“And” was a fitting conjunction which subsumed the plethora of topics that were discussed by experts from companies, government and the media at the ISB Leadership Summit 2012. Each year at the ILS, the student clubs at the ISB organise intellectually-stimulating discussions and invite experts to speak on a variety of topics from marketing challenges in India to the advances in the pharmaceutical industry. The Women in Business Club invited Kiran Bedi, the fearless former policewoman, who in her inimitable style spoke earnestly about the dichotomy that she has observed between the role of men and women in business. “Women in business collaborate and are not as networked as men who are able to spend more time in the business.” She ended her talk with some practical advice to the women in the audience about how they can make their careers count. The two-day event comprised several invigorating panel discussions and a forum, where participants could present snippets of ideas in “Ignite.”
Riding high on his popularity post the Olympics Games that he helped organise so successfully, the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, was at the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently for an interactive session hosted by the Centre for Emerging Markets Solutions (CEMS). Mayor Johnson’s India visit is his first overseas trade mission as mayor.
Charming the audience with his ready wit, Mayor Johnson launched into his well-practiced speech enumerating the reasons why Indian entrepreneurs, students and professionals are welcome in London. “London has twice as many book shops as New York along with a quarter of the murder rate. We have more museums and parks, less rainfall than Rome, and a young population that is bursting with ideas.” He lampooned countries that have held onto their nationalistic values at the cost of being integrated with the world economy. Products in this economic era cannot be owned by the country of their origin anymore. As they move seamlessly from country to country, they lose their national identity and gain a global character. Jaguar, though made in Birmingham, is neither British nor Indian, perhaps it is “Brindian” he countered.
“It doesn’t matter what the ownership structure is, what matters is that value is added in each location of the value chain and the critical thing in a global economy is to find the place and the people who will add value in the most efficient and competitive way, ” he stressed.
The session with Mayor Johnson was organised by the Centre for Emerging Markets Solutions (CEMS) at the ISB and moderated by Professor Reuben Abraham, Executive Director, CEMS.
The ISB Digital Summit organised by the Srini Raju Centre for IT and the Networked Economy (SRITNE), and co-hosted by Jigserv Digital brought to the fore challenges and opportunities of conducting businesses in the current networked economy. In his keynote address, Rajan Nandan, MD, Google, India, provided the audience with a detailed account of the digital world – from the internet and smartphones to e-commerce. Further insight was provided by academicians and company executives. In his speech on “Digital Anthropology vs. Data Science in Social Marketing,” Professor Arun Sundararajan of NYU’s Stern School of Management built on the idea presented in the last conference, when Professor Chris Dellarocas declared in his keynote address that “human beings are social animals; our behaviour is fundamentally tribal.” Professor Sundararajan expanded on this concept. He explained that one could only get a nuanced understanding of how people interact in social media if one followed an “anthropological approach.” Topics such as “How to harness the power of the digital self” and “Leveraging Scoial Media for B2B Connect” were also discussed at the conference.
ISB's Centre for Investment served as the academic partner for this year's Morningstar Investment Conference, which was held in Mumbai recently. The conference brought together more than 500 investment professionals, including leading investors such as Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and industry representatives such as Ashish Kumar Chauhan, CEO, Bombay Stock Exchange and Prashant Jain, Chief Investment Officer of HDFC Mutual Funds. Speakers included Professor Krishnamurthy Subramanian from ISB, who discussed behavioural finance. Given the diversity of the speakers, there was a remarkable consensus on the need for greater financial literacy in India, and on the need for providers of financial services to innovate.
Participants from over a dozen Chandigarh-based NGOs received a crash course on business skills in the two-day management workshop, “Diffusion” that was recently held at the Mohali campus. This workshop was organised by the Net Impact club and the Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (WCED) at the ISB. This workshop has also been conducted in Pune and Hyderabad earlier. Through the workshop, participants learned valuable insights on fundraising and revenue generation, organisation building, marketing and branding, negotiations and the use of social media. The knowledge of these skills helps in increaing the efficiency of NGOs. “Organisation building concepts and clarifications on setting specific goals for the volunteers have provided us new ways to manage the responsibilities,” said Simranjit Singh, Programme Manager for Environment Matters. The event also provided the ISB students an opportunity to understand the challenges faced by the non-profit organisations in their daily functioning.