Professor Sridhar Seshadri has recently joined the Indian School of Business (ISB) as a resident faculty specialising in Operations Management. Previously, he was a professor of Information, Risk, and Operations Management at the University of Texas, Austin. In addition, he was the Fellow of the Center for Excellence in Supply Chain Management as well as the CBA Faculty Fellow at UT Austin. He has also been a faculty member at the Stern School of Business, New York University for over ten years. During his teaching career, he was awarded the Stern School of Business Teaching Excellence Award (1998) and recognised as the Stern School of Business Undergraduate Teacher of the Year in 1997.
His areas of interest include Stochastic modelling and applications in queuing systems, supply chain management, and revenue management.
Professor Vijay Govindarajan from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College was at ISB recently to speak about his latest book, Reverse Innovation. This book co-authored by Chris Trimble also of the Tuck School of Business, helps leaders and senior managers understand what it means to develop in emerging markets first, instead of scaling down rich world products. Professor Govindarajan spoke about some of the successful strategies adopted by multinationals such as GE and P&G that have adopted the approach of innovating in the emerging markets first. Professor Govindarajan is ranked No. 3 in the Forbes list of “The World's Most Influential Business Thinkers” and his article on Reverse Innovation for Harvard Business Review that he co-wrote with GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt was rated as a ‘Big idea’ of the past decade by the magazine.
Observant visitors to ISB will notice cycles with yellow tags parked at different parking lots dotting the campus. These bikes are part of “Cycles on Campus,” a recent initiative launched by the Operations and Sustainability Council (OSC) in which 60 cycles have been placed at eight different locations in the campus so that the community will drive less and bike more around the campus. Dean Ajit Rangnekar and the Deputy Dean Deepak Chandra participated in the inaugural ride around the campus. The aim of this drive is to increase awareness about sustainability issues while also improving the health of the ISB community. The cycles have been provided by Invesco, an investment management company. The cycles have already found many fans in the community with students and staff riding them in the evening.
Paul Romer, Professor of Economics at New York University's Stern School of Business, was at ISB recently to talk about “Structural Transformation and Urbanisation in India.” Professor Romer is Professor of Economics and the director of Stern’s Urbanisation Project. In his talk, Romer emphasised the importance of urbanisation for accelerating growth. He proposed the start-up hypothesis, arguing that cities can help to disseminate economic growth-fostering norms. He cited Hong Kong as a key exemplar for this hypothesis, and highlighted how it led to the transmission of market-friendly norms to the rest of China.