Archive for the ‘Harvard Business School’ Category
Global B-schools chart emerging markets course
Last week, a group of 71 second year MBA students from London Business School (LBS) were in Mumbai on a week long trip, soaking in the business culture of the financial capital, meeting CEOs like Raymond Bickson (The Indian Hotels Company – owner of the Taj group of hotels) and Sanjeev Lamba (Reliance Entertainment) and immersing themselves in conversation with the likes of Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra and Farhan Akhtar to get a grasp on emerging business trends in Bollywood.
The visit was part of a new curriculum introduced by LBS – global business experience (GBE) – which offers an opportunity for second year MBA students to choose from five locations around the world to gain learning experience. LBS is not the only business school emphasizing on a global business experience for students, with a specific focus on emerging markets. Last August, nearly 300 students from Chicago Booth went on 25 trips around the globe, led by 100 second year trip leaders. The school’s first ever emerging markets summit will be held in April this year, wherein students involved in the emerging markets group along with those in groups covering Latin America, South Asia, Africa, Asia-Pacific and other regions, would come together.
Harvard Business School (HBS), on the other hand, has FIELD (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development), a curricular innovation which was launched two years ago. FIELD is a required first year course that spans a full academic year. The objective of the global immersion portion of the course is to increase students’ global intelligence. One of the modules under this takes place in 14 different emerging market countries and is designed to develop students’ understanding of what it means to lead in a global setting, in a place they have never been before.
There is a clear shift in business education from being only about location-specific topics and activities to a more global experience-oriented field. “Emerging market learning has become an important quality for a student. You have to allow students to interact with different cultures and draw on the experience when they go out in the world,” says Amelia Whitelaw, Associate Director for Global Business Experiences at LBS.
The GBE curriculum at LBS is designed to be fast-paced, engaging and demanding where students are expected to deliver a group project working in an unfamiliar environment and with peers with whom they have not worked before. Likewise, Chicago Booth prepares its students to excel in a global setting. “We do this in several ways, starting even before students arrive on campus. In the summer before students begin classes, they have the option to attend one of many international trips with a small group of their classmates,” says Stacey Kole, Deputy Dean of the full-time MBA programme at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Most business schools are striving towards a single objective: to take students out of their comfort zone and put them in a position where they have to act and make decisions, rather than discussing the theory as they do in the case method. “Business is conducted in a global arena and leaders are expected to have a global perspective. In order to be effective, our students have to be as comfortable in Mumbai as they are in Mexico or Manhattan,” said Brian C. Kenny, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, HBS. This change has a direct correlation with the way businesses are chasing growth and profitability beyond national borders. All businesses, whether American, European or Asian, are trying to close the gap in globally adept talent.
However, at the Fletcher School, global experience doesn’t just mean being able to market a detergent in a foreign country or figuring out how to adapt the car you manufacture to road conditions in poorer countries. “It can mean something as humdrum as: Do you have the ability to cross a cultural chasm and extend your hand in friendship to a business colleague or partner? You should be able to say to your foreign partner/colleague that, ‘Not only have I taken the time to write the 40-point PowerPoint deck, but I’ve also learned how to have a conversation with you over dinner about a sport that you guys probably are deeply interested in and I cannot understand. And I can talk about the sport in the language that you would use’,” said Bhaskar Chakravorti, Senior Associate Dean, International Business & Finance, The Fletcher School, Tufts University. That explains why LBS wants its students to become conversant in at least two languages.
Source: The Times of India, April 5, 2013
Harvard courses focus on India cases
Harvard Business School (HBS) is expanding its presence in India through adoption of more India-based cases and new offerings in Executive Education. The base of Indian case studies at HBS has risen to 90 in the last one year, and will see more additions in the coming time, says the school. “There are a lot more new India-focussed cases coming up in the next few years. We are still concentrating on building this up, gathering and creating more teaching material. It will take some time as it is a long process, and a lot of work goes into it,” said Stefan H. Thomke, William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at HBS and Faculty Chair for HBS Executive Education in India.
Over the last five years since HBS opened its India Research Centre housed at Mahindra Towers, Mumbai, around 15 cases related to India have been published each year. Prior to that, there were fewer cases being written on India. This is reflective of a broader trend in business education around the world. Before the year 2000, business schools and Executive Education curricula did not have significant global content. Today, given the global macroeconomic scenario and the importance of understanding how to do business in emerging economies, there is greater need to create global content.
These cases are taught at Harvard Business School (MBA and Executive Education). They are also taught in business schools around the world, as well as in other Executive Education programmes and company training programmes around the world. The largest consumer of India-Focused cases are US B-schools, as faculty in MBA and Executive Education programmes seek to add more content from emerging markets like India into their curriculum.
Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) India, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, last year signed an agreement with the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B) to source 24 case studies from the institute every year. HBP publishes management content for academics, students, and professionals. IIM-B is the only institute from India and fourth from Asia that supplies case studies to HBP.
“Our agreement is that we will supply about 24 cases to HBP every year. We are putting only new cases written by IIM-B faculty. We started this last year,” said Professor Dinesh Kumar, Chairperson, Research and Publications, IIM-Bangalore. Kumar added IIM-B had gone through a process where it received a lot of tips on how to style the case, etc. Harvard hand-holded IIM-B for about a year. HBP distributes the cases to B-schools and corporates globally, including over 75 B-schools in India which use the cases extensively in their curriculum. Globally, these are priced at $3 per student for use in MBA programmes and $6.95 per student for use in Executive Education. However, Indian schools are charged a lot less in an effort to make the content more accessible to the faculty and students.
Executive Education offerings is another area where HBS is striving to expand its presence in the country. The institute began its Executive Education in India in 2006-07 with few programmes, but has expanded the portfolio gradually. This year, there will be a total of seven Executive Education programmes in India. “HBS has broadened its portfolio in India in terms of research and cases, and executive education will play a crucial part in this endeavour. Our programme portfolio folder has been increasing gradually, and we hope to keep it on a steady rise. So, you will have this and more in the future,” Thomke said
All the HBS programmes have been tweaked to cater to the Indian executives. The teaching methodology in particular, has been tweaked to be relevant to the local context. For example, HBS used the Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) ‘Sactor’ innovation case study in ITS Executive Education programme on management innovation, to help executives understand equipment sector innovation. The case study involved analysis of the project at M&M to produce a tractor with an in-built trolley that could be used for non-farm purposes.
“The questions you get in such focussed case-based discussions are also very different from what we see in other countries. For example, we invited M&M executives to answer questions related to this particular case, so that the participants could understand the subject better. Overall, there has been a healthy mix of India-focussed cases and global cases, because this is what the executives want,” Thomke added.
He said management innovation would be one topic that will be taught every year in India. He said HBS has put more of marketing aspects to the course, that makes it unique to India. HBP is also looking for different channels to cater to the Indian leadership.
Source: Business Standard, August 30, 2012
HBS students to study Sreedharan’s ethic
On a wall behind his desk were Sanskrit quotations on the power of knowledge. Verses from the Bhagavad Gita were included in bulletins and newsletters released by the company he led. The man in question may sound like an archetypal, somewhat religious, Indian civil servant. He also ran a project that in phase I alone cost Rs.100 billion and involved building a Metro railway network in India’s Capital, successfully battling politics, cynicism and vested interests.
How E. Sreedharan, former Managing Director of Delhi Metro Rail Corp. Ltd (DMRC), built a world-class mass transit system is now a Harvard Business School (HBS) case study. The case study will teach students of HBS’s advanced management programme Sreedharan’s crisis-management methods and how he got a variety of people with often opposing interests to get behind his agenda. HBS is planning to teach the course, largely attended by chief executives and board-level candidates, in the September-October session.
It will examine how Sreedharan and his team dealt with two accidents during construction in eight months in 2008-09 that led to fatalities and could have irretrievably damaged the Metro’s reputation. The study also examines DMRC’s unique structure and management ethic that enabled it to meet deadlines and budget limits.
“I was looking for a good case on project management. The fact that the Delhi Metro came in under budget and ahead of schedule caught my eye,” said V.G. Narayanan, Thomas D. Casserly, Jr professor of business administration unit head, accounting and management at HBS. He worked on the case study with Saloni Chaturvedi, researcher at HBS India Research Center. “I wanted to understand how DMRC accomplished this,” Narayanan said.
The process included a meeting with Sreedharan in 2011 and many meetings and conference calls with senior DMRC officials. The 65 km-long first phase of the Delhi Metro, of which 13 km was underground, was built in seven years and three months, less than the scheduled 10 years. By contrast, Kolkata, the only other Indian city to have a Metro at the time, took 23 years to build a 25 km line.
The Delhi Metro’s construction began in October 1998, with public services starting on 24 December 2002 on an 8.3 km stretch. It has finished 190 km of track so far. With the second phase of the construction complete, six operational lines (including the Airport Express line) and 142 stations, the current third phase of expansion is set to add another 108 km of track, three new lines and 92 more stations at an estimated cost of Rs. 300 billion.
The HBS study will run students through DMRC’s gruelling initial years that were fraught with challenges. From putting the basic organizational structure in place and building technical capabilities, there were several battles to be won that included deciding on the kind of gauge to be used, putting legal cover in place, land acquisition, and realignment and tunnelling issues.
“How does a leader inspire an organization when he/she cannot buy performance by just paying more in the form of bonuses and incentives? How does a leader respond to a crisis? We hope to explore these issues in class,” Narayanan said. Sreedharan had a consistent message and others around him absorbed his values, helping DMRC make quick decisions, Narayanan said. And by being thoughtful and considerate, he got the public on his side. “The perfect alignment of his key constituents, it seems to me, is the key to his efficiency,” Narayanan said.
Abhaya Agarwal, executive director (infrastructure and public-private partnership) at Ernst and Young, said Sreedharan’s unique combination of management skills and technical ability gave DMRC the edge. Much of his technical learning was picked up during an immensely challenging stint at Konkan Railway, connecting Mumbai to the south along the west coast of India.
“The Delhi Metro, for critics who panned the Metro rail system for being too expensive, is a great precedent that showed that a project of such scale can be achieved. The good part is Sreedharan has created a structure with such processes in place that can be followed to complete the remaining project,” said Agarwal. Sreedharan retired on 31 December, with Mangu Singh becoming the new DMRC chief.
Last year, Bangalore joined Delhi and Kolkata as a city with its own Metro rail service, when a portion of the first phase of the network was inaugurated, about 19 months behind schedule. A 6.7 km stretch of the eastern line was opened between Byappanahalli and MG Road, covering six stations. Other forthcoming Metro projects include one in Mumbai. The first line of this is being built as an east-west corridor linking Ghatkopar and Versova, and is expected to be operational this year. Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Infrastructure Ltd (R-Infra) has been constructing the 11 km line, expected to cost Rs. 23.56 billion, since 2008. R-Infra has also won the contract for the 38 km second line, between Charkop and Mankhurd, but work on this line is yet to begin.
Source: Mint, June 2, 2012
Teaching leadership is easier than practising it: Nitin Nohria, Dean, HBS
When he took charge as dean of Harvard Business School (HBS) 18 months ago, Nitin Nohria announced five strategic themes that would guide his administration in the years to come, all starting with the letter I: internationalisation, inclusion, intellectual ambition, innovation and integration with the rest of Harvard University. The last two he’s partly achieved through the setting up of the Harvard Innovation Lab, which is now used by students and faculty from every discipline at the university.
This week, the dean was in Mumbai to take his first theme forward, with the inauguration of the Harvard Classroom at the Taj Land’s End hotel. “This classroom is hugely important to us. It’s designed as an exact replica of the classrooms we have at HBS and its architecture is central to our educational technology, which is the case study method,” he said.
Administrative duties usually leave deans of major academic institutions with little time for teaching or research, but Nohria still manages to teach a three-day ‘New CEO workshop’, at HBS thrice a year, meant for first-time CEOs of companies with a turnover of at least $2 billion. “Teaching leadership is much easier than being a leader,” he said ruefully. What’s the greatest challenge? “Staying focussed on your priorities. It helped that I declared what my priorities were, right at the onset. Otherwise, it’s very easy to get buffeted by millions of things that clamour for your time.”
The new Harvard classroom at the Taj was inaugurated by Ratan Tata in the presence of a select set of HBS faculty and alumni. The inauguration was followed up with a symposium on corporate social responsibility (CSR) on Saturday, attended by top leaders from government and industry, including Union minister Praful Patel, Anu Aga, Nadir Godrej, Rajashree Birla, Roberto Zagha of The World Bank, Kishore Chaukar of Tata Sons, Ranjit Sahani of Novartis and Onne van der Weijde of Ambuja Cement. Not an easy collection of people to bring together, but as Nohria said, “Our power lies in being able to convene high quality groups for interesting conversations. This process is distinctive to us.”
The new classroom, earlier the hotel’s gymnasium, constitutes a CSR initiative on the part of the Tata Group, albeit one that is guided by enlightened self-interest. HBS will have free use of the classroom for 12 weeks a year for its executive development programmes, but participants will have to pay for rooms and meals. The project has been three years in the making and Nohria says there are no plans to create any more classrooms in Taj Hotels. “We really don’t need any more. We’re not in India to chase demand. We’re here to chase knowledge.”
Meanwhile, HBS is closely watching the government of India’s plans to legislate a mandatory 2% expenditure on CSR for all companies with a profit after tax of 5 crore and plans to do a case study on the project in the future.
Source: The Economic Times, March 12, 2012
Harvard B-school has a new address in Mumbai
US-headquartered Harvard Business School (HBS) has finally found an address for its executive education classroom in India. The B-school, beginning this March, will offer executive programmes at the Taj Lands End, at Bandra, in suburban Mumbai. The space at the hotel will be an amphitheatre-style classroom fashioned after the ones at Harvard Business School in Boston. The B-school has been conducting executive education or management development programmes (MDPs) in India since 2008 at five-star hotels.
India’s growing Rs. 350-crore (Rs. 3.5 billion) executive education space continues to attract B-schools. The Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, will also have its own centre in India. “We will have office space and classrooms. We are looking at a centralised location and Mumbai that will suit our needs the most, as of now. Within the next two years we will have a physical presence in India. Through the centre, we will not only conduct executive education, but will also use it as a place for the alumni to converge and our faculty to convene for research,” Jason Wingard, Vice-Dean, Executive Education at Wharton told Business Standard.
Wharton joins the likes of University of Chicago, Tuck School of Business, INSEAD, Oxford University’s Said Business School and Duke University, among others, to offer their executive education programmes in India. “We have realised that many of the emerging markets continue to grow, and it is important for us to have a variety of locations around the world. We are present in India, China and Brazil.” Wharton receives about 10,000 executive education participants on its campus every year and India is among the top three countries in terms of participants from outside the US.
Wharton has started a certificate programme, ‘Accelerated Development Program’, for business leaders in India from January 2012. Track one of the programme will have three Wharton executive education programmes in India at Rs. 660,000 (plus service tax). Track two will see two executive education programmes in India and one in Philadelphia in the US for Rs. 500,000 (plus service tax) and Wharton Philadelphia programme at a discount of 25 per cent.
Source: Business Standard, March 1, 2012
Xander Group founder Siddharth Yog gifts $11 million to Harvard Business School
On the 11th day of the 11th month of 2011 at 11:11 a.m., Siddharth Yog gifted $11 million as ‘guru dakshina’ to his professor Arthur I. Segel at the Harvard Business School, his alma mater. He added a dollar to that amount as ‘shagun’, or a token for good luck. The 38-year-old founder of Xander Group Inc., a global investment company focused on emerging markets that manages over $2 billion of equity capital, follows in the footsteps of prominent Harvard alumni who have given back to the business school that played a major role in moulding them into successful business people.
Other Indians to figure on that list include Anand Mahindra, Ratan Tata and Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy. In early October 2010, the Vice-Chairman & Managing Director of Mahindra & Mahindra had given $10 million to support Harvard’s Humanities Center; days later, the Tata Group donated $50 million to fund a campus building; and earlier in the same year, the Murthy family gifted $5.2 million to publish ‘The Murthy Classical Library of India’.
Yog’s gift has its distinctive elements. For one, it figures amongst the single-largest personal gifts an Indian has made to Harvard University. For another, it follows the ‘shishya-guru parampara’, or the age-old Indian disciple-teacher tradition. “I can never thank Arthur enough for what he has taught me. The gift is to the institute and specifically to Arthur for bringing about a life-changing experience (in me),” said the class of 2004 alumnus in an interaction with this writer during a recent visit to New Delhi to be part of a lunch hosted by Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust.
On his 30th trip to India in seven years, the guru, a co-founder and co-owner (between 1982 and 2001) of a private equity real estate development and investment advisory company, is a tad embarrassed by the ‘guru dakshina’. “Teaching is such a joy… but the idea of a gift in my name is preposterous. It is very nice, but unnecessary,” says Segel with a grin. Yog convinced the good professor to accept the offering by narrating the story of Eklavya from Mahabharata, who cut off his thumb and offered it as dakshina to his guru Dronacharya.
So why is this maverick – who now rubs shoulders with the likes of Tata, Mahindra, Murthy as well as western donors such as David Rockefeller – so indebted to Harvard University? Well, it’s thanks to the university, and to Segel, that Yog turned
entrepreneur. Before that, since 1993, Yog was involved in global real estate and infrastructure. Between 1999 and 2002, Yog was based in Singapore and Hong Kong as founder-director of CB Richard Ellis’ (CBRE’s) Asia-Pacific strategic consulting practice. Prior to that, from 1994 to 1998, he helped set up CBRE’s India operations and led the consulting, valuation and research groups. He has also worked at Bain & Company in New York, Deutsche Bank Real Estate Investment Management GmbH in Frankfurt, and Feedback Ventures in New Delhi. But after nine years of working, Yog found himself asking the quintessential mid-career question: where do I go from here? Answer: the Harvard Business School, where he landed in 2002.
Segel recalls his first meeting with his shishya when Yog walked into his office at Harvard; Yog knew only real estate, and Segel taught the subject. “He was among the top students of his 900-strong batch,” the professor recalls. Yog went on to write a case with Segel on real estate major Eldeco; Segel still teaches it. Like most regular MBA grads, whose next destination is a coveted job in the financial services industry, Yog was set to start JPMorgan Chase’s private equity business in the Asia-Pacific after graduating in 2004. “But, as they say, life happens,” recalls Yog.
In New Delhi to get his visa stamped, none other than Segel prodded Yog to start a business of his own. Yog, with Segel and a clutch of investors in tow, duly founded Xander Group Inc. The private equity business of the group has investments from Lord Rothschild’s family, RIT Cap Partners, The Getty Family Trusts, and of course Segel and Yog, who is currently based in London. Over the past seven years, Xander Group has grown to 75-plus employees with offices in New Delhi, Singapore, London, Boston, Mauritius, Bangalore and Mumbai, among other outposts. The focus is primarily on companies and assets in real estate, retail, entertainment, infrastructure and hospitality.
Yog says the exposure to Lord Rothschild’s philanthropy played a big part in his decision to give back to Harvard. “It was a desire to start early. As Steve Jobs said: stay hungry, stay foolish. I did that and I am hungry and foolish again.” The gift of $11 million spans multiple Harvard schools and focuses on innovative science, educational access, public service and academic-public policy collaborations. The financial aid and fellowships have an India and emerging market focus, says Yog.
To be sure, India is top of mind for Yog. “The company is named after Alexander the Great, who first tried to marry East and West. The idea is to create an ecosystem between the East and the West and to tie back the opportunities in India specifically along with other emerging markets.”
Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), January 28, 2012
How India’s best-known B-school got built
It is rare in India to come across a biography (if one can call it that!) of an educational institution or one who is closely associated with the creation of such an institution. It is rarer still to see a combination of both in one single book. T.T. Ram Mohan, an alumnus of IIM-Calcutta and a professor in the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), attempts precisely that in his evocatively and aptly titled Brick by Red Brick —Ravi Matthai and the Making of IIM Ahmedabad (published by Rupa & Co).
The oft-photographed brick facade of what is arguably India’s most famous B-school is familiar to anyone with any aspirations to, or interest in, management education. However, not much is known of its origins or the role played by key individuals in its founding and its transformation into an institution of repute. And to that end, this book is a welcome addition to the little literature that exists on the subject of management education in India today.
It is a fascinating story of institution building, of a coming together of a “constellation of forces” (to use a much favoured expression of Prof. Dwijendra Tripathy, one of Ram Mohan’s key sources) — of personalities, Governments (State and Central), thinking politicians and bureaucrats, and the foreign hand (the role of Harvard Business School and other overseas academicians) who somehow seemed propelled by some force to achieve a higher goal.
It is especially remarkable to see how various personalities got together to create and, thereafter, define the contours of their vision of a management educational institution. Each personality is striking — be it Vikram Sarabhai (a remarkable modern day renaissance man, responsible for the founding of many of India’s famous institutions), Lalbhai, a prominent industrialist and no mean institution-builder himself, Prof. Kamla Chowdhury, who is widely credited with the academic framework in the initial years, and, of course, the main protagonist and IIM-A’s first director, Ravi Matthai, who many credit with the unique culture and appeal that IIM-A continues to have even today. These driven helmsmen are possibly the reason why IIM-A is where it is today.
What Ram Mohan also clearly shows is the way frameworks and processes were designed and implemented in a manner that contributed to IIM-A’s unique way of working at different levels — be it the active involvement of the faculty in key policy decisions; the autonomy that IIM-A sought and got from the beginning; the deliberate creation of a culture of informality with accountability; thinking big as evidenced by the choice of Louis Kahn as the architect (thereby, rendering IIM-A’s old campus a tourist attraction even today!); and so on.
There were several key decisions taken in the initial period which are valid even today — granting a diploma for the PG course as opposed to a degree; allowing freshers without work experience to join the PG course; permitting faculty to do private consulting; having a strong, independent Board of Governors; and frequent Faculty Council meetings, among others.
Ravi Matthai, the founding director, seems to have had a major role to play in the formulation and implementation of many key aspects of the institute’s functioning, many of which have had a long-term impact. It almost seems like any director thereafter decides on major issues asking himself this question ‘What would Ravi have done in this situation?’!
Ram Mohan, who has never met the man (Ravi passed away in February 1984), is clearly inspired by the enduring legacy and imprint that Ravi has left behind in the form of key processes, his approach to making key decisions, and IIM-A’s unique culture. Above all this, what absolutely stands out is Ravi’s clear determination, right from the time of his joining to stepping down as Director after five-seven years; he actually did that, much to everyone’s utter shock at that time, and continued as a regular faculty member.
It is pretty hard to imagine that there would be men like that in India today who would voluntarily give up position and power! A key lesson that emanates is what Ram Mohan enunciates on page 38 — “You do not need extraordinary people in order to create great institutions, you need ordinary people who are highly motivated and are driven by a shared sense of purpose.”
This message is particularly apt today when many of us are witness to institutions being compromised or subordinated to the greed or hunger for power of a few individuals or groups or vested interests. One sometimes gets the feeling that Ram Mohan is torn between two approaches. One side of him, the academician, wants to keep it analytical and thoughtful, while the other side of him, the columnist, itches to make it more racy and fast-paced.
It looks like the former generally prevailed (perhaps, because he continues to be a faculty member there) though there are occasions where the latter has managed to sneak through (cases in point being some alleged triangle between Vikram Sarabhai, his wife and a former professor, or Ravi Matthai being sent off to England after a road accident).
But these bits are mere sideshows and the overall intent of the book — to show us how a world-class educational institution can be built and sustained — is pretty effectively conveyed. More than anything else, it shows us how one man, in this case Ravi Matthai, can give totally of himself to build a pioneering centre of excellence, without expecting anything in return.
This article is written by Chandu Nair, an alumnus of IIM-A from the 1983 PGP batch.
Source: The Hindu Business Line, September 12, 2011
IIM-A, Harvard to share filmy fundas
IIM-Ahmedabad’s course on Contemporary Film Industry: A business perspective, is all set to go global. The course coordinator is in talks with a faculty of Harvard Business School to use Hollywood practices for management education.
“The course lacked global perspective,” says Kandaswamy Bharathan, IIM-A visiting faculty who designed the course. “The idea is to understand global aspects of the film industry and get more insights into Hollywood’s best practices, which can be taught to students here,” he said.
In the new academic year, IIM-A post graduate programme (PGP) students will take up a case study on Hollywood comedy-drama ‘The Bucket List’ starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. The students will be expected to look at the production excellence and the emotional connect in the movie.
The institute will use cross sectoral learnings that Harvard has taken from Hollywood. The IIM-A and Harvard collaboration may result in combined case studies on Hollywood and Bollywood movies, with an aim to study how MBA methodology and film industry strategies can be helpful for each other.
“A film is made with 200 people and a particular budget in a short span of 15-20 months. If a management student wants to set up a Rs. 50 crore (Rs. 500 million) factory within a short time, he can take lessons from the film industry through this course,” Bharathan said.
The course has become popular on campus with a 300% rise in enrolment since its launch in December 2008. In a batch of about 200, at least 15 students want to taking up projects in the film industry every year at the end of the course. The course has also attracted recruitment interest from prominent companies in the industry like UTV Pictures, Reliance Big, Mumbai Mantra among others.
“The course aims at fostering creative thinking among students. ‘The Bucket List’ has been executed in an emotional way with two terminally ill men, who share a hospital room, defining a list of things to do before they die. The film carries a socio-cultural message to sensitise the audience, is not just of business value but shows societal value,” said Bharathan, who is also the producer of hit films like Roja.
Source: The Times of India, August 8, 2011
>Response by Taj employees to 26/11 a case study at Harvard
>
The heroic response by employees of Mumbai’s landmark Taj Hotel during the 26/11 terror attacks is now a case study at Harvard Business School (HBS) that focusses on the staff’s selfless service for its customers and how they went beyond their call of duty to save lives. The multimedia case study ‘Terror at the Taj Bombay: Customer-Centric Leadership’ by HBS professor Rohit Deshpande documents “the bravery and resourcefulness shown by rank-and-file employees” during the attack.
The study mainly focusses on “why did the Taj employees stay at their posts (during the attacks), jeopardising their safety in order to save hotel guests” and how can that level of loyalty and dedication be replicated elsewhere. A dozen Taj employees died trying to save the lives of the hotel guests during the attacks.
“Not even the senior managers could explain the behaviour of these employees,” Deshpande is quoted as saying in HBS Working Knowledge, a forum on the faculty’s research and ideas. Deshpande said even though the employees “knew all the back exits” in the hotel and could have easily fled the building, some stayed back to help the guests. “The natural human instinct would be to flee. These are people who instinctively did the right thing. And in the process, some of them, unfortunately, gave their lives to save guests.”
A documentary-style account of events, the case includes video interviews with hotel staff and footage of the attack. It shows how leadership displayed by people in the bottom rank to the top levels in the organisational hierarchy helped in saving lives. It also focusses on the hotel’s history, its approach to recruiting and training employees, the Indian culture’s “guest is God” philosophy and how the hotel would recover after the attacks.
Another key concept of the study is that in India and the developing world, “there is a much more paternalistic equation between employer and employee that creates a kinship.” Terming it as one of the “hardest cases” he has worked on, Mumbai-native Deshpande said it was hard to see people confront their trauma again.
“We objectify it, keep emotion at a distance, but after 15 minutes of questions with a video camera in a darkened room, there are deeper, more personal reflections of what happened,” he says in the HBS Working Knowledge.
Deshpande said Taj employees felt a sense of loyalty to the hotel as well as a sense of responsibility to the guests. He cites the example of a general manager who insisted on staying put and help direct a response to the attack even after learning that his wife and sons had died in a fire on the hotel’s top floor. “Nothing in the employees’ training could have prepared them for such an unprecedented situation,” Deshpande said.
Deshpande has taught the case in the School’s Owner/President Management Executive Education programme. It can also be taught as an example of managing the post-crisis recovery of a flagship corporate brand, he added.
Source: The Economic Times, January 27, 2011
Tatas gift US$ 50 million to Harvard Business School
India’s Tata Group has announced a US$ 50 million (Rs. 2.2 billion) gift to Harvard Business School (HBS), the largest donation from an international donor in the school’s history. Besides cementing an already significant relationship between India and the world’s premier business school, the grant also sends out a strong message of Indian academic and economic involvement in the U.S. ahead of the visit to India of President Obama, who is also a Harvard (law school) alumnus.
The gift, disclosed in Boston on Thursday by Chairman Ratan Tata, will fund a new academic and residential building on the HBS campus for participants in the School’s broad portfolio of Executive Education programs. The School hopes to break ground for the building, which will be named Tata Hall, next spring.
Incidentally, Ratan Tata attended the School’s Advanced Management Program — one of three comprehensive leadership programs offered by HBS Executive Education — in 1975. He received the School’s highest honor, the Alumni Achievement Award, in 1995. On top of this, Harvard Business School’s current (and 10th) Dean is Rajasthan-born Nitin Nohria.
Clearly, the gift is not without some political undertones, coming on the eve of the visit to India of President Obama, who has lately railed about the flight of American jobs to India. Boston’s Democratic Mayor Thomas Menino, who joined Tata and Dean Nohria for the announcement on the HBS campus, said the Indian company’s generosity would have both a local and global impact. “Mr. Tata’s gift will create jobs right here in Boston, and the executives who study at HBS will go out into the world as ambassadors of our truly world-class city,” he said.
In fact, President Obama himself is expected to stay at the Tata Group’s flagship property, the Taj Hotel, site of the deadly 9/11 terrorist strike by Pakistan, during his visit to Mumbai next month, also as a gesture of solidarity with the Indian group which lost several employees in the attack. Ahead of the presidential visit, Larry Summers, one of his key economic advisors, who is also a past president of Harvard University, is already in Mumbai.
All these factors appeared to have played a role in the big Tata gift, although there has been criticism in some quarters regarding Indian business lavishing grants on American schools that are already wealthy beyond compare. Harvard University has an endowment of over US$ 25 billion, the world’s largest, and HBS’ endowments alone top US$ 2 billion. Last week, India’s Mahindra Group announced a US$ 10 million gift to support Harvard’s Humanities Center.
But the hoary university, which has many distinguished Indian alumni including two cabinet ministers (P. Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal), and several business leaders (Rahul Bajaj, Y.C. Deveshwar besides Tata and Mahindra among them), evidently has a special place in Indian hearts and minds. “The Harvard Business School is the pre-eminent place to be exposed to the world’s best thinking on management and leadership, and we are pleased that this gift will support the School’s educational mission to mold the next generation of global business leaders,” Ratan Tata said, in explaining the gift.
Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria expressed deep appreciation for the Tata Group’s “extraordinary generosity” saying, “This is an historic gift from a renowned organization revered for its significant economic, civic, and philanthropic impact.” Nohria, who is an alumnus of IIT Mumbai, reminded Americans that Tata Group is widely respected for integrity and innovation, not just in India — where it produced both the first indigenous car and the $2,000 Tata Nano automobile — but in a variety of business lines across several continents, from cars to hotels and from tea to information technology.
Tatas own three premier hotel properties in the U.S. in New York (The Pierre), Boston (Ritz) and San Francisco (Campton). Together with its IT operations, its enterprises have created thousands of jobs in recession hit U.S., a fact that is seldom recognized in America.
Source: The Times of India, October 16, 2010
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