IIM Bangalore: Learning Curve

I JOINED THE INDIAN INSTITUTE OF Management Bangalore (IIMB) as a professor in 2002. I moved here from a business school in the US, where I was a faculty. The work pressure at IIMB was quite mild; I had to teach one or two courses in a year, and do some research. In those days, IIMB was a well-known brand in India, and was usually ranked second or third in the country. It was known outside India, but mainly as a public institution with high quality of students.

I found that the institute encouraged faculty to engage in research or other academic activities according to their in­terests and leanings. The resources available were generous: funds, library collections, access to the internet, ability to travel to leading international conferences, and interactions with industry, were all plentifully available. Students were excel­lent, and teaching was a pleasure, as in-class interactions were intense and challenged the professor to be informed and alert to the range of questions and queries.

After the mid-2000s, the views in IIMB began to change, with a focus now on international standards and being on par with business education in leading B-Schools around the world. The faculty and administration took a stand to attain international standards, and a slow churn began in IIMB.

IIMB changed its mission and vision statements to reflect the new priorities. Our vision is “to be a global, renowned aca­demic institution fostering excellence in management, inno­vation and entrepreneurship for business, government and society.” The words “global”, “renowned”, and “excellence”, echoed throughout our discussions about what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go. We embarked on a journey towards excellence.

IIMB’S DRIVE FOR excellence began by changing our understanding of what we meant by quality in research and teaching, and by extension, all other activities of the institute. Through many discussions, and over numerous drafts of documents, we arrived at some standards that we felt were suitable for us.

These standards included a list of academic journals that we considered as representing the best in the management field and that we could encourage faculty to publish in. We were careful in making this list for our own strengths and needs, and not borrow an international list from another country or institution, plenty of which were available. This list formed both a measure and a target for driving quality in research. It signalled what we cared about and how we wanted to shape our knowledge creation and dissemination activities.

We systematically reviewed all our teaching programmes. We re-designed the doctoral programme from scratch, setting up a structure that reflected our priorities for research, and also our move towards international quality standards. We had ex­tended discussions, lasting over years, as to what constitutes an MBA education, what our role in the world of business is, and how we impacted society. This led to significant revamping of our course offerings and also signalled our efforts to shape the future of management education in India.

We changed our hiring, promotion, tenure and work-report­ing structures for all faculty and staff to adhere to our new aspira­tions. We wanted to be world-class, and we had to set up strict standards for ourselves. This was not easy, but it had to be done.

Finally, we started to participate in international rankings and sought out an international accreditation. We applied to the best ranking institutions (like Eduniversal, Financial Times and Quacquarelli Symonds), and got feedback on our processes and our educational outcomes, such as student quality, impact on hiring, impact on society, and so on. We also applied to an inter­national accreditation agency, the EFMD Quality Improvement System (EQUIS), and became an EQUIS accredited B-School in 2010. This was a significant milestone, as it showed that we were now on par with the best in the world.

A KEY PHRASE IN our vision is that of “innovation”. At IIMB, we have innovated and created new programmes as the need and opportunity has arisen. In the early part of the millennium, we started a programme in managing soft­ware enterprises, which was to directly address the need for managers in the rapidly growing software and information technology industry in Bangalore. We also initiated a Master’s programme in public policy to impart modern management training to officers from the government. Both these pro­grammes were immensely successful.

With the growth of massive online open courses (MOOCs), IIMB was the first business school in India to partner and offer MOOCs on edX, a global MOOC platform that had formed as a partner­ship between two leading universities, MIT and Harvard, to offer courses online. Today, we have over 50 business courses on this platform, and have served over 2 million students. We are pioneers in of­fering courses on SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds), the Indian MOOC platform for which IIMB is the coordinating institute for management education.

With an increasing demand for di­versity in the student and faculty body, particularly amongst doctoral students, IIMB initiated a programme to train stu­dents from under-represented communi­ties for applying to doctoral programmes. This is known as the NS Raghavan Pre-Doc programme and is running success­fully since 2018. IIMB has also partnered with the government for a programme to train fellows in rural districts to promote entrepreneurship.

WITH THE CONSISTENT efforts in improving quali­ty in all aspects of academic activities, IIMB’s stature has grown in the world of MBA education. One of the leading agen­cies that ranks various MBA programmes worldwide is the <Financial Times> (FT) of London. It ranks programmes based on various criteria, which include research quality, teaching, and alumni career progression. Though the ranks have varied somewhat over the years, they have retained IIMB’s position in the top 100 in the world (in the top 50 for the 2-year MBA, our flagship programme).

Another highly respected ranking agency, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) also independently ranks IIMB in the top 100 in the world.

In addition to FT and QS rankings, IIMB has also fared well in the Eduniveral 2022 ranking, as the best B-School in Central Asia, in Bloomberg Best Business School, ranking #1 for the 1-year MBA, and the Indian government’s National Institutional Rank­ing Framework (NIRF), where IIMB is ranked #2 in India.

IIMB’S VISION HAS been supported by three groups of people—the leadership, faculty, and the staff.

The leadership, consisting of the board and its members, and the directors, have retained a clear focus on IIMB’s vision and on upholding standards under all circumstances. Chal­lenges from regulations, from competition, and from threats of obsolescence have spurred them to redefine priorities and take assertive action to remain focussed.

The faculty, too, has maintained a commitment to excel­lence in teaching and research, and in actively supporting policies for attaining a world-class status.

Staff has closely supported all activities, ensuring that all operations of the institute, from arranging classes to landscap­ing the gardens, are completed with care and attention to de­tails. The staff retains a strong sense of loyalty to the institution and its values. MANAGEMENT education in the future is envisaged in different ways. Some see the 2-year MBA as a product that has a limited shelf-life and is likely to fade away in favour of shorter formats. The ar­gument for this scenario is that in a fast-changing world, two years is too long for students to stay locked in an institution, and besides, their learning has to be life-long. The two-year model grew in an era where knowledge gained in the early years shaped the entire ca­reer of an individual. Today, learn­ing has to be lifelong, and enabled through short and skill-specific programmes.

A second trend is the rise of the specialist MBA that focuses on specific skills imparted during the programme, moving away from a general MBA. MBAs in, for example, product management, or financial technology, or digital marketing, will hold greater value in the employment market over general knowledge of business functions. This particular trend is gaining traction in some business schools.

A third possible move in business and management educa­tion will be an emphasis on responsible business, with deeper engagement with issues of environmental sustainability and living rights. Elements are already visible as business pro­grammes around the world are integrating these ideas within traditional curricula and ensuring all students are aware of their responsibilities as managers and global citizens.

In a developing economy like India, the demand for MBA education has grown during and after the pandemic. Enrol­ments in MBA entrance exams is higher by about 15-20 per cent from a few years ago. In the US, there is a declining trend in MBA demand, where even the top-branded business schools are seeing a decline in applications. These data point to a country-specific and local need for business education, which is driven by the existing conditions in the economy. This means that a single, global picture of business education trends is unlikely to emerge.

I think that demand for MBA education will continue to grow in India, driven by the need for professional managers to run India’s established firms and the new startups that are emerging. The need for specialisation will also grow, though that demand will be more from managers already working, and those who seek exposure to cutting-edge technologies and methods of doing business. IIMB’s two-year MBA will likely retain its hold, as it serves a niche market, on those recent grad­uates who are starting out in their careers. The MBA offering will have to retain its relevance by constantly upgrading its curriculum and content.

The demand for delivery of business education through vari­ous channels will also increase—fuelled by the experience of online work during the pandemic. Hy­brid, online and physical classes, and tribrid, online synchronous, online asynchronous, and physi­cal, formats will emerge according to needs of students and firms.

A MANAGER IN A firm in the future will have to deal with multiple uncertainties and challenges. These will require a resilient attitude and a set of skills that will buffet them as they navi­gate their careers.

One set of skills that will be of great use is being able to understand and operate in the digital world. Digitalisation is only likely to grow, and the myriad technologies that are like­ly to appear, and disappear, will have to be understood from a perspective of their basic capabilities and faculties. This will require constant reading and upgrading of knowledge.

Managers of the future will also have to understand fully the underlying forces that are driving businesses towards exponential scale. These are emerging from information, bio, and additive manufacturing technologies. Exponential scale, as is evident in network-based businesses, have needs for resources that are orders of magnitude more than what has been seen so far. They also have competitive pressures that will pose management challenges not seen before.

Managers will have to learn to work with machines and human hybrids. As decision-making and many cognitive tasks are delegated to AI-based machines, humans have to learn how to both train these new devices, as well as learn from them. The nature of teams and co-workers will change, as digital agents assume far greater roles in collaborative work. Managers will need new skills to anticipate, under­stand, and negotiate this new workspace.

MY PERSONAL JOURNEY at IIMB has been one of dis­covery, learning, and engagement with some of the best students and academics in the world. I have been part of the move towards excellence, and our march to world-class status.

In the 50 years since its inception, IIMB has become a lode­star of management education. It is likely to grow and inno­vate, while holding a firm grip on quality and excellence.

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