Accelerating India's Growth Through Management Education

Conclusion by Dipak C. Jain, Dean of INSEAD

"India is a big country, and the challenge is to be inclusionary," said INSEAD Dean Dipak C. Jain, concluding the India Business Dialogue session on Saturday, 25 February, in Mumbai. He further stressed the need to  manage the country's wide diversity of thoughts, to be humble, and to "be yourself," recalling the homily "when your shadow becomes longer than your height, remember the sun is about to set."

Dean Jain also questioned how business schools can best adapt themselves to be relevant to the transformation of global business. He referred to his experience when, as a Board member of United Airlines, he was asked his opinions regarding how to gain a competitive edge over American Airlines. His reply: "the biggest competition is video conferencing not another airline."

Referring to the evolution of management education, he referred to the Ford Commission's 1959 watershed investigation into the future of management education for and the ensuing shift from the Harvard-based tried-and-true case study method to a more analytical approach. "This was a shift from 'relevance' to 'rigor'," he said. "Today, we need more 'experiential global learning' which also incorporates ethics and values - a combination of rigor and relevance. Students need to understand not only WHAT happened, but also HOW and the need to understand under what conditions things could have gone another way."  He also stressed the importance of a company's delivering on the promise inherent in its branding.

Dean Jain said a school's "reputational currency" is important in building a successful future, but so is hard currency - the sort many US schools have in the way of endowments. "This is like a shock absorber for schools when economic times are tough," he added. "European schools do not have this tradition of philanthropy, and we will have to build one."

On the educational front Dean Jain said it was important to include emerging markets in the global business school curriculum, and hopes to create a study center on this theme at INSEAD's Singapore campus. He reminded the audience of the high regard in which Indian parents hold education for their children and added, "There is so much talent in this country...we just have to be sure it goes down the right avenue. We have all the ingredients here, but if we want to take India to the next level, we have to bring it all together."