With the rapidly changing nature of businesses in a technology-driven world, ‘Innovate or die’ is the mantra that entrepreneurs know by heart. While globalisation has made more markets easily available, improved connectivity has helped boost business processes. But it has also increased competition and challenges to new businesses manifold. The shift in on-the-ground business realities also needs to be adequately reflected in what business schools teach their students.
Today, management is a much sought after discipline of education across many countries, including India. With our nation emerging as the third largest startup ecosystem in the world, there is a growing demand for efficient and innovative management graduates, who are adept and trained at devising new strategies to resolve problems. Despite the increase in demand for the discipline and the changing paradigm of management and business, Indian management education was slow to respond to the changing trends. However, today more and more B-schools are reworking their syllabus, pedagogical techniques, agenda, as well as admission criteria to better suit the needs of the time. Here are a few mechanisms that need to be adopted or are already being adopted by new age B-schools in India:
Moving beyond classrooms
Currently, the Indian education system across the board strictly follows the culture of in-class teaching. Once considered as an ideal mode, this teaching method has lost its essence due to the need for more practical exposure and to match pace with the industry. In-class teaching method puts a burden on the faculty where they are judged by number of students turning up for the class, number of classes taken and marks scored by the students in examinations. Hence, it’s only a quantitative analysis of the imparted knowledge instead of a qualitative one. This also creates a distance between the students and the faculty, which hinders the sharing of experiences and practical exposure.
Additionally, with in-class teaching, what is imparted is theoretical knowledge. While an understanding of the theories of business, economics and the history of growth of entrepreneurship is important for every management student, the real teaching comes from action and practical learning. Even employers today evaluate students not by the schools they have attended but by their practical exposure. A student who has dabbled in a business or run an entrepreneurial project will get preference over a student who might only be a high scorer.
Incubation is the key
‘Out-of-class teaching’ that combines theoretical lectures with practical projects is the need of the hour and is being adopted by many B-schools today. For example, while teaching retail shelf management to students , it is important to depute them in a live store, where they would be able to bear the brunt of loss and profit. In a bid to become good managers, the students should be able to realise the impact of their decisions in real time, not on paper.
One of the most essential demands of the industry today is incubation. Students should be able to incubate while studying. This is not only important to generate more enterprises but also to generate economic value. It is also imperative to help students dwell on a real life problem by themselves. Therefore, it is necessary for every management institution to introduce the concept of incubation. B schools can be valuable places where ideas can be incubated, debated and funded by successful alumni, if found viable. Ideally, first generation entrepreneurs who have not only developed enterprises but have also achieved success in international scenario should operate such centres. In this context, a combined support from the industry, institution as well as the government is required to make incubation a success in India.
Integration matters
When students spend a fortune to pursue such degrees, they are not in a position to take entrepreneurial risks, mostly due to loans or family liabilities. Thanks to high costs of education, less than 10 per cent of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Indian Institute of Management (IIM) students get into incubation despite the presence of state-of-the-art incubation centres within their premises. As a result, they stay away from entrepreneurship and look for guaranteed jobs. On the contrary, if students are given the opportunity to start their enterprise during their course of degree, it would give their entrepreneurial talent the right push at the right time. Hence, it is necessary for the government to support such initiatives irrespective of it being public or private. This would not only invite innovation but would also become a platform to new enterprises.
Department, by its nomenclature, defines compartmentalisation and classification. Therefore, today, where digital marketing rules the roost by being a blend of marketing and IT, building departments seems a story of past. Digital marketing sets the perfect example of impact that would be created if two different departments were brought within one application area. Digital marketing very efficiently connects two departments to offer programmes that combine to create courses and provide industry advisory protocols.
Precisely, departments can be conceived as a building or a construction that is restricted in terms of courses and opportunities. However, in case of centres, multidisciplinary teaching and research is a norm. It is an amalgamation where convergence of power takes place as it allows many industries to participate together. Creating centres of management learning that may integrate several associated aspects and sub-groups of business including ideation, incubation, fund-raising, talent acquisition, business development, marketing etc is the future. In this context, it is important for both the industry and the government to work together to provide opportunities through internships, placements and sharing data.
Widening admission criteria
Many successful professionals in different domains are today deciding to take sabbaticals from their careers to polish their skills. Many of them, including engineers and doctors, desire to study management courses. Realising this shift in the nature of students, many
B-schools today are reworking their admission criteria. This provides weightage to experience and practical exposure along with test scores. This phenomenon is likely to grow further in coming years.