Snehal
Rebello
Mumbai,
August 27
THE
COUNTRY rejoiced when the Centre decided to set up 1,200 new universities.
But on Wednesday, the hottest business guru, as labelled by business
magazines, said that the idea was redundant.
Professor
Vijay Govindarajan flew in to Mumbai from his plush office at the Tuck
School in the US and swept Indian B-school gurus with his articulate
ideas and experience.
With
1,500 B-schools in India and shortage of
faculty, Govindarajan said there is a need to
rethink education to fill the education gap.
"We
can't build new universities. So, we need digital technology to bridge
the gap. India has been good in information technology," he said.
"It avoids building physical infrastructure. One has access to
global faculty and borrow curriculum from universities abroad."
Govindarajan
- or VG - was at the 20th AIMS (Associations of Institutions of Management
Schools) Annual Management Education Convention at the Welingkar Institute
of Management Development and Research.
The
co-author of '10 Rules for Strategic Innovators' had a suggestion for
B-schools. "Address the innovation gap. There is a need to teach
MBA student's innovative thinking and reinvent concepts for fixing the
innovation gap. That's to selectively forget the past and create the
future."
For
chief guest K.V. Kamath, managing director for ICICI Bank Limited, India's
growth depends on people development. "I would advise management
schools to look back and think forward to design the future. Even though
Indian industry is rooted in the past, the future beckons."
Settled
in the US for almost 26 years, VG said that had he been born
today, he wouldn't have left India. "There is enormous opportunity
in India. There are inadequacies in areas like education
and health. But these are very the same issues that create opportunities
to develop world-class solutions in these areas," said
the director, Tuck's Centre for Global Leadership.
Govindarajan
went a step ahead to say that rather than studying Best Practices, the
strategy is to create 'Next Practices'. "I would tell management
students to become entrepreneurs. The timing to create new business
could not have been better because India has too many problems to solve.
The only constraint is leadership."
snehal.rebello@hindustantimes.com