iim-bangalore-blog

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Seoul Story

A gushing rapid on the trail of the Bukhansan trek

During animmersion experience at KAIST in South Korea, IIMB’s one-year Global MBA students get insights into the country via field visits, projects and some adventures. Karthik Ramanathan shares his experience.

21 September, 2017, Bengaluru: It was eight o’clock in the evening on 13thAugust 2017: we, the students of the full-time Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management (EPGP) at IIM Bangalore, were lugging our bags, getting ready to load them in the buses waiting to ferry us to the airport. Yes, the day that we had all been yearning for has arrived! Term 2 – the most dreaded of all terms – done and dusted, we were on our way to South Korea, Seoul in particular. The atmosphere in the bus during the nearly 90-minute ride to the airport was heady. Portable speakers were out; there was song and dance and unrestrained merriment. The mood had been set for the forthcoming fortnight.

No sooner did the flight take off, 30 minutes past midnight, that all the pent up exhaustion and fatigue of the last three days kicked in and knocked us out. We woke up to a wonderful view of the blue sea and small islands with green-topped hillocks – we were about to land in Hong Kong. Some of us had a fairly long layover in Hong Kong that allowed us to visit the city for a few hours. On landing we immediately made for the immigration counter to secure a clearance to enter the city, after which we took the airport express train to the city. The weather, though not hot, was quite humid. Our destination was the promenade from where the famous skyline of Hong Kong, across the sea, can be seen in all its glory. The route took us through some of the most upmarket localities of the city. The skyline itself was quite impressive, and it would have been a sight to behold at night. After spending about an hour on the promenade we headed back to the airport.

The flight from Hong Kong to Seoul was all about friendly chatter, snacks and movies. We landed in Seoul quite late but were warmly welcomed by students from KAIST, our host school. What struck us about the South Koreans immediately was their humility and hospitable nature — two traits that we came face to face with, over and over again, during our two weeks in the city. We reached Gangnam Family Hotel well past midnight and I, at least, had no energy left except to, fix myself a quick ready-to-eat meal and snore what-was-left-of-the-night away. A 9:00 a.m. departure sound positively punishing. But after four months of hard work back home at IIMB, we were well trained for tough times!

Prior to the bus ride we were served a wonderful breakfast that had plenty on offer for vegetarians, including fresh fruits, steamed vegetables, potato fries, assorted breads, hot chocolate, yogurt, and coffee. We spent the thirty-minute bus ride to KAIST taking in the sights of the city, which looked like an infrastructure marvel, which we later learnt was called the ‘miracle on the Han river’, Han being the river that flows through Seoul and divides the city into northern and southern halves.

Lectures, fields visits and more

We were welcomed to KAIST by Prof. Betty Chung with a little gift for each one of us. The day consisted of three lectures, the first one from Prof. Chung herself. She talked about the important characteristics of Korean culture and also about South Korea’s meteoric rise from being one of the poorest nations in the world in the ’50s to one of the most developed societies in the world today. I was particularly amazed by the choice of words such as jung and noonchi to communicate important cultural aspects that are integral to South Korea.

The second lecture was by Dilip Sundaram, who was the CFO and Chief Transformation Officer of Mahindra’s acquisition of SsangYong. His session was peppered with incisive questions aimed at us that put us in his shoes to think like a C-level executive in charge of transforming a company. As aspiring business leaders, this session taught us lessons that will remain with us throughout our careers. His emphasis on perfection on execution in a transformation context, and his highlighting of Korea as an execution specialist country really left an impression on us.

The third lecture was by the Indian ambassador to South Korea, Vikram Doraiswamy. We consider ourselves honoured and extremely lucky to be able to listen to, in person, to a person who is not only a distinguished civil servant but also a knowledgeable industry expert. His understanding of how the capabilities of Korean companies can be matched with the needs of the Indian market was impressive to say the least. His central message of creatively managing India’s unique traits to make it attractive for Korean companies to invest in, was the key takeaway.

The following days had lectures by James Rooney, who provided us an outsider’s perspective of not only South Korea but the other two Northeast Asian economies of China and Japan.

The lecture by Prof. Leighanne Yuh, a historian, provided us the backstory for South Korea’s stratospheric economic rise. Her detailing of President Park Chung-hee’s era during the ’60s and the ’70s was particularly insightful.

We went on field visits to the Samsung Innovation Museum, and to the Korea Exchange (KRX) in Busan. We also had two visits that helped us explore the culture of South Korea, and these were Nanta and Kicks. The former is a cooking-based mime show that amazed and stupefied us with its speed, coordination, and skill, while the latter is a taekwondo show by the national team that combines martial arts, storytelling, and technology. After our visit to KRX in Busan, we also found time to visit the beach.

Flights of fantasy

The best was saved for the last. Prior to our departure to South Korea, my class had been divided into groups of seven each, and each group was to work with a Korean company on a project. Two groups were drawn to work with the Indian Embassy of South Korea, and I was in one of those two groups. On the penultimate day of our stay in South Korea, quite unexpectedly and surprisingly, we were granted permission to visit the headquarters of Korean Aerospace Industries (KAI) in relation to our project, thanks to the efforts of Parth Sharma – Vice Chairman, Indian Chamber of Commerce in Korea. KAI’s headquarters is situated in Sacheon, which was a four-hour bus ride from Seoul. We were staring at the prospect of travelling eight hours for a two-hour meeting with a 9:00 a.m. departure for the airport next day! But the KAI visit was worth every bit of our time and energy. We interacted with Dr. Choi – Senior Manager & Chief, International Marketing Division, KAI, who was kind enough to explain in detail KAI’s business and the general landscape of South Korea’s dealings with other countries in the defence aviation sector. We were also shown around the assembly line of KAI’s fighter and trainer jets, and helicopters, and we were also given a glimpse of the cockpit of T-50, KAI’s advanced jet trainer.

Memories are made of this

Besides the formal lectures and field visits, our personal adventures and outings contributed a lot to the entire Korean experience. One of my first destinations in Seoul was the Cheonggyecheon stream, which in the aftermath of the Korean War was nothing more than raw sewage, but has now been restored with a walkway along the stream, making it an excellent public space. We also frequented various shopping hubs of the city such as the popular Gangnam Street, the sprawling Lotte Department Store, the crowded bylanes of Myengdong (the street food on offer, especially the deep fried ice-cream, is a foodie’s delight), the underground markets, and the buzzing night market at Dongdaemun (I like the name a lot. Seems worthy of a boss villain in an epic Oriental RPG video game.)

The Changgyeonggung Palace was a pleasant surprise. With its modest furnishings and simple architecture it was unlike any other palace that I have ever seen. The striking feature of this palace, and I suspect the other four palaces in Seoul, is the abundance of open spaces in comparison with courtrooms, royal residences, etc.

Another instance that made my trip memorable was the rain playing spoilsport twice – once during the hike in Bukhansan National Park, and the second time during a trip to Nami Island. In the former instance, we still managed a decent hike that afforded us breathtaking views of gushing streams and tranquil Buddhist temples, and in the latter instance we managed to see Gapyeong, a picturesque little town close to Nami Island. The twenty-minute walk, tumbling up and down Gapyeong’s rolling terrain flanked by tall mountains and under the fading light of the evening sun, was an experience of a lifetime.

I have experienced the sun and rain of the Korean summer and hope to visit this beautiful country in all its glorious colours and meet its wonderful people sometime later during a Korean autumn. Gamsahamnida Korea!

Photo Gallery : Post Graduate Programme in Management (EPGP)

A seat of serenity nestled in wooded hills, beneath a grey sky.

Sprightly green grass, reflective glassy river, and wise brooding hills – presided over by a portentous sky.

Enjoying the kick of Kicks.

In front of Gangnam Family Hotel.

At Samsung Innovation Museum.

A view of Busan from KRX

About the author:

Karthik Ramanathan is an IT Professional with considerable experience in the BFSI domain. He is an enthusiastic writer at heart with a passion to capture memories in words. He is currently pursuing his one-year full-time MBA at IIM Bangalore.

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Learning public systems at Syracuse University

PGPPM’17 cohort at Syracuse University

During their recent immersion experience at Maxwell School, IIMB’s Public Policy and Management students get insights into policy formulation and implementation in the US through a variety of lectures and field visits

22 September 2017, Bengaluru: Students of the one-year Post Graduate Programme in Public Policy Management (PGPPM) at IIM Bangalore participated in a two-week International Immersion Programme at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, USA, from August 07 to August 18.

International Immersion at IIMB provides students with insights into the economic, social and cultural spheres of the countries they are visiting. They attend lectures with specific focus on business and industry and make field visits to familiarise themselves with local challenges and opportunities. They also visit historical sites and take part in cultural events.

Maxwell is home to the professional programs in public administration and executive education programs. The introduction on American Culture, American Federalism, and Public Programs on Healthcare systems were presented by Daniel Nelson, International Program Manager at Maxwell School.

A wide range of topics were covered during the program. The American Political System and its Federal Structure, including the political institutions, were discussed in the seminar. The complexities and how deeply they are fragmented, both horizontally as well as vertically, were also deliberated upon.

The seminars on Analysis of Poverty and Social Welfare Policies and Healthcare System of USA were interesting. The Social Security Program, under which an employee has to pay a contribution of 7.65% of his income for a period of 10 years to become eligible for the benefits, has been under tremendous distress due to reasons like increase in life expectancy, increase in the cost of healthcare and the decrease in numbers of the working population, as a result less number of people are contributing to a large number of retired persons. Similarly, the schemes like Medicare and Medicaid have huge budgetary allocations in comparison with their efficacy. The budget allocation during 2016 for Medicare was $632 billion and for Medicaid was $553 billion. Almost 18% of the GDP was being spent by US on healthcare. There are other countries which are spending much less than the US on healthcare, but achieving better results, the case in example being the UK.

The trends in public sector reforms and impact of leadership and role of NGOs were also discussed. There are more than 2 million NGOs in the US. The registration of NGOs is done at the office of the Attorney General’s Charity Bureau at state level.

The seminar on International Trade and Labour Market, by Prof. Devashish Mitra, was educative. He also highlighted the intricacies of the labour market.

A site visit to Onondaga County was organized to give an overview of the role of local government. Onondaga County is in the state of New York, which has 62 counties. The state of New York places heavy responsibilities on local governments and more than 50% of the state budget consists of aid to local governments. Education and health are granted top priority.

The seminar on citizens’ participation in the work of government was very informative. In the US, there is a provision for participatory budgeting, under which 10% budget is kept for spending as per the public opinion/decisions.

The education policy and recent reforms efforts were discussed by Prof. Amy Schwartz. Innovation management, controlling the chaos and how to separate winners and losers was discussed in length by Prof. Sean O’Keefe. The program on reflections and evaluation was covered by Prof. David Van Slyke, Dean, Maxwell School.

The second part of the immersion program was in Washington DC, where the emphasis was on site visits. A tour of the Library of Congress, US Capitol, Air & Space Museum and IBM Centre for Cognitive Government was organized. In addition, a seminar on technology as a driver for change in federal government, by Scott Bernard, US Federal Chief Enterprise Architect, was also organized.

The immersion program helped us get insights into various aspects of policy formulation and their implementation in the context of the US. Daniel Nelson, International Program Manager, and his team had designed the curriculum in the most effective way and had made all administrative arrangements to ensure a comfortable stay for us IIMB students.

Photo Gallery : Post Graduate Programme in Public Policy Management (PGPPM)

Site visit to understand the role of local government. An overview of the Onondaga County Government. Ed Kochian, Special Advisor, Executive Department, Office of the Onondaga Country.

Site visit to understand the role of local government. An overview of the Onondaga County Government. Ed Kochian, Special Advisor, Executive Department, Office of the Onondaga County.

Program conclusion at Greenberg House, Washington DC.

Independence Day at the Indian Embassy, Washington DC, USA.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

BY SHIV KUMAR, IDSE

Mr Shiv Kumar is Director, Military Engineer Services. He is currently pursuing his Post Graduate Programme in Public Policy & Management (PGPPM) at IIM Bangalore.

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FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING AND ANALYSIS

Confusing? Daunting? Intimidating? Are these the words that come to your mind when people discuss financial numbers? Get a strong grasp of financial numbers and statements through our upcoming MOOC on Financial Accounting and Analysis and acquire much-needed financial business acumen with this course.

Visit And Enroll Now @ https://www.edx.org/course/financial-accounting-analysis-iimbx-ac105x

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IIM BANGALORE PARTNERS WITH GERMAN B-SCHOOLS TO LAUNCH INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME FOR TECHNOLOGISTS

The program distils key elements of Indian and German technology ecosystems to deliver the competencies required for global business

20 September, 2017: The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) has announced a partnership with two premier German B-schools – the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, Germany for an International Management Programme for Technologists (IMPT), an innovative Executive Education Programme.

The IMPT is designed by the three management schools to enable technology leaders respond effectively to challenges and complexities that they face. Offered to engineering and technology managers, R&D leaders, product designers and architects, and managers in charge of large and complex projects in India and Europe, the unique two-week programme will be offered at both locations, with participants traveling to Nuremberg and Bangalore for one week each.

The focus of the programme is on innovation, technology-driven business models, intrapreneurship and platform business models.

For registration to the programme, go to www.iimb.ac.in/eep/impt

For more information, call 080-26993380.

Highlighting the key takeaways of the new programme, Prof. R. Srinivasan, Chairperson, Executive Education Programmes at IIM Bangalore, said: “The IMPT distils the key elements of Indian and German technology ecosystems to deliver the competencies required for global business. The Erlangen Nuremberg area in Germany is the origin of Industry 4.0, and is known for its manufacturing excellence. Bangalore is home to a vibrant technology start-up ecosystem and is widely considered to be the Silicon Valley of India.”

The partnership brings together best-in-class academicians and leading researchers on strategic innovation, cooperation and management, and the digital transformation of organizations.

Prof. Dr. Kathrin M Möslein, Chairperson, Information Systems, Innovation and Value Creation at Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, said: “The IMPT helps participants understand how to compete using technology and leverage the benefits of open innovation in a sharing economy, and promote intrapreneurship. It will equip managers to work in cross-functional, cross-cultural and geographically distributed teams.”

The IMPT programme will be delivered using multiple learning methods: workshops, discussions, simulation exercises, site visits, and coaching from highly-rated professors as well as business technology experts. Participants will get a window to fast-changing technologies and upcoming innovations through site visits to Fraunhofer IIS.

About Partner Schools

The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) has been ranked No. 1 Business School in Central Asia by Eduniversal, a French Consultancy Group. It has also been ranked among the Top 70 global schools by the Financial Times Executive Education Rankings 2017.

An EQUIS-accredited school, IIMB offers post-graduate and doctoral level courses as well as executive education programmes. With a faculty body from amongst the best universities worldwide, IIMB’s distinctive feature is its strong focus on leadership and entrepreneurial skills that are necessary to succeed in today’s dynamic business environment. For more on IIMB, go to www.iimb.ac.in

Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg is one of the largest universities in Germany with a strong research and innovation focus. Reuters has ranked it the second most innovative university in Germany and sixth in Europe. QS World University Rankings has ranked it as the institution with the most widely cited publications in Germany. https://www.fau.eu/

Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS is one of the world’s leading application-oriented research institutions for microelectronic and IT system solutions and services. It ranks first among all Fraunhofer Institutes in size and has received worldwide recognition for its technologies such as mp3 and the co-development of Advanced Audio Coding (AAC).https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en.html

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NSRCEL third among India’s top 45 Technology Incubators: Entrepreneur India

Magazine lists MOOCs, workshops, go-to-market orientation, seed funding support, India Innovation Challenge, Women’s Start-up Program, and NSRCEL Social as some the achievements which helped NSRCEL bag the coveted spot

20 September, 2017, Bengaluru: The entrepreneurship and innovation hub of IIM Bangalore – N. S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) has been ranked third among India’s top 45 Technology Incubators by Entrepreneur India, a magazine which provides a platform for entrepreneurs to discover and unleash breakthrough ideas, innovations and insights needed to realize their power to disrupt the social, economic and tech ecosystem.

According to Entrepreneur India, while the start-ups and investments have gone through restructuring, the mentorship and support ecosystem have gone from strength to strength. This forms the basis of their ranking. The others in the list include top incubators focusing on technology and technology-enabled areas across sectors, such as, technology business incubators housed at various government universities and technical institutes, entrepreneurship-led private incubators, incubators based in private universities, corporate incubators, and incubators that are part of knowledge parks.

Highlighting the accomplishments of NSRCEL the magazine states, “The incubator offers the Blended Entrepreneurship Model that includes MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), workshops, go-to-market orientation and seed funding support. Some of the other programs include Do-Your-Venture MOOC, India Innovation Challenge in association with Texas Instruments and DST, Women’s Start-up Program, NSRCEL Social, the not-for-profit incubator supported by the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. The total valuation of 55 active companies from the incubator is around $1 billion with highest job creation of 4,500.”

IIM Bangalore has working on a number of initiatives in enabling a ‘start-up culture’ in the country. ‘Entrepreneurship’ is today an integral part of IIMB’s academic agenda. NSRCEL is a world-class centre for excellence in seeding, nurturing and promoting entrepreneurship with emphasis on start-ups and existing organizations with high growth potential. The objective is to help entrepreneurs channelize their energy and talent towards transforming their ideas into successful companies. NSRCEL does so by guiding them in understanding specific opportunities for business growth and helping them access the resources they require.

The centre has formed active collaborations with industry and other academic institutions to strengthen the much needed start-up ecosystem in the country. The centre’s latest initiative, ‘NSRCEL Social’, plans to leverage NSRCEL’s experience in nurturing early stage ventures to incubate world-class not-for-profit organizations focused on improving the lives of those living in urban poverty. This initiative was launched by NSRCEL in partnership with the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. NSRCEL has also started focused initiatives designed to help women entrepreneurs – the ‘Women Start-up Programme’ – which is supported by Goldman Sachs.

NSRCEL has been selected by NITI Aayog to receive INR 10 crore as scale-up support over the next two years, which will enable the centre to upgrade and expand its infrastructure and thereby its services to entrepreneurs. NSRCEL is one of the six established incubation centres in the country to receive this financial support under the Atal Innovation Mission.

Visit @ IIM Bangalore

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IIMB’S INCUBATION HUB OFFERS WORKSHOPS, NETWORKING SESSIONS AND REVIEWS TO ITS FIRST BATCH OF 8 SOCIAL VENTURES

Anchor-mentors will guide the start-ups through their 18-month incubation journey at the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning

18 September, 2017, Bengaluru: The eight early-stage organizations selected by IIM Bangalore’s N. S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), under the social ventures program for incubation over the next 18 months, were inducted on September 15 (Friday), 2017, in the presence of IIMB faculty, mentors and NSRCEL members.

Rajiv Sawhney, Chief Operating Officer, NSRCEL, said: “A review system will be in place for periodic intervention to monitor your progress. We need to get into a far more frequent Q&A mode. There will be many speaker sessions and workshops to engage you in high gear. Access to online platforms will help boost interaction with a larger community. To make you successful is our own test as well.”

The entrepreneurship and innovation hub of IIM Bangalore – NSRCEL – had launched its social ventures incubator in April this year, to nurture early stage non-profit organizations.

Through this initiative, NSRCEL Social aims to address the lack of an effective support system for early stage NGOs that are offered little or no technical assistance for fund raising, legal issues and operational challenges. One of the first social incubators of India exclusively for non-profit organizations, it aims to help create a pool of high-performing organizations that can create large-scale social impact. The social ventures incubation program is currently supported by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. These selected ventures will be incubated for a period of 18 months and given financial support of INR 18 lakhs.

The goal of the NSRCEL Social Ventures Program is to help the ventures build a mindset to scale and impact. NSRCEL will put in place an M&E framework to periodically track progress of the ventures through joint goal setting efforts ofmentors and ventures and enable a three pronged mechanism of self, peer to peer and mentor review system in place. NSRCEL also intends to foster cross learnings and sharing of best practices through the mix of programs and other incubatees under its fold.

The selection process for the program started early April this year. The centre received over 160 applications, out of which 24 were selected spanning diverse sectors like education, livelihood, financial inclusion, etc. The 12-week pre-incubation program for these ventures included mentoring, classroom sessions on critical strategies, field visits, boot camp, networking and intensive review sessions.

Shortlisted ventures were pitched to an advisory committee before the final eight were selected. The incubation will give the ventures access to resources at IIMB and leverage the support system created for non-profits. The incubator is guided by an eight-member advisory committee comprising established non-profit and business leaders and faculty of IIMB. It leverages the expertise of NSRCEL-IIMB in nurturing for-profit organizations for over a decade, faculty members and student communities at IIMB.

The induction event, on September 15, was organized for the very first batch of incubatees. All the ventures have been assigned an anchor-mentor who will guide them throughout the program. The incubatees will also have access to the large pool of industry experts, IIMB faculty, alumni and resources at NSRCEL during the program.

Other than the agreements and documentation formalities, the day’s activities included walking the ventures through the incubation plan brief, designating anchor mentors, followed by a goal-setting workshop that will facilitate the formulation of the M&E framework to track their progress.

Professor Sourav Mukherji, Dean of Academic Programmes at IIMB and one of the mentors, congratulated the incubatees for having taken up, what he described as, ‘the bold and difficult journey of entrepreneurship’. “Being a social entrepreneur is even tougher. There has to be internal balance between social impact and financial sustainability. However, no learning or experience is great unless it is difficult!”

Prof. Mukherji’s advice of maintaining this balance was echoed by the mentors as well. They advised the incubatees to be rooted in reality while trying to think beyond the norm, take risks, disrupt, and identify and solve difficult problems.

Details of the selected ventures and anchor-mentor profiles

Selected Ventures

1. i-Saksham: Founded by ex-Gandhi fellows Ravi Dhanuka, Aditya Tyagi and Shravan Jha, it aims to enhance learning outcomes by training community youth educators using technology as the main facilitator. It enables these educators to run their own learning centres and meaningfully engage in various other educational activities.

2. Meraki: Brainchild of Seemant Dadwal and Co-founder Ghajal Gulati, it offers solutions for intergenerational burdens that disadvantaged families carry, by equipping parents with knowledge skills and mindset to be able to transform their children’s lives.

3. Mantra4change: It works through school transformation. Khushboo and Santosh, founders of Mantra4Change, explain that through an intensive two-year partnership with schools, Mantra4Change aims to transform the aspects of instructional leadership, teaching-learning processes and the school culture.

4. Tarkeybein Education Foundation (TEF): It develops English language learning tools and training programs for students and teachers. Learning tools are being co-created with children from low-income groups. The core focus is on children building skills of observation, interpretation and expression, and acquiring English language skills in this learning process.

5. Superheros Incorporated: It aims to develop success-oriented mindset and career readiness, along with strengthening technical skills in vocational trainees, in order to provide industries with skilled workforce. Operating through various programs designed for the students at ITIs, it aims to bridge the gap between the supply and demand of the skilled and trained workforce with enhanced employability.

6. Guardians of Dream: It is working towards building an anchor institution to define and consolidate the childcare sector. It is also working to solve critical gaps in research, intervention design, implementation capacity and resource mobilization. In the initial phase, Guardians aims to create and deliver interventions within an institutional framework (children’s homes and orphanages).

7. Bridges of Sports: Founded by Nitish M Chiniwar, it works with children from economically and socially backward communities in the age group of 8-14 years. A network of high quality volunteers, athletes and teachers dedicate two years of their life to the fellowship program and post fellowship, Bridges of Sports supports the fellows to become micro entrepreneurs with a focus on building and accelerating the vibrant sports ecosystem.

8. Anthills Creations: At Anthills Creations, Pooja Rai and Nancy Charaya, alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, are determined to bring back play for kids through building sustainable playscapes by using recyclable material.

Profile of Mentors

1. Professor Sourav Mukherji is the Dean of Academic Programmes at IIMB. Professor Mukherji teaches postgraduate courses on Organization Design and Inclusive Business Models. His current research focus is on inclusive business models – businesses that address the needs of the poor in a financially sustainable manner. In this domain, he has authored many case studies, several of which have been published online by the Harvard Business Press. He has been a consultant to organizations in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors, advising them on organization design and financial sustainability.

2. Samina Bano: Founder RightWalk, where she is building an inclusive and accountable education system, opening up access for children to an equitable education irrespective of socio-economic status. To do this Samina is building a movement of students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and government officials who are demanding an inclusive education system through policy and implementing it through accountability mechanisms.

3. Rajesh Navaneetham: Rajesh is a Founder-partner in Katalytics Growth Consultants. He works with organizations to help them scale up their operations in India. In doing this, he brings his practical knowledge of more than two decades in the corporate world, where he has successfully set up / scaled up engineering teams and businesses in India.

4. Dipesh Sutariya: Dipesh Sutariya is the Co-founder and CEO of Enable India, a non-profit organization that has been working for the economic independence and dignity of persons with disability across India, since 1999. Dipesh is transforming attitudes towards the employment of people with disability through a growing group of professionals with disability who meet the needs of the corporate sector and who dispel the myths and stereotypes about hiring persons with disability.

5. Rajiv Kuchhal Rajiv is an active angel investor and mentor to multiple start-ups in the social enterprise and technology space. He is an advisor and board member of many such companies and a general partner at Exfinity fund.

6. Naghnma Mulla: Naghma works towards creating and maintaining a sustainable philanthropy network to support the EdelGive investee portfolio with the funder community. She is responsible for and heads the three divisions at EdelGive, namely Investment and Programmes, Fundraising and Partnerships, and Employee Engagement Programme.

7. Naga Prakasam: Nagaraja (Naga) Prakasam is a full-time angel investor who has invested in 16 start-ups and seen three exits. He has spearheaded Impact thinking in Indian Angel Network and co-founded IANImpact. A partner at Acumen Fund, a New York based $100M impact-venture fund, he serves as an Independent Director in one of its portfolio companies. In addition, he directs boards in Uniphore Software Systems, GoCoop – Social Marketplace, Saahas Zero Waste, FreshWorld, Lumiere Organic, SP ROBOTIC WORKS Pvt. Ltd and is a board observer at Happy Hens Farm.

Photo Gallery:

IIMB’s incubation and innovation hub – the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) – welcomes the first ever batch of eight social ventures to the NSRCEL Social Program on September 15, 2017.

Anchor-mentors and incubatees of NSRCEL Social at the Induction Program.

Visit @ IIM Bangalore

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FROM RIVER REJUVENATION TO NEEM REVOLUTION, TEDXIIMB FEATURES INSPIRATIONAL TALKS

Event organized by students and alumni of IIMB elicits enthusiastic response

11 SEPTEMBER, 2017: Students and alumni of IIM Bangalore jointly organized this edition of TEDxIIMBangalore on Sunday, September 10. The theme for this year’s talks was ‘Transformational Ideas’ and featured five eminent speakers.

Dr. Rajiv Kumar Gupta, Managing Director, Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizer & Chemicals Ltd, spoke on the Neem Revolution and how it has been empowering women in rural India.

Dr. T.V. Ramachandra, Professor at the Center for Ecological Sciences at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, spoke on ‘Rejuvenating Ecology and Hydrology in Rapidly Urbanizing Landscapes’ with a special focus on Bengaluru’s rapidly changing ecology and how to restore the imbalance.

Sampath (Sam) Iyengar, Partner, Forum Synergies PE Fund Managers (India), shared his thoughts on ‘Dharmic Capital – a Practitioner’s Perspective’. He made a case for quadruple bottom line: Planet, People, Profits and Purpose.

Srinivas Guttal, Founder, Pūrṇapramati School, explained the concept ofPūrṇapramati in his talk. He shared his experience of running an experimental school in Bangalore for the last 20 years and spoke of the need to protect “rich ancient knowledge”. Highlighting the success of a project to rejuvenate river Kumudvati near Bangalore, he said this was possible because of the involvement of the student community.

Mahantesh GK, Founder Managing Trustee at Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled, and Vice-President-World Blind Cricket Council, spoke on ‘Give a lever and a place to stand, and I can move the earth’, and shared instances where people with visual disability excelled in their chosen fields when provided with an enabling environment.

Photo Gallery: TEDxIIMBangalore

The speakers and IIMB Director Dr. G Raghuram at the TEDxIIMBangalore event organized by IIMB students and alumni on September 10, 2017. Built around the theme of ‘Transformational Ideas’, the event had speakers such as Sampath Iyengar, Partner, Forum Synergies PE Fund Managers, India, Srinivas Guttal, Founder, Pūrṇapramati, School, Dr. T.V. Ramachandra, Professor at Center for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Mahantesh G.K, Founder Managing Trustee, Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled & Vice-President, World Blind Cricket Council, Prof. G Raghuram, Director, IIM Bangalore, and Dr. Rajiv Kumar Gupta, Managing Director, Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizer & Chemicals Ltd.

Dr. Rajiv Kumar Gupta, Managing Director, Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizer & Chemicals Ltd., delivers a talk on ‘Neem Revolution’.

Dr. T.V. Ramachandra, Professor at Center for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, delivers a talk on ‘Rejuvenating Ecology and Hydrology in Rapidly Urbanizing Landscapes’.

Sampath Iyengar, Partner, Forum Synergies PE Fund Managers, India, delivers a talk on ‘Dharmic Capital — a Practitioner’s Perspective’.

Srinivas Guttal, Founder, Pūrṇapramati, School, delivers a talk on ‘Purnapramati’.

Mahantesh G.K, Founder Managing Trustee, Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled & Vice-President, World Blind Cricket Council, delivers a lecture on ‘Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I will move the earth’.

Dr. G Raghuram, Director, IIMB, receives a token of appreciation.

The organizing team of the talks with the speakers and the Director of IIM Bangalore, Prof. G Raghuram.

Visit @ IIM Bangalore

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IIMB AND ISB JOIN HANDS TO TRAIN THE NEXT GENERATION OF B-SCHOOL FACULTY

First-of-its-kind partnership to promote teaching excellence amongst India’s B-Schools

07 September, 2017: In a first-of-its-kind collaboration, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) and the Indian School of Business (ISB) have joined hands to organize the ISB-IIMB Doctoral Consortium on Teaching for doctoral candidates who are about to start their careers as faculty at India’s B-schools.

Led by Professors Arun Pereira, Executive Director of the Centre for Learning and Management (CLMP) at the ISB, and Sourav Mukherji, Dean of Academic Programmes at IIMB, the Consortium had participation from doctoral candidates at ISB, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Lucknow, IIM Indore, and IIM Kozhikode among others.

Participants were trained on effective teaching and classroom management, by using student-centered learning approaches to teaching, conducting effective case discussions, understanding the changing role of technology inside and outside the classroom, knowing the importance of student learning styles, how to engage with them better and what it takes to design a compelling learning experience for students.

Sharing his perspective on how the association between the two B-schools can make a difference, Professor Arun Pereira of ISB said, “The ISB-IIMB Consortium is a fine example of how collaboration among Indian B Schools can raise the bar for management education in India. If Indian B-schools are to grow in quality and global stature, it is critical that the quality of faculty and teaching standards are on par with the best in the world, and programmes like this help to make that a reality. The ISB-IIMB association is unique in that it meets an increasingly urgent need to build capacity for India’s burgeoning management education sector.”

Professor Sourav Mukherji, Dean of Academic Programmes at IIMB, and one of the lead faculty for the programme, said: “The ISB-IIMB Doctoral Consortium addresses a long felt demand of the doctoral student community to provide key inputs towards honing teaching skills from the master teachers of ISB and IIM Bangalore. While several doctoral consortia have in the past focused on enhancing much needed research skills, the uniqueness of this programme lies in its focus on teaching, which given the enormous shortage of high quality business school faculty, caters to an important national agenda.”

Now in its fourth year the Consortium was for the first time organized jointly by the two B Schools, at the ISB’s Hyderabad campus. The programme is targeted at final year FPM /Ph.D./Doctoral candidates to help them get a head start as they begin their careers. A unique component of the programme is that each participant was required to teach and was provided substantive feedback, along with a recording of their teaching for review and reflection.

Participants from the consortium shared their experiences of how the Consortium was helpful. Kaveri Krishnan, from IIMB, said was a ‘very valuable experience, especially for doctoral students with no prior teaching experience’, while Biswajita Parida, IIMA, said the consortium was ‘an eye-opener to the state of the art technological tools, teaching methods, and styles of assessment evolving in the contemporary market.

The Doctoral Consortium was supported and funded by the International Schools of Business Management (ISBM). ISB Is a member of the ISBM — a group comprising of leading B Schools such as HEC Paris, IMD Lausanne, INSEAD Fontainebleau, Kellogg School of Management, North western University, London Business School, SDA Bocconi, Milan, Stern School of Business, New York University, Stockholm School of Economics, IAE Aix-Marseille Graduate School of Management, and China Europe International Business School (CEIBS).

About ISB

Indian School of Business (ISB) is a global Business school offering world-class management education across its two campuses – Hyderabad and Mohali. The School has grown at a rapid pace over the sixteen years since its inception and already has several notable accomplishments to its credit – it is the youngest school ever to consistently rank among the top Global MBA programmes, one among the select 100 global B-schools to have AACSB and EQUIS accreditation, one of the largest providers of Executive Education in Asia, and the most research productive Indian management institution. A vibrant pool of research-oriented resident faculty, strong academic associations with leading global B-schools and the backing of an influential Board, have helped the ISB fast emerge as a premier global Business school in the emerging markets. For details visit @ www.isb.edu

About IIMB

A leading research-focused business school in Asia with around 100 full time faculty members, more than 1200 students across various long duration programmes and nearly 5000 annual Executive Education participants, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) is located on a verdant 100-acre campus in India’s high technology capital, Bangalore.

IIMB’s long-duration post graduate programmes comprise the Fellow Programme in Management (FPM), the Post Graduate Programme in Public Policy and Management (PGPPM), the one year full-time Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management (EPGP), the Post Graduate Programme in Enterprise Management (PGPEM), and the Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP). All these programmes are very highly rated and IIMB alumni occupy senior managerial and academic positions around the world.

Along with ten disciplinary areas and five centres of excellence that offer courses and conduct research on interesting questions facing various sectors of industry, IIMB has three faculty recruiting centres – the Centre for Management Communication, the Centre for Public Policy, and the N S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning.

Committed to make deep social impact using technology-enabled education, IIMB offers Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) through edX, a not-for-profit online initiative of Harvard and MIT that offers online courses from the world’s best universities. IIMB is the first management school in India to offer MOOCs on the edX platform.

IIMB is accredited by the EFMD Quality Improvement System (EQUIS). EQUIS is a global school accreditation system run by the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) that specializes in higher education institutions of management and business administration. For more information on IIMB, please visit @ www.iimb.ac.in

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‘The MOOCs sounds great, but will I get a job after completing it?’ is a typical question we, at the IIMBx MOOCs Programme, often hear when we talk about ourMassive Open Online Courses and lifelong learning.

Converging Marketplace of Digital Learning Credentials

Skills Marketplace: Picture courtesy https://www.flickr.com/photos/photobom/36056608455/

The answer is ‘We are definitely getting there,’ and I say that for two converging reasons:

Supply: Like any other consumer-driven movement, this recruitment world is also witnessing the slow (yet steady) onslaught of online credentials as students and professionals are acquiring skills through digital learning. With automation (threatening to) take away jobs in the 4th industrial revolution, skillset and workplace requirement are changing rapidly. Technology is perceived as the way to keep pace and secure a place in the workplace of 2030.

Demand: Digital Learning is the #2 topic in the minds of HR heads, according to a recent report on Human Capital Trends. Requirement for nonlinear skills coupled with convergence of existing job roles into new ones is forcing companies to look for people with multiple skills and invest in digitally upskilling existing employees.

Micro Credentials for the Job Seeker

Certificate: Picture courtesy Pixabay

MOOC Providers like EdX, Coursera, Udacity and FutureLearn are offering micro credentials and creating academic content to keep pace with the changing nature of industry needs. It could be argued that these programmes are better targeted to job requirements and possibly as worthy as degrees to a prospective or existing employer. Stackable credentials like MicroMasters and Nanodegrees are focused on jobs and are finding recognition with industry and employers. Coursera’s Learner Outcome Survey found that 84% of career-focused learners who completed courses reported career benefits and 18% started a new career after taking a MOOC.

The job seeker is ready, the credential is ready, are you hiring?

Yes! The IIMBx MOOCs Programme recently decided to walk the talk and got on board a Front-end Web Developer who proudly showcased his Online Nanodegree. Inayat, a young M.Tech. graduate who recently earned the Udacity Full Stack Developer Nanodegree is equally pleased and says,

“I knew I needed something extra to get a job of my choice, something that would help me keep pace with the fast-growing tech world. Initially, I didn’t have much faith in online courses, but the journey has been amazing. And the outcome is that I got a job through it in the digital learning industry. I am going to focus on using my newly acquired digital skills in creating an IIMBx platform that helps many others like me. ”

Just as Netflix transformed the way people watched ‘TV’ shows, platforms like edX, Coursera, Udacity, LinkedIn and a host of others are unbundling the education, skilling, hiring and upskilling cycle. Are you ready to hire the ‘digital’ way?

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PROF. U DINESH KUMAR PUBLISHES BOOK ON BUSINESS ANALYTICS

Titled ‘Business Analytics – The Science of Data-Driven Decision Making’, the book provides a holistic perspective of analytics with theoretical foundations and applications of the theory using examples across several industries

05 September, 2017, Bengaluru: A book titled, ‘Business Analytics – The Science of Data-Driven Decision Making’, authored by Professor U Dinesh Kumar, faculty and Chairperson, Decision Sciences and Information Systems area, IIM Bangalore, has been published by Wiley India Pvt. Ltd.

Written with the aim of becoming the primary resource for students of Business Analytics, this book provides a holistic perspective of analytics with theoretical foundations and applications of the theory using examples across several industries. The content of the book starts with the foundations of data science and addresses all components of analytics, such as, descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics topics which are discussed using examples from several industries, as well as nine analytics case studies distributed by Harvard Business Publishing and used by several institutes across the world. The book is enriched with 10 years of teaching experience of the author at various programmes in IIM Bangalore and several training and consulting projects carried out by him.

About the book: The book provides equal importance to theory and practice with examples across industries. The case studies provide a deeper understanding of analytics techniques and deployment of analytics-driven solutions. It has thorough coverage of topics such as basic probability concepts, probability distributions, hypothesis testing, multiple linear regression, logistic regression, decision trees, forecasting, clustering, prescriptive analytics, stochastic models and Six Sigma. The book offers real data sets for students to practice various analytics techniques and consists of discussion of analytics applications in industries such as banking and finance, eCommerce, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and services. It has multiple-choice questions at the end of the chapter which will ensure that the reader has understood the learning outcomes. The microsite of the book lists the datasets used in the book, and the case studies in this book are distributed through the Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) case portal.

The book has 17 chapters and the first few chapters are dedicated to foundations of Business Analytics. Introduction to Business Analytics and its components such as descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics along with several applications are discussed in Chapter 1. In Chapters 2 to 8, basic statistical concepts are discussed, such as descriptive statistics, concept of random variables, discrete and continuous random variables, confidence interval, hypothesis testing, analysis of variance and correlation. Chapters 9 to 13 are dedicated to predictive analytics techniques such as multiple linear regression, logistic regression, decision tree learning, and forecasting techniques. Clustering is discussed in Chapter 14. Chapter 15 is about prescriptive analytics in which concepts such as linear programming, integer programming, and goal programming are discussed. Stochastic models and Six Sigma are discussed in Chapters 16 and 17, respectively. Each chapter is enriched with several solved problems, multiple choice questions, and exercise problems. Many chapters include case studies that will improve understanding of the concepts and enable students to understand how analytics is used by the industry.

About the author: Prof. Dinesh Kumar is also the Chairperson, Data Centre and Analytics Lab, an initiative of IIMB set up to support interdisciplinary empirical research using data on primarily Indian as well as other emerging markets, and Chairperson of IIMB’s Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management (EPGP). He holds a PhD in Mathematics from IIT Bombay. He introduced the Business Analytics elective course in 2008 to the Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) students at IIM Bangalore and started one of the first certificate programmes in Business Analytics in India in 2010.

Prof. Dinesh Kumar has over 20 years of teaching and research experience. He has published more than 60 research articles in leading academic journals. Twenty-eight of his case studies on Business Analytics, based on Indian and multinational organizations, have been published at the Harvard Business Publishing’s case portal. He has also carried out predictive and prescriptive analytics consulting projects for leading organizations. Moreover, he conducts corporate training programmes on Analytics for several companies.

Prof. Dinesh Kumar is the Founding President of the Analytics Society of India (ASI). He was awarded the Best Young Teacher Award by the Association of Indian Management Institutions in 2003. He is listed as one of the top 10 Analytics academics in India by the Analytics India magazine.

Visit @ IIM Bangalore

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CONSULATE GENERAL OF ISRAEL IN BENGALURU AND IIMB CELEBRATE MUTUAL COLLABORATION FOR BUSINESS AND ACADEMICS

In keeping with the rapid expansion of engagements between the two countries, plans for IIMB to deepen such ties were discussed during the luncheon celebration, which includes hosting an Israel Center at IIMB to build deeper understanding on issues of importance to both the countries

30 August, 2017, Bengaluru: The Consulate General of Israel in Bengaluru andIndian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), organized a luncheon at IIM Bangalore, to celebrate the collaboration between the Consulate and IIMB for the development of business and academic ties between India and Israel, on August 6, 2017. Prof. Abhoy K. Ojha from the Organizational Behavior & Human Resources Management area of IIMB and Prof. Gadi Ariav of Tel Aviv University jointly hosted the event.

Prof. Gopal Naik, Dean Faculty, IIMB, welcomed all the participants and emphasized IIMB’s aspiration to deepen ties with universities and businesses in Israel. He also referred to plans to host an Israel Center at IIMB to build deeper understanding on issues of importance to both the countries.

Yael Hashavit, Israel’s Consul General to South India, stressed the need for India and Israel to strengthen business as well as people-to-people ties and appreciated the role of IIMB and Tel Aviv University in acting as vehicles to facilitate such ties. She expressed satisfaction in the rapid expansion of engagements between the two countries. Also part of the discussions were Asif Iqbal, President, Indo Israel Friendship Society, Ajay Nanavati, President, Grey Gurus Management Advisors LLP, Neena Gopal, Resident Editor, Deccan Chronicle and Dr D. L. Maheshwar, Vice Chancellor, University of Horticultural Sciences, Bagalkot and Shalini Elassery, Partner, Meivia Global Services LLP. All the participants highlighted the importance of such events and lauded the efforts of the people who are working toward forging stronger bonds between the two nations.

The event also provided the opportunity to bid farewell to Israel’s Consul General to South India, Yael Hashavit, who returns to Israel after concluding a short, intensive and successful term in Bengaluru, which includes a close and useful associaltion with IIMB.

Visit @ IIM Bangalore

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A revised version of his earlier work, the new book reflects rapid changes in the Indian and global markets, and the valuable feedback received from subject matter experts, students and working professionals engaged in the discipline

02 August, 2017, Bengaluru: A book titled, ‘Consumer Behaviour: The Indian Context (Concepts and Cases)’, authored by Dr. S Ramesh Kumar, Professor in the Marketing area at IIM Bangalore, has been published recently, by Pearson Education. This is a revised version of his earlier book titled, ‘Consumer Behaviour and Branding: Concepts, Readings and Cases – The Indian Context’, which needed updating given the developments in the realm of digitization, cultural scenario and in consumer decision-making witnessed in the last two or three years.

About the book: The text in the revised book has been holistically updated to reflect rapid changes in the Indian and global markets, and the valuable feedback received from subject matter experts, students and working professionals engaged in the discipline.

The updated book draws special attention to:

New examples to reflect changing lifestyles and consumer decisions

Extensive discussion on digitalization and consumer behavior

Strong conceptual base that stimulates the thought process of the readers

Specific applications to illustrate the practical usefulness of concepts

Indian cases that have been drawn from real-life brands

Attractive visuals of brands to illustrate the concepts discussed

About the author: Prof. S Ramesh Kumar, who is also IIMB Chair of Excellence, has a mix of industrial and teaching/research experience of over 30 years. His areas of interest are exploring the application of marketing/consumer behavior concepts to the Indian context. His specific research interests include Branding-Consumer Behavior Interface, Cultural Dimensions in Marketing, and Consumer Behavior-Digital Marketing Interface. He has also adapted the 11th edition of Consumer Behavior by Leon Schiffman and Joseph Wisenblit. He has published articles and case studies in reputed journals (national and international), business magazines and business newspapers. His international publications include papers in refereed journals of repute, which are known both for their academic rigor and practice orientation.

He teaches in the postgraduate, executive management, and research fellow programmes. He has developed courses at the postgraduate and doctoral levels. He has also co-authored and published several real-life cases associated with reputed organizations in the Indian context.

He was awarded the ICFAI Best Teacher Award by the Association for Indian Management Schools (AIMS).

Prof. Ramesh Kumar has presented papers in many international conferences. He has been an invited speaker and visiting scholar in universities abroad and has delivered special lectures on marketing in the Indian context. He has conducted a number of training programmes for corporate executives in Indian and multinational organizations.

Visit @ IIM Bangalore

[iim-bangalore-blog]

NSRCEL AT IIMB HOSTS WORKSHOP FOR EDUCATORS

As part of its Customer Connect initiative, N. S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), the start-up incubator of IIM Bangalore, organized a workshop on ‘Inspiring Educators in Digital Age’ on July 26, 2017.

It was a collaborative effort by NSRCEL and ‘Mantra for Change’ -– a social venture focused on school transformation. The workshop format was interactive with brainstorming sessions and ideating discussions with 28 educators and school leaders from schools across Bangalore and Mysore.

The assembly line, the break bell, the homework and the favourite teacher... how often do we really miss those carefree days of school? Almost every day – given the stressful adult lives today! For all the positives in the school as a workplace and teaching being a noble profession, the job requires immense motivation.

Career growth, inspiration, gratification and respect for teachers were discussed at the workshop. Some actionable ideas surfaced, as a result of all the brainstorming. These included:

• Skill mapping of teachers, and opportunities for them to attend skill enhancement workshops

• Adopting ‘Teacher of the Month’ and similar initiatives to recognize and reward the effort of teachers

• Creating a more inclusive environment for their career growth and progression

Participants and organizers alike left the room noticeably energized and enthused with the idea of implementing some of the ideas that were discussed during the workshop. NSRCEL will continue to support these educators and start-ups making a positive impact in the education sector.

Going forward, NSRCEL aims to take up more initiatives to help women entrepreneurs connect with the innovation ecosystem and markets, and build networks for successful growth of enterprises. Stay tuned for more Connect stories.

Visit @ IIM Bangalore

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CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH BY FACULTY OF IIM BANGALORE

Faculty members at IIM Bangalore generate knowledge through cutting-edge research in all functional areas of management that would benefit public and private sector companies, and government and society in general. The knowledge generated by IIMB faculty appears in leading academic journals with high citation index and impact factor. Many textbooks and working papers are written on a regular basis. Research carried out by IIMB is used to augment new courses and executive education programmes.

Journal of Economic Theory

Vol. 158, Part A, July 2015, pp. 232-258

Paper Title: Dynamic choice in a complex world

Abstract

We consider an environment in which a Decision Maker (DM) finds it sufficiently complex to even describe the state space, let alone guess the parameters of the underlying data generating process. He is therefore unable to use the standard Bayesian methods. Instead, at each moment in time, the DM constructs a preference relation on the set of available actions based on their past performance. We postulate a set of axioms on this family of preference relations indexed by histories (of rewards). Two key conditions, a typical dium; Exchangeability axiom and another labeled Consistency, that constraints the DM not to update her preferences after certain events (loosely based the “the principle of insufficient reason”), characterize thumb rules for ranking actions that are akin to the familiar fictitious play in game theory. Moreover, if in fact the stochastic process that generates the rewards is exchangeable, a DM that obeys our axioms (almost surely) cannot be distinguished in the long run from one that is fully cognizant of the environment and satisfies the expected utility hypothesis. The main result requires proving a representation result on multisets which may be of independent interest.

Written by,

Murali Agastya, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

Read More @ Journal of Economic Theory

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CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH BY FACULTY OF IIM BANGALORE

Faculty members at IIM Bangalore generate knowledge through cutting-edge research in all functional areas of management that would benefit public and private sector companies, and government and society in general. The knowledge generated by IIMB faculty appears in leading academic journals with high citation index and impact factor. Many textbooks and working papers are written on a regular basis. Research carried out by IIMB is used to augment new courses and executive education programmes.

Management Science

Vol. 61, No. 11, February 2015, pp. 2720-2738

Paper Title: An Interproduct Competition Model Incorporating Branding Hierarchy and Product Similarities Using Store-Level Data

Abstract

We develop and implement a Bayesian semiparametric model of demand under interproduct competition that enables us to assess the respective contributions of brand-SKU (stock keeping unit) hierarchy and interproduct similarity to explaining and predicting demand. To incorporate brand-SKU hierarchy effects, we use Bayesian hierarchical clustering inherent in a nested Dirichlet process to simultaneously partition brands, and SKUs conditional on brands, into groups of “similarity clusters.” We examine cluster memberships and postprocess the Markov chain Monte Carlo output to infer cluster properties by accounting for parameter uncertainty. Our proposed approach lends to a spatial competition interpretation in latent attribute space and helps uncover the extent to which competition across SKUs in the latent attribute space is local or global. In a related vein, we discuss the implications of well-defined groups of similar SKUs as subcategory or submarket boundaries in latent attribute space. We empirically test our model using aggregate beer category sales data from a midsize U.S. retail chain. We find that branding hierarchy effects dominate those from product similarity. We find that the model partitions the 15 brands in the data into 4 brand clusters and the 96 SKUs into 25 SKU clusters conditional on brand cluster membership. In estimating a set of models of spatial interproduct competition, we find that SKU competition is more local than global in that only subsets of products compete within groups of comparable products. Finally, we discuss the substantive implications of our results.

Written by,

Pulak Ghosh, Decision Sciences and Information Systems, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Read More @ Management Science

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CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH BY FACULTY OF IIM BANGALORE

Faculty members at IIM Bangalore generate knowledge through cutting-edge research in all functional areas of management that would benefit public and private sector companies, and government and society in general. The knowledge generated by IIMB faculty appears in leading academic journals with high citation index and impact factor. Many textbooks and working papers are written on a regular basis. Research carried out by IIMB is used to augment new courses and executive education programmes.

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A

Paper Title: Bayesian estimation of long-term health consequences for obese and normal-weight elderly people.

Abstract

Obesity is a rapidly growing public health problem even among the elderly. Understanding the disabling consequences of obesity in the elderly will help us to design better effective intervention management guidelines for the elderly obese. To examine the long-term health consequences of the obese elderly, we present a joint model consisting of two bivariate ordered responses observed at successive time points. The bivariate ordered response model corresponds to the subject’s self-reporting health status outcomes including self-rated health and functional status. Although the joint model that we propose is generally suited for use in health and disease research, where the ordered value responses are observed at successive time points, we further extend it by addressing some of the challenges by incorporating the semiparametric features in the ordinal logistic model, by modelling the underlying latent states of health that are associated with self-rated health, by jointly modelling the bivariate ordinal out-comes to mitigate the variability of the single response and by accounting for the non-ignorable missing data due to different reasons through a multinomial logit model. The motivating data were obtained from the Second Longitudinal Study of Aging, which are longitudinal survey data from 1994–2000 providing various useful information on the health status of elderly people. Parameter estimation of our joint model was performed in a Bayesian framework via Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. Analytical results demonstrate the difference in longitudinal pat- terns of the health outcomes between the two weight groups, validating our hypothesis that different management strategies for the obese elderly should be employed.

Written by

Pulak Ghosh, Decision Sciences and Information Systems, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Read More @ Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A

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The past decade has seen MOOC emerge as a buzzword – much has been discussed about the hype around it, its efficacy, revenue model, academic rigour and so on. But, is MOOC an emerging technology? Hasn’t distance learning been around for a while? How is a MOOC different from erstwhile distance learning? Is it just old wine in a new bottle? What we need to understand is that MOOC is different; it is a pedagogically powerful tool and is structured to mimic the classroom learning as much as possible. In fact, MOOCs can be seen as a means to improve faculty effectiveness and to augment the learning experience in the classroom.

Professor PD Jose, Professor Ashok Thampy and Professor Subhashish Gupta of IIM Bangalore conducting sessions on Blended MOOCs at the Faculty Development Programme at Chandigarh University.

Reskill and Re-invent Yourself as a 21st Century Teacher: As faculty, why should we talk about MOOCs and why are they relevant? Globalization and technology like MOOCs have removed geographical borders between academicians and students – a student from Chandigarh University, India can learn from a European school; an IIMB teacher can teach learners in Africa and so on. The way forward for an academician to stay relevant is to orchestrate classroom learning experiences by bringing together knowledge from global teachers and take students from global information to contextual insights. Students have access to learning at their finger-tips and therefore, faculty are also faced with the challenge of constantly reskilling and re-inventing themselves.

Understand the 21st Century Digitally Native Learner: If we look at it from the point of view of the learner, the social contract between the student and the teacher has changed; students’ expectations of teachers have also increased. Today’s students are far more digitally savvy and can multi-task, i.e. learn through videos while socially interacting online and being part of a classroom all at once. How do you evolve your classroom to cater to the changing learning and education needs of this 21st century learner? Here are some ways - 

Understand how and why students learn to help you make informed decisions about curriculum and pedagogy.

Shift from ‘passive’ to ‘experimental’ pedagogy to make classroom learning active and application-oriented.

Adopt social and peer-to-peer learning methodologies to be where your student is.

3. Prepare students for the new-age industry requirements: Technology is constantly evolving and jobs are changing rapidly. If you look at the top 20 jobs of 2030 (as per a report by WEF) you will see that you are trying to train students to prepare for jobs – more than 80% of which are new and unheard of today. Can you afford to ‘not change the way you teach?’

Today’s education is moving to a trend of ‘unbundling’ – content, curriculum, faculty and credentials. Today’s faculty and educational institutions should equip themselves to take the best content, blend it into the curriculum, learn from the best global faculty and give credentials that industry will recognize. By adopting the best of digital learning in the traditional classroom, blended MOOCs can become a ‘tradigital’ tool to evolve education to keep pace with learner and industry needs.

The IIMBx MOOCs Programme conducts Faculty Development Programmes on ‘Blending MOOCs in the Classroom’ to open up minds to asking the right questions on MOOCs and to foster adoption of MOOCs into traditional classroom teaching. For more details, visit https://www.iimbx.edu.in/

Note: This post is written to capture key insights shared by PD Jose, Professor of Startegy, and Chairperson – Digital Learning, IIMB, at a Faculty Development Programme conducted at Chandigarh University on 10th July 2017.

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