Smith School Hosts Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Conference

In December 2005, the Smith School co-sponsored and hosted the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) USA Inc. Mid-Atlantic Conference 2005. The theme of the conference was Business Opportunities in a Globally Networked Economy.

The Indian Institutes of Management, popularly known as the IIMs, are the most sought after Indian business schools. Every year more than 100,000 Indian candidates compete to obtain admission in the IIMs. The IIMs admit only the best 1,200. IIM alumni are business leaders the world over and the alumni include noted business thinker Dr. C. K. Prahalad, President and CFO PepsiCo Indra Nooyi, and Chairman and CEO MphasiS Jerry Rao.

IIM USA Inc. is a pan IIM organization founded in the summer of 2005. It represents more than 1,500 USA based alumni of the Indian Institutes of Management. There are similar chapters in Europe, Middle East and Far East. The IIMs are well recognized as a premium brand in India and Asia. IIM USA intends to leverage this brand to the same heights in USA.

The highlight of the evening was the keynote address by Jerry Rao. Jerry Rao, CEO of BFL-Mphasis, has been described by Thomas Friedman as being at the core of [this] business revolution that has happened over the past few years (Smaller and Smaller, New York Times, March 4, 2004).

In his speech Rao emphasized that the export of the services business in the U.S. (such as accounting and taxes) to lower-cost nations overseas constitutes nothing less than a paradigm shift in the way the world does business. He said that the resulting productivity gains are of several orders of magnitude. He compared this new revolutionary model of doing business as similar to the Industrial Revolution in England.

Rao felt that the rise of India as the preferred outsourcing and off shoring destination was partly an unintended consequence of the fact that India is an English-speaking country. However, he also cautioned that unless efforts are made it is possible that this new revolution will leave the poor and the uneducated untouched and in some ways may make their lives even more miserable. He highlighted the fact that even a six-week English language course can have an extremely positive impact on the wage level of Indian employees. Rao also spoke passionately about a rural community experiment that he is a part of on the outskirts of Bangalore. He said that he is supporting the training and facilitation of marginalized villagers performing data-entry operations. Although, it is early days yet, he said the initial results have been promising and he is confident that even though the experiment may not earn profits, but it will certainly break-even and that is an encouraging sign.

Other notable speakers at the conference included Dean of the Smith School of Business, Howard Frank; Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of India, Ambassador Raminder S. Jassal; Ralph J. Tyser Professor of Strategy and Organization at the Smith School of Business, Dr. Anil Gupta; and David J. McGrath Jr., Professor in Management/Chairman, Information Systems Department at Boston University, Dr. N. Venkatraman.

Ambassador Jassal in his presentation pointed out that globalization is often mistakenly thought of as a recent phenomenon whereas India's past reveals several examples of fruitful business collaboration with countries from several continents. Dr. Gupta and Dr. Venkatraman participated in a lively panel discussion which discussed several important features of doing business in a global and digital economy.

The event was well attended with several IIM alumni of the Mid-Atlantic region coming together to participate in the conference. Also, several full-time Smith MBA students too took advantage of the convenient location of the conference and benefited enormously from the informed discussions. Arindam Basu, first year full-time MBA student said, This is finals week, and at first I was not sure if I should come or not for this event. But after listening to Jerry Rao and the thoroughly engaging panel discussion, I am extremely glad that I made the correct choice.

Smith Media Group, Sachin Agarwal, MBA Candidate 2007