ISB - Curtain Raiser for the academic year 2009-10

Hai Friends,
All the best for all those people who are aspiring to become tomorrow's global leaders at Indian School of Business, which is ranged as Top-20 in the global MBA rankings by Financial Times. Now that the admission process for Round-1 has started, think about it seriously, prepare with acumen and hit the bulls eye in your first attempt. I also wish all the best for re-applicants who missed the bus in their earlier attempts. In this blog, I would try to give the information about the ISB admission process, the details of admission information sessions conducted by ISB at Hyderabad and other big cities, actual interview experiences of candidates appeared in the previous years as well as in the current year, the opinions of persons who passed out from ISB, the Indian macro economic scenario, the inflation trends, the monetory trends, the growth in the Gross Dometic Product, analysis of various emerging sectors of Indian economy, emerging employment opportunities and much more.

ISB dean elected to the Board of GMAC

This is the press note released in repect of ISB dean being elected to the Board of GMAC and published in Business Standard, and PagalGuy.com on August 01, 2007.

M Rammohan Rao, Dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB), has been elected to the board of directors of the Graduate Management Admission Council® (GMAC), effective July 1, 2007. Dean Rao’s election is particularly significant because he is the first Indian Business School Dean to be named to this prestigious body.

Speaking about his new role, Dean Rao said, “This is an excellent opportunity to bring global management practices to India. The ISB was one of the first B-schools in India to use GMAT® scores an admission criterion. It has helped us a great deal in establishing international standards of quality and in selecting bright students for the Post Graduate Programme in Management.”

"The Graduate Management Admission Council® is honoured to have Dean Rammohan Rao join its board,” said David A. Wilson, president and chief executive officer of GMAC®.. “He is an outstanding scholar who is now leading one of the most respected schools of business in the world. He will bring wisdom and perspective to the deliberations of the board." Dean Rao has been elected for a period of three years. As a board member, he will play an important role in making the GMAT® exam more accessible to people who wish to pursue a graduate management degree.

The ISB is also a member of the Council’s group of governing schools. Membership in this group is by invitation only, and the ISB is the only school to represent India. GMAC is the provider of the Graduate Management Admission Test® (GMAT®), used worldwide to assess applicants to graduate management education programs. The GMAT® exam is a highly reliable predictor of an applicant's ability to succeed academically in graduate business studies.In addition to its value as a predictor of an applicant's success in business school, the GMAT® exam is also a powerful tool for comparing applicants.

As an objective and consistent indicator, the GMAT score offers one of the most effective ways of contrasting one applicant with another, no matter how different their backgrounds may be. The GMAT examination, launched in 1954, is a standardized test designed to measure verbal, mathematical, and analytical writing skills. It is given throughout the year in nearly 100 countries around the world. Over the more than 50 years of its use, the GMAT® exam has been repeatedly studied, tested, and modified to ensure that it continues to help predict academic performance.

IBM announces collaborative SSME intiative with ISB and other schools in India

IBM, at the first India Service Science, Mangement and Engineering (SSME) - 2007 conference held in Banglore announced collaborative SSME curriculum initiatives with leading business and tech schools in India.

The company had signed a memorandum of understanding, earlier this year with Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad. While signing the MoU, Professor Rammohan Rao, Dean, ISB said, "A strong industry academia partnership is extremely important for us to provide management education that is relevant and current. I am sure that IBM and the ISB together can conduct cutting edge research that will be immediately applicable in India, and also successfully replicated elsewhere in the world. The ISB is proud to be associated with IBM for pioneering this research in India."

"The aim of this agreement is to support ISB to open the SSME Program which includes high-end research, development of case studies and curriculum for the Executive Education and the Post Graduate Program in Management with the help of IBM so that the discipline of service science can be developed and lead to nurturing specialized human resources," said Dr. Daniel M Dias, Director, IBM India Research Laboratory.

Professor Viswanadham, Executive Director, Centre for Global Logistics and Manufacturing Strategies (GLAMS) at the ISB said, "With 30 % of our economy dependent on it, the service sector plays a very important role in the Indian economy. The Centre for Global Logistics and Manufacturing Strategies will explore innovative possibilities to streamline, transform and automate processes and develop human resources to deliver services more efficiently. The study will focus on service chains connected with ITES, Retail, Textiles, Logistics, Supply Chain Finance, Human Resource Management, Business Services and others."

IBM is working closely with IIM, Banglore, IITs, and Indian Institute of Science, Banglore to advance SSME research in the region. Dr. C. Mohan, IBM Fellow and Chief Scientist, IBM India, said, "The new academic initiative is designed to prepare graduate students for careers in the evolving multi-disciplinary field of services management. In the 1950s, IBM made a similar effort to help establish computer science as a new academic discipline."

S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai (SPJIMR) has partnered with IBM to study IT deployment services management model. The study results will help SPJIMR and IBM to develop a courseware in services design.

Nirma Institute of Management (NIM), Ahmedabad, has teamed with IBM to study managed deployment of eGovernance services. The study result is expected to provide guidance in managing the IT-based system deployment of eGovernment projects particularly in the area of citizen services and to contribute in developing a courseware on the eGovernance services.

The new programs draw on research and teaching in the fields of computer science, computer engineering, business strategy and management sciences to help students develop the skills required in a technology-based, services-led economy.

IBM said many leading universities across the world have begun exploring and investing in the field of service science, also called service sciences, management and engineering (SSME), to develop exactly these cross-disciplinary skills. University of California, Berkeley, Arizona State University and North Carolina State University are among a handful of universities in the United States that have established programs in service science. Universities in Europe and Asia are also creating programs in this area.

The goal of the SSME discipline is to drive productivity, quality and sustainability of services, while making the learning rates and innovation rates more predictable across the service sector, especially in complex organization to organization services including business to business, nation to nation and government to population.This new academic discipline brings together ongoing work in fields of computer science, operations research, industrial engineering, business strategy, management sciences, social, cognitive and legal sciences, to develop skills required in a services-led economy. The global SSME research community is aggressively laying the groundwork for this challenging new research area.

Complete Source Articles:-

• IBM Announces Collaborative SSME Curriculum Intiatives in India - itnewsonline - 24-06-2007
• IBM and ISB Launch Major Services Initiative in India - ZDnetindia.com - 07-02-2007

Judge Business School and ISB agree to foster technology entrepreneurship

In October 2006, Judge Business School of Cambridge University and the Indian School of Business have signeed a three year international student exchange programme. The programme will enable selected students from the ISB to visit Cambridge and enroll as full-time MBA students for one academic semester, whilst the selected students from Judge Business School will enroll at Hyderabad for a similar appropriate period.

While visiting their host schools, the students will attend lectures and undertake consulting projects with host Microsoft Research on "emerging" technologies in order to familiarise themselves with technology entrepreneurship. Microsoft Research is supporting this international exchange programme. To help foster technology enterpreneurship, it will be inviting the exchange students to undertake business feasibility studies on technologies arising from the research activities at their Cambridge, England and Banglore, India laboratories. These projects will allow the students to learn about global issues in a fast growing technology environment, equipping them with the insight and practical skills necessary to develop them into managers for the future.

International Research Conference on Entrepreneurship

Source : ISB website
Link: The First International Research Conference on Entrepreneurship in Emerging Regions

The First International Research Conference on Entrepreneurship in Emerging Regions was hosted by the Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (WCED) at the ISB, along with the Journal of Business Venturing and the Batten Institute, University of Virginia, from December 5-7, 2006. The conference proved to be an innovative platform for thought leaders on entrepreneurship from around the world to share ideas and experiences.

Some technical papers were presented during the three day deliberations. These papers discussed, broadly, areas of entrepreneurial activities like entrepreneurial action in emerging economies and small firms, factors influencing entrepreneurial decisions, niche entrepreneurial opportunities, virtual entrepreneurial clusters, barriers in developing countries to entrepreneurship, growth strategy planning in small entrepreneurial ventures, sustaining family firms in chronically hostile business environment, need for innovation in technical entrepreneurship and MBAs’ perception of and inclination towards entrepreneurship.

ISB - The Power of Five

Today (05-12-2006) is the fifth anniversary day and the power of FIVE at ISB (both the numbers being FIVE) is still working.

Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh today visited ISB to commemorate the fifth year of its existence and also to inaugurate the two-day Global Logistics Summit-2006. He stressed the need for 100 clones of ISB in India on public-private partnership.

Chief Minister Dr Y S Rajasekhar Reddy said "The ISB has become a trendsetter right from its beginning and has earned the reputation of being one of the most prestigious business schools in India"

In fact, the Approach Paper to Eleventh Plan (2007-2012) stressed the need for more qualitative and world class institutions in India to cater to the knowledge economy whose contribution to the Indian GDP is growing bay by day. In the 11th plan, the Government is planning to add three more IITs with an additional intake of 3000 students. Similarly, one university will be chosen from each of the bigger states like Andhra Pradesh, Mahrashtra and make them centres of excellence with world class facilities with public-private partnership. Similarly, there is a need to establish world class business schools like ISB to cater to the needs of one billion people in India.

Mr. Rajat Gupta, chairman of ISB and senior partner at McKinsey & Co., said " We have grown from 128 students in 2001 and will continue to grow. ISB today has 418 students and soon the number will go up to 560 that will make it the FIFTH largest business school in the world". A new research chair for family business and wealth management, named after Dr. Thomas Schmidheiny, was set up at the ISB. Additionally, two more Centres of Excellence (CoE) would be set up at the institute, taking the number of such centres to six and every year five more resident faculty would be added. (Source : Deccan Chronicle dated 06-12-2006)

It is good news for all of us that ISB is increasing its seats from 418 to 560. But, we do not whether it is from this year or from next batch.

You can read the articles on PM's visit to ISB at Rediff News or view the photo gallery or video gallery at ISB-Power of Five

Research Chair for Family Owned Businesses

The Indian School of Business is planning to establsih a research chair for family owned businesses in association with Holcim, a Swiss cement major. The ISB is presently celebrating five years of its existence, with Prime Minister, who is presently on a visit to Hyderabad, visting the Campus on 5th December, 2006. The B-School is also planning to introduce new electives in pharma, retail and project management for its PGPM program. The research chair would help address challenges faced by family-owned businesses. In the words of the Dean, Mr. M. Rammohan Rao, it will also lead research, organise conferences and intercace with the academia and practitioners to debate on key issues in this field. The ISB has recently signed an MOU with Hyderabad-based real estate company, Indu Projects, for establishing a research chair for "real estate and urban studies'. Under the MoU, the company will provide a grant of US $ 550,000, spread over a period of five years, for setting up the chair.

Source : The Economic Times dated 04-12-2006