IIM-L Focus On Public Policy Delivers The Goods

IN A RECENT ARTICLE, “Business Education is Broken”, Professor Andrew J. Hoffman, a visiting fellow with Institute for Business in Global Society at Harvard Business School, argues that one of the ways to fix business education is offering more coverage in curriculum to role of government and teaching topics such as value of wealth to be passed on to next generation, economic inequality, non-remunerated work (such as child rearing), resource depletion and environmental degradation.

It seems IIM Lucknow (IIM-L) has a head start. The B-school had launched agribusiness management in 2004. It has also opened a centre of excellence for food and agricultural management. “We were the first IIM to start a full-year programme on sustainability,” says Vikas Srivastava, dean-programmes, IIM-L. The school offers nine different programmes, apart from masters in business management, and a large number of electives, 20% of which are upgraded every year. In 2005, it set up a satellite campus in Noida exclusively for executive education, a first for any IIM, and holds the coveted dual accreditations from AMBA (Association of MBAs) and AACSB (Association of Advanced Collegiate School of Business). It is also working towards accreditation from EQUIS; this will make it one of the few B-schools to have the ‘triple crown.’ Srivastava says IIM-L has been ahead of the curve by setting up eight centres of excellence — first Centre of Excellence for Food and Agricultural Management, Centre for Public Policy, Leadership and Human Values, Centre for Business Sustainability, Internet Commerce Research Centre, Enterprise Incubation Centre, Centre for Marketing in Emerging Economies and Rekhi Centre of Excellence for the Science of Happiness. In last five years, director Archana Shukla has pushed for action in three areas: programmes to impact business world, economy and public policy; entrepreneurship and sustainability; and creating global linkages. The Centre for Public Policy was the first to host a programme for the chief minister and council of ministers to provide them a managerial view of public policy. It runs several impactful programmes. For example, during Covid, it helped the state government manage supply chain in hospitals and created dashboards for monitoring oxygen cylinder disbursal. The school also advises government on MSME capacity building projects. It works with a multi-commodity exchange, farmer producer organisations and is a participant in the National Mission For Clean Ganga. Other initiatives include running short training programmes for public servants, helping students understand governance and including sustainability initiatives into courses. The B-school has also set up a lab to map the brain and come out with initiatives in areas of marketing, finance and trading.

Other USPs

Earlier, IIM-L was known for its focus on marketing, but over the last decade, the quality of consulting and finance jobs being offered has improved tremendously. Research has also become an important focus area with companies tying up for case studies and offering case competitions and consulting projects. The way firms interact with students has also changed. Now, a mere 10-minute job interview is not enough. Firms engage students via case study-based competitions which allow students to interact with C-suites for a long period and get offers before the formal placement day.

Relevance of B-schools

If there were no B-schools, doing business would be a gamble, says a Harvard Business Review article. B-schools teach how to prioritise variables in business environment, leverage finance and use technology and data. Covid brought in modernisation of the school’s infrastructure. Now, all classrooms are digital, which allows it to get industry experts from all over the world. “We are a knowledge school and offer students skills, deep-dive into conceptual models and hands-on training,” says Srivastava.

IIM–L also runs Entrepreneurship and Business Excellence Incubation Centres, a Section 8 company, and has incubated over 110 companies with market cap of over ₹2,000 crore. It has a managing director and a CEO. A number of companies like Balmer Laurie have funded the start-ups. The next target is ‘triple crown’ and climbing up global rankings.