IndiaRetailBiz

According to Kishore Biyani, the founder and CEO of Future Group, management schools in India need to innovate to become relevant in the fast changing business world. He was speaking at the Management Education Convention organised by The Association of Indian Management Schools (AIMS).”

B-Schools were first established about 100 years back in the industrialisation era.Today services dominate the markets. B-schools need to innovate on their curriculum and teaching methodology,” he said. “In the Indian context, what they are teaching is not very relevant in the changing business dynamics in India, where youth dominate the market composition and their aspirations are changing very fast,” added Biyani.

“Business schools need to encourage new ideas and thinking. Instead of case-method, which looks at the past, we must encourage Scenario-planning approaches which simulate the future,” averred Biyani.

Interestingly, case method made popular by Harvard Business School is being extensively used as a preferred method of teaching at IIM Ahmedabad.

Emphasising the need to develop solutions that meet India’s needs, Biyani stressed, “Given our culture and caste system, we can not read Paco Underhill and just implement in the Indian retail environment. It will fail. We need to develop an Indian solution to Indian needs.”

Paco Underhill incidentally is an expert on retailing who has authored much celebrated book on retailing entitled, ‘Why we buy: The Science of Shopping’ and ‘Call of the Mall.’ He is also the founder of Envirosell– a research and consulting firm specialising instudying retail and service environments.

Biyani’s comments came while participating in a panel discussion entitled ‘The Innovation Imperative - Expectation from the B-Schools.’ The panel comprised global management experts that among others included Dr. Sten Ekman, Research Director - Malardalen University, Sweden; Dr. Banny Banerjee, Director - Stanford Design Program, Stanford, USA; Prof. Dr. Uday Salunkhe, Director, Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research, and Dr M R Rao, Dean, ISB.