Content written by Vasant V Bang and published by Financial Express
MBA News Digest Comment: None.
Extracted Content: The Harvard Business Review’s latest ranking of top 100 CEOs includes only 32 MBAs. Since its inception, the proportion of MBAs in this exclusive club has hovered around 30. No wonder, questions are being increasingly raised about the relevance of conventional management education, especially mainstream MBA programmes. Against this background, business schools will do well to pay attention to the work of this year’s Nobel laureate Paul Romer, who, incidentally, is a professor at a leading business school. His work in economics highlights the role of ideas and innovation in economic growth. Innovation need not be only technological, but it also spans domains of international trade, public policy and business management. Research and development are keys to innovation.
Of late, leading management institutes in India have increased their focus on research. However, research publications that help institutes to rise in academic rankings do not necessarily make them relevant to practice. Noted management scholar Nirmalya Kumar made a stinging observation about doctoral programmes arguing that, with a few exceptions, most marketing academics did not focus on the issues important to practitioners.