B-School Leaders Discuss The Opportunities And Challenges Of Industry-Academia Collaboration

Today, the collaboration between industry and academia is critical in order to keep up with the rapid changes and creating world-class leaders.

At the BW Education Future of Management Education Conclave 2019, leaders from different business schools come together and discuss the challenges and opportunities of industry-academia collaboration. Among the panellists were, Dr Pawan Kumar Singh, Director, Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon; Dr Bhimaraya Metri, Director, IIM Trichy; Dr Debashis Sanyal, Director, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon; Asish K Bhattacharyya, Director, IMT Ghaziabad; Dr Himadri Das, Director, International Management Institute (IMI), New Delhi; S C Sharma, Director, ICFAI Business School (IBS), Gurgaon. The session was moderated by Kunwar Shekhar Vijendra, Chancellor, Shobhit University.

The IIM Trichy Director believes that a lot of changes, in terms of technology, are happening in the corporate world which has impacted the business community and because of this business schools play a significant role in industry-academia collaboration. He said, “Many initiatives have been brought by the regulators in order to scale up the business schools of the country. However, due to the technological changes happening today, business schools have the opportunity to collaborate with industry and align with Industry 4.0.”

“The executive education and probational development face-to-face training, e-learning and blended learning will be the common phenomena in the coming near future. Apart from that, certificate programs to build the special skills for the corporate professional is going to be an important collaboration with the educational institutions,” he added.

Dr. Pawan Kumar Singh pointed out that the Industry and academia interface is natural and there is nothing new to it. He said, “Academicians need to take more responsibilities on treating our findings based on data as jumping board and then dive into the pool of subjective analysis based on objective data. And, generally, this point is missed that our data is an opportunity.”

S C Sharma asserted that the industry and academia are two very different worlds and the relevance of academics depends on the industry, thus it is important for academics to collaborate with the industry.

Dr. Himadri Das expressed that we live in the era of un-learning and re-learning, the most important objective of a business school is to prepare a graduate who is industry-relevant but the challenge is ace of technological changes.

“The industry should not only come at the time of placement, but academia should open windows and doors so the interaction between industry and academia is intensive. We should go to industry, spend time and talk to counterparts in the industry to learn how to apply the new model,” said Asish K Bhattacharyya.

Dr. Debashis Sanyal suggested three areas of collaboration, he said, “The academia can work on three strong areas in collaboration with the industry i.e. finding the solution to needs of the industry, developing relevance to the industry and continuous training.”