SPJIMR’s annual Business Academia Conclave this year brought together four leading CEOs, over 50 CXOs, faculty members, students and staff for an exchange of ideas around the theme of innovation.
At the event, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said that educational institutes must encourage innovation.
Dr. Ranjan Banerjee, Dean, said: "We have identified two words that we want to own: 'innovation' and 'social sensitivity'. The catalyst will be events like SBAC. SBAC will let the world take notice, it will showcase what we are doing and from SBAC will begin a series of conversations, which will be followed by co-creation to take us to a far larger audience."
Citing examples from a range of businesses and dipping into sport, Dr. Govindarajan, a leading authority on strategy and innovation, laid out his simple but powerful “three box solution” to innovate and build for the future.
‘The Three Box Solution’ is the title of his best-selling book: Box one builds on the current business models, box two is about selectively forgetting older models and box three is about investing for the future.
Dr. Govindarajan and SPJIMR faculty members with students and staff then moved to the Grand Hyatt for SBAC 2017 – which saw on stage R Gopalakrishnan, thought leader, author and SPJIMR’s Executive-in- Residence in conversation with N Chandrasekaran, CEO of Tata Consultancy Services; Sanjiv Mehta, CEO of Hindustan Unilever Limited; D.Shivakumar, CEO of PepsiCo India and ‘VG’.
The panel discussion was included N Chandrasekaran, CEO of Tata Consultancy Services; Sanjiv Mehta, CEO of Hindustan Unilever Limited; D.Shivakumar, CEO of PepsiCo India, Dr. Govindarajan and SPJIMR faculty members. The have exchanged experiences and shared ideas on innovation in the Indian context, an interaction that SPJIMR said marked the beginning of a longer-term dialogue and cooperation between business and academia. ‘VG’ commented often from a business and academic perspective, and R Gopalakrishnan as the moderator gently steered the panel to discuss how India could possibly become the innovation capital of the world.
The panel was preceded by a keynote by VG about innovation, in which he covered his time as the Chief Innovation Officer of GE, and how Indian businesses like Narayana Health (formerly known as Narayana Hrudayalaya) were taking innovation to developed markets. He spoke of adopting “next practices” rather than studying “best practices”.
SPJIMR Dean Dr. Ranjan Banerjee and faculty member Dr. Snehal Shah, Chairperson of SPJIMR’s Fellow Programme in Management presented a white paper that discussed innovation in Indian companies. The paper was based on a survey of Indian corporations led by SPJIMR’s faculty member Thomas Puliyel, who is the former President of IMRB International. The paper offered a strategic framework for “co-opetition”, a balance between cooperation and competition in leading innovation in businesses.
SPJIMR will circulate a copy of the paper shortly as part of its larger efforts to continue and build on the conversations at SBAC, the annual conclave that opens up a platform for an exchange of ideas and experiences between academia and industry. The opportunity for the two to interact and learn from each other is at the core of SBAC, which stands for SPJIMR Business Academia Conclave. SBAC 2017 was the eighth such conclave organised by SPJIMR, and for the first time came in a new format that attracted leadings CEOs, CXOs and academics.
SBAC 2017 this time also incorporated a section on learning about innovation from areas beyond business, notably from sports. Joy Bhattacharjya, Project Director, LOC of the U-17 FIFA World Cup, who was previously a part of the IPL starting from 2008, and served as team director of the Kolkata Knight Riders franchise, spoke about innovation in sport. Prakash Iyer, noted author, speaker and former MD of Kimberly-Clark Lever, then summed up with more ideas on innovation, ending with the “PhD” route to innovation, where he said the acronym stands for being “Passionate, Hungry and Disciplined”.
