MBA is a practical course. The business managers are hired by organizations to solve problems.  Pointing problem is easier, but what after you find a problem? You are expected to find solution to the problem. You are expected to find a course of action. There’s no right answer, but you must deal with the complexities of the choice you make. At Havard Business School the classrooms are filled with people from diverse industries, functions, countries, and backgrounds. The main pedagogy is solving case studies. Harvard prepares you for the business world with case study analysis almost every day.

The case method prepares you to become a leader. It makes you ready to face leadership positions in which you will face time-sensitive decisions with limited information. Reflecting on each class discussion will prepare you to face these situations in your future roles.

Harvard focuses on the drivers of enterprises in China and India by building cases on over a decade of work with companies, investors, and non-profit organizations. This Business School produces some 400 new teaching material each year. One of the advantages of the case method, as opposed to a textbook is that the material can be kept constantly up to date, reflecting what’s going on and what’s changing in the world of business. This is particularly important in a rapidly growing economy like India’s. The cases are based on real companies, real people, real developments, and actual situations.

Harvard Business School (HBS) is expanding its presence in India through adoption of more India-based case studies by offerings new cases in Executive Education. The base of Indian case studies has risen to some more than 500 during past few years. There are a lot newer India-focussed cases coming up in the next few years. Professors and students are still concentrating on building this up, gathering and creating more teaching material. It will take some time as it is a long process, and a lot of work goes into it.

Why India?  Indian stock market is poised for healthy growth in the medium to long term because of a strong economic growth, expectations of political stability after the General Elections 2024 and the stronger influx of domestic retail investors. Besides this, numerous industrial zones, workforce and labour availability, lower labour costs, and a relatively open environment for foreign direct investments. India’s large labour and consumer base, low operating costs, and linkages to important international markets makes Indian markets attractive.

India remains one of the world’s fastest growing major economies although it faces challenges common to many other countries such as inflationary pressures, commodity price volatility, and supply chain interruptions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. The United States-India relationship remains resilient, with total trade in goods and services topping $191 billion in 2022, almost double the amount recorded in 2014. India’s economy grew at 7.2 percent over the April 1, 2022-March 31, 2023.

India, with its young population and rising disposable income has become favourite destination for consumer brands. When Tim Cook arrived in India last year to open Apple’s first physical store in the country, he was welcomed like a hero. Cook’s visit exemplified the rising tide of interest that corporations and governments are showing in doing business with India. Just days after his landmark trip, ‘Pret A Manger’, a trendy British sandwich chain, set up its first outlet in the commercial capital of Mumbai, as it bet on the country’s growing middle class.

India is the United States’ ninth-largest trading partner, with U.S. goods and services worth $73.1 billion sold to India in 2022. The United States maintained its position as India’s largest trading partner, with $118.8 billion of imported goods and services. The United States was expected to continue its trade deficit with India in 2023. India partnered with the United States and eleven other countries to launch the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity in May 2022, a high-standard agreement that aims to produce benefits that fuel economic activity and investment, promote sustainable and inclusive economic growth, and benefit workers and consumers.

So, at Harvard, professors choose Indian cases to fill a specific need in their course syllabus. They then contact a particular organisation, which agrees to host them and be as transparent as possible about the issue or problem, success, or failure under consideration. The overwhelming majority of HBS cases are field-based, not library-based, which means that the professor and his/her research associate will travel to the company and study it on-sight. This includes a series of interviews and revisits. The findings, conclusions and observations need to be done in a selected timeline because Indian markets are changing swiftly.  

The Indian Research Centre (IRC) was established in 2006, based in Mumbai, around 20 cases related to India have been published each year. Prior to that, there were fewer cases being written in India. This is reflective of a broader trend in business education around the world. Before the year 2000, business schools and Executive Education curricula did not have significant global content. Today, given the global macroeconomic scenario and the importance of understanding how to do business in emerging economies, there is greater need to create global content.

The India Research Centre produces a portfolio of cases that focus on a variety of topics, including business, government, regulation, law & order, social, ecological, etc. Cases also go beyond traditional business topics. A famous case for example by Harvard Professor Rohit Deshpande, dealt with leadership and teamwork among employees of Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai during the terrorist attack in the year 2008.  Another example is a case by Professor Stefan Thomke on the Dabbawala meal-delivery system in Mumbai. The service is offered in the last 130 years.

Havard cases are also taught in business schools around the world, as well as in other Executive Education programmes and company training programmes around the world. Indeed, India is most unique and heterogeneous market in world.

Another reason for acquiring an MBA degree is – many companies look for executives and managers with an MBA degree because MBA degrees teach leadership and analytical skills. The MBA students work with groups for doing projects, assignments, and presentations. For completing challenging assignments they need to collect lot of primary and secondary data and research methodology. They learn presentation skills, managing abilities and learn to handle almost any business problems through case studies analysis.

An MBA degree also teaches extremely important management skills such as finance skill, collaboration skill, people management etc. Not only will you learn how to manage your own time effectively, but you will also learn how to handle projects in time and how to effectively use money and group of employees in project management. Another management skill that is extremely important in today’s business world is risk management and an MBA degree will teach you how to analyze risks and make skilled and cost-effective decisions.

MBA degree will teach you to effectively negotiate with anyone.  An executive or manger will be expected to communicate well with clients, investors, colleagues, employees, general public and government agencies. As a student of MBA you will attend many seminars, workshops which will teach you to collaborate effectively with your employees, co-workers, customers and clients; it will also teach you how to delegate work responsibilities and how to lead your workforce with confidence. You will also learn the art of public speaking and therefore will be more comfortable in the board room or speaking at a seminar. It will teach you the art of speaking crisply and relevantly.

While choosing a University program look out for subjects like project management, negotiation skills, strategic leadership, managing innovations, design thinking workshops, researching skills, behavioral finance, decision science and business ethics. See if these subjects are included. Also, see if subjects like real financial models and business history are included in the curriculum. These subjects sharpen your analytical skills.

Look for MBA programs where the faculty has hands-on experience in the real tough world. Avoid faculty that overly rely on Xerox-based case teaching and power point presentations. Looking at 50-75 slides in a 3 hour lecture without any sensitization to real time issues and relevance will thoroughly bore you. Instead, look for faculty that knows about Maria Montessori (she was an Italian physician and educator best known for the philosophy of education, and her writing on scientific pedagogy). Go for the course which will prepare you for rough and tough business world. Embrace seriousness for some time; after all, it is the power of ideas, not a spreadsheet with statistical analysis which can improve business. And finally, listen to your intuition, your inner voice. Some good B Schools these days have started design thinking workshops. Opt for such schools. It will change your life forever.

Back in 1999, it was already essential to work in groups. This was arguably a crucial skill that Columbia business school taught, particularly compared with those schools that encourage students to compete against each other by allocating much of their grade to their participation in class. All case study analysis would be done in groups of five, who would sit huddled around laptops at the big tables in the library. The students in the group would actually find solutions to the real time issues in the cases. Yes, working in groups teaches you to respect other’s view points and team spirit.

Go for challenges, go for intensified studies. Work with intelligent crowd which will help you in self-awareness exercise. Work with groups which will evaluate you and you will evaluate others in terms of the personal skills needed to find and keep a job, this is probably more useful than many other over fashioned curriculum. Go for internship in your chosen areas.  For example, if you want an internship in real estate, take a couple of classes on the subject in your first year and demonstrate your commitment to recruiters. In short, choose a school which stimulates your thinking, which helps you to realize your dreams and helps you to augment your credentials. And, let me tell you, it’s not so simple to find such a school.

Operations Management is one of the most important subjects. A full-term class on the subject prepares you to run companies and making factories or supply chains work more efficiently. Don’t underestimate Micro and Macroeconomics. Nowadays, macro factors, and central bank policy, drive markets. Everyone in the world of finance needs an opinion on the Federal Reserve. Though you might find those subjects high and dry they are the most applicable and useful subjects. I feel, eventually, education cannot be treated democratically. Students must be told by their teachers what they need to know. That is part of the value of an MBA, or any other worthwhile qualification. The requirements are set by someone specialists who have researched and designed the syllabus.

But such ideas are increasingly mismatched with the changing nature of business education. The job of setting a curriculum is becoming difficult than ever before. The business environment is changing at a faster pace, it requires new skill sets. The competitive landscape for business education is changing; therefore friends give yourself time to choose the right business school and the right program. MBA is still one of the most exciting programs.

Ironically, MBA/MMS course which once reined the educational streams seems to have lost its zest; almost 50% seats remaining vacant. The case is worse in Nagpur University where 59% management seats remained vacant in 60 colleges. Though the number of MBA seats is increasing every year, the colleges are facing crunch of students, especially the newer ones. Karnataka has 236 colleges having an intake of 14,148 for MBA degree. Out of these, 8,007 seats were allotted through the Post-Graduate Common Entrance Test conducted by the Karnataka Examination Authority. And of them only 7,600 students have reported to colleges.

Students used to look up to the MBA course because of the employability it offered. But today corporate world prefers Economics graduates; they prefer BMS (Bachelor’s of Business Management) to the MBAs. “These students (BBAs, BMS, BFAs, and BMMs) carry less head weight and are down to earth. They are humble and supple therefore they are easy to shape, also, they study all subjects taught in the MBA degree at the degree level itself” say some of the HR Heads from prominent companies. In most Universities the syllabus the MBA degree overlaps with the degree course such as BBA, BMS, BAF, BMM etc.

Successful entrepreneurs are rare among MBAs  

In an article published few years back in ‘The Economist’ by a Harvard MBA, Philip Delves Broughton, the author was very forthright while suggesting that MBAs have lost value, he says successful entrepreneurs are rare among MBAs. They come from general public. Entrepreneurs know that business is fundamentally about two things innovation and selling. Most MBA programs don’t teach both of these. If MBA is about networking, it happens when you are successful and you don’t need to get into an over cramped networking of MBAs struggling to clinch on to their jobs.

In today’s business world “innovation” is the hottest thing. Google searches for the term have grown by more than 500% in the past few years. The Wall Street Journal has published that innovation is no longer obsession of entrepreneurs only; it matters even to the general public. Innovation is the key word in everybody’s life because it is the key to living life brilliantly.

Lesser interest for MBAs could be due to increased demand for market oriented postgraduate diploma courses. Some experts blame the lukewarm industry response during campus placements. Students are reluctant to invest up to Rs 5 lakh for an MBA degree after graduation. If they do, they seek instant gratification in way of lucrative placements on campus. Many are taking up jobs and opting for part-time MBA courses instead of taking up full-time MBA programme.

With so many students doing an MBA it has almost become like a generic graduation degree, the other fact is too many institutions are offering the course. Startups are reluctant to hire MBA graduates because they don’t learn the basic techniques used in a business and big employers say they lack the skills required to effectively manage today’s diverse, globally-dispersed, super-connected and resource-constrained organizations. They lack things like strategic thinking, scientific analysis, formal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, ethical reasoning and most importantly leadership and interpersonal communications.

MBA courses concentrated only on theory

An old criticism of MBA degree courses was that they only concentrated on theory, thus leaving graduates wholly unprepared for the big bad business world. The focus of MBA degree courses has changed to some extent with focus on case studies. Only a senior faculty with good industry experience can solve a case study with points like what is the issue, the goal of the analysis, what is the context of the problem, what key facts should be considered, what alternatives are available to the decision-maker and last but not the least recommendation from the learner to the case.  Experienced and seasoned faculties are in dearth. Are such faculty available in the best business schools or in top MBA programs.

A study by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmadabad (IIM-A) has publicized that business school research in India is lacking. The research conducted by Professor Arindam Banerjee of IIM- Ahmedabad, aimed to look at “some historic reasons” for poor productivity in research in India, including unproductive competition among institutions due to a false sense of self sufficiency, lack of adequate research infrastructure at the institution level and, the long standing government policy in India that has considered teaching to be the core activity in the Indian university system.

In fact, research adds on competency to the faculty’s teaching skill. We need macro level policies regarding fund allocation and revising mandates to do some meaningful research says the report. The MBA course requires learning and adapting changes as a core of its syllabi; owning to knowledge, honing skills and capacity of the learner.

Contemplating and integrating with student’s experience in the course work is very important. Does that happen? Does an eMBA program take this in account.

The world has changed a lot over the last 15 years – it is very much an ‘unknowable world’. For instance, the numbers of Fortune 100 companies from 10 years ago are no longer in existence today. It is a swiftly, rapidly shifting world and it is hard to keep up with all the new features of change. The technology, the ethnicity, the business trends, climate changes, geographical tapering, world politics, everything is changing so swiftly. Technology is changing so fast that we see gadgets and updates that seem to come out on a monthly basis. Technological advances have hastened business practices – bringing in changes in business strategies.

Flexibility in MBA program

We have to ready ourselves to apply flexibility to our MBA programs. Take feedback from industry, make them a party while changing syllabus for MBA degree programs. Take feedback from the senior academicians; involve them in making effective curriculum. Take feedback from alumni and the current students by increasing choices of courses and flexibility. Allow students to choose their elective in the first year itself. Take leads from the market. I think we need to customize the curriculum as per demands from the employers. We need to bring concepts to the student’s life. Use effective pedagogies such as live projects, simulations, prototyping, role-playing scenarios, global captivation, and case studies.

In conclusion, let’s bring back the lost sheen of the MBA course and prepare the business leaders of tomorrow through best MBA programs.