Executives from ITC Limited, technology major IBM, and National Stock Exchange on Wednesday highlighted how industry-institute linkages are making a difference in the way they work and in building successful relationships with academia for mutual benefit.
S. Sivakumar, Group Head, Agri & IT Business, ITC Limited, said, “The e-Choupal project is a classic case of a collaborative effort between ITC, academia and other businesses over the past 15 years. This project would not have been what it is now but for the exchange of ideas and information and sharing of learning.”
The project such as e-Choupal and various other initiatives of ITC, be it in the agribusiness or in the IT sector, have grown through an inter-disciplinary engagement. Unless B-Schools adapt to such interdisciplinary approach, there would not be any real time learning from the industry perspective.
Speaking on Making Industry-Institute Partnership Work: Lessons from successful collaborations at the Two-day Indian management Conclave 2015 now underway at ISB, Rajan Saxena, Vice Chancellor, NMIMS University, Mumbai, said, “There is a great opportunity for collaborating and leaning through networking and thereby improve and strengthen the management education in the country and make it industry relevant.”
Kunal Dureja, Country Manager, Career Education, IBM India, said they have created about 23 business analytics labs in the country along with their partners to engage students and preparing them for the next generation jobs.
“We at IBM have identified Cloud, Big Data Analytics, Mobile, Social and Security as key thrust areas going forward. By adapting to a hybrid online and offline mode, students in the engineering colleges and B-Schools learn hands on how the market forces are behaving and shaping up the business,” he said.
Referring to IBM’s association with Google, Twitter and Facebook, he said social media marketing is one big growth opportunity. IBM analyse four million tweets every day, to spot a trend which is useful for marketers. It is such areas where there could be collaboration between industry and academia, he said.
Rehana D’Souza of NSE explained how within 20 years it has become a big exchange engaging various stakeholders by educating and providing opportunities to be part of the exchange or other businesses through the learning it shares.