From compulsory courses on entrepreneurship to commerce and design thinking, the digital revolution and the rise of the e-commerce sector has forced most leading business schools to evolve their MBA curricula.
Ranjan Banerjee, Dean, SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), said apart from the fact that there are more e-commerce jobs today, the digital ecosystem is a systemic part of business, including areas such as information management, finance and marketing. Keeping this in mind, SPJIMR recently launched a course in digital marketing, created in collaboration with industry representatives.
IIM-Indore did a major review of its curriculum in 2015 and introduced a new one for the 2015-17 batch.
“Separate workshop courses on entrepreneurial orientation, innovation and design thinking were introduced in the new curriculum.
“Digital marketing and e-commerce-related topics are part of many of the core courses,” said Prof Rishikesha T Krishnan, Director, IIM-Indore.
IIM-Kozhikode is also offering elective courses on entrepreneurship and new ventures in the second year. Apart from that a 20-hour ‘Entrepreneurship Workshop’ is compulsory for all students.
Prof Sourav Mukherji, Dean of Academic Programmes, IIM-Bangalore, said the current post-graduate programme (PGP) at the institute has greater emphasis than ever before on entrepreneurial thinking.
Job creators “As more young Indians now seek to become job creators, and with Bangalore being the national capital for start-ups, we have made entrepreneurship education a part of our PGP. We have a world-class entrepreneurial development centre, the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning, which nurtures budding entrepreneurs and student-run ventures,” Mukherji said.
B-schools have also increasingly been focussing on providing a global exposure to their students. In 2014, IIM-B launched new international field courses and dramatically raised the number of PGP students who travelled abroad for study, from 34 per cent of the batch to 64 per cent. In 2015-16, this number touched over 90 per cent.
“Given that a global perspective is imperative in today’s interconnected world, we place a great deal of importance on increasing emphasis on globalisation of our programmes, our research and our impact. Such exposure prepares our students for leadership in the world economy,” added IIM-B’s Mukherji.
Similarly, Banerjee said since last year, SPJIMR has also been sending all its MBA students to the US for a one-month compulsory programme.