Richard Ivey Business School has a goal to develop 500 new India-based cases by 2014. Ivey is also teaching Indian faculty to write and teach with cases. At this juncture, we speak to Prof Ariff Kachra on the importance of case studies for management students.
What courses are offered?
We offer seven programmes — full-time undergraduate honours business administration (HBA), full-time graduate degree programmes (MBA, MSc and PhD), executive MBA (EMBA) programme in two locations, Toronto and Hong Kong, accelerated MBA (AMBA) programme available to recent HBA graduates only, PhD in business administration, pre-business courses and executive development.
What brings you to India?
We are meeting a number of corporates, who will be buying executive education from us. We have so far designed 35 different programmes. I just conducted a case writing workshop at ISB, Hyderabad. Ivey Publishing has now developed more than 200 India-focused cases. The top five India-based ones are Infosys: The Challenge of Global Branding, Eli Lily in India: Rethinking the Joint Venture Strategy, Dabbawallahs of Mumbai, Swatch and Global Watch Industry, and Louis Vuitton in India.
How will these case studies help our students?
Most of the best business schools in India have been teaching students American or European-based case studies. This is of no use to the students here. They need to learn and understand cases they can relate to and use as reference. This is where writing Indian case-studies comes into picture, and that is why we have collaborated with three Indian b-schools — Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and Indian Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, to train faculty to write Indian case studies.
For students in India, the classroom experience was often quite frustrating. Eighty per cent of the cases studied were based on companies and situations these students would never see. In North America, our students would absolutely revolt if 80 per cent of the cases were about companies they didn’t know. Executives in India are very impressed by the calibre and diversity of our faculty. They have a global perspective and are educated at top institutions around the world. The teaching quality at Ivey is phenomenal and the case method is unique. These are characteristics that differentiate Ivey in India.
For instance, I recently completed writing a case on Nokia India’s Live Tools initiative in direct collaboration with the CEO. This is how most of our cases are written. Ivey’s Indian strategy is having an impact closer to home as well, generating a tremendous amount of excitement among alumni. It absolutely redefines us as a global business school.
How does one measure the return of executive education?
Executive education programmes focus on attracting people who want to focus on strategy building and development of leadership skills. If you get this from your programme then it can be considered as a return of investment. We do not provide a time-bound course but design and evolve the programme according to the requirement of the student. We do not develop off-the-shelf programmes. For instance, the programmes could also be scheduled for 18 days over two years where four days are spent in class, one day in Hong Kong to meet people in the same industry and another two in Canada. So the programmes are custom-made for those interested in augmenting their professional goals, both monetary as well as rank-wise.
Your opinion on Canada as an education destination.
The three-year open work permit that international students get along with the Canadian experience makes Canada a very attractive destination
