Campus Diary

When Tom Peters issued his clarion call to "re-imagine" everything, starting with institutions, he didn't have the IITs in mind. But the National Knowledge Commission sure does, going by an IIT-Delhi seminar on getting ready for tomorrow's Knowledge Economy.

"Our success depends on our education, er, imagination," declared Wipro's Azim Premji, even as Tata Sons' R. Gopalakrishnan expressed concern for India's "spirit of rational enquiry" and Techspan's Arjun Malhotra bemoaned how only "the walking wounded make it to college" after the classroom battle against creativity.

But change is at hand, thundered the Commission's Sam Pitroda. "Indian parents will eat less and sleep less to give their children better education!"

NMIMS MUMBAI
To get across

Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Vile Parle, is all set to kick off its Silver Jubilee celebrations tomorrow with a four-nation summit on the need for networking and the "network effects" of exponential value brought on by the active exchange of ideas.

Special invitee participants would include the vice-chancellors of Pakistan's Lahore University and Bangladesh's North South University, and also the director of Sri Lanka's Post Graduate Institute of Management.

Of course, the networking needs to happen on a much much bigger scale (in multitudes and multitudes), as with India's broader education thrust, of which Sam Pitroda says, "If we don't do it now, we'll be sorry 20 years from now." Ditto for this. Time ticks away.

PRINCETON ACADEMY MUMBAI
Where did that come from?

It's not in New Jersey, but Shalimar Park, Andheri, Mumbai. But if the name doesn't strike curiosity, the topic of a conference this academy is organising in October ought to: risk management. Ironically, the focus will be on derivatives, with sessions on the engineering of "volatility swaps", "convexity positions" and the like.

Meanwhile, notice how well the originally famous B-schools have been marketing themselves globally? Here's an ad for Wharton: "...market busting is an action taken by your firm that changes the game to deliver markedly superior performance", quoting a professor.

Here's another, for Trium, a combo-MBA from NYU Stern, LSE and HEC Paris: "This is not an orange" it says above an orange with a portion magnified to reveal "issues" that others do not see ("price volatility", "genetic modification", "human rights" ...).

MDI GURGAON
An imperium and an apology

This Friday, Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon, will begin hosting Imperium, described as a "three-day extravaganza" to inculcate a "holistic perspective of life". This means formal and informal workshops, paper presentations and stage performances that presumably say something of relevance.

Clarification: In "Modern Arrows", Campus Diary, 7 September, 2005, we featured a photo of Air Marshall Bandopadhyay accepting a civilian award from Fair & Lovely Foundation, an initiative of Hindustan Lever Ltd.

This is to clarify that this event had no relation to MDI, Gurgaon, or its business education course for ex-armed forces' personnel, the subject of the aforementioned write-up last month.