Campus Diary

MDI GURGAON
Tuning in to learn

The arches and greens of the sprawling Management Development Institute (MDI) campus in Gurgaon stood witness to quite a weekend, with the "fest" crowds testing themselves on new ways of listening and learning.

The singer KK got earlobes turning forth with Tadap Tadap while Shubha Mudgal urged everyone on with Seekho Naa. In the next burst of activity, starting mid-November, the campus will see an ad fest called Advent, followed by an international online B-school festival called E-Blast.

Professor Sanyal, MDI's dean, was visibly excited by all the voluntary enthusiasm displayed so far. "It's all the students' doing," he beamed, "It's all theirs." Well said, sir.

T A PAI MANIPAL
Wider understanding

Manipal's TA Pai Management Institute (TAPMI) recently organised a workshop on "The WTO Regime: Understanding The Agreement" at its Center for Executive Education in Bangalore. It was held in collaboration with Association for Environment and Development Research (AEDR), an NGO based in New Delhi. The implications of the "WTO regime" were discussed with specific reference to its impact on local businesses. Managers, entrepreneurs and academics knocked heads together on the threats and opportunities of global trade. While some fears were expressed, the mood was largely one of buoyant confidence in domestic competitiveness.

ISB HYDERABAD
Barsati to B-school

In another move that lives up to its promise of delivering business education that inspires startups as much as corporate careers, Hyderabad's Indian School of Business (ISB) has got HCL founder Shiv Nadar to join its executive board.

Rajat Gupta, ISB chairman and former McKinsey chief, has described Nadar as "a global visionary" who saw India's IT potential way ahead of time. M Rammohan Rao, ISB's dean, hailed his "entrepreneurial spirit".

And Nadar called the promotion of quality education "an imperative for our Nation". Global exposure is the other big need, though this is partly taken care of by ISB's partnerships with Kellogg, Wharton and LSE.

CLI NEW DELHI
Tuck shop talk

You may need to blog the date in your Blackberry. Delhi's Corporate Leadership Institute (CLI), an initiative of Emory's Jagdish Sheth and Brandprophet's Ajay Gupta designed to expose Indian business to global strategic practices, has invited Professor Vijay Govindarajan of Dartmouth's Tuck School to conduct a workshop on 19 January 2006 in Delhi and 23 January 2006 in Mumbai on "Innovative strategies for creating the future". Govindarajan stirred senior level talk recently through the publication of "Building Breakthrough Businesses within Established Organisations" in Harvard Business Review. Now, admit it or not, growing big or growing small, this is a challenge worth many a company's time.