After serving as the director of IIM-A for five years and later working with the Adani Group, Bakul Dholakia is now the director general of the International Management Institute (IMI), Delhi. In a chat with Prachi Rege he speaks about his new role and the features of an ideal business school.
What made you accept your current role at the International Management Institute (IMI)?
After working and completing projects with both IIM-A and the Adani Group's education institutes, I was looking forward to the next big challenge. That's when the opportunity to lead IMI came about. The institute has faculty members from different parts of India with strong industry exposure and a focus on academic excellence. Several factors including a healthy student teacher ratio and an Association of MBAs (AMBA) accreditation suggested to me that IMI is ready for take-off into the league of India's elite B-schools.Thus I took up the new role.
What are your plans for the students and the institute?
This institute was set up 30 years ago. In these years, it has established itself as a premier institute, but barring one, has never been ranked in the top 10. In the next three years, I would like IMI to become best private B-school in India. The institute is strong on intellectual capital, now we will work on enhancing its national, Asian and global visibility. We will appeal to key stakeholders like recruiters, applicants and peers among Asian B-schools.
Also, though we have a portfolio of international partnerships, these are few and far in between. Diversifying the portfolio of international partnerships and making headway into North America and Asia Pacific region is also my priority. Also because of its location in Delhi, it is in an ideal position to do public management and policy related work. Currently, the institute does not have a strong focus on policy domain and I would like to change that.
How would you apply your previous experience of heading a B-School in the functioning of IMI?
There has to be continuous product innovation. The rate at which an institute introduces new courses and reorients or upgrades new courses is important. For instance in IIM- A, if you look at the second-year electives, one third of the courses have been developed in the last three years. Such performance parameters need to be brought to the table for the advancement of the institute and the faculty must be fully involved in the process.
What are the positive and negative things about IMI that you observed before taking over?
The good thing at IMI is that the input is of significant standard; but the output can be of a higher level in terms of knowledge, skills and attitudes. The complete set of activities that the student goes through in two years must be assessed in terms of the learning and gaining of hands-on capabilities to face any situation in the corporate world. The focus must be on the future, resulting in an even better equation of input-throughput (the rate of production or the rate at which something can be processed.)-output. Based on my initial observations, systems and processes related to the overall governance structure at the institute need to be strengthened significantly.
What according to you are the features of an ideal business school today?
A business school’s activities can be understood on an input-throughput-output model. An ideal B- school would have the environment, competence and commitment to deliver value addition on this model while keeping in view the needs of tomorrow. The quality of students taking admission (input) is one aspect and the quality of output at the end of two years is another. The throughput has to cater to activities like: up-to-date industry linked course content and delivery, contextually relevant industry-oriented projects, participation in competitions across the country, engaging with people from different walks of life and widening the horizon of knowledge. Needless to say, that the systems and processes have to be fair and transparent.
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