ISB has a big rival in its backyard — Harvard

HYDERABAD/AHMEDABAD: The Indian School of Business (ISB), has some new competition right in its backyard. The Harvard Business School (HBS), will kick off its first executive education programme in India early next year.

The first-of-its-kind five-day programme on Building a Global Enterprise in India will cost Rs 1.8 lakh per participant.

Not surprising considering they will be taught by blue-breed management gurus senior HBS faculty including Harvard dons Thomas J DeLong, Krishna G Palepu and Amy C Edmondson.

“The program is based on 10 years of extensive, on-the-ground HBS research in India and uses cases tailored to the specific needs of companies operating in the country,” professor David Yoffie, senior associate dean and chair of Harvard Business School Executive Education programs, said in a statement.

The programme marries on-the-ground, research-based knowledge of India with the global perspective of one of the world’s leading business schools-a combination unavailable in any other executive education program.

This is perhaps the first time that HBS is kicking off academic programmes in the country after nurturing IIM Ahmedabad way back in 1961-67.

The reputed B-school set up in Mumbai its India research centre in 2005 after it began developing India focused cases about a decade earlier.

The new programme, slated to be held in February 2008 at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre, a stone’s throw from the ISB campus, will replicate the world-renowned HBS learning experience. It will provide participants the opportunity to meet and discuss business issues with a diverse and dynamic group of C-suite peers from India and around the world.

That Hyderabad was chosen as the venue for the HBS’ first executive programme in India is significant.

Executive education programmes are a significant revenue earner for the ISB, which runs the Centre for Executive Education, which organises short-term programmes ranging from a few days to a few weeks.B

ISB leverages its academic alliances with The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the London Business School, which has contributed extensively in developing the executive programmes for it.

But then B-school executive education is nothing new in India. The concept was pioneered by IIM Ahmedabad with its one-year post graduate programme for executives costing Rs14 lakhs.

Participants at the IMMs for this programme are selected on the basis of their GMAT scores the same as ISB’s one-year programme which, too, is for experienced executives.

“Executive education programs are certainly the order of the day but one requires much more in-depth perspective than a four-day workshop,” one of the participants of IIM-As PGPX said.