Recipe for Success and Recognition

It has been a very eventful week so far. I spent the weekend with my college friend enjoying the royal treatment he serves me every time i visit his place. We spend hours on end chatting on any and every topic under the sun...Back home in Monterey, Monday syndrome usually strikes me once i wake up on Monday morning. But this week something was different. I woke up and checked my mails and I saw the unbelievable news. ISB - which i am going to join in 2 months time has been ranked 20th in the latest Financial Times rankings for global B Schools.

I have never been a great fan of business school rankings and I chose ISB purely because i believed in its quality - students,faculty and the brand reputation in the Industry. But i guess this ranking beats everything. Even a non-believer like me understands the magnitude of this achievement. Just to put it in context, the B school rankings have always been the stamping ground for US B schools and a few elite ones of Western Europe.No B School from India has managed to be in Top 100 of the rankings though i believe that IIMA should definitely have found a place in them just by virtue of the quality of students and unbelievable brand value in India and abroad. True it does not have international diversity, true it does not have professors from US visiting them but the quality of education it has been imparting definitely deserves recognition. But this post is not about IIM it is about ISB, the school that dared to dream and achieve it.

I quick look at the history of ISB, its board members, its roots in industry (both US and India) is enough to understand the rich contacts that it brings on board. ISB has been setup with an improbable aim of being one of the best B schools in the world and in India. This was not an utopian dream but had a lot of rationality as well. In other words the founders had dared to dream and at the same time been active in getting the pieces in place to achieve it. When President Bush came on an official visit to India, he found time to fly down to Hyderabad to visit ISB. I guess that speaks volumes about the contacts the institution has.

So what happens when an aspiring institution (students, faculty and support staff) works tirelessly to materialize a dream to excel and is backed by established global contacts - the result is out there for everyone to see. The whole world has perhaps seen many such examples but this is unique in more ways than one - The school is in India and the founding members are not westerners but powerful and influential Indians. Finally we have made a hole in the elite class of B schools where the snobbish Harvards and Whartons London Business schools reside. This ranking should act as a shot in the arm for ISB and fuel the aspirations even further. As the dean said, this is the start of a positive feedback loop of more visibility,international recognition, more funds, more recruiters, better faculty, better students which would lead to better visibility. Hope i can contribute to the dream in one way or the other. For now I am just happy - ALL BEST THINGS IN THE WORLD DOESNT NECESSARILY HAVE TO BE OUTSIDE INDIA

1 comments:

  Anonymous

1:35 AM

Great work.