Report on National Conference held by ISME on “Developing Entrepreneurial Managers-Curricula to Careers” on 15th December 2012 at the Auditorium, ISME, Bangalore

ISME conducts a National Conference on a current issue every year as a planned academic venture to provoke new thinking on management issues which can add to the existing body of knowledge. The invitees are not only from the Academic field but also senior executives from Industry. The deliberations are therefore, rich and varied because of this good blend which results in different perspectives being shared. This also provides the students an opportunity to listen to the views of such learned and accomplished speakers and they can only be the better for the experience.

Each speaker is required to submit an Abstract for the review of the Conference Committee. Once it is vetted and accepted, the contributor is invited to submit the full paper within a word limit of 1500. There were two break-out sessions, each chaired by an eminent Academic who also was the judge for that session. The two best paper presenters were awarded prizes. The judgment was based on the scores of the three independent judges, who were impartial assessors from outside.

It is also the tradition to invite a keynote speaker as the Chief Guest to deliver his address. In keeping with the academic precedent at ISME, the key note speaker in this conference was Dr.Debashish Sengupta whose profile is given below:

Area Chair and Professor-Organizational Strategy and Leadership,

Alliance School of Business, Alliance University

Dr.Debashish Sengupta is the Area Chair & Professor of Organizational Leadership and Strategy at Alliance School of Business, Alliance University. His area of specialization is Employee Engagement, Strategic Human Resource Management and Training & Development. He is the co-author of a Crossword Best seller book ‘Employee Engagement’. He has also written an excellent and contemporary text book on Human Resource Management published by Biztantra in 2012.

Dr.Debashish is an avid researcher and has 64 publications to his credit. Some of his research papers are listed on EBSCO database. He has won a national level research award in 2007 for his contribution to the field of management research. He writes a professional blog on Employee Engagement. He is also a book reviewer for the prestigious Emerald Book Publishing, London. Dr.Debashish occasionally writes columns in the Business Line, a Hindu publication and for the Outlook Business Magazine.

Dr.Debashish gave an interesting talk which as entertaining and informative as it was relevant. He presented a diagrammatic model of the impact of the external environment and the internal environment in an organization and the dynamics between these two factors and how they influence organizational culture, and which in turn influences entrepreneurial spirit amongst managers. He illustrated his talk with examples drawn from the US way of life of how parenting in the West is different from the parenting practiced in our nation and how this ultimately impacts the entrepreneurial attitude of society as a whole. His talk set the tone for the papers that were presented later and the discussions that followed. He punctuated his talk with  an interesting example of a serendipitous discovery –the invention of band aid.

At the outset, it should be made clear that the specific theme of this conference, as the title suggests, is not intrapreneurship, per se, as it occurs in the corporate organizations.  It is to explore the ways and means to sow the seeds of intrapreneurial behavior and attitude of students in the post graduate management programs during their academic tenure so that when they build up their professional careers in their specialized fields they may sprout as entrepreneurial managers at different levels to the growth and profitability of the corporate in which they are working.

There are certain premises for this hypothesis that academic programs have to take up this new specificfocus of developing pro-active entrepreneurial managers, as compared to the traditional focus of developing reactive managers in general. They are:

·            Evolving national and global business environment has become more competitive due to a number of factors of socio-economic, poltico-legal and technological changes.

·            Two major trends in these changes are Globalization and Digitalization leading to a Net-worked global business activity.

·            The imminent need of every corporate is to become innovative in its processes, products and services to gain a competitive edge.

·            It is being increasingly realized such continuous innovative process has to be generated not just at the corporate level but at the team and individual levels by building up an organizational culture to harness the hidden intrapreneurial talents of individual managers at different levels.

·            Hence there is a concerted search for recruiting the management candidates who have a potential and an urge for pro-active and effective contribution to the organizational growth rather than just efficient managers in the prescribed job specifics.

·            This points out that there are certain individual traits which distinguish the potential of intrapreneurs.

·            There is adequate material available on the topic of Intrapreneur or Intra- corporate Entrepreneur, ever since the term ‘Intraprenuer’ was coined by Gifford Pinchot (and Elizabeth Pinochet) in his book “Intrapreneuring” in 1978. (1) School for Intrapreneurs was set up in Sweden in 1985. He is a highly recognized consultant with his agency Pinochet & Associates.

This concept paper is based on the above mentioned available material on the topic, with relevant acknowledgment, to reposition it to the specific focus of the conference “Developing Entrepreneurial Managers (Intrapreneurs) through Management Education-Curricula to Careers”. The sub-topics covered are:

·         Definitions of Intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship

·         Differences between the Intrapreneur and entrepreneur

·         Interpreneurial process

·         Behavioral attitudes and specific skills of an intrapreneur.

·         Possible alternatives to introduce additional inputs to initiate and nurture the attitude and skills of a potential intrapreneur in the post graduate program- General and Functional specialization specific.

·         Identify appropriate Teaching methods in terms of providing knowledge base and skill formation.

·         Experience of ISME

·         Relevant issues for further deliberations in the Conference.

The Conference was conducted in two sessions-Session A and Session-B. The Abstracts of the papers that were presented are given below, session-wise.

Profile of Dr.Mohan Gopinath

Dr. Gopinath is a senior Professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership and Strategy at Alliance University’s School of Business. Dr.Gopinath has a very good blend of industry experience allied with academic accomplishments. He is a product of the famed St.Stephen’s college, Delhi University. He worked for over two decades with HSBC and has worked in the UK, Hong Kong and the Middle East. Dr.Gopinath was earlier the Dean of the St. Joseph’s College of Business Administration. He obtained his Ph.D degree  from Osmania University on Organizational Learning (in the banking industry).

Dr. Gopinath has presented and published papers in national and international conferences/ journals in his areas of specialization as well as on aspects of Indian dance and music. He has also written a novel ‘The Intruder – a Nocturnal Interlude’ which is privately published.

Mr.Rishiraj Dasgupta, Visiting Finance Faculty, ISME

Imparting ‘inter-preneurial’ skills through the curricula in a business school still remains an area of deliberation.  Research papers are suggesting lower correlations in the skills imparted in the college and the skill sets in demand in corporate in various studies done across US business schools and EU. In India, the situation is not so different. This paper dealt with the identifiable gap, the author’s personal experience in receiving as well as imparting such skills, and his personal entrepreneurial growth in his career, citing the analogy available in such models.

This paper  examined the aspects of ‘OHIRO’ (Openness-Honesty to the purpose-Innovation-Risk taking ability-Ownership) model of imparting entrepreneurial skill practically in the curricula. The author’s personal journey through this environment in IIM Calcutta campus is cited and it tried to correlate the skills that had been nurtured and imbibed through professional exposure, with the skills imparted.

Finally, this paper also explored the possible obstacles for developing such skills through the curricula, and how to surmount those obstacles to design and implement holistic curricula. Socio-economic reality in the arena of management education in our country affects skill-environment of this particular nature and widening expectation gap is throwing a big question mark on the system. This paper l suggests few approaches to improve the skill-supply chain so as not to burden only the business school campuses with the responsibility.

Ms.Indu Sharma, Mgmt Consultant & Ph.D Scholar, Alliance University

This paper explores the idea whether management education can really make entrepreneurs.  The study found its motivation from the sample of a management school which was closely examined and the result was only 5% of them became entrepreneur from a sample of 50 students 4% of the students by choice and 1% because of family business. Many business schools have introduced Entrepreneurship as a subject and students are getting good marks also as this is the subject which is very basic and interesting to study. Still we have very few entrepreneurs who became entrepreneur because of a subject or the college they went to study in.  The author has taken two type of samples, one those who have gone through management course and another who have not gone through management education. With this type of sample the author has explored that management education enhances the skill of an individual to pursue any role in life. The study explained why an individual is an entrepreneur and why some managers lack entrepreneurial skills.

This study also helped in finding the challenges faced by individual to be a successful manager, and how entrepreneurs are made and survived.

Key words: Entrepreneur, Skill, Education, Management school.

C.Boopathy, Assistant Professor, MVJ College of Engineering, Bangalore

Dr.Noor Firdoos Jahan, Professor  & HOD, MVJ College of Engineering, Bangalore

Today, a number of schools, colleges, science and technology institutions and management schools have included entrepreneurship inputs in their curricula. Expert agencies have been nominated to develop curricula on entrepreneurship, to share resources and to organize training programs. All of these efforts are based on the same underlying principle – nurturing entrepreneurship is vital to the economic development of a region.

This Paper presents the evolution of entrepreneurship education in India. It then discusses the current and emerging ideas, and challenges, in India vis-à-vis the role of educational programs.

Key words: Entrepreneurship, Education, India.

Nitin Garg, Director, International School of Management Excellence

The paper studies the need for an Intrapreneurial environment within companies and the enablers that are needed to create an environment where Intrapreneurs (Entrepreneurial Managers) can do well. A model for developing an Intrapreneurial environment in companies is presented. The model lists the points under 4S: Structure, System, Staffing and Shared Values. Each of the S requires Intrapreneurs to develop points listed under the 4S model. The paper then looks at Intrapreneurial Skills and attributes required and how these skills benefit companies. The skills and attributes are illustrated in a model that connects the skills and attributes to process and behaviors.

The role of Management Games within the management curriculum to develop Intrapreneurial Skills is then explained.  The paper concludes that Online Management Games are especially effective in developing the skil
ls required for an Entrepreneurial Manager.

5.        Polarity Management – An innovative teaching tool to develop entrepreneurial Managers by

 Ms.Preeja Sridhar, Assoc.Professor, ISME

Entrepreneurship is the buzz word for most of the youngsters in India. There are many entrepreneurs on the rise, who have been successful. The world is looking out for risk-takers, lateral thinkers and trend setters who can establish their standards and survive in the competition on the global front. Hence there is a daunting task for the management schools to create models for entrepreneurial education and focus on building skill sets for the Gen-Yers who are the upcoming workforce.

·         The aim of this paper is to identify the need of creating a course/curricula to nurture the budding entrepreneurs

·         The purpose is also to train the budding entrepreneurs on inculcating entrepreneurial  skillsets required to be successful

1.      Challenge unproductive and limiting mindsets

2.      Differentiate between problems to solve and polarities to manage

3.      Understand the importance of managing polarities in complex times

4.      Map polarities and predict their movement

5.      Create action plans to capitalize on the energy of conflicting values

6.      Tap into the power of polarities to thrive in a constantly changing environment

S. Shyam Prasad

Associate Professor-Marketing,ISME

In the ever “flattening” globe, for business to be successful, besides mundane resources, it is the human resource that makes the difference. It makes a great sense in training the future business managers, in whose hands the reins of business will be, into Intrapreneurial ones. Presently, most of the B – Schools churn out managers – managers with varied attitudes and with different levels of competencies but hardly any who are entrepreneurial managers  – managers with entrepreneurship attitude. This paper dwells on the possible roles the schools can play in shaping young managers, particularly marketing managers, who would perform their jobs like entrepreneurs. This paper focuses on the qualities of entrepreneurial marketing managers and how these attributes can be developed in them.

(In this article, for the sake of convenience only, the author has used masculine gender. It has been done with no bias against women.)

 “Organizational culture is a system of shared meaning and values held by members that makes it distinctly different from other organizations.” It has a deep influence on its employees and its clientele; ISME has a unique culture which promotes a spirit of dynamism, risk taking, innovation and intrapreneurship.  ISME culture which includes symbols, processes, language, curriculum, values has evolved over a period of time; different components of its culture have come into existence either through a conscious effort or unconsciously.  Whatever may be the origin, the organizational culture has a far reaching impact on all its stakeholders including the faculty, staff and the students.  This paper examines the ISME culture and discusses how it can be leveraged to promote an entrepreneurial ecosystem and nurture entrepreneurial managers.

The paper also discusses the challenges of infusing institutional culture to the students, and presents the various exercises, projects and assignments designed by ISME to transmit the values and culture enabling the creation of entrepreneurial managers.

Dr Amit Gupta is an Engineer-MBA with a Doctorate in Entrepreneurship and combines extensive corporate experience with academic leadership. Besides teaching & training in B-schools, he is involved in strategic management consultancy focused on start ups, and skill development mission in his role as a consultant to National Skill Development Corporation.

Dr. V.J.Byra Reddy is a Ph.D. in Business Administration and a post-graduate in Economics. His areas of Interest include Managerial Economics, International Business, Monetary Economics and Public policy. He has 14 years of teaching experience and 4 years of Industry experience. In his present profile as the Assistant Dean – Academics at Indus Business Academy (IBA), Bangalore, he manages the development of nearly 300 resident post graduate management students and academics.

He has published more than 20 scholarly papers in National/International journals and Edited Books.

He also has varied International exposure in terms of successfully executing projects in various countries in Asia, Europe and Africa. He is one of the co-founders of Asian Dialogues on Social theory and World Spiritual Transformations Forum.

Abstract:

To be successful in today’s global business environment, it is important for a professional Manager of an organization to imbibe the traits of an Entrepreneur. Some of the key traits of an Entrepreneur are general management capabilities, proactive approach in problem solving, persistence, professionalism, confidence, self-responsibility, passion, goals driven and risk taking.

If we take Human Resources function, a Manager who has the qualities of an Entrepreneur will be able to look at the entire employee life cycle management in a very different way. One can bring in entrepreneurial mind-set in managing all sub-functions within HR namely recruitment, learning & development, employee engagement, compensation & benefits, career management, succession planning, organization development, separation management, etc.

The right recruitment strategy should contribute to revenue growth and also better employer branding. Effective learning & development, employee engagement, career management, etc should result in enhanced Customer Satisfaction and thereby Customer retention.Employee retention should contribute to better productivity & therefore better profitability.

An entrepreneur is totally involved in what he does. The person is very committed to the cause. The person is very passionate with his project / theme. He / she has a very high level of ownership in accomplishing the planned tasks. The person takes the required level of risks to achieve what he / she wants.The same qualities can be instilled in the DNA of the HR organization.

This paper presents a Case Study of how the HR team of a particular organization has imbibed the entrepreneurial traits in their day-to-day business operation.

Mathew Mampra                                                                                                                                               Research Scholar, Alliance University, Bangalore.                                                                                            and                                                                                                                                                                Dr Mohan Gopinath Ph.D.                                                                                                                                        Professor, Department of Organizational Leadership and Strategy                                                            Alliance School of Business, Alliance University, Bangalore                                                                            

Abstract

Purpose –To analyse the leadership role in creating and sustaining an organizational culture conductive towards developing entrepreneurial managers.

Methodology – This paper is based on a systematic literature review and compilations of findings and lessons learned from the authors’ own experiences. The pa
per also draws on examples from forward looking companies.

Approach–The entrepreneur is always a goal-setter. They havea purpose and a good idea of how to achieve it, and moves firmly in that direction. The manager, however, understands the goals of the organization, relates them to its members, and integrates them with their goals. The strength of the entrepreneur lies in their responsiveness to the needs of the situation and theirdedication to the attainment of thesetgoals. The successful manager on the other hand, involves everybody in the goal-setting andattainment process. Theimportance and relevance of a leadership role to get the best of the above two worlds are explored.

Practical implicationsand Learning Objective– The paper has implications for understanding the leadership role in nurturing a favourable organisational culture.This paper is expected to assist business leaders to consciously create a culture which encourages the entrepreneurial spirit in managers.

Originality/value–The importance of theleadership role in developing efficient entrepreneurial managersby creating a favourable organisational culture is under-researched in comparison with other factors.Sustainable business growth requires effective entrepreneur-managers. But, how are they to be nurtured and supportedwithin organisations?Often the organization itself discourages, or at least makes it extremely difficult, for them to take risks in order to explore new opportunities.The leadership role is consequently the key in creating and sustaining the appropriate culture.

Keywords– entrepreneur, manager, entrepreneurial manager,leadership,organisational culture

Paper type –Research paper

 Mary Thomas,

Faculty, Christ University

Leadership theories related to entrepreneurs are hard to come by. The dynamics of being a leader within an organizational framework are vastly different from being an entrepreneurial leader. Which competencies need to be focused on? How does one decide the appropriate competencies to be leveraged in various situations? These are the questions sought to be answered in this paper.

The Entrepreneurial Orientation Construct and the Managerial Grid are the models used in developing this conceptual framework. The Entrepreneurial Orientation Construct was distilled to suit an individual level framework and the five competencies arising thereof are identified for enabling appropriate leadership behaviour in the entrepreneurial journey. The Grid purports five distinct leadership styles. Each of these styles will be relevant in different stages of the entrepreneurial firm’s development. An attempt is made to link the relevant competencies arising out of the Entrepreneurial Orientation Construct to the desired leadership styles as defined by the Grid, in order to provide a roadmap for entrepreneurial leadership.

Key words: Entrepreneurial Orientation, Managerial Grid, leadership, situational leadership.

Failure is a part of every one’s life.  A person who says he has never failed has either never tried to do anything or is a blatant liar. It is actually the result in the life of an individual, which makes it dreading.  Any successful person will admit he or she had their share of failures. Entrepreneurs or Intrapreneurs also become successful or failures by this standard.They became successful because of 2 reasons : one is they are able to identify their mistake and correct them by reasoning and secondly they have the will to rebound and get back to the task.

The other side of success after seeing failure can be the likes of J K Rowling, the author or Harry Potter. In her own words * “ You might never fail on the scale I did, but it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default”.  Coming from her has to be true, who penniless, divorced and raising a child on her own wrote her first Harry Potter book on an old manual typewriter.  After getting rejected by twelve publishers and a year later she was given a green signal by Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, who agreed to publish the book but insisted that she take up a day jobalong side, because there was no money in children’s books. Rest is history, she magically became richer than the Queen of England overnight. ‘ What if she had stopped after first or second or third or fourth or…….
  Rejections ?With this back ground let us take a look into some of the factors leading to failures and how the present Management education  can guide the students to understand these causes and how to come out of this and become a successful entrepreneur or intrapreneur.in-tra-pre-neur (In¹tre-pre-nur) n. A person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation

Prof HS Mishra-HR Faculty & Head Placements ISME

Introduction

The entrepreneur is a buzzword all over the world. People are looking for new ideas, new product or new services to start a new business. Of late this has been main focus of Government, corporate, educational institutes and young minds. The drive has also been supported by companies, individuals and venture capitalist for making available the funds to start a business. There is always a risk involved in new business and it is generally seen that only 10 out of 100 succeed. Remaining 90 either go back to their previous jobs/business or try new things. In some cases people lose out all their money and become pauper. The main reason why the majority of business owners (over 90%) fail is because most people who start a business have no idea of how to build and run a successful business. They lack the critical skills sets. Then, why do they start businesses? What makes them think they can succeed? Well, what kills most people from the start is an assumption they all make. And it is a ‘fatal’ assumption. They all assume that as they know how to ‘do’ the technical aspect of the business, they would therefore know how to run a business that does that technical work (a famous quote by business guru, Michael Gerber).

Keeping the above thought in mind it is felt that the MBA graduates should be advised to gain experiences in corporate world and develop necessary skills, competencies and the capacity to generate funds for starting a venture. Once they are totally ready they can plan and start venture either independently or by collaborating with some like minded people/friends.

M. L Prasad, Finance Faculty, ISME

Abstract

Competing and Surviving in the season of financial turmoil and mishaps is a formidable task. To continue to live in the midst of crisis, the focus should shift from specialized managers to in-house entrepreneurial managers.  The entrepreneurial managers are most likely to think beyond the jurisdiction in decision making, with proper understanding of the managerial dilemmas. Need of the hour as a manager is to analyze the situation in a well-grounded perspective which brings in the desired results to the organization by balancing risk and profitability. Managers also need to look at how resources are allocated and need to know what each activity costs and why. The key financial decisions are in area of Cash flow Analysis, Costing, Financial Statement Analysis, Taxation, Working Capital Management and Financial Statement Disclosure. Imparting knowledge and experience in the field of finance to managers will be the real focus of any enterprise to face the new world of complexity.

The paper discusses the teaching content and techniques used to develop some the financial management skills through management education.

The paper focuses on the concept of entrepreneurial leadership; the qualities and skills that define entrepreneurial leaders as distinct from managers/leaders in organizations. It also encompasses within its ambit, an overview of entrepreneurial skills and leadership skills and the interaction of these skills. A literature survey provides the empirical support for the propositions being posited. The effort is to focus on entrepreneurial leaders within organizations and on what they do and how they are different and how their efforts add value to their respective organizations. If the skills/qualities of such entrepreneurial leaders are identified with a measure of confidence, supported by strong empirical evidence, these skills can be the starting point for academic institutes to restructure their academic content and training to ensure that these skills are focused upon so that, once students are familiarized with these identified skill-sets, they can go on to further refine and hone these skills within their respective organizations and ultimately emerge as entrepreneurial leaders or ‘intrapreneurs’in their own rights within their organizations.

 Also, such skill-sets can be the subject of training within organizations to identify managers with this predilection and to further train them in-house through formal training programmes and with planned job rotations to enhance these skills. Industry-Institute interface can be an important cog in this link to develop such special skills which, by the inherent definition, are not common and therefore, need special efforts to first identify and then nurture such special talent. This effort can be a part of talent management programmes of organizations to build sustainable competitive edge in business through nurturing such entrepreneurial leaders within by providing an eco-system which would enable the identification, refining and application of such skills.

The three judges-Dr.Mohan Gopinth, Dr.Amit Gupta and Prof.Byra Reddy, adjudicated on the papers that were presented and the final decision, as decided by them, was as follows:

Best Paper :

 Mr.Mathew Mampra, Entrepeneur CEO & Research Scholar, Alliance University for his paper : “Developing Entrepreneurial Managers – How Leaders Can Build A Favourable Organizational Culture”.

The second prizewas awarded to Ms.Indu Sharma, Mgmt Consultant & Ph.D Scholar, Alliance University, for her paper, “Manager or Entrepreneur: Management education and other factors.”

The Awards were presented at the conclusion and certificates awarded to all participants.

The Judges were invited to give their views at the conclusion and they gave positive feedback. They were presented mementos as token of appreciation.

A Conference publication was released during the Convocation on 23^rdFebruary 2013 containing the papers that were presented.