Gothenburg Executive MBA participants visit Bangalore to understand India in transition

Early in the Gothenburg Executive MBA programme’s fourth and last term, our participants spend 10 days in residency in Bangalore, a booming metropolis of 8 million people located in the southern part of the Indian subcontinent. Bangalore is since many years the IT capital of India, but interestingly, since the early 20th century the city has been a center for the high-technologies of each era, such as electric power, aeronautics and space technology.

While in Bangalore, participants first stay five days at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), one of the top-3 business schools in all of India, located in a lush, 100-acre walled-in campus south of the city centre. Under the common theme ”Understanding India in Transition”, the days at IIMB are filled with academic lectures, entrepreneur presentations, company visits and cultural immersion. The remaining five days of the residency take place at a conference hotel downtown Bangalore, where one of the Executive MBA programme modules called ”Creative Leadership”, is taught.

In all, the India residency provides the Executive MBA participants with an unprecedented opportunity to develop their own leadership and to understand and observe the business implications of India’s rapid economic growth. Subject to a most intense schedule seven days a week, their learning takes place in direct dialogue with leading Indian faculty and business representatives. The group was received for company visits at Titan Watches and the global Indian IT giant Infosys. Once back from the residency, our Executive MBA participants will be ready to apply their newly acquired insights.

“You have to 'taste' a culture to profoundly understand it, which is what we did during our residency in India. It is a country of permanent paradoxes. As our professor at IIMB put it: Whatever you may think of India, the opposite is also true!”, says Laura Stavby, Service Strategy & Planning Manager with Volvo Group. “I will bring all the new experiences acquired during this trip into my work, but also into my personal life”.

Laura Stavby, Service Strategy & Planning Manager Volvo Group

The Make in India campaign
Compared with China, the relative size of India’s industry sector is very small indeed: only 19% of the GDP is created in the industry sector. In the rapidly growing Indian economy (which, incidentally, likely outgrew that of China in 2015) there is plenty of scope to boost manufacturing. Attempting to mimic the Chinese development since the late 1980s, a growing Indian industry sector could create new employment opportunities and better pay for people today working with unskilled farming or service tasks. But what will that take?

“Make in India” is a global campaign, initiated by the Indian government to boost investments in manufacturing in the country. Given the challenge of overcoming the tremendous amount of bureaucracy, the Indian government urgently needs to reform the legislation under which domestic and foreign investors can plan, build and operate new manufacturing entities in India. To this purpose, the digitization of the economy will also be key.

Håkan Ericson, Managing Director at GU School of Executive Education concludes: “It is striking how the combined assets of India – demographics, education system, entrepreneurial drive and the prevalence of English, only to mention a few – have the potential of profoundly transforming India into a leading global economy. We are proud to provide the Gothenburg Executive MBA participants with unique on-site insights into this on-going transition and the possibilities it presents to their companies.”

Håkan Ericson, Managing Director at GU School of Executive Education

You find more impressions and conclusions from our Executive MBA residency in India on our blog: ”Booming Bangalore – Understanding India in Transition” and ”Make in India, please”.

For more information, please contact:
Håkan Ericson, Managing Director, GU School of Executive Education, tel +46 31 786 53 81, +46 709 50 63 35,
e-mail hakan.ericson@handels.gu.se ; www.handels.gu.se/exed

Olof Billebo, Business Manager, GU School of Executive Education, tel +46 31 786 13 83, +46 703 320 1383,
e-mail olof.billebo@handels.gu.se ; www.handels.gu.se/emba

GU School of Executive Education delivers Sweden’s only AMBA-accredited Executive MBA programme and custom programmes for the private and public sectors. Clients are spread out across the globe, with programme deliveries e.g. in USA, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, China and South Korea. By designing programmes to combine academic rigour and practical relevance, GU School of Executive Education develops their clients’ key employees. www.guexed.com

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