Gandhian Innovation: Insights from Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR

Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR make continuous attempts to align classroom learning with industry best practices. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the first graduate business school of Greater Noida, we have endeavoured to integrate the best practices of innovation management into the academic curriculum for management courses. Given that Delhi NCR has one of the best job markets in Asia, there are obvious advantages that the academic community of top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR get to avail of. Our interaction with alumni, business executives and entrepreneurs has led to the institutionalization of fundamental and advanced concepts of innovation management into the academic curriculum.

Every great academic institution has an academic culture of its own and builds on certain strengths. As a matter of principle, Ishan has always intellectually and academically championed the cause of economic and social inclusion. It is in this context that it may be asserted that over the last 21 years the first MBA College in Greater Noida has programmed its academic design in favour of concurrent themes like emerging economies of Asia and Africa, financial inclusion and of course Gandhian innovation. The writing on the walls of the business school is that frugal innovation, jugaad innovation, reverse innovation, disruptive innovation, BOP innovation and associated tracks that enable business leaders and managers to achieve high performance with fewer resources have always been highly popular.

Gandhiji’s Talisman and Gandhian Engineering: Key Features

Does Gandhian Innovation really adhere to the principles of Gandhism? How can Gandhian engineering be relevant to India in the 21^st century? Does the Gandhian school of thought offer a viable business and revenue model to multinational corporations seeking to strike gold in India? Does Gandhian innovation offer opportunities to maximize shareholder value in emerging economies? While there are ideas and opinions in business that may be intellectually stimulating to academicians and even the exuberance of youth may once in a while romance the aura of social entrepreneurship, it is worthwhile to ask if Gandhian innovation offers a core value proposition to business enterprises. Hence the academicians at Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the top MBA College in Greater Noida have done our best to answer these questions by means of lecture sessions, business research projects and case studies.

Gandhiji continues to be an enigma in business schools. The reasons behind saying so are multiple. First, Gandhiji’s principle of non-violence stands in sharp contrast to the free market economy that India has embraced now for the last 25 years. Economic reforms are meant to engineer an economic system that works on the basis of meritocracy and does great justice by rewarding the efficient and punishing the inefficient. This carrot and stick policy may work wonders in the free market institutions like blue chip corporations and MSME sector where investors want their due and seek to maximize shareholder value. Even employees and customers shall see nothing wrong in sticking to meritocracy. Any profit maximizing enterprise shall support this. Yet the same cannot be said of the government. Investors, employees and clients are economic agents who engage in transactions but citizens are not. Second, in an emerging economy like India where more than 60% of the population lives on a daily wage less the $2, who shall take the responsibility for the inefficient and weak? If this sizeable chunk of the population is left out what shall remain of the free market? Third, at the microeconomic level the free market economy motivates individuals to be driven by enlightened self interest. These economic agents are called rational people in the pure economic sense. Why should these rational people leave behind self interest to pursue something as weird as Gandhism?

Gandhian engineering is characterized by high technical efficiency, high economic efficiency, adaptability to local conditions of time, space and scale and focuses on people, planets and profit simultaneously. These are the most important characteristic features of Gandhian innovation. As such there are multiple technical, technological, talent and temperament challenges that obstruct Gandhian innovations. All Gandhian innovations are essentially engineered to use fewer inputs like raw materials, spares, fuels, fixed and recurring capital. Products like Tata Nano, the HUL Pureit, Tata Swach, Le Chal, Mitticool, and Chotukool are just some of the examples of new product development that have embraced the principles of Gandhian engineering.

There are deep running economic, scientific and social ramifications of Gandhian engineering in an emerging economy like India. While enough has been conceptualized by Prof. C.K.Prahalad of Michigan State University and R.A.Mashelkar of Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai on the theme of bottom of the pyramid market it is clearly evident that Gandhian engineering is corporate India’s answer to low cost new product development for the poor, low cost technological expertise, employment generation, revenue generation in rural markets, volume business and revenue generation in Bharat and climate change. It is remarkable that most cases of Gandhian engineering in the areas of product and process innovations are carbon and water positive. Tata Nano by virtue of being distributed and sold in the form of disintegrable tool kits in showrooms has drastically reduced the logistics costs associated with the sales of the brand. Pureit makes no use of electricity or any other form of energy and thus virtually gives back a lot more to society. Coco Cola has engineered visi-coolers that are 33% more energy efficient and thus enable retailers to reduce sales costs to the tune of 33% and also energy consumption and the company’s carbon footprint.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the premier MBA College of Greater Noida and one of the top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR we have 7 case studies on Gandhian engineering in the past year. The department would also like to acknowledge the contribution of Abhishek Kumar Singh, student of the 19^th batch and now working with Price Waterhouse Coopers in setting the tone for path breaking research by conducting an in-depth study on Gandhian engineering in Mission Mangalyaan by ISRO.