The Economics of Robotics and AI: Insights from the Top PGDM College in Delhi NCR

Two months back in a lecture session on strategic management, the PGDM final year students and an academic were engaged in a discussion on the steps that Dr.Vishal Sikka, the new CEO of Infosys has taken to script a turnaround for the IT behemoth. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR it is a common practice for academics and students to deliberately stray away from and beyond the academic curriculum. Needless to say discussions such as the one stated above are like journeys into the centre of the universe in search of black holes and answers to the conundrums of the Big Bang theory. While not many students may accept and appreciate the method to madness of a Stephen Hawking at a business school in Delhi NCR, fortunately the PGDM program is designed for intellectual and academic activities that are contemporary and trendy unlike the historic heritage based academic curricula of an MBA program. Coming back to the discussion though, we moved to design thinking and tried to identify the different upcoming trends in the Indian IT industry. We spoke of social media, cloud computing, big data, data analytics, robotics, artificial intelligence, embedded systems, BITCOIN and block chain technology. The lecture was indeed productive to the extent that it gave rise to a conclusive footnote on the rise of SMAC while also posing a few unsolved questions on the impact that robotics and artificial intelligence is likely to have on the economies of nations that have been frontrunners in the race for office and production process automation. What is also interesting to watch is the effect on key economic metrics of employment, income generation, displacement of labour, economic growth rates and also marketing indices like customer satisfaction, user experience, and marketability of a brand using robotics and so on.

Robotics: The Terminator of Jobs for Humans?

Just a few months ago there was an unfortunate accident in Gurgaon, wherein a giant robot that was installed in the assembly line of an automobile manufacturing unit malfunctioned. The program of the robot failed and then the robot disobeyed instructions, went into autopilot mode and finally killed the worker employed at the workstation of the robot. While this may sound scary, the truth is that humans are not the most efficient workers on planet earth. A report published by Techcrunch.com suggests that 57% human workers are at risk of losing their jobs to robotics in the U.S.A and Western Europe. It is hardly ant rocket science to anticipate that jobs of customer service and manufacturing are the most likely to be affected within the next 20 years. Artificial intelligence threatens to wipe out the jobs of front desk executives, receptionists, retail sales persons working in house stores and travel agents.

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Economic and Technical Efficiency of Robotics and AI

The microeconomic analysis of the use of robotics and AI is based primarily on the parameters of economic and technical efficiencies. First economic efficiency of robotics and artificial intelligence stems from the fact that these applications can be optimized for achieving a very large scale. In the long run when corporate enterprises have to take decisions for foreign direct investment and thus transfer of technology becomes an important consideration, the scalability of operations is likely to be the most important consideration. Irrespective of the nature of the investment project and the production automation required therein, robotics and AI offer the highest possible economies of scale through continuous operations for 24X7 working conditions, uninterrupted work ethic, unwavering focus unlike human beings and a learning by doing knack that is very much like humans. Moreover modern industrial psychology shares the view that learning in itself is a process with three steps: unlearning the past, learning the present and putting to practice the learning of the present. This is exactly what challenges human learning ability and exposes the limitations of humans. Artificial intelligence gets robots, devices and machines to understand think and feel like human beings but with a far superior technical efficiency. Machine learning raises the bar for organizational learning, knowledge management and the development of new core competencies based on the use of knowledge as a key asset or resource. This is where robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning can combine to revolutionize workplace rules and raise metrics like total quality, acceptable level of defects, and adherence to six sigma and sky high productivity. The combinatorial impact of economic and technical efficiency of robotics and artificial intelligence can indeed break the rules of human workers in verticals that require repetitive tasks and follow an algorithm bound by standard operating procedures for work.

The Rent Element in Skill and Walrus Law: Optimizing Across Markets

While standard microeconomic analysis can explain the reasons behind embracing robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, it also does explain the reasons behind the attainment of equilibrium in the labour markets. For every positive supply side shock that is generated by a new wave of technology or disruptive innovation, a new frontier opens up with an increase in demand for that technology and skilled manpower to operate, troubleshoot, innovate, build and sell that tech based application. This has always been the case since the times of industrial revolution. It was observed in continental Europe that in the year 1908 when automobiles first swept across markets, blacksmiths lost jobs for horse shoe making while new jobs were created in thousands for work that had to be done in factories producing cars. This is the general exposition of the Walrus Law in microeconomics and is bound to hold true for robotics as well.

Moreover there is a rent element involved in the compensation received by highly skilled professionals. Take the case of surgical medical science. Surgery is one of the front runners in the race for automation and use of robotics. Yet it is very difficult to imagine a scenario where surgeries would be performed by high precision robots in the absence of a senior surgeon. At best a robot can be a personal digital assistant in ferrying tools, equipment, measurement and diagnosis of the effectiveness of a surgery but cannot replace the context specific learning and experience acquired by a senior surgeon through hundreds of operations and years of experience in medical science. The unpredictable element of intuition that is based on experience is impossible to emulate for the best of programmers working on AI, machine learning and robotics.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the top PGDM college in Delhi NCR we inject contemporary tracks and upgrade our academic curriculum each year to offer cutting edge managerial know-how. The above piece is dedicated to the final year PGDM students Alka Mishra, Samir Akhtar, Pawan Sinha, Utsav Kundu and Damini Bansal pushed the envelope during that lecture on strategic management, by bringing design thinking to the centre of corporate strategy.

Insights on How to Answer Your Heart’s Calling, from the Top PGDM College in Delhi NCR

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the top PGDM college in Delhi NCR we have walked the distance for 21 years. It has been a journey hallmarked by milestones and achievements of the management, students and the academicians. After walking the distance for 21 years now when we reflect upon the experience of producing 3000 alumni at the business school, we are tempted to go back to the famous lines of the American country side rock legend Bob Dylan and ask: “How many miles must a man walk before he is called a man?” The academicians of the top PGDM college in Greater Noida believe that the same question applies foremost to the individuals that we are. While it is always obvious for alumni of a business school to measure the success of one’s life in terms of revenue growth, profit growth and shareholder value growth, the plain truth is that no one was ever born to do a job and go to office. As paradoxical as this may sound, it offers a clear window for us to think about the purpose of our lives and how best to summarize the success and failure one has had in life.

What They Do not Teach and Ask to Be Taught at Business Schools?

We are sure that you must have come across self help books with this title in the best book shops in Delhi NCR. The truth is that there are certain things that are not taught at business schools. The reasons are twofold. First academicians themselves never think of these things with a peaceful mind and are very often engaged in completing the academic curriculum, delivering lectures, doing board work for mathematical modelling, solving case studies and teaching students how to fix deals. It is a statement of the obvious that students at most business schools are happy to lap up the science of fixing deals and measuring their lives’ worth in revenues. Secondly students are most interested in asking questions that are meaningful and have a sense of purpose. It is astounding that most business schools during the two years that they spend with each batch of freshmen during the course of an MBA or a PGDM program do not ever deal with any of the following questions:

How can I ensure happiness in my career?

How can I ensure happiness in my relationship with my family?

How can I ensure that I get a good night’s sleep?

While it is only prudent on the part of academicians and students at business schools to go through the routine of lecture-assignment- exam and then go grab the degree on graduation day, the truth is that life starts on graduation day, it never ends on graduation day. Those who do not ask these three questions during two years of their stay at a business school for a PGDM or MBA program are most likely to ask and frantically search for answers to these questions after graduating.

How Can I Ensure Happiness in My Career?

Most of the students who belong to the generation of the “Millennial” search for success in ticking things of the bucket list of price tags, smart phones, cars, pent houses and all sorts of things which at the end of one’s life would probably end up straight in the gutter. The point is we do not search for happiness as long as we are not unhappy. We tend to get accustomed to learning things the hard way and then try to reminisce about the costs that we have had to pay for achieving the precious little that we have. Why do some  managers even after spending more than twenty years of their careers in an industry vertical and after building an empire for themselves like an apartment with all amenities in the heart of Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai or Kolkata, loath the Monday morning blues of getting ready in the C-suite and jet setting for office? Why do we fear losing all that we have accumulated through hikes, promotions and lateral transfers after being in the job for a decade? This is the result of trying to summarize life in terms of deals closed, clients obliged, revenues earned and hikes achieved. This is the result of trying to live in the future while discounting the past. The marginal cost rule of achieving goals entails that we think of the additional gain and the additional costs of chasing a goal, while ignoring what we have. The truth is that safeguarding all that we have achieved in the past is more important than the additional gains and costs.

How Do I Ensure Happiness in My Relationship With My Family?

The physical evidence led approach to decision making works wonderfully well as long as it is being implemented in the right place-the work place. Even at the work place there are certain delicate invisible assets that we take for granted as long as the erosion of those assets does not get visible to the naked eyes? The marginal cost rule of economics is to be blamed once again. How much do I gain from spending dinner time with my wife and kids? How much do I gain from sitting by the side of my old parents and entertaining their childish requests? How much I do gain by asking my children about the proceedings at school? In God we trust, everybody else must bring data to the table. This is fine when we are taking decisions for investments that may be plagued by mist on the screen and hence affect our vision. But this rule does not work for relations with family. And yes, the definition of the family must include old parents first. Trying to cut the family photograph to size by cropping the faces of the helpless old faces of our parents’ repeats itself if practiced. This is what our children learn to do when they grow up to be matured and sensible working professionals. Downsizing the family never fetches returns. It never does.

How Do I get a Good Night’s Sleep?

This is the least asked question. This is the least answered question. Infosys founder and business legend N.R.Narayana Murthy put it across beautifully in the compilation of his lectures “Better India Better World”. How many business leaders and business school graduates even understand the worth of this questions unless they loss it? Staying away from the iron hands of the judiciary, keeping on the fair face of business and holding one’s head high do not matter as long as one can escape trouble. Here again it is observed that being happy is easier when one intends to go by the book 100% of the time rather than going by the book 99% of the time and trying to sneak through the regulator’s lenses for 1% of the time. Do we ever get our mathematics right by taking that once chance at winning against honesty? 995% honesty in career and life is not honest at all.

Answers Given at Ishan Institute of Management & Technology

As a top PGDM college in Delhi NCR, Ishan Institute of Management & Technology enables students to ask these questions and sit on the same during two years of their study of PGDM. We do not give answers to these questions straight away as it stifles individuality that is so much required in the corporate sector. We do not want our business graduates to be lame ducks that travel all the time in the same direction, flock together, eat together and even look all the same. That is not our job. Our job is to tell students narratives of different kinds so that they get to think and frame an answer that best suits them. Prof. Tushar Arya, the Chief Finance and Planning at Ishan Institute of Management & Technology calls this “listen to the calling of your heart.” As he says “Don’t marginalize life going by marginal revenues and marginal costs. Life’ success lies in the totality of happiness. Listen to your heart’s calling.”

(The above piece is based on the academic research of Prof.Tushar Arya, Chief Finance and Planning, Ishan Educational Institutions and alumnus of Manchester Business School, United Kingdom)

Insights on Tech Bubble Bursts from Top PGDM Colleges in Delhi NCR

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the top PGDM college in Delhi NCR, the academicians are still trying to come to terms with the reality of a possible bursting of the Indian ecommerce bubble. Given that there had been a mad rush of venture capitalists towards ecommerce companies over the last five years it was a bolt from the blue when the faculty and students of the top business school in Greater Noida woke up to the unfortunate pieces of news flowing in from the print, electronic and digital media. The incident that we are talking about is the deferring of joining of fresh hires from IIM A by a renowned Indian ecommerce company.  Yet this is not an isolated event and is preceded by a trail of events that has led to this mishap. In fact very recently Morgan Stanley has downgraded the company valuation of an Indian ecommerce firm from USD 80 million to USD 58 million in its filings submitted to the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC).  In April 2016 there was top talent flight from a major Indian ecommerce company who had been hired from Google for managing product development. Amidst the flurry of all the bad news pouring there has been an euphoria over the boom in the Indian ecommerce vertical for some time now and it seems that euphoria is finally over and people have begun to wake up and smell the coffee.

The faculty team at Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top MBA colleges in Delhi NCR have got into the act of data collection and analysis. While it is too early to make concrete statements on the debacle in the absence of reliable sources of information on the functioning of many ecommerce companies operating in India, we have observed the following as the prima facie evidence and reasons behind the debacle. Take a look.

User Experience

Ever since Steve Jobs, the late Apple founder had emphasised on user experience it had become the buzzword for product based companies. Some of the big names in the ecommerce business vertical in India let go user experience and traded it for price competition, making the user extremely price sensitive and a bargain hunter. When a user replaces user experience with bargain hunting, customer loyalty goes for a toss and sales volumes from repeat purchases of existing customers goes down. It shall not be an exaggeration to assert that many Indian ecommerce firms were actually delivering best bargains on specifically one product line- smart phones. Focus on a single product line while selling online, offline, on the web or through app is a crime. The user is guaranteed to leave the company once he has had the best bargain and move over to another online shop that offers him a better bargain. More over the levels of product range, product quality and customer satisfaction were compromised upon for a long time. Some Indian ecommerce enterprises used to splash their names for all reasons like crowd funding, investment from VCs, IPO and on boarding of top management level talent from Silicon Valley firms but not for user experience. The product reviews on the websites of Indian companies and those on the websites of its global competitors are poles apart. Need we say anything more?

App Only Strategy

In continuation of the anecdotal evidence furnished above, the app only strategy of the top Indian ecommerce firm also comes out as yet another recipe for disaster. The app only strategy does work well in matured ecommerce markets like South Korea, USA, United Kingdom and China, but certainly not in an emerging economy like India that was until few months back debating on the utility of freebies like “Free Basics” from Facebook. While the smart phone revolution in India is a reality, there are other metrics that tell the complete story. There are some key technological drivers for an app only strategy to succeed like high downloading speed, high surfing speed, coverage of 3G network, density of payment gateway development and usage among smart phone users for cashless transactions. These technological drivers hold the key to an app only strategy to gain traction and critical mass. Sadly the realities of India are not on the same page.

Gross Merchandise Value

Perhaps the mother of sins was hidden in the revenue model of major Indian ecommerce firms that stuck with gross merchandise value (GMV) as a revenue parameter. While GMV has been a favourite with many ecommerce firms in the recent past, there are serious flaws in the usage of this metric. GMV uses the selling price as the revenue equivalent while overlooking selling costs, advertisement and promotional costs, etc. This has the effect of inflating the revenue side of the balance sheet and correspondingly the profit margin. While this may work well in the short run to allure FIIs, PNs, and VCs, people are smart enough to see through it as is evident from the actions of Morgan Stanley and Fidelity investments. One year back when the top PGDM and MBA colleges in Delhi NCR were busy doing case studies on the investment boom little did they notice that the seeds of self destruction had been sown and that these ecommerce companies were sitting on a time bomb of “deep discounting” to compensate for the losses arising out of discounted sales with VC funds.

In the final conclusion, it makes enormous good sense to assert that the days of honeymoon and partying are over and as India transcends from being a beginner level ecommerce market to a more matured one, supernormal profit will be sized up and companies will have to focus on creating brand equity through the practice of innovation, new product development and a multichannel business development framework without abandoning frugality. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR the final word of the academic team is that of cautious optimism rather than euphoria. The party is over. Let’s not panic, but let’s get to work.

Managing the Human Mind: Insights on Mindfulness from Top PGDM Colleges in Delhi NCR

Managing the human mind at work is possibly the most difficult of all tasks. Top PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR reflect upon this aspect in both the academic curriculum and also in beyond the classroom learning activity. There are aspects of human behaviour and managing the self that academicians at even the best business schools in Delhi cannot teach aspiring managers. For that matter at Ishan Institute of Management & Technology we have been offering Art of Living lessons to students of all batches. Through these efforts and engagements with students we have found that while business executives and corporate leaders try their best to manage resources of all types, they lag behind in managing the self. Managing the self is perhaps the mother of all management trades. In the parlance of management psychology we refer to it as ‘mindfulness.’

What Are the Challenges in Managing the Self?

Managing the self is about managing the human mind. Let us take a look at the research reports and survey results on the importance of mindfulness. Most professionals reach their place of work every day with a trail of energy and exasperation in the rush hour. The truly hard working and sincere professionals come to the office with a work plan of their own and a to-do list that is cumbersome. They get to work with a burst of high energy and as they race against time to tick things off their to-do list it is evening even before they have realized. By the time it is evening most of these people realize that they have accomplished very little of the targets they had set for themselves early on in the day. Is not it astonishing? A work day ordinarily consists of 9-10 working hours in the corporate sector. On days of unusually hectic business activity this may go up to 12-14 hours and yet most business executives in the corporate sector do not have an idea about what went wrong with their work day. Recent research reports assert that most people spend 47% of their time thinking something else apart from what they are doing. In fact most of us operate on autopilot mode.

Business psychologists refer to this as the attention economy. In most business schools that confer PGDM and MBA degrees academicians engage in lectures, workshops and other academic activities that develop technical, analytical, interpersonal and generic skills while ignoring two really important skills that are required to manage the self: focus and awareness. These two skills define the mindful mind. Focus is defined as the ability to concentrate on the present while dealing with task at hand. Awareness is defined as the ability to realize distractions of all kinds that arise from time to time and thus threaten to disrupt the focus. Much of the threat to focus emanates from the fact that managers, corporate executives and business leaders deal with decision making and decision making requires them to deal with information. This translates into staying connected to all sorts of devices like the laptop, smart phone, IPad, fax machines and land line phones at the cost of being disconnected to the self. Constant irritants include regularly incoming emails, social media updates, phone calls and frequent requests for assistance form office colleagues. The end result is a complex of data overload on the mind and distraction from work even before one realizes that he/she is being distracted and thus losing focus. Email addiction for example releases dopamine, a pleasurable hormone that affects our focus on the completion of small and unimportant tasks that probably do not even figure on our to-do lists. The effect is that the completion of these small tasks makes us feel like the Gods of small things and by the time we come out of the momentary pleasure of having achieved something small, the work day is over and we stare back at the to-do list only to realize that we have won the battle but lost the war.

How to Practice Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a science of the highest order and calls for regular application to get the visible results. In order to practice mindfulness, one needs to get the basics right. First, start the day with mindfulness. It has been observed that people release the highest quantum of stress hormones early in the day at the time they wake up from sleep. As we wake up from sleep our mind is engrossed in thoughts on getting things done and starring at the mountain of work that we have to climb. The release of cortisol in the blood perpetuates stress levels that are tough to handle. Practice deep breathing while concentrating on one’s breathing process is one simple but effective way to practice mindfulness. As one inhales and exhales he/she should listen to his breaths and heartbeats for two minutes before getting out of bed. Second, on reaching office one should practice deep breathing while sitting at his/her desk for the first two minutes. Closing one’s eyes while sitting upright and breathing with focus is prescribed before one heads off to work and starts the one on one meeting at office. This way work delegation, coordination with colleagues and clients becomes less cumbersome because even when dealing with people who represent the other one is constantly in touch with the self. It enables one to see through the verbal, non-verbal and written forms of communication better, decode the meanings of others better while sticking to one’ own agenda. Third, as the day progresses it becomes hectic to manage communications from and with people in different directions. It is recommended that one should after lunch set a timer on the phone for it to ring once every hour. Every time the bell rings one should practice deep breathing with eyes closed for one minute and regain connect with the self. Fourth as the work day comes to a conclusion one should get back to practicing mindfulness by taking time out for two minutes at the end of the commute. Switch off the phone, the radio and all other gadgets. Focus on your breathing and feel your existence while breathing in and out. It enables one to detach from office and the motions of the day to engage productively with family at home.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, workshops on Art of Living are conducted for management graduates with an aim to enable them take charge of their lives. As one of the top PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR we make concrete efforts to get students in top mental shape for their career in corporate sector. 

Amazing Grace: Insights on Barrack Obama from the Top PGDM College in Delhi NCR

Ishan Institute of Management & Technology is one of the top PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR in its own right. The first graduate business school in Greater Noida has earned respect that it commands today by building a legacy. It has taken 21 years to build this legacy and hopefully the academicians and the student community can extend this streak of academic genius over the coming 21 years and more. As a top PGDM college in Greater Noida, the academicians believe that it would be absolutely criminal to not indulge in an act of intellectual surgery by laying the ten year regime of the outgoing U.S. President Barrack Obama on the surgical table of case studies in leadership.

It has been fashionable for business schools in India and other countries in South Asia to chant hymns in praise of outgoing U.S. Presidents primarily because corporate India wants them to do so. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the academicians of the business school have endeavoured to get a glimpse of the third world view of the outgoing U.S. President Barrack Obama. This perspective holds water in the contexts of South Asia, the aspirations of India and of course first generation business leaders. In this piece we select a few of those events that showcased Barrack Obama’s leadership qualities.

Obama Care in 2008: Engineering a Fiscal Stimulus for U.S.A and the World

Cometh thee hour, cometh thee hero! Many orthodox academicians of business schools may make the vitriolic allegation of idolizing Barrack Obama for the solutions that he proposed and implemented in the aftermath of the sub-prime crisis. Keynesian pump priming is old fashioned ventilation for a free market economy that is in coma. Cynics also lament the challenges of fiscal profligacy, risks of falling of the fiscal cliff and the withering away of the welfare state in the after years of the adoption of Keynesian fiscal policies. Yet at the core of the analysis or rather paralysis by analysis, lies the thread bare fact that the sub-prime crisis of 2008 just like the Wall Street crash of 1929 was an act of the invisible hand of the market and it required substantial action from the government. It is interesting to note that the viral mechanism of international trade and institutional investments that were responsible for the outburst of the financial crisis finally led to the spread of the antidote. President Obama showed the world that Keynesians pump priming is effective as a turnaround strategy and that he is a master craftsman of turnaround strategy.

Hurricane Katrina: Rise of the Working Class Hero

A natural disaster is not about chanting hymns in worship of God and shedding tears. When the going gets tough, President Obama gets going. Instead of paying a one stop formal visit or an aerial survey that most politicians across the world prefer to sidestep public wrath and fury, the U.S. President Obama rolled his sleeves and got to work with the crew for relief and rehabilitation. The message is loud and clear. First, do not deny a problem when there is one. Second, words of sympathy and assurances are fine. Work for relief and rehabilitation with a hands-on approach is far better. The hurricane proved a time tested truth that holds good for both the electorate and the governing boards of corporations: the best way to win elections is to work to win trust. Everything else will follow.

The War on Terror: Damage Control in Action for Better PR

During the Second World War the strength of the Axis powers collided against the colonial empires of the Allied Powers. Despite the fact that the victory of the Allied powers it was difficult to tell if the battle was between good and evil. The war on terrorism initiated by George W. Bush Jr. was similar. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks it was only rational for the United States of America to take punitive action. But as the war progressed from targeting terrorists to installing puppet regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, other areas like Egypt and Syria it became increasingly clear that the United States had to change course. While the Syria crisis is work in progress, it must be accepted that Obama showed the world that the hand that can slay the demons can also be the hand that cares for the weak. Obama, the effective diplomat was amply on show during the Af-Pak years. Operation Geronimo was indeed a surgical strike of gold standards of clinical efficiency.

 Obama in India: The Melting Pot of Cultures

The oratory skills of Obama have been closely followed by the world over. There have been several top notch orators who have visited India. But one must accept that Obama’s speeches were not one way traffic flows but rather interactions. The Siri Fort auditorium address in New Delhi, the St.Xavier’s College Mumbai address to students, the address on the floor of the Parliament House in New Delhi where he called upon the inspiration of Swami Vivekananda, his partnership with Dr.Manmohan Singh that gave birth to the Singh Obama Scholarships and his famous handshake at tea with the Indian PM Shri Narendra Modi have been widely followed by people in India. For the first time the Indian Diaspora in the United States and the people of India realized that it is possible to combine the process discipline and efficiency of an American corporate enterprise with the family values of an Indian enterprise. It shall not be incorrect to state that the impact that U.S. President Barrack Obama has created in India is no less than the impact that Rabindranath Tagore had created on his first world tour across Great Britain, United States of America, Argentina, Germany, Italy and Japan or the visit of the Mahatma to Pietermaritzburg in South Africa. These were all game changers.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, we have integrated excerpts from Obama’s autobiography “The Audacity of Hope” in our lectures on business communication, videos of his addresses on foreign tours in Leadership and the implementation of Obama care in the case studies of economic environment of business. Academicians at this top business school of Greater Noida refer to him in the words of John Lennon of Beatles as “working class hero.” The millennial generation of PGDM students refer to him in the words of DJ Bravo: “Don’t forget Michael Jordan ... Obama a champion.”  As we conclude this footnote in the glory of Obama let’s do it in his style of a C-suite corporate leader:

“Let’s get back to work.”

The Post Oil Era Economy of Saudi Arabia: Insights from Top B.Com Colleges in Delhi NCR

The top B.Com Colleges in Delhi NCR have had some exciting times in the last month. Students of B.Com program have been mailing questions to academicians demanding replies on the post oil era of Saudi Arabia. The dramatic collapse in oil prices have been a watershed development in the global economy. Countries like India that are gross importers of oil and petroleum have had it easy and have found a way to cushion their foreign exchange reserves generating huge savings on their current account. The picture has been far from rosy for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As such Saudi Arabia it seems is finally coming to terms with the bitter realities of an export promotion policy led economy whose only bragging right is the abundance of oil. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top B.Com colleges in Greater Noida, the academicians have been collaborating on data collection and analyses drives to understand the background of the Saudi Arabian economy, the importance of oil, the demerits of an oil export dependent economy and the big bang economic reforms being engineered by Prince Muhammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.

The Slippery Oil Crisis and the Global Economy

In the year 2008 at the height of the sub-prime crisis, oil prices skyrocketed to U.S. $ 145. In the year 2016, the global economy has witnessed paradise burn to ashes with oil prices plummeting to a range between U.S. $ 27 and U.S. $45. On February 16, some of the leading oil producing countries initiated diplomatic efforts to engineer a strategic framework for dialogue on joint profit maximization and thus decided to curtail oil production to give a push to oil prices for the better. Consequently oil prices jumped by 5% the next day only to be pushed back to $30 later. An article published in the Harvard Business Review by authors Bernhard Hartmann and Saji Sam forecasts oil prices to fluctuate around the expected value of $50. In fact the authors also diagnose that the current prices are just about the average price of oil for the last 150 years when measured at the value of U.S dollar with 2014 as base year. The consistent patterns of oil based business cycles were shattered by productivity shocks form shale oil producers from United States of America.

Real Business Cycle Theory at Play in the Oil Industry: Courtesy U.S.A

During the past decade the United States of America has revitalized the oil production technology with shale oil producers improving their drilling and fracturing technology massively to produce massive increases in productivity. Drilling and fracturing technology has enabled U.S. based shale oil procuring companies to increase production in just six months at a minute capital investment relative to their competitors. The result has been that U.S based oil companies are now producing 4 million barrels of additional oil relative to what they produced in the year 2008. This is a major positive supply side shock that has disrupted the equilibrium prices and production of oil for the entire global economy. While these are still early days, academicians of Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top B.Com colleges in Greater Noida are in the process of engaging in data collection to assess and validate the hypothesis of a disruptive innovation in this case. On top of that this year the American government lifted the VER (voluntary export restraint) that had been in place for the last 40 years thereby allowing U.S. based oil producing companies to aggressively engage in export promotions.

Argentina and China are in the process of developing similar technologies for oil production increases. In fact the Xinhua news agency has confirmed that it is working on R&D efforts on its unique coal gasification technology. Saudi Arabia always had the advantage of excess capacity and hence used to act as a swing producer that had the capability to inflate or deflate oil prices by expanding or contracting supplies of oil. That competitive advantage has been destroyed.

Oil Everywhere but no Oil to Sell: The Challenges of the Saudi Arabia Economy

Last year Saudi Arabia’s foreign exchange reserves fell to historic lows with reserves being sufficient for only two years. It was rather starring at insolvency to be precise. Traditionally oil has contributed to more than 50% of the GDP of Saudi Arabia and more than 90% of the welfare state expenditure. The falling oil prices have only produced a budget deficit of U.S. $ 200 billion. While these are just aspects of the fiscal impact of the over dependence on oil, there is to more to the picture than meets the eye. The Saudi Arabian economy is plagued by a largely unskilled labour force, the partial or in some cases complete exclusion of women from the job and product markets, a lackluster work culture and precisely a total absence of vision to steer the economy away from oil.

The New Vision of Prince Muhammad bin Salman for Post Carbon Saudi Arabia

Prince Salman the new engineer of the Saudi economy has a great tight rope walk to do by balancing his vision for a modernized and revamped free market economy in Saudi Arabia and the historically conservative social and religions fabric of the country. On April 25, the Prince released his ambitious new vision document that would initiate far reaching economic reforms for the country’s economy. To begin with it includes the creation of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund that will hold more than U.S. $2 trillion in assets. The wealth fund would be large enough to buy the four business giants in the world- Apple, Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway and Google. Second, there is a well structure plan to disinvest 5% stake in the state owned oil company Saudi Armaco through an IPO. This shall transform the company into the world’s largest industrial conglomerate, streamline corporate governance, increase market capitalization and improve corporate strategy for productivity. Capital procured from the IPO shall be used to diversify investments into non-oil business verticals to hedge the security of the Saudi Arabic government’s portfolio of investment holdings. On the front of fiscal policy the Prince has introduced economic reforms to cut costs by reducing subsidies on water, electricity and gasoline. He may also introduce a value added tax on luxury goods and soft drinks. The combined effect is expected to generate a revenue of U.S. $ 100 billion a year by the year 2020.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the best B.Com college in Greater Noida, we deliberate upon these issues in the lectures of business environment and engage in productive discussions on resolving these challenges in the academic context.

Why Gender Equality is Imperative to India’s Economic Growth?: Insights from Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR

Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR have observed and researched on the relationship between India’s economic growth story and the gender equality conundrum from close quarters. Academicians at Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top MBA colleges in Delhi NCR have begun working on the issue by collecting data published by reliable business research and consulting organizations. The question in place has a lot to do with assessing and improving India’s economic growth potential and also understanding the relationship between free market democracy and the working of social institutions. While it is common for students pursuing courses like MBA and PGDM to ask for the differences between economic growth and development, it is now becoming crystal clear that economic growth and development exist have a circular relationship with one fostering the other. In this piece we take a look at why gender equality is central to India’s ambitions of sustaining the economic growth story and identify those states that fare relatively well on the metric of gender equality. We conclude with observations on finding consistency between policy thoughts for directly productive activities (DPA) and social overhead capital formation (SOC).

Forecasts for Gender Equality and Economic Growth in India

India’s economic growth potential and gender equality case is strengthened by many research publications. The latest of these research works is “The Power of Parity: How Advancing Women’s Equality Can Add $12 Trillion to Global Growth?” published by McKinsey Global Institute in November 2015. The report categorically asserts the following. If all countries were to achieve gender parity with those that are high on gender equality, it would enable the addition of U.S. $12 trillion to the global GDP by the year 2025. Moreover it also asserts that India could pocket an additional GDP of U.S.$ 700 billion by the year 2025 by laser focusing social and institutional reforms aimed at improving gender equality. This would translate into India increasing its annual GDP growth rate by 1.4 percentage points. Broken down into quantitative metrics to fix and achieve targets of gender equality, it means that India can achieve 70% of this “best in region” potential by adding another 68 million women to its labour force. The addition of these 68 million of these women would raise women’s participation by 10 percentage points. 70% of this increase in women’s participation in the labour force can come from bridging the economic and social gaps in just nine states. The assertions are based on the India Female Empowerment Index (Femdex) that the company has created.

Based on the findings of the research, McKinsey Global Institute came forward with scores of all Indian states for its Femdex.

The results produce some very important insights according to the researchers Jonathan Woetzel and James Manyika. The India Femdex scores show that the state at the top of the list that comes closest to gender parity is Mizoram with a score of 0.70 and the state at the bottom of the list is Bihar with a score of 0.42.

In recent times the Government of India has launched several schemes for women empowerment to save and educate the girl child. The sex ratio has improved to 943 females per 1000 males. India continues to rank on the lower side of the Gender Inequality Index of the UNDP at 127 out of 146 countries with a value of 0.563.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top MBA and PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR, we have included 2 case studies each on women empowerment and gender parity in business environment and business ethics and corporate governance. The academicians have integrated the works of Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen on the “missing women mystery.”