CMS B – School, Jain (Deemed-to-be University) had organized a One-Day National Seminar on Innovations in Management Education and Career Development on 11 August 2018.

Dr. Harold Andrew Patrick, Dean Academics, CMS B-School, spoke about the new domains that have opened up in the post-digital era and the changing expectation for management professionals from the employers. He stressed on the importance of this seminar for students and researchers to get insights into this change.

The chief guest of the event Mr. Bhaskar Bhat, MD Titan Company in his inaugural address connected the seminar theme with the theme of the book – “Managing Performance” written by our honorable Chancellor Dr. C G Krishnadas Nair. The book was also released on the same occasion. He highlighted on the fact that innovation is different from technology implementation. It holds true both in industry and academia. In a world that requires continuous learning, it becomes important to instill in students, curiosity, inspiration and creativity that fosters innovation. He also highlighted the main themes covered in the book such as CSR, ethics and integrity, social accounting etc.

Mr. Prakash Belwadi, actor, activist and journalist who honored the occasion as the guest of honor spoke about the paradox of management and career today. He emphasized the fact that on the one hand we are managed by systems and on the other hand we are faced with choices. In the era of artificial intelligence, if we continue to depend more on machines our choices will be dictated by them.

Our honorable Chancellor Dr. C.G. Krishnadas Nair spoke about his book “Managing Performance” and the motivation for writing this. He spoke about the compliance of CSR and management responsibility to innovate and improve. He also mentioned about social accountability which is balance sheet of what we take from the society and what we give back. He called it as Sustainable Balance Sheet. He also mentioned about the responsibility of the business towards all its stakeholders. He calls for more research on such topics as innovation for the betterment of the economy. Sir has put in all his managerial experience and insights in the form of this book.

Dr. N. Sundarajan, our honorable Vice Chancellor gave detailed information about the Jain University Press and the Aventure magazine of the University. He also spoke about its usefulness to the community of researchers and writers. He narrated the journey and growth of Jain University in such a short span.

Prof. Mithileswar Jha, our Pro-VC gave the keynote address for the seminar. The topic being Innovation in Management Education: Kautilya Entrepreneurship and Management Institute (KEMI) MBA Story. He spoke about the importance of humility in education, “higher education should liberate the minds”. He talked about the history of management education in the world and how KEMI is redefining entrepreneurship education focusing on India centric values. KEMI is named after Kautilya, whom we all believe as the greatest economist and management scholar.

Technical session
The technical session started after the tea-break with two eminent speakers from industry, Mr. Sujitesh Das, VP Global HR, Microland Ltd., And Ms. Asha M, Associate Director, Accounting Advisory Services, KPMG.

Mr. Sujitesh Das spoke on the new generation management terminologies. He spoke about the importance of V-sumes, E-Gens, and Prodman for Self-marketing. He spoke about the importance of training and experience in management to make it – “20 nothing into 40 something and 60 everything.”

Next speaker was Ms. Asha M, who narrated the Satyam Story and her role in innovatively handling the accounting fraud. Her message was that any unethical business practice is going to bust one day and innovation is a daily affair in Industry.

Paper Presentation Session
11 papers were presented on different topics and the Evaluator of presentation Session was Dr. Ganesh L., Prof. General Management, Christ University.

Panel Discussion
Topic: Past, Present and Future Management Education
Panelists: Dr. Laxminarayan Rao, Dr. Vinod Kumar Murty, and Dr. Ali Azkar
Moderator: Dr. Sudarshan Seshanna

Dr. Ali Azkar was the first speaker. He spoke about his experience as education in the past was teacher-centric and it was all peer collaborative and self-learning. Now, everything is available as information at Google and the challenge is how the available information is effectively used. The focus is on experiential learning. Education now is Learner-centric.

Dr. Laxminarayan Rao started his speech with the emphasis on employment. He said, more humans went through education meant for employment and now we are sure of the employment in the future. He stressed on 5 horizontal competencies and the need for change in curriculum and evaluation pattern. He said in the future employment becomes the utility.

Dr. Vinod Kumar Murty put his experience as a student saying, there were no textbooks as such and had to study from so many irrelevant books. The things have changed with tremendous opportunities for learners with a wider scope.

The views and the content of each panelist were well summarized and moderated by Dr. Sudharshan Seshanna.