Guest lecture by Dr. Marc Ghisi

He has a remarkable ability to rearrange alphabets into words that touch the senses.. Dr. Marc Luyckx Ghisi was here at our campus from 19^th to 20^th of September. Dr. Marc Ghisi has worked directly for Presidents of the European Commission, Mr. Jacques Delors and Mr. Jacques Santer, as a member of the “Forward Studies Unit”, in the European Commission from 1990 until 1999. We at SPJIMR were honored to have such an eminent personality & renowned fantast at our campus. He addressed the students on “Why business is changing”.

His speech was packed with enlightening statistics, extra ordinary anecdotal evidence and was undogmatically alive. He took us on a journey to the centre of the transmodern planet. He reached his core premise – the new uneasy struggle between the industrial modern society and knowledge transmodern society. Part sociological thesis, part guidance for future, his speech was engrossing and emphatic. Transmodern state is about non-violent negotiation. On this count, EU is a success, he declared.

“Business has a mission in bringing about change. Profit is just a consequence”, he observed. He pointed out that business education is about two legs. The first leg is where the traditional topics are learnt…finance, accounting, marketing et al. This is about the win-lose world. The second leg is where the soft skills are learnt. This is the win-win world. Both are important. Today’s tools of production are knowledge based. So, in a knowledge economy industrial management and mindset won’t work. He warned us about a serious global problem..that of collective death in spite of money and technology.

In the pre-modern world, the cosmos was sacred. In the modern world, the cosmos is relegated to being just an object. We need to take a leap into the transmodern world where men and women are part of the cosmos…where people bring about positive changes to sustain and nurture life. Dr. Ghisi explained how the animosity between France and Germany was made to evaporate in about one and a half generations. Why isn’t it possible to do the same in south Asia? Food for thought! When a visionary is pointing at the moon, it’s foolish to look at the finger. The moon is symbolic of non-violence. The finger is “free trade” between nations. It is high time that the governments took note of this.

For all of us, this talk was a vivid handshake with one of the best minds from the EU.

To have a further look on Dr. Marc’s publications and interests do visit: http://www.vision2020.be/