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/

Today is my day

Hey readers, this is not my first attempt at blogging but I am not a professional blogger as is Godfather “Ganga” - as I fondly call him. Seriously speaking I really do not understand some of his serious blogs like the one about night canteen. But that doesn’t really matter. As a matter of fact what more can you expect of yours truly who has made fewer appearances in Eco classes than the same of a guest faculty at SPJIMR. But thankfully my classmates do recognize me as one of them and don’t ask me awkward questions like “Are you in PGDSM MIT?”

I would like to just throw a beam of light into the life of a PGDSM-MITian through this blog. But it’s from my point of view, which would of course match with that of Ambar, Amit Maheswari, Parag, Taha, Pramod and rest of the ‘most sincere’ participants of PGDSM MIT 03. Topper’s league consisting of Shireen, Maulik, Rakesh, Pranav, Praveen, Partha, Sonia, Anamitra and others are better off in Pamplin…hehe. There was an ip from heaven that there is an urgent need of ‘Smart Working’ people for Business Analysts and higher profiles in the “Soul Chain Management” (SCM) wing over there and would be paid handsomely. So, I forwarded the resumes of all people in the topper’s League. As of Praveen, he can always carry his Halo over there. The rest like me can enjoy ‘Welcome Party’ in hell. The ones left out are very much invited to do “Dandiya’ tomorrow.

Don’t blame me if Prof. Tom comes next day into the class and says “Today, you have to make a rational rose model of Dandiya at Virginia Tech”! I really do have amazing B-plans. Otherwise, how do you think Bansal Polishing Company made it to Fortune (- 500) list. It’s this much from me right now. But before I leave I really promise one thing. PGDSM-MIT will have its own mirror blog site on intranet soon. Will be of great use during all those hours of no-internet! Bye for now.

- Sudhir Jena

Prof. Tom Sheehan has arrived...

It is a great pleasure for the students and faculty of PGDSM MIT to extend a warm welcome to Dr. THOMAS T. SHEEHAN. Dr. Sheehan is the Director of Masters in Information Technology Program, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia. Dr. Sheehan will be here with us from 25.09.06 to 29.09.06. He will be teaching ‘Systems Approach to Business Modeling’ to PGDSM MIT 03 participants.

It's the time to dandia!!

Folks,
ColoSeuM...apna sports n cult com...is organizing a gala dandia nite on 27th september. We promise foot tapping dandia numbers till you drop! And more. So, mark your calendar. Come and be part of the most happening thing on our campus on 27th sep! Check out the lovely invite below.

What we are reading...

*. Nitish Shukla

- Options, Futures & Derivatives, (a textbook for other courses) by John C Hull -

- Microsoft Excel - Data Analysis and Business Modelling, by Wayne L. Winston –

- The Google Story, by David A Vise

- The Search, by John Battelle

*. Moon Nagar: India 2020 by APJ Abdul Kalam

*. Amit Kumar: Introduction to Material Mgmt.....by Tony Arnold

*. Partha: Deception point by Dan brown…unputdownable!

*. Praveen: Lee Iacocca.. About the book – It’s pretty old and has got a stale smell to it.

*. Ganga:
- The undercover economist by Tim Harford
- Ten deadly marketing sins…signs & solutions by Phil Kotler

*. Abhishek Ranjan: IT in financial banking, retail industry..

*. Aditya Baliga
- Insurance - fundamentals, environment, procedures by Bodla, Garg and Singh
- Ordinary man's guide to the empire by Arundhati Roy

*. Karthikeya Rathore
- The Fifth Discipline by Peter M Senge
- Games People Play by Eric D Berne

*. Sukanya
- The Walmart effect - Charles Fishman
- Doing it Right - The makeover of India's Manufacturing (An ET intelligence group report)

*. Maulik Shah
- The Search for the Perfect language. - Umberto Eco
- The Ultimate CRM Handbook - John G Feeland
- Stalin - Gimenez, Manuel
- Rosicrucian Enlightenment - Yates, Frances A
- Course of German history: A survey of the development of German history since 1815 by Taylor, A J P

*. Manas Sahu: - Lateral Thinking...by Edward De Bono..

*. Ruby Singh: - An Intimate note to the sincere seeker by H.H.Sri Ravi Shankar

The Independence Day @ SPJIMR

14^th august. Dr. Luiz DaSilva’s first day of contact session. 9am... Sid and Su had made arrangements for the posters (about the Virginia Tech contact session) to pop up at all the vantage points including the 'B mile' notice board (Bistro mile - walkway leading to the bistro). The day before that Sid, Su and I sat for a poster review. What was supposed to be a 5 minute review, update, save to pen drive and dash to royal Xerox itinerary, turned out to be an hour long session. Mumbai baarish notwithstanding, we ran to Andheri station…hurriedly crossed the bridge and walked into royal xerox. Now this is a pigeon hole of a photocopy, printing, designing and publishing dukaan. Well, not that you could expect more real estate for a photocopy enterprise in Mumbai.

The open book-open lappy quiz at 1.30pm was bit of a learning curve and was fun. Dr. DaSilva’s class ended at 5pm. It was pizza time at bistro. No sooner had we silently polished off pizza, vada pav and samosa, Pallavi joined us and told us about the rehearsals going on in GW 2. This was for the morrow’s cultural program. She did a good job of convincing us. Soham, Su, Moon and I walked up the flight of stairs.

At the far end of GW2, Shek (Ranjan) and Rohit were singing to glory behind what looked like a massive piano waiting to grow up…it was the synthesizer actually. Nishant was effortlessly getting his chord right. Adi was on the acoustic guitar. Zoshi was busy practicing ‘raghupati raghava raja ram’. Couple of paces from there, RJ and Sai were busy crafting a brilliant feminine silhouette in a tricolor logo. Saurabh was back with FlickPic posters and carried a festive zeal. Pan to the center of the hall…There was a motley group of 3 or 4…Maulik, Sonia, Rakesh and Javed. Tarun and Chandan joined soon. Shireen and Sonal were choreographing the theme dance. They both are wonderfully talented dancers. What more, they can even infuse synchronization into a willing group of dancers. We joined the party.

Javed, Subir and I had the quintessential negative role…that of stoking communal hatred. After bharariYummy-Yam, the mould is cast. The angels of peace (read Shireen and Sonal) lift the pall of gloom and make good Samaritans out of us. We run with saffron, white and green pieces of satin cloth while Shireen and Sonal make the chakra with blue satin cloth prop. Umpteen number of rehearsals and improvisations, we seem to get it right. Everybody is dead tired. We call it a day and plan to meet at 8am next morning. Slept like a log of wood.

15^th August. SPJIMR campus wore a festive look. The blush of the saffron, the tranquil of the white and the verdant green were everywhere - paper flags, flowers and those lovely kurtas. National flag was hoisted at 8.30 a.m. The cultural program started pretty soon in the audi. PGP guys started off with poetry recital and patriotic songs. PGPX staged a street play called ‘Mumbai meri jaan’…a thought provoking one at that. The way the actors translated the local train and Mumbai street scenes onto the stage medium with little or no props was amazing. We, PGDSM MIT, had kept the best for the last. Shek, Rohit and Zoshi gave mellifluous rendition of patriotic songs while we alloyed the dance-drama into the songs. The finale was when we made the flag formation with satin cloth props. The audience gave us a resounding applause. Two sounds were very clear for PGDSM MIT. One was a pat on the back. The other was a gentle push showing us more sky. CultCom, take a bow!

c u soon,
Ganga

Flickpic - mooh pe smile daal

It is like catching some fresh air in a bottle and closing the lid. You would have observed in your morning walks that you can feel your lungs when you take in fresh air..ahem, I have not seen many sunrises myself. Actually, the last time I saw a sunrise was in Kanyakumari 2 years ago. The last time I saw a sunset was a year and half ago…at Haji Ali. Working at Central European Time has its downsides, you know. Back to the bottle now. This blog is an attempt to bottle such fresh air. Guess it will feel good later to open the lid once in a while to get a whiff of pure air.

The occasion was the launch of ‘FLICKPIC’ movie club. This is an initiative from apna PGDSM-MIT INFRACOM. It is a well thought out name for the movie club. In fact it is a good idea to submit this service/name idea in the marketing assignment that is due tomorrow! But there is a team of 8 entrepreneurial people…Manas Western Winds, Rahul RJ45, Navneet, Sonaal, Pradeep Baldi, Ankur Zoshi, Amit Kumar and Nitin Kumar who own the patent for it and rightly so. FlickPic is the fruit of the collective enthu and creativity of these InfraCommers.

4pm. O.R group work done. Time to down dip chaai. Some of my journo classmates tell me that the latest buzzword is ‘double chaai’, though. Not a chance. We made a beeline to the audi instead. The curiosity and excitement were palpable. If we had a popcorn stall in front of audi, we could have made enough dough to wash off water issues in girls hostel..heheeee. If wishes were caramel and cheese…yummy. Prof. Sunil Rai, Prof. Aditi, Prof. Mona, Prof. Nikhil Agarwal graced the occasion. Lakshmi M’am, Dipali M’am and Vanita M’am joined us soon.

Navneet, as cheerful as ever, welcomed the gathering and requested Prof. Rai to speak a few words. Prof. Rai addressed the gathering in his inimitable style. The curtains came up. The credits rolled. A finely made flash movie thanked our faculty for their encouragement and support.

The movie started. ‘Pirates of the Silicon Valley’. It was about Apple computers taking on the Big Blue. Steve Jobs and pal Woz making it big in an industry where CEOs asked ‘of what use is computer to ordinary people?’. It was about Bill Gates making big bucks right under the nose of Steve Jobs. It was probably a one movie distillation of a hundred documentaries on entrepreneurial drive and biz strategy. If you are here to move from cubicle to conference rooms and today made up your mind to move from classroom to audi, this movie was for you.

For those of you who couldn’t make it…well, guys.. looking forward to catch you all during FlickPic’s next flick.

It’s all about bottle and fresh air. Watch this space.

c u soon,

ganga