Harvard dresses up for growth courses in India

Harvard Business School will start an executive education programme in India next year, reports Narayanan Madhavan.

Harvard Business School will start an executive education programme in India next year, stepping out of its traditional East Coast venue in the US, targeting companies with global ambitions to address what it believes is the typical challenge in the booming economy--managing hypergrowth.

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The kick-off programme would be a week-long one at Hyderabad in February on the theme, “Building global enterprises out of India,” Krishna Palepu, global management guru and senior associate dean for international development at Harvard, told Hindustan Times.

He said companies growing 20 per cent a year had typical challenges that Harvard had studied systematically, and would use the course both to share its experiences and learn from practitioners, with its philosophy of a “bias towards action”.

How to generate leaders at a pace consistent with growth was one question that many companies had to address, he said. Other issues include challenges in shifting from cost-based growth to innovation-based growth, mastering acquisitions and alliances, and building a global organisation.

Harvard Business School planned to have three more courses in India next year, focusing on private equity, real estate and mergers and acquisitions, Palepu said.

“We saw the changes going around the world as an intellectual opportunity, not a market opportunity,” Palepu said.

With a decade of careful study of new trends, aided by its own five global research centres, Harvard had prepared itself carefully for the course, Palepu said, adding that about 160 of 400 research studies in Harvard last year were from outside the US, representing a 40 per cent share against 10 per cent a decade ago.