Term 6 started off pretty slowly with not much to do except all the events that we had this time. We had the Venture Capital Investment Competition, in association with the Kenan-Flagler Business School @ UNC. This was an internal round and the winner from ISB gets to participate in the Asia Round that we are organizing for the first time sometime in Feb. So this was kind of a trial run. I was handling all the logistics and I can tell you, it wasnt an easy job. It did go off without a hitch though, so no complaints.

VCIC Internal Round

Parallel to the VCIC, we also had the Energy Conclave organised by the Energy and Manufacturing Club on the same weekend!

Next, we had the RBI Governor, Dr. D Subbarao on campus to talk about the impact of the recent crisis on India and our future growth.

Dr. D Subbarao @ ISB

Then we had the ISB Leadership Summit, ISB’s flagship event with over 30 speakers coming over to speak on multiple panels, all on a single day. It was an interesting experience, with the sad part being the choices we needed to make on which discussion to attend. I settled for a very interesting panel discussion where Mr. B S Nagesh, the MD of Shopper’s Stop, spoke on his experience with Indian Retail and its growth over the years.

Mr. Nagesh on Indian Retail

Then of course, we also had ISB Day celebrations as ISB turned 8, with a cultural program over the weekend as well, with some great performances by students, staff, families, you name it!

ISB Day- The Acapella Band!

In between we also had the finals of the iDiya, the social entrepreneurship competition, with teams of working professionals from all over India competing, and the top 6 teams attending mentoring workshops at ISB. One of the highlights of the competition was the session on Responsible Leadership by Rahul Bose, who besides being an actor, is involved in a lot of different things, from the Indian rugby team to his NGO.

In addition, pre-placement talks have started, with companies coming to campus almost everyday to deliver their pitches. There are some really interesting roles up for grabs, and resumes are being polished, and interviews being prepared for.

And last, but definitely NOT the least, we have Solstice 2009 this weekend. The biggest fun event of the year, when ISB alums from all over come back to school for 3 days of partying with the current batch.

WHEW! So much for being short, I am already out of breath.

Oh, and this is just a single term at ISB!

- Jasnoor

Class of 2010

For further details please visit www.isb.edu/ils2008

As for my club (Business Technology) , we are having our panel discussion with the theme “Think Small: Technology for emerging markets”. We have created a small promotional video for this. More details on the event once it goes through. Any of you interested, we would definitely like you to come and be part of it.

BTC Track Promotional Video for ILS 2008 on Youtube

I was listening to Mr. OP Bhatt, CMD of SBI who was speaking at the CLIC conference here at ISB and his topic of talk was the organizational transformation of SBI in the last 1.5 years under his charge. I listened in amazement at how he went about rejuvinating the organization – a public sector behemoth. Many of the things we learnt in OB class were put to use and with spectacular results. Just as an example, he talked about how he motivated peons at the SBI branches to take up additional responsibility and thus improve productivity and response time at the bank. He had them trained to operate the basics of the computer and printer and how to update the pass books of the bank customers. With this, their additional role was to update the passbooks of the customers, thus taking the load away from the teller. This was a phenomenal success. The peons got so motivated that they were not only proficient, they asked for more responsibility. And the amazing part of this was that the labour unions did not even ask for a pay hike. This is a classic example of intrinsic motivation as we study in OB. The peons whose only work was to transfer files from desk to desk at times and just sit in some obscure corner smoking a bidi was all of a suddena very important person in the bank. Customers queued up to him and requested him to update their passbook. This gave him recognition, pride and a sense of belongingness.

So why did I start on this seemingly boring intellectual post early on a sleepy cold November morning? Well the thing is I have been reading Managing Teams for my exams this week and these thoughts kept going around in my head. As regards a campus update, a lot is going on. Placement fever has set in and some international companies have started coming in. We have our Term 5 exams this week. Another term just whizzed past. 3 more to go…Wish me luck with everything