The time has come to redefine the MBA programme as it exists today, said KV Kamath, President, New Development Bank, and former Chairman of ICICI Bank and Infosys.
“Things are changing so dramatically that you cannot rely on a printed medium or on a case; it will be outdated in three years,” he pointed out, in an exclusive interview to BusinessLine on Campus , before his appointment as head of the Shanghai-headquartered bank.
Kamath, who was also Chairman of the Board of Governors, IIM Indore, points to the metamorphosis in the banking industry.
“Banking is seeing a metamorphosis every three years, not in ten years as thought earlier. E-tailing is having a huge impact on day-to-day activities. Ten to 12 years ago we talked of clicks vs bricks in the banking industry but now it’s an app world. Are we prepared for that? How are things like this taught in B-school? This is the rapidity of change and, in a way, students understand that this change is happening and, in their placements, they are going for things they would not have gone for earlier,” he explains.
Talking about his MBA from IIM-A in the early 1970s, Kamath, an engineer from REC, Surathkal (now an NIT), says an MBA gives one the broad tools and it is then up to the students to pick up speed in one’s work and learn on the job.
“The theoretical context is given to you and that will vary from school to school, how they teach you the context and prepare you at a broader level. From then to now there has been an updation, but things are changing so dramatically in terms of speed that schools will need to rethink how they will get students current on what they should know and they should increasingly look at other mediums — live content from corporates, aggregators, media houses — and put all this together. The school of the future will be an amalgam of all these."
To read more from the My MBA Lessons section, click here .