Harvard Builds Its Global Enterprise in India

Author:  Roderick Millar, Editor, IEDP.info

First Published:  November 2007

In February 2008 Harvard Business School will run its first Executive Education program in India. “Building a Global Enterprise in India” is aimed at senior managers of businesses either currently operating in India or those contemplating such a project. At 180,000 Indian rupees (approximately $4600) it will only be attractive to the largest Indian businesses – but it still represents a hefty discount on similar programs run at the Harvard campus in the US.

Price, of course, is not the critical criteria in executive education. The barriers to entering such programs are typically the perception of benefits accrued from attending - and scheduling. Harvard remains the pre-eminent name in business education; having attended a Harvard exec-ed program is a resumé notable event, even for the most senior of executives. So regardless of whether participants gain any tangible or implementable knowledge from a particular program the mere fact of attendance is often valuable in itself. The “Building a Global Enterprise in India” program will be no sinecure however, it boasts an impressive faculty line-up and will feature some specially created case studies for the Indian market. Participants can be pretty sure that they will take away some sophisticated insights and ideas. If you buy into the concept of executive education at all you can be confident that the benefits box will be ticked. The second barrier to entry, scheduling, is always something of a lottery but by bringing the program to India Harvard are clearly reducing the inconvenience factor significantly.

Harvard has been building its Indian base for many years. The Indian university system is largely state-run and this has meant that academics and professors have been restricted in their employment terms and critically their pay. The result of this has been a steady stream of the best Indian academics following the money to the well-endowed US universities, and clearly Harvard has benefited from this process. The accumulation of Indian expertise at Harvard Business School (HBS) was institutionalised formally in 2005 with the opening of the HBS Indian Research Center (IRC) in Mumbai. In recognition of the enormous growth achieved and yet to be realised in India the IRC was created to enable the HBS faculty to learn from the Indian economy and companies and thereby enrich the school's teaching programs – it is not a teaching centre itself, although it plays a central role in developing Indian based case studies, Harvard’s signature teaching method.

Prof David Yoffie, Senior Associate Dean and Chair of Executive Education at HBS told IEDP.info  “We put great emphasis on teaching that is close to practice.  Through the IRC and by working closely with many Indian companies and business leaders to conduct research in India over the past ten years, we have been able to identify some of the key challenges facing companies looking to manage and sustain growth in India, develop unique Indian focused case studies and teaching materials and ensure that participants have an experience that is grounded in the day-to-day business environment they are operating in.”

The selection of topic for this first India-based program comes directly from the IRC’s close contacts with Indian industry. Prof Yoffie said “Rapid economic expansion in India in recent years has created unique and varied challenges for companies and through our research we found that there were some core issues facing companies as they sought to manage and sustain that growth in a global marketplace.  The curriculum for the program reflects some of those key areas - a focus on strategy, developing leadership talent and managing the transition from competing on cost to competing on innovation.” It is part of HBS’s global strategy to increase the number and range of such programs offered in non-US locations and there is a clear intention to offer further exec-ed programs in India from next year.

The program is to be run in Hyderabad at the International Convention Centre (ICC). Hyderabad increasingly vies with Bangalore as the IT capital of India and the ICC itself is situated in Hitec City, a new IT focused business park that houses organisations such as Microsoft, Dell, Oracle, GE and banking giant HSBC. Hyderabad offers a number of other useful strengths as well. It is geographically the most central large city in India but perhaps of more interest to the exec-ed sector, it is also home to the Indian School of Business (ISB), India’s leading private sector business school which has close relations with Wharton, Kellogg and London Business School. The arrival of HBS on their doorstep has created something of a stir at ISB. ISB dean M Rammohan Rao was recently quoted in the Indian newspaper the Economic Times as saying “While competition in the education field is good for society, the existing stakeholders will feel the brunt when institutes of international repute foray into India”.

Harvard however, are not the first of the major business schools to run stand alone exec-ed programs in India. As mentioned Wharton and Kellogg have their alliance with ISB (LBS’s connection is limited to faculty sharing); but the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan has been running their Global Program for Management Development (GPMD) there for 13 years. The GPMD has been taught both in open enrolment and custom format to more than 350 executives at over 70 major Indian businesses including Tata, Ranbaxy, Mahindra, ICICI, Godrej and TVS group in India during that period. Ron Bendersky, the Executive Director of Executive Education at the Ross School, told IEDP.info that “participants in the program learn about local and global “next practices” for building competitive capability. Our core instructors in this program have served as advisors in various projects to large Indian firms over the last decade and leverage their expertise through India specific teaching materials and case studies. The programs are very action oriented and each manager walks away with an ‘action agenda”- things that he /she can implement on their return.  As a result, everyone in top management in firms like ICICI and TVS Motors has been through this program.”

Like Harvard the Ross School also runs an India Research Centre started in 2004, under the co-direction of CK Prahalad and MS Krishnan, which informs the teaching of the GPMD program. Prof Prahalad, who recently topped the Thinkers50 2007 ranking of the world’s leading business thinkers, leads the faculty on the program. The next GPMD will be run at the ICICI Bank Learning Centre, Khandala about an hour outside Mumbai, rather than in Bangalore where it has been previously.

Ross’s involvement in India is focused on three pillars – a CEO Forum that is in its 14th year, GPMD that is in its 13th year and a research program based on The India Centre which is in its 4th year. 

The Harvard program while having a different focus to Ross’s increases the top-level supply of executive education programs in India – it will be interesting to see whether its arrival expands the market demand or heightens the competition. Either way it looks like Harvard’s arrival is going to change the growth strategies of not just their program participant’s organisations but those of their business school competitors as well.

For more information on:

The HBS Executive Education program: Building a Global Enterprise in India

The Ross School of Business, University of Michigan: GPMD

Indian School of Business (ISB).