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There is a huge potential for Indian IT companies in Brazil and they need to leverage their strengths in the Latin American country. “The Brazilians look at India as a reference point,” says Carlos Arruda, Professor of Innovation and Competitiveness at the Brazilian business school Fundacao Dom Cabral (FDC), on a recent visit to India.
Global perspective
“We want to build a connection,” says Arruda. “We are working on project called the Indo-Brazil Club which will totally focus on IT companies. Can Indian IT companies see Brazil as a potential partner; could Brazilian companies see India as a potential partner. We are going to help on these exercises. We are going to bring Brazilians here to meet IT people.” The goal he says is to give Brazilian companies a global perspective. Indian IT companies with competent English language skills can thrive in the services industry, he points out.
FDC is Latin America’s best known B-school. But, its programmes are not targeted at graduate students but at businesses. Created in 1976, FDC designs programmes for businesses to help modernise their corporate structures and achieve sustainable growth. Around 35,000 executives attend its programmes every year. The school has strategic alliances and agreements with world-renowned schools from Europe, Asia and the US.
More than 25,000 executives attend FDC’s programmes every year. The B-school has struck alliances and agreements with world-renowned schools from Europe, Asia, the United States and Latin America.
Elaborating on the FDC way, Arruda says, “That’s what we call learning through partnership. It’s not just the professor speaking and everybody listening, but sometimes the company speaks and the professor and others listen. We have developed this methodology very well. We are working with about 700 companies and that’s what we want to do here in India: Brazilian and Indian companies together learning, teaching, sharing, visiting each other.”
Arruda says that in the mid-90s, recognising the tumult the world was going through, it designed a programme for future CEOs; for people in the 40-45 years age group. “It is called STC – skills, tools and competency. Every year we bring about a hundred future CEOs. The CEOs of Nokia and Shell in Brazil are alumni of this programme. The CEO of largest food company in Brazil called Brazil Foods is also an alumni,” explains Arruda.
The interesting thing about FDC is that it has no placement office! “Because hundred per cent of our students are already employed and they are sponsored by the companies,” says Arruda.
Full-time faculty
With the business orientation the FDC has, it has a full-time faculty of around 32 professors. But it uses about 300 professionals to teach; they could be a manager, a consultant, or an independent faculty member from industry. “Those 300 are the ones who really run most of our programmes. We train the trainers. We help them learn how to teach and how to transfer knowledge and so on.”
Very often, it designs a programme for a company. And later, visits to see how it applies what you it has learnt. “It is much more result-oriented than just knowledge-oriented,” explains Arruda.
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