On a couple of visits to the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, Sanjay Padode, founder, IFIM Business School, Bengaluru, saw that the graduate candidates who joined there were in pretty much the same physical shape as the recruits at his B-school. But, during the graduation parade, the newly-minted officers were brimming with confidence.

“So, I was perplexed and wondered what do they do at the IMA that we can’t do in civilian life,” he said.

He put this question to a tough-looking sergeant, who was getting his wards to jump three-storeys into a pool. The sergeant told Padode that the importance of such exercises was that it built self-confidence.

Unique programme

Overcoming physical hurdles also breaks down mental barriers, Padode gathered, as he thought to himself, “Why don’t we get these smaller wins for our students; win small and build confidence.”

With that objective in mind, IFIM launched its unique personality enhancement programme (PEP) six years ago.

PEP has two components: lifestyle and life skills.

“Wellness is an important part of holistic education. Our students have to necessarily participate in yoga classes and in sport and they get credits for that. Every term they have certain benchmarks to achieve. Their confidence is built by small achievements and we keep pushing them to surpass the benchmarks. They get physically fitter and mental barriers also break,” says Padode.

On life skills, the students are expected to perform and demonstrate improvement in communication, leadership, negotiation and teamwork, for which, too, they get credits.

IFIM’s PEP, along with its social immersion projects, industry internship programmes, and research incubation offered to students, helped IFIM secure the AASCB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) accreditation.

As Padode explains, the challenge was to align the mission with the teaching and learning processes; demonstrate faculty sufficiency both in terms of qualifications, relevance and numbers; ; financial stability, as well as the acceptance of the mission by external stakeholders such as corporates and society.

Reshaping curricula

With the ASSCB accreditation in hand, Padode roped in former IMT-Ghaziabad Director, Atish Chattopadhyay as Director, to reboot IFIM and get its students ready for new businesses .

As he says, IFIM is now engaged in preparing a curriculum for the fourth industrial revolution, which is all about a fusion of technologies from the physical and digital spaces. One of the first exercises IFIM embarked on was to invite 300 industry leaders to respond to a quantitative survey based on the World Economic Forum framework for the skill-sets required in the future. Post that, there were a series of industry conclaves in four major cities.

Based on the inputs from the conclaves, recommendations were made for relevant management education curricula, explains Chattopadhyay.

Some of the contours of the new curricula, Chattopadhyay says are to introduce design thinking and innovation incubation where the students will need to develop a business plan and demonstrate the proof of concept or develop a minimum viable product.

The other plan is to develop a platform to provide skills to the industry, academia and professionals in gen-next technologies.

This platform will focus on AI, data engineering and business analytics, digital commerce and blockchain.

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