History has shown that institutions, which have been able to anticipate global changes and have been able to accept and adapt to the changes, have survived the test; while the others have become a part of the history. In India, as we integrate ourselves with the global economy, we have started realising the change in our lives. For many years we lived in a closed economy, believing in self-sufficiency rather than interdependency. The result was lack of competition, complacency and monopolistic regimes.

But when India opened her doors to the world economy, a switch from a seller’s to a buyer’s market took place. Some of the resident monoliths, which woke from their slumber, managed to survive; others just lost out in the race and some even vanished.

Our monoliths, in their need to be competitive had to shed some of their flab: either the current employees had to be trained and upgraded or jobs had to be found to suit their skills. CEOs had to be more answerable to the real owners – the shareholders – and had to innovate and find solutions and strategies to maintain the bottom line and keep the top line healthy.

The erstwhile successful family-run organisations also started moving towards professional managers and CEOs to adapt to the changing order. With the changing dynamics of the business environment, indigenous industry realised the need for employees having a formal education packaged with the experience of real life case studies. It was no longer just important to be good at number crunching, but also important to manage people, which is the vital raw material for any industry.

The new industries like the software industries and the consultancy group started demanding ‘knowledge workers’. It is in this regard that management education became very important; as it helps future managers broaden their horizons and think from the other’s perspective. However, there is a need for management schools to lay emphasis on the Indian environment. We have been dwelling on foreign environments for so long now, in spite of the fact that they are so alien to our culture – more so because as a country, we are a multicultural and pluralist society, providing far more diversity than most cultures abroad. It is a challenge in itself to manage this diversity. Besides India is also a vast country strong on human resources but weak in capital, which also becomes extremely challenging to manage. HLL, one of the major multinational companies that is considered to be an excellent training ground for corporate India, practices this strategy of putting their young urban managers in an absolute rural environment for two or three years. This helps them keep in touch with their target audience while developing strategies for servicing them.

Failure, they say is the doorstep to success, but sometimes the price of failure could be too high. Staying in touch with reality could help to avoid reinventing the wheel.