Management and strategy made easy

Updated on: Wednesday, August 19, 2009

All of us are or can be strategists. It shows in the way we plan our future, live our lives and deal with people. However, strategic management — as a subject in the MBA — is still not considered as an area of focus in most Bschools and its status is just as one of the many compulsory subjects.

Another hindrance to having strategy-focussed business and management education are the high costs involved (an MBA programme today can cost anywhere between Rs 6 and Rs 10 lakh for a two-year course) and non-availability of qualified strategy faculty in most B-schools.

Aware of such a situation, Education Times has come up with a solution that can disseminate live, interactive, tailor-made, customised courses delivered on a two-way, real time, interactive digital platform to students at any given point of time and place.

NEED OF THE HOUR
There is growing awareness among working executives, entrepreneurs and students about the special role of strategy in determining their success quotient. The good news is that these groups are on the lookout for strategy focussed business and management education programmes which emphasise risk taking, execution and leadership. As Ranjan Das, professor of strategic management at IIM Calcutta, who is also the chief mentor and founder of The Strategy Academy, an institution that delivers strategy focussed postgraduate and corporate programmes directly to the desktop of participants located anywhere in the world, opines, "In order to be successful, one need not wait for the environment to be favourable. If an organisation or an individual is always correctly positioned based on strategy, it will continue to be successful and generate wealth, irrespective of the turbulence in the environment." He adds, "Short, compact programmes focussed on management and strategy can work wonders because they can help save money and time, without sacrificing quality. Even the preparatory period is much shorter, although it covers the entire gamut of strategic management."

COURSE CONTENT
In collaboration with an institution that networks with a credible group of professionals (such as the faculty of premier management institutes like IIMs etc and also the faculty in overseas management institutes or universities), Education Times proposes to present two programmes titled Postgraduate Programme in Management, Strategy and Leadership (PGPMSL) and Postgraduate Programme in Strategy, Innovation and Management of Start-up (PGPSIMS), respectively. The first programme, PGPMSL, is designed especially for the working executives who are interested in self-development on-the-job and keen to upgrade their strategy, execution and leadership skills in order to progress rapidly in their career. The second programme, PGPSIMS, would prepare both working executives and fresh students to plan and set up their own enterprises. The total duration of both the programmes will be 11 months with 324 hours of live sessions spread over 40-45 weeks and extensive self-study hours at home based on given guidelines. Each postgraduate programme will have three semesters having a total of 18 subjects plus one dissertation, take-home assignments, end-semester examinations and year-end viva. Faculty members from top B-schools, including IIMs, other management institutes and overseas professors will conduct classes over the live, twoway interactive, digital platform. Since both programmes will have full-time working executives as participants, the formal sessions will be held mostly on Saturday afternoons and Monday evenings and only occasionally on weekday evenings.

TECH-ESSENTIALS
All a student would need is a PC or a laptop, a headphone and a 256 kbps broadband service (or a high speed broadband data card) or just visit any cybercafé where all these are readily available.

Times of india

Management and strategy made easy

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