T.A. Pai Management Institute: Connecting the Present and Future Generations of Convergent Thinkers Date:   Friday , February 27, 2015 Life\'s numerous obstacles are best dealt by a combination of knowledge and experience - so is management. Management education is all about preparing the students to face the real world problems. TAPMI recognizes the need for success stories to be narrated by the protagonists themselves! In addition, it is always exciting for the students when teachers share their experiences and connect it with what is being taught in class. As the sixth term in the Post Graduate Diploma in Management Program at T.A. Pai Management Institute (TAPMI) approaches, this level of excitement is always on high among the marketing students, as the subject called \'Integrated Marketing Communication\' would be taught by Prof. Malavika Harita, CEO at Saatchi & Saatchi Focus Network. With the dreams of themselves being in the CEO\'s chairs the students find it extremely motivating to see a CEO herself teach! For TAPMI students, Prof. Malavika\'s classes are not the sole motivation. A similar situation can be seen when Prof. Nishith Mohanty, Senior Global Vice President - Human Resources, Manipal Group provides the students with knowledge of what skills and knowledge should prospective employees possess. Both Prof. Malavika and Prof. Nishith Mohanthy have been able to bring practicality into the classroom based on their expertise in dealing with the real world business problems on a daily basis and this has been extremely valuable to the students. Concurrently, the students have been able to grasp the knowledge with ease when professors like Dr. Gururaj Kidiyoor, Dr. Simon George and Dr. Vishwanathan Iyer began teaching their classes utilizing the case method of teaching and learning, which the professors have been trained for at the Harvard Business School.\"We ensure that our students get the best of the academics and industry as we would like them to possess world class knowledge and skills in order to work for the best and become the best,\" says Dr. R.C. Natarajan, Director. While the institute is able to get senior executives of top companies to boost the knowledge possessed by the students, it has made certain that the faculty members it hires are the finest and thus employs a rigorous process in evaluating the applicants. \"We ensure that the faculty members we hire for subjects with high theory-content possess a PhD in their field and are of top quality. We consider ourselves lucky when we are able to select 3 to 4 top faculty members out of the 1200 applications we receive while recruiting,\" says Dr. Natarajan. As TAPMI is an AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) accredited school, the institute ensures to hire faculty members who are able to present research work, which is acceptable to its own quality standards and that of AACSB. The institute provides around Rs. 1.25 Lakh to each faculty member as an encouragement to participate in more research activities. \"When a faculty member who can think on his/her own contribute to knowledge and bring that to the class room in a relevant manner, it is a great asset, which is very rare to find now,\" says Dr. Natarajan. The faculty members are also encouraged to use the Finance lab, which houses 16 Bloomberg terminals, the most in any B-School in the country. By utilizing these terminals, the faculty members can do more research with real data. Enhancing Knowledge through Experiential Learning As today\'s industry is extremely dynamic, to equip the students with the changing industry demands TAPMI relies heavily on experiential learning. \"We decided to adapt experiential learning in our institute so that our students will not be clueless about the current market when they join the industry,\" says Dr. Natarajan. To ensure maximum usage of the experiential learning method, the faculty members at the institute use role-plays, simulations and many case discussions during classes. The collaboration with Markstrat is one such initiative in this path for marketing students to understand how to take decisions when they are working in the industry. For the first year marketing students, the institute has introduced a simulation called \'Brand Pro\' and for the second year students, a full course by Markstrat have been introduced. \"The financial lab with 16 Bloomberg terminals was built with the primary reason to teach finance students a course called SMIC- \'Student Managed Investment Course\' through which students are able to relate theory to practice of stock market operations,\" says Dr. Natarajan. Students who wish to pursue this course are selected carefully by a panel consisting of faculty members, deans and the director, as they will be given capital to start a firm and then trade in approved stocks of NSE & BSE. Through these simulations, which have been in on curricular practice for the last fifteen years, the students have gained immense experience and furthermore they understand the risks they have to take. Dr. Natarajan adds, \"We are reducing the load on teaching time and increasing the self-learning practices considerably.\" The Application of Outcome Based Learning While selecting top quality faculty has been an important criterion, the TAPMI has also placed a heavy emphasis for outcome-based learning in the curriculum. \"At TAPMI, to keep in line with the mission to excel in post graduate management education, research and practice, we have introduced \'Outcome-based learning,\' which ensures that each course has clear-cut learning outcomes that the students will be able to demonstrate,\" says Dr. Natarajan. The students are informed right at the beginning what they are expected to learn in a particular course or subject. However, if a faculty member feels that not all learning outcomes have been achieved, he/she can revisit the plan, which was made earlier and change the way in which it can be achieved. Moreover, the institute has constant interaction with people from the industry who inform them about the current trends, knowledge and skills that the students need to possess. The interactions with the industry are conducted through the leadership lecture series and the various events held such as the Finance Conclave, Marketing Conclave and HR Conclave. \"The faculty members and students are able to meet senior executives of various companies and thus are able to share ideas, present papers and cases and also have a panel discussion with them,\" says Dr. Natarajan. These activities are also conducted in addition to the flagship event of TAPMI known as Brandscan, which is the annual market research fair conducted by the students. As a part of this event, companies provide live projects to the students, which are researched by collecting data through and projective and/or introjective techniques and analyzed using qualitative and quantitative tools and techniques. \"BrandScan gauges a wide array of research topics and has a unique way of eliciting unbiased and natural responses through the use of cleverly crafted \'disguised games.\'Furthermore, to validate the highest standards of quality for the research, it is partnered with leading data analytics and market research firms,\" says Dr. Natarajan. Conducted in the form of disguised games, the survey seeks information by actively involving visitors to the fair in a simulation who will reveal their true preferences and behavior. By utilizing a simple but powerful methodology, students who conduct the research present the results to its clients. BrandScan has done more than 240 projects for about 130 clients. The coveted list of clients includes HUL, Apple, Citibank, Airtel, Reebok, Samsung, IBM, ICICI, Amul, FlipKart, Fastrack and Perfetti among others. While the students and faculty members are able to gain a deep understanding of how consumers\' mind works at subconscious level, they are also able to present research papers and cases based on their findings and thus gain recognition. \"The industry has been impressed by the hard work we put in to change and improve our students and thus have recruited all our students with which we can claim to have achieved 100 percent placements,\" says Dr. Natarajan. Some of the companies that recruit the TAPMI students are Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Cognizant, Accenture, Google, Flipkart, Zee Television, Amul, Tata Motors, Tata Capital, KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst & Young to name a few. The institute is looking forward to entering the space of part time MBA, which will cater to the professionals who are busy with work and would like to gain more skills to climb up the corporate ladder. While the majority B-schools in India are struggling to provide quality education to their students, TAPMI has been always an exception, as the platform that they have created enables the real world problem solvers in the present industry to motivate the current learners to become next generation convergent thinkers. Dr. R.C. Natarajan He is presently the Director at T.A. Pai Management Institute. He has 30 years of work experience, of which 15 years in Managerial Cadre in FMCG industries and 15 years in Management Teaching in TAPMI, Manipal and IIM Indore. He obtained his Doctorate in Management from Manipal University. He holds a PGDRM (IRMA) and MA-Econ (JNU). His research interests are in writing cases and papers in the areas of Distribution Management and Marketing Strategy.