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Stanford Business magazine

 

Class Mixes MBAs in Bangalore, Silicon Valley

Stanford MBA students returned from Bangalore last September with valuable insights into Indian culture and the country’s economy. The students who took part in an intense week of living, learning, and bonding with peers at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore (IIMB) came back with an understanding of the rapidly developing nation—an understanding they say is missing from most international exchange programs, where students often spend more time with fellow Americans than with the people of the country they are visiting.

That was the intent of Seenu Srinivasan, the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management at the Business School, who helped design the new exchange program as a way for students to immerse themselves in the reality of Indian business without having to spend an entire academic quarter away from Stanford. The new program has a structure similar to the Business School’s exchange program with Tsinghua University in Beijing.

“They lived on campus and ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a group of 16 IIMB students,” said Srinivasan. “They got to know each other in depth.”

If mealtimes offered a great way to start the bonding process, the camaraderie deepened during long bus trips over roads packed with cars and cows alike to destinations like Infosys, Google India, and local health care centers. Indeed, these daily commutes, which most Indians endure without a shrug, emerged as one of the most striking lessons of the program—a metaphor for how the growing opportunities in India today are tempered with equally big challenges, and how the locals manage to navigate the two extremes with patience and optimism.

Like the outdated roads over which Indians travel to high-paying jobs in modern office buildings, the country’s strengths and weaknesses were exposed by the program, say the Stanford students. Some of the strengths they observed included a culture that was not only highly diverse but also surprisingly tolerant. They also perceived a rapid reversal of the Indian brain drain: Now, it seems, both Indians and foreigners are more interested in starting their careers in India than in the United States.

The students also saw innovative approaches to some universal social problems, like the shortage of affordable health care. One system used a mini-hospital on a bus to treat patients in far-flung rural areas. A local health insurance system managed to provide coverage to rural farmers for less than a dollar a month.

“They are creating solutions for themselves,” said Lloyd Nimetz, MBA Class of 2008. “They don’t need developed countries as much as we need them.”

On the downside, students noticed a stubborn gap between the haves and the have-nots and a cultural aversion to risk that led most Indian business students to favor careers in banking and consulting over entrepreneurial ventures. While a number of Stanford students said they were inspired to think more seriously about starting a company in India, some admitted that cultural differences posed a potential drawback.

“Indians are not motivated by wealth in the same way that Americans are,” said Reshma Karipineni, also MBA Class of 2008. “It’s something I would think about if I was considering starting a business there.”

Such topics may sound politically incorrect, or just too awkward to discuss, but they were exactly the issues Srinivasan hoped close contact with Indian peers would bring to the fore. Srinivasan, an India native who has lived in the United States since 1968, said he understands firsthand how the two cultures have vastly different styles of communicating, which, unless addressed, could lead to serious misunderstandings in the business world.

“Indian executives will rarely come right out and say that they will not do something. Face saving is a very big thing in India,” Srinivasan said. “This is not always a good thing in business, but it can be. It can lead to ways to look for a third way, a compromise.”

The exchange continued in December, when the Indian students visited Stanford and had the opportunity to observe American businesses for themselves.