How some of the B-schools have cracked puzzles facing Indian management education? What are the best ideas that can be applied and replicated by all B-schools? What unique ideas are emerging out of various challenges in management education in the country?

The answers will come straight from 12 IMC Awards finalists that include BIMTECH Delhi-NCR, GIM Goa, Great Lakes Chennai, IFIM Bangalore, IIM Kashipur, ITM Navi Mumbai, Jaipuria Institute of management, NMIMS, SPJIMR Mumbai, Symbiosis Pune, & TAPMI Manipal.

The IMC Awards 2013 finalists will showcase their innovative ideas and unique initiatives at Indian Management Conclave (IMC) to be held on August 2-3, 2013 in New Delhi.

Following is the list of 12 finalists across four IMC Awards 2013 categories:

Theme 1:
Effective Demand Management: Developing successful engagement programs & finding niches

• Jaipuria Institute of Management Studies, Noida
• NMIMS School of Business Management, Mumbai
• Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communication, Pune

Theme 2:
 Improving Core Product: Revisiting the Program Architecture

• Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai
• Indian Institute of Management Kashipur
• S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai

Theme 3:
Improving Core Product: Innovations in Curriculum Delivery

• Goa Institute of Management, Goa
• NMIMS School of Business Management, Mumbai
• T. A. Pai Management Institute, Manipal

Theme 4:
Effective Industry-Institute engagement

• BIMTECH, Greater Noida
• IFIM Business School, Bangalore
• Institute of Technology and Management, Navi Mumbai

The 12 IMC Awards finalists, who represent best B-school initiatives and pioneering ideas, will be invited to present their initiatives before who’s who of MBA Educators community at the 4th Indian Management Conclave (IMC) organized and hosted by MBAUniverse.com on August 2-3 in New Delhi.

The finalists have been chosen by an eminent IMC Awards Jury including Dr Debashis Chatterjee, Director, IIM Kozhikode; Dr. Devi Singh, Director, IIM Lucknow; Fr. E. Abraham S.J., Director, XLRI, Jamshedpur; Dr Pritam Singh, DG, IMI & Former Director IIM Lucknow; Dr Rajan Saxena, Vice Chancellor, NMIMS University, Mumbai; and Dr Sesha Iyer, Director, S P Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai.

The nominations received for Indian Management Conclave Awards carry new ideas brought in by different B-schools to add value to their MBA programmes, making them more relevant in today’s fast changing business and economic environment. IMC Awards 2013 had received a huge response with over 50 nominations from top B-schools including IIMs, PGDM Institutes, Central University B-schools, and Private University B-schools.

Terming the judging of nominations a “great learning experience”, Dr Rajan Saxena said, “What clearly comes out of these cases is that the B-schools are really concerned about the declining credibility of management education and their programs.”

“The diversity of initiatives also shows that development in management education is not only restricted to major schools in mega cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore but even smaller schools in tier II and tier III cities are making consistent efforts towards adding value to their quality,” he added.

Dr Pritam Singh, Director General, IMI, said that the IMC Awards nominations show that B-schools in India are actively pursuing some of the best ideas in the field of management. “I hope sharing of these unique initiatives at IMC 2013 will benefit large universe of B-schools in India,” he said.

The Jury awarded individual scores to each of the nominations and the finalists were chosen on the basis of average sum of the individual scores by each jury members.  The three broad parameters on which B-school nomination has been awarded scores by the jury include:

Impact: What is the impact of this initiative on its target-group, and other key stakeholders? Is the impact measurable? What are the supporting documents to this effect?
Uniqueness: Is the idea/initiative & its execution unique, or is it merely copied from western models/other Indian institutions?
Applicability: How applicable is this idea to other B-schools? Can many/most B-schools apply this idea? Or it has very limited use for other B-school? The more applicable the idea to other B-schools, the more will be its scalability and future impact.

In case, the Jury member’s institution had entered the IMC Awards 2013, as an accepted international practice, the concerned Jury members did not award any score on that entry. The average scores of rest of the judges were considered as final for this nomination.

Apart from the 1st IMC Awards 2013, the other highlight of the 4th Indian Management Conclave will be IMC Conference, now in its fourth year.

The 2-day IMC Conference, to be held on August 2 & 3, will consist of Keynotes by Management thought-leaders, Panel discussions, Case-study presentations by IMC Award Winners, and Workshops by partners like AACSB International, EFMD/EQUIS, Harvard Business Publishing amongst others. Confirmed keynote speakers include Mr Vineet Nayar, Vice Chairman, HCL; Dr SS Mantha, Chairman, AICTE; Dr Michael Luger, Director, Manchester Business School, UK; Dr Zhou Lin, Dean, ACEM, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai; Dr Rajendra K Srivastava, Deputy President, Singapore Management University amongst others.

Conclave website www.MBAUniverse.com/imc2013/ has more details.

Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more on Indian Management Conclave (IMC) Conference and Awards 2013.