IMC 2026 Theme: Reimagining Management Education for the AI Era

IMC 2026 THEME PAPER
Management Education in the Age of AI
By Dr Amit Agnihotri 
Founder & Chair, Indian Management Conclave (IMC)

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping both the demand for management talent and the way that talent is nurtured. Evidence from 2025–26 shows AI moving from experimentation to enterprise-wide use, compressing the routine analytical work that once distinguished a strong MBA graduate. As employers place a growing premium on judgement, critical thinking and leadership, the very ways in which many students use AI risk eroding these capabilities.

IMC Theme Paper 2026 synthesizes current industry and academic evidence, sets out the central tensions confronting business schools, and offers a practical self-assessment framework to help institutions locate where they stand and define their agenda for change. It frames the questions the 16th Indian Management Conclave (IMC) 2026 will deliberate, so that Indian management education shapes, rather than merely reacts to, the age of AI.

THE IMC THEME TRADITION
Each IMC theme is chosen with deliberate thought. It reflects the most pressing question facing Indian management education in that year. They follow an overarching multi-year arc that maps the full value chain of the selected domain.
Over fifteen years, the IMC theme journey has moved through three distinct phases.

Phase 1: 2010–2016 — Contemporary Issues and Solutions
The first phase of IMC addressed the most immediate issues facing Indian management education after two decades of rapid expansion.

• 1st IMC 2010: Rethinking and Rebooting Indian Management Education — The founding edition framed the case for a serious, fact-based platform.
• 2nd IMC 2011: Building a Great B-school: What’s the New DNA? — Institutional identity in a crowded market.
• 3rd IMC 2012: Survival of the Fittest: Lessons from the Best — Benchmarking and the release of the MBA Employability Survey.
• 4th IMC 2013: Enhancing the Value of MBA — Response to the employability crisis.
• 5th IMC 2014: MBA EDU 3.0: Envisioning the Future — Leading to the McGraw Hill book Envisioning the Future of Indian Management Education.
• 6th IMC 2015: Enhancing B-school Competitiveness — First edition hosted at ISB Hyderabad. Led to the Pearson book of the same title.
• 7th IMC 2016: Institutional Leadership in Management Education — Hosted at IIM Ahmedabad, the well-respected institutional leader.

Phase 2: 2017–2022 — Mapping the MBA Value Chain
The second phase took a systems view of management education. Six sequential themes mapped the entire MBA value chain — from the curriculum students are taught, through the pedagogy used to teach it, the faculty who deliver it, the learner at the centre, and finally the net outcomes produced.

• 8th IMC 2017: MBA Curriculum for New Era — Hosted at IIM Lucknow.
• 9th IMC 2018: MBA Pedagogy for 21st Century Business School — Hosted at IIM Bangalore.
• 10th IMC 2019: Effective MBA Faculty for 21st Century Management Education — 10th Anniversary edition with Late Shri Pranab Mukherjee as Chief Guest.
• 11th IMC 2021: Learner Centric Management Education — Hosted at MDI Gurgaon. (No IMC in 2020 due to the pandemic.)
• 12th IMC 2022: Measuring MBA Outcomes — Hosted at IIM Kozhikode with Shri Ram Nath Kovind as Chief Guest.

This six-year arc produced one of the most coherent intellectual contributions to Indian management education. Each theme led directly to the next, covering curriculum, pedagogy, faculty, learners, and outcomes in sequence.

Phase 3: 2023 Onwards — AI & Technology led Business Disruption, Revisiting MBA Model

The third phase responds to the biggest external forces of AI and Technology shaping business and education today.

• 13th IMC 2023: Business Value Creation in the Age of Disruption — Hosted at SPJIMR Mumbai. Theme paper identified IT, Consulting, and BFSI as the top MBA recruiting sectors, together accounting for over 80 percent of MBA jobs. CXOs gave a detailed account of contemporary business practices for value creation.
• 14th IMC 2024: Identifying Contemporary Roles and Competencies for Reshaping MBA Program — Hosted at XLRI Jamshedpur, the HR thought-leader. Key MBA Roles were identified and mapped. IMC International Research Conference (IMC IRC) is born.
• 15th IMC 2025: Leveraging AI in Business and B-Schools to Enhance Competitiveness — Hosted at IIFT New Delhi. The State of AI in Indian B-schools Survey 2025 was released by Shri Vineet Joshi, Secretary, Department of Higher Education.

IMC 2026: The Next Step
Deliberations in the recent editions and AI survey have established the ground truth. AI is reshaping business and management domains, and Indian B-schools must respond to keep pace. 

The question now is no longer whether to leverage AI in business and management education. The question is how management education should be reimagined for the new era. What should be the learning goals and strategic priorities of MBA programs to develop talent aligned with evolving industry demands? How must curriculum design and pedagogy be reimagined to build relevant, future-ready capabilities? And how can AI be leveraged in research to drive meaningful impact while upholding the highest ethical standards?

IMC 2026 takes on this question under the broad theme of reimagining management education for the AI Era. 

IMC Themes: A Fifteen-Year Timeline

Past Theme Papers and Publications
IMC themes have been formally documented through books and white papers.

• Envisioning the Future of Indian Management Education (McGraw-Hill, 2015) — Based on IMC 2014 theme.
• Enhancing B-School Competitiveness (Pearson, 2016) — Based on IMC 2015 theme.
• State of AI in Indian B-schools Survey 2025 — Released at IMC 2025, widely covered by The Times of India, The Economic Times, Mint, Hindustan Times, and Business Standard.

IMC 2026 will continue this tradition with a theme paper and an annual research study to be released during the Conclave.