Friday, September 30, 2011

Vista Schedule

Saturday









Sunday

IIMB Vista - No Day Better Than This Day



No moment better than this moment
No road better than this road
No way better than this way
No day better than this day!

IIMB Vista...Be The Change!

Participate in on-the-spot events and gather insights from industry leaders. It's all happening at IIMB Vista 2011!

Event details and schedules at http://www.iimb-vista.com/index.php

Thursday, September 29, 2011

IIMB Vista - 2 Days To Go!



He painted Picador at the age of 8 and went on to redefine the art landscape with by opening the doors to modern art with Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Picasso changed the world with his paintings. 

How are you changing the world?

IIMB Vista…2 days to go.

More details available at http://www.iimb-vista.com/index.php

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

IIMB Vista - 3 Days To Go!



He made his first mathematical discovery while still a teenager and went on to give the world the normal or Gaussian distribution and become the Prince of Mathematicians. Carl Friedrich Gauss changed the world with his mathematical genius. 

How are you changing the world?

IIMB Vista…3 days to go.

Check out http://www.iimb-vista.com/ for details of various events and to know how you can be part of it.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

IIMB Vista - 4 Days To Go!



A child prodigy who gave his first piano concert at the age of 8, he continued composing even after going partially deaf. Beethoven changed the world with his music.

How are you changing the world?

IIMB Vista…4 days to go.

Visit http://www.iimb-vista.com/ to know more.

Monday, September 26, 2011

IIMB Vista - 5 Days To Go!



Forced to go into hiding at the age of 13 with her family during the Holocaust, Anne Frank changed the world by telling her story and recording history.

How are you changing the world? 'IIMB Vista - Be The Change' gives you the opportunity to be a changemaker. Join in and be the change.

Visit http://www.iimb-vista.com/index.php for more details.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Let's try a question on banking today - Quiz question 5 - Vista

In 1955, World Bank along with India's public-sector banks and public-sector insurance companies, formed a joint venture to provide project financing to Indian industry. This company later established a bank in 1994. What is the name of the bank?

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Quiz Question 4 - Vista - Corporate Quiz - Sneak Peek

The use of this data storage technology can result in significant storage and cost savings.
A company that specialized in this technology was bid for acquisition by EMC and NetApp in 2009.

a. What is the name of this storage technology?
b. What is the name of the target company?

Monday, September 19, 2011

Quiz Question 3 - Vista - Corporate Quiz Sneak Peek

Till recently, Wipro's IT division was headed by 2 CEOs. Can you name both?

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Take pride in reading business magazines? Then surely you know who I am.

Vista Corporate Quiz Teaser
Identify the man in the picture below.

Do you keep track of the corporate world? Try this one...



Know the answer? Post it in the comment section.
The real event will see you compete with the best to be judged by acclaimed quiz masters in front of a knowledgeable and cheering audience.
To participate, take home a prize and a memorable experience from India's premier business school, visit: www.iimb-vista.com

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Corporate Events @ Vista 2011


Another edition of IIM Bangalore's premiere Business Festival is back this year. Visit http://www.iimb-vista.com/ to know more about competitions, talks, workshops and conclaves organized as part of Vista 2011!

This year also, we bring to you exclusive corporate events with interesting competitions that enable you to come out of the daily job chores and participate and network with like-minded intellectuals!

Corporate Czars

Whether it is a frail or robust economy, corporate strategies have evolved into newer and newer dimensions. Gone are the days when the mergers, acquisitions and partnerships were based on the prevailing regulatory frameworks or ideology of open standards. Strategies for controlling technology and market access have taken interesting routes with IPR battles and IP trading arising as the front-runner in acquisition strategies.

Is it the ego that is playing the daemon? Are market players moving in the direction of mutually assured destruction?
or is it still the strategically thought decisions that win the bet?
Are you ready to play the role of a protagonist to devise strategies for the next big move for one of the leading market player?

Click here to participate!

Deadline for initial submission - September 15

The Next Big Wave

Innovative solutions crafted with a keen market understanding will be the only straw that will keep the companies afloat in this dynamically changing market. The Next Big Wave challenges you to identify innovative solutions for the live and imminent business problems faced by the emerging industry sectors. Can you ride this next big wave ?

Click here to participate!


Deadline for initial submission - September 15

Corporate Quiz

Vista presents Corporate Quiz an exclusive quizzing extravaganza for corporate participants. Hosted by acclaimed quiz masters, with the top corporate teams fighting it out, the winners would have to dig really deep and bring out their best game to the table. So, come and join us for an entertaining and joyful afternoon which is sure to prick your brain at the same time. Let the sparks fly!

Monday, September 05, 2011

Developing insight

Insight. It's a loaded word.

I remember a time, it was around two years ago, when one of my fellow classmates raised her hand and asked of the professor 'Prof, I get what's happening... but, what's the insight?' The prof peered at her with a shrewd smile, and said a couple of sentences which he thought must have answered it. I don't remember the answer, but what I do remember is that for the duration of the course, spanning ten weeks, every once in a while, when he remarked something that seemed awesome, he'd turn to this lady and say 'THAT's your insight'. Made me look at the person and the course in a different light. The prof, as always, remained awesome in my eyes, I went on to attend his last PGSEM course, probably the last academic course he taught.

Since then, classes have been a blur, some sessions so remarkable that you leave the classroom feeling so rich. Yet others have been so bland that you could only wait for the class to get over, and stay amazed at the fact that what seems like an eternity is just five minutes. However, this quarter I had the opportunity to be in a class where we were forced to ask 'Why?'. 'Person A was just 23 years old, and she took charge of the company after her father passed away. Why? She could have sold it, and made a lot of money, and done something else that she wanted to, but she didn't. Why? She took the enterprise along a very different direction than her visionary father wanted to, and it is doing extremely well. Why?' Sometimes, it gets crazy... You're giving a presentation and the prof asks you to speak up louder, and jokes if you didn't have breakfast. You say no, I didn't.. and he asks Why?

Actually no, the last didn't happen. It was something else... but you get the point. However, this prof made us think a little deeper than what was given in the case. He encourages us to ask 'Why?', and in turn hopes that we come away with some insight into what happens in the background... to read the story through the blank spaces between the written lines. He hopes that someday we'll gain the wisdom that comes from understanding the context, and being able to form our OWN opinions, such that we have a point of view, one that WE have, not one that is given to us by someone on top. In his mind, if we are to become leaders tomorrow, we better learn to come away with our own individual minds. To think separate, from the collective. Now that we have our project presentations going on, he makes a blanket statement - I guarantee that all of your presentations will have oodles of information, but will have very low insight. Through all the presentations, but for a couple of them, this turned out to be hauntingly true. If anything, he's left us with the last strong lesson - one I'll remember for a long time - strive to form your own insight.

These are the same profs who tell you that we know you PGSEM students won't be able to do as analytical a job as the full-time PGPs, you guys just don't devote the same amount of time and dedication towards the tasks we set you. They mock us in class saying we can do better, we're just trying to stay normal. They sometimes go so far as to remind us that we might have thought that IIMB is a conveyor belt, where we go in bumbling techies at one end, and come out spiffy managers the other, and that as profs they stand in the way to belt us into realizing that we need to do a lot of work if we are to take away anything from this course. Yet, these VERY SAME profs tell us that we made brave decisions of trying to balance work-life, family-life, and academic-life, and stuck to these decisions for close to three years. We show dedication and discipline in not letting any of these fail, and in that we have taken a braver decision than the full-time students do. Making an Either-Or decision is easy, they say, choosing to do an 'AND' requires a commitment that is not easy to come by. Of course, they go and diss the PGP students also, saying you guys think you're smart and working hard, go and see what the PGSEM guys can do. Looks like the formula is the same, just applied differently for the different student segments.

The first prof I spoke about could have just asked the student to shut the hell up, and stop questioning him, the way some of us have seen our school/college profs react... but he didn't. The second prof I spoke about could have just let us spout our theories, wonder to God about why he's still teaching numbskulls who don't understand and apply what he's teaching them, yawn and go home... but he doesn't. All our profs can also tell us that 'we sympathize with you in terms of the multiple loads you're balancing... here... let's lighten the load so much for you that you can walk straight', or 'You guys are the brightest of the bright in India, organizations will be lucky to have you'... but they don't.

Do they know something that we don't? Is it that they've learnt that teaching adults is very different from teaching children, you can't punish them into learning, the way you do with kids? Do they see something in us, that we don't see in ourselves? If so, that's quite some insight they have there.

Academia typically have so much theory in them, that it's spouting out their ears... they will throw dates and research paper info at you, and make us read and comprehend the driest of research, and with eyes gleaming with excitement, they say 'See???', and we're staring blank at them, thinking 'WTF?'. But through the duration of the session, they take the pains of explaining real-life situations to us, examples where they ventured out into the real world to get back nuggets of practical examples, to make us realize the insight that they have received, not by spoon-feeding it to us, but by actually helping us realize it. They take us through a process, whereby the next time, we're able to move similarly, and arrive at conclusions. They don't teach us insights, they teach us how to arrive at them.

It's not easy to live amidst all that theory and research, and identify examples of practice that can be used to demonstrate the learning. It's even harder to whip up energy and a sense of doggedness in a bunch of students who have spent their lives thinking that they're not as good as those from outside their country. I remember that one of my interview questions was on why Indians aren't so crazy about starting ventures, and I kept giving round-a-bout answers, and was almost guided into the realization that we just don't have confidence. It's not just my problem, it's all of ours. We might have been technically smart to get into IIMB, but that didn't stop us from having an inferiority complex when compared to other nations. Our professors have helped us realize that we're equal, if not better. They imbue us with so much confidence, that people around us think we're arrogant or cocky. Maybe they're right, maybe some of us do take it too far... but we're at least poised to take risky steps, without being too fearful. As teachers, they've helped us recognize our potential, and make use of it.

IIMB is not the place where I learnt what to do, it's the place where I learnt what NOT to do and why. It's not been a place for me to learn the skills of management, it's the place where I was shown that I.. we.. can be SO much more.

I wish that, some day, every educational institution has the privilege to have teachers with a similar mindset. I know that we'll get there.

Dear profs, on behalf of all of us, we wish you a happy Teacher's Day.

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