Igniting Minds

In today's rapidly evolving business scenario, management students have to be literally on their toes to learn new skills. They have to be fast in grasping the changes that are happening in the professional world. To enable them acquire practical knowledge, Businessgyan in alliance with the HR-in-India Association is organizing a lecture series called ‘Igniting Minds' in various management schools across Bangalore.

Inspired by A P J Abdul Kalam's book by the same name, this lecture series endeavours to bring senior management professionals to interact with management students and prepare the young minds for the challenges in the business world. HR-in-India Association is one of India's largest human resources network having more than 5,000 HR practitioners as its members.

The first leg of the lecture series was held in the Indian Institute of Planning & Management, where first year students were exposed to the thoughts of leading HR and marketing professionals. Jaideep Singh Chowdhary, a leading brand consultant working with Equitor Consulting spoke about  ‘Assessing Brand Value'. Using the examples of leading brands in the country, he illustrated the power of the brand value versus the value of the entire asset of an organisation.

Despite the drastically changing business environment a stable brand will continue bringing in profits and consistently stand for their uniqueness. Comparing the brand value along with the market capitalisation of various international brands, we get a clear picture about the value of brand building. Brand positioning is all about having individuality and making consumers buy into your thought process. The differentiation in brand positioning of Rolls Royce, BMW or a Mercedes Benz explains this individuality, opined Jaideep.

Jaideep explained to the students who would be future brand managers, that building a brand is not just the responsibility of a brand manager, or the art director of the ad agency or the PR agency. Everyone from the CEO to the sales executive in the organisation is responsible for it.

Dr Pallab Bandyopadhyay, Chief People Officer, Scandent Group spoke about ‘Career Management'. Talking about charting out a career plan for management professional, he said organisations used to decide every career move of the individual. For instance, Hindustan Lever used to offer one of the best career paths available for management professionals. One could join as sales executive; get promoted to regional manager, then assistant brand manager and then product manager and then land up in the corporate headquarters. They believed you can't become a product manager till you have gone through the grind of understanding all aspects of the organisation. Similarly Indian Army which has one of the best career management systems, believed in moving people from the lowest to the highest enriching them with valuable experience.

But now in the new economy the individual decides about his or her career, says Pallab. Since he had been recruiting engineering and management graduates since the past 20 years, he has seen the way career focus has evolved. Now it is all about occupational self concept, a definition of career drawn up by the individual.

 Issue BG48 Mar05

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