INDIAN B-SCHOOLS POSITION YOU FOR THE GLOBAL PLATFORM

INTERVIEW Deepak Ohri, president, Luxury Atelier Maison Happiness, and founder and CEO, lebua Hotels and Resorts

- ABHINAV SINGH

Q/ How has management education helped you in your career?

A/ B-school education is not a magic wand that makes you a businessman; it is a foundation. It gives you a perfect and solid groundwork. In b-schools we learn from the different case studies, successes, and failures, forecast and broader outlooks of the business environment globally. Management education should engage people in experiential learning like group studies, brainstorming simulations, and should enhance creativity as the first step to innovation. It is an instrumental tool that helps students become successful business leaders and entrepreneurs. With a solid foundation, you will always remember what you have learned, so the chances of failure become very less.

Q/ How do you compare management graduates at the time of your graduation with the more recent graduates?

A/ When I graduated, there were very few startups, and now we have plenty. It is a positive progress because startups have a lot of principles, passion, innovation, and creativity. When the organisation is mature, it becomes the organisation of the rules. When I look at the students from the US institutions whom I work with (he teaches in the MBA programme at the Florida International University in Miami), many want to create startups. There is passion and they base their organisation on principles. It was not the case when I was young. We sought opportunities with mature organisations.