ISB commences its Dean's speaker series with a talk by Dr. Vijay Govindarajan, one of the world’s leading experts on strategy and innovation. The Dean’s Speaker Series is the brain child of Professor Rajendra Srivastava, Dean, ISB. The objective of this series is to share best practices and thoughts of leading academicians and global thinkers in keeping with ISB’s vision of education making an impact on practice, scholarship and policy.

Opening the series Dean Srivastava said, “Our aim is to ensure that ISB develops into a school from Asia that is the best-of-the-best in the world – rather than a good western oriented school that happens to be in India.  For this to happen ISB will have to balance the best of Asian insights that are valued the world over.”

Addressing a packed auditorium Dr Vijay Govindarajan also known as VG spoke about his renowned Three Box Solution: a strategy for leading innovation. The Three-Box Solution that prescribes a framework for managing a business’s responsibility to take action in three time horizons at once: executing the present core business at peak efficiency, taking steps to avoid the inhibiting traps of past successes and innovating a future built on non- linear ideas. He spoke about how creating a new business and optimising an already existing one are two fundamentally different management challenges and how the real problem for leaders is doing both, simultaneously.

Sharing his insights, VG said, “Strategy is all about innovation. It is not about competitions of present but it has everything to do with competitions in future. Every industry changes in the future, so one constantly needs to involve for innovation. Planning for future is meaningless but preparing for future is very important”.

Interacting with the audience, he gave selective examples from various industries to explain and asked students to refer to our ancient scriptures like Vedas as they are a superior reservoir of knowledge and practical wisdom. The talk generated a lot of interest among distinguished personalities from various fields ranging from CEO’s, entrepreneurs, industry experts, government officials, ISB alumni, faculty, students and the media.

Thanking Vijay Govindarajan Dean Srivastava summarised the talk as Insightful, Engaging and Inspiring.