IIT Kanpur MBA Blog

A seminar on “Cultural Intelligence and Communication for Global Effectiveness” was organized by the IME department, IIT Kanpur. The speaker was Ms. Shoma Mukherjee, who is a well-known consultant for MNCs and practices in the field of Business Communications, HR and Finance. She introduced the topic by mentioning that people from different cultures differ in a variety of ways. This means that there are several challenges in cross cultural communication in terms of communication style, attitudes towards conflicts, and approaches to completing tasks etc. And thus, in this globalized world, it becomes highly imperative to have an insight of these issues and make a conscious effort to overcome them She went on to explain the Iceberg model of culture, which identifies a visible area consisting of behavior or clothing or symbols and a level of values that is invisible. Also she discussed Hofstede dimensions to distinguish between cultures which comprise of Power distance, Individualism, M...

A guest lecture was organized by IME department on 8th September on “Role of Absorptive Capacity in New High-tech Product Development”. The speaker was Mr Shashi Shekhar Mishra, who is a doctoral candidate in marketing area at Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, and his doctoral research is in new high-tech product development process. The seminar began with an introduction to technological innovations and their transformation into successful new products, which is indispensable for high-tech firms. Mr. Mishra said that the researchers and practioners have well recognized the importance of firm-level technology acquisition intent (TAI) for successful realization of new products across various high-tech industries. Extant literature suggests the role of firm’s dynamic capabilities on new high-tech product development (NPD) process. Higher firm-level absorptive capacity is prescribed to stimulate firm’s external knowledge acquisition and overall performance. However, he also sai...

IME department organized a seminar on “Market Basket Rules as Input to Improve Inventory Performance” and invited Dr. Pradip Kumar Bala to deliver his valuable lecture on it. Dr. Bala is associate professor at IIT Roorkee in Department of Management studies. Dr. Bala introduced the association rules, also known as market basket rules, in the context of retail items. Market basket rules have been widely used in marketing, shelf allocation in retail stores, web designing in commerce etc; however, according to him, the works on applications of these rules in the area of operations management have been limited so far. He mentioned that recently a few works with applications of market basket rules in inventory management have been applied. According to him, the knowledge of correlated items in the form of association rules can be of tremendous importance in designing inventory replenishment policies and hence, it must be accounted for. The research incorporated in his current work makes...

Well, the wait is over... The “team” is out there with a fantastic September edition of IIT Kanpur e-Newsletter: Avant Garde The world has been witnessing change of late in the form of Jasmine revolution, Wiki-leaks, Japan’s crisis and several other events of big and small scales... India also saw, and continues to see, a “change” in mindset against corruption... and so “the change” has not been elusive to Avant Garde as well. Avant Garde, with few new enthusiastic and energetic editors and equally ecstatic contributors, looks at its new level in this edition. The articles on Hero-Honda split, technological revolution of tablet-pc, and change in attitude of people toward corruption by MBA 1st year students; insight into Strategic Process Improvements in Internal Operations‘ (Apollo Health Street) by Nabarun Sengupta (MBA 2nd year) truly exemplify the theme of this edition: “Change: the eternal constant”. I, personally as well as on behalf of PR and media cell, congratulate the ...