I, The Absolute

IIMA has launched a one-year program. Obviously, to leverage its excellent brand. But, it would be cursing itself for not having thought about a program for experienced professionals before ISB came.

My views

1. The reason why the students of IIM two year program are most sought after is not necessarily the curriculum, faculty and the infra facilities. It is the difficulty level of getting an entry that puts premium on the students who have gone through the process.
2. Given that the number of seats in the one-year program is just forty, competition will be high. Entry will be difficult. I won’t be surprised if recruiters show enthusiasm for this program too.
3. Other IIMs will come up with one-year program. Give another couple of years.
4. IIMA’s application is somewhat vague. Can’t understand how they are going to check up with references. Will IIMA call up the recommenders and discuss the candidates?
5. One-year format is not its flagship. Why would I want to spend INR 8 Lac to do an MBA program from an institute where that program is not the flagship?
6. IIMA has a huge corpus of funds. It really does not have to price its one-year program that high. But its pricing decision is very good. Its costs will be very less. It will leverage its existing infrastructure, faculty and make a lot of moolah out of this program. It will use these profits to maintain its flagship program at very low cost to maintain the ROI (for a student) as the world best.
7. Since the number of seats at IIMA is just forty, ISB will not be too bothered. IIM cannot match ISB on infra and faculty. But, ISB needs to change its strategy to counter any ‘possible comparison’.
8. ISB should focus on admissions. Given that the response is excellent, ISB should ‘up’ its admission criteria. Any application-to-seats ratio of more than 10 will be detrimental to the overall quality of admission and the process itself. “Ultra Filtering” is important because in India just the population size can make the applications go beyond manageable levels.
9. Any b-school that wants to be world-class cannot but have world-class students. Students are ‘the’ most important differentiating factor for any b-school.
10. Competition will hot up in the b-school segment. Competition has always brought benefits for the consumers. Quality goes up. Good for the students and recruiters – the consumers of a b-school.