BRAVE NEW WORLD

FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF INDIA'S MBA GRADUATES, THE CHOICES THEY MAKE WILL MATTER AS MUCH AS THEIR CAPABILITIES. FIVE PIECES OF ADVICE TO NAVIGATE THIS EXCITING NEW LANDSCAPE

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Dumbledore tells Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets, "It is our choices more than our abilities that reveal what we are." As a nation, our political choices after 1947 ensured that we built the world's largest democracy on the infertile soil of the world's most hierarchical society. But our mass democracy couldn't pave the way for mass prosperity as our economic choices created a weak economy. However, in the next 25 years, Indian MBAs will graduate to a growing, productive and complex economy that is on its way to become the world's third-largest one. Our economic renewal, combined with a new world, offers some unique choices for the next generation of MBA students and institutions.

Choices, though, are downstream of context, and thus it's important to understand the drivers of change in India. In the new world of careers, the life expectancy of a Fortune 500 company has come down from 64 in 1950 to 15 today. This means employment has shifted from a lifetime contract to a taxicab relationship-it's short, but intense. In the new world of work, there is no such thing as a technology company; all companies are technology companies. Work is less tied to a physical office; it is a dial tone of remote or physical, synchronous and asynchronous work enabled by digital collaboration. In the new world of education, Google knows everything; learning continuously is more important than knowing. In the new world of entrepreneurship, the availability of venture capital means the courage in your heart and the sweat on your brow matters much more than your surname. In the new world of talent, big or multinational companies no longer have an unfair advantage over smaller or Indian companies. In the new world of Foreign Direct Investment, 50 per cent of what India has got since 1947 has come in the past five years. In the new world of public capital markets, there is a considerable premium for growth and governance.