Dr. Shailendra Raj Mehta

Wearing many hats with remarkable ease seems to come easily to Dr. Shailendra Raj Mehta. For not only is he currently serving as academic director of Duke University’s acclaimed Corporate Education program but is also a visiting professor of Business Policy at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Prior to these positions, Dr. Mehta taught Economics and Strategic Management at Purdue University for 16 years during the course of which he conducted ground breaking work in the area of Synthetic Economies, authored proposals which helped bring in millions of dollars of research funding to the university while also winning distinction for serving as an inspiring teacher.

Brain Gain Rajyasri Rao spoke to Dr. Mehta at the One Globe 2012 conference in New Delhi and asked him to describe what he thinks led to the rich mix of roles in his career, what value he places on studying abroad and what he thinks leading Indian institutions such as the IIM can do better to count in the global reckoning.

You have a most incredible background in academics, research, teaching, consulting and planning. To what extent do you credit your decision of studying abroad for this rich mix?

I think in a large measure - travelling abroad and studying abroad have both contributed heavily to what I have ended up doing.

“For the past eight years, Duke has been the leader in customised executive education programs: securing the number one spot in both Financial Timesand BusinessWeek rankings, quite a distinction.”

Getting excellent education in any country today – and I’d like to believe I’ve received a wonderful education in India – plays a role in understanding your own culture, the world. You need to understand diversity, the duality of viewpoints – this is something that going abroad essentially did for me. It allowed me to look at my own society, my own culture and civilisation and the world through a very different set of lenses. In particular I started to appreciate the lenses that other people bring. It makes for a very interesting dialogue. And it’s not just about global communication with the Americans or Europeans: it’s also about being able to communicate better with my fellow Indians or indeed with my family.

In some sense we are all worlds unto ourselves. When you go abroad, you are hit by this challenge. That people do the same things differently and with different mindsets and unless you figure that out it becomes very difficult to function properly. And in the process of learning how to function properly in a different civilisation you pick up a lot of skills.

Of the many distinctions in your career, you’ve been credited with groundbreaking work in the field of synthetic economies. Can you tell us a little about that?

“You need to understand diversity, the duality of viewpoints – this is something that going abroad essentially did for me.”

The aim is to create a simulated environment where you can create lots of what “ifs”. If the world were to go in this direction, what would be the implication for me? If you think about it, it’s the result of the interaction of a lot of forces, which are behaving in specific ways and it’s about how you draw inferences from that – trying to do lots of interesting “what ifs”.

What was distinctive about your study?

There were lots of issues – for instance, we wanted to see if you had a disease, and you had particular conditions, how would it spread, or a marketing campaign, how would it evolve. The whole idea then was there are millions of entities doing their own thing but how do they come together and create collective behaviour?

You are head of Duke Corporate Education and visiting professor of business policy at IIM Ahmedabad (IIM – A). What are your responsibilities at the two places?

I teach courses on business policy at IIM - A such as technology strategy and others.

At Duke I basically help run any of the executive education programs.

You oversaw the collaboration between the two? What led to it? What does it involve? And what opportunities if any does it offer to those at IIM - A?

“...there is a huge shift in business education from open enrolment programs which are ‘one size fits all’ to customised programs – and Duke is the leader in this movement.”

If you think of management education – it falls into 3 distinctive categories – degree programs such as an MBA program, open enrolment programs where IIM - A or Duke or LSE will advertise a seven day program on senior management for the non-financial sector to which any organisation can send people and the third model, a customised program, when a company comes to you.

In this last model, you focus on problems specific to the company only for their managers. Then you get to have deep discussions on their challenges, on confidential information, policy issues and strategy issues.

The value addition to this third program is of a very different kind. You can make a deep impact for there is a huge shift in business education from open enrolment programs which are ‘one size fits all’ to customised programs – and Duke is the leader in this movement.

For the past eight years, Duke has been the leader in customised executive education programs: securing the number one spot in both Financial Times and BusinessWeek rankings, quite a distinction. The Duke CE program takes the best of the academic environment and the best of our collaborations, and brings in responsiveness to a corporation in terms of its challenges, its issues and then sources faculty, globally.

Given that the focus is not on students but senior executives, this is really a way for corporations from within India to have access to some of the world’s best faculties – to have methodologies which are unique and time tested. It is also an opportunity for them to use this as a vehicle to bring interesting opportunities for IIM-Ahmedabad faculty as well.

Culturally what is different in the way Duke and IIM-A tackle the question of leadership?

“Internationalisation needs to happen. Because it is only when you are forced to confront diversity, are you then also forced to understand everything in a new light.”

The main difference is that Duke runs programs in 16-17 countries. I’ve run programs around the world. So what it does is bring a global perspective. While IIM - A has a lot of global collaborations, I think the degree of internationalisation leaves much to be desired. IIM - A is ranked 11^th in the world in FT in terms of the world’s best business schools. I’d like to believe we should have been higher but provided we had cracked the internationalisation puzzle.

Our student and faculty body is very India-centric – a large majority of both are of Indian origin. And this is different from the other top 10 or top 20 business schools in the world. They are far more international and Duke is one of the most international of the already very international bunch!

So I’d say the challenge is in leveraging that.

Internationalisation needs to happen. Because it is only when you are forced to confront diversity, are you then also forced to understand everything in a new light.