AACSB Pulse: Inside India’s Business Education Evolution

In this episode, host Eileen McAuliffe, AACSB’s executive vice president of EMEA and chief thought leadership officer, talks to Varun Nagaraj, dean at the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, about India’s distinctive business education landscape. They discuss the factors changing business education priorities both nationally and globally, and how business school leaders can respond:

1. What makes the Indian business school landscape different from what we see in other major markets? 
2. What have you learned about how organizations can innovate in ways that create not only business value but positive outcomes for society? 
3. From your perspective as both a dean and an AACSB board member, where does business education most need to innovate to remain relevant and impactful? 

[00:00] Intro: Welcome to AACSB Pulse, the podcast that tackles critical topics in global business education today, three questions at a time. We talk with deans, industry leaders, and other big thinkers about the trends reshaping education, leadership, and the future of work. AACSB Pulse brings these topics and more into sharp focus. AACSB Pulse: Three big questions. Bold answers. Better business schools.

[00:26] Eileen McAuliffe: Welcome to AACSB Pulse. Joining us today at the CABS U.K.-India Business School Dialogue in New Delhi is Varun Nagaraj. Varun is dean and professor of information management and analytics at the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, as well as a recently elected AACSB board member. Congratulations, Varun, on your appointment.

[00:50] Varun Nagaraj: Thank you, Eileen. Looking forward to working with you.

[00:52] Eileen McAuliffe: And Varun, we’re so pleased to have you here on the podcast.

[00:55] Varun Nagaraj: Well, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here in Delhi with you.

Question 1: What makes the Indian business school landscape unique?

[00:59] Eileen McAuliffe: Wonderful, Varun. We’re having this conversation here in New Delhi at a particularly interesting time for business education in India. The country is one of the world’s largest and fastest-changing economies with a distinctive higher education and business environment, and of course, a very substantially growing influence globally.

So let’s start there with the first of our three big questions. So what makes the Indian business school landscape different from what we see in other major markets?

[01:31] Varun Nagaraj: I think to start with, India’s development trajectory has been different than what other major markets have seen. And as a result, when we basically look at working with our students or educating future managers, we have to recognize there are multiple Indias. The urban India that we are currently sitting in—which looks like a second first-world country, almost—is different from the Bharat or the rural India, which is the majority of the population.

Our managers need to work across both segments of India, and I think that immediately has us focusing on things that probably are a little bit different than what Western schools might focus on.

[02:10] Eileen McAuliffe: So I’ve got a real question here. It’s a bit of a burning question that I have. India has a very large and increasingly ambitious population of young people. How are changing student expectations influencing what business schools offer and how they’re delivering it now?

[02:26] Varun Nagaraj: And again here, if you take a look at the macroeconomics of Indian youth, which is far larger than just what we at the top business schools might look at. So I’ll begin with sort of the larger picture. You know, we talk about a demographic dividend in India. India is really counting on the fact that it has, at this moment in time, a bulge of young people who will then contribute to accelerated growth, like has happened in many other places.

[02:38] Eileen McAuliffe: Of course. 

[2:39] Varun Nagaraj: But it is also a ticking clock, meaning that we could potentially blow it. And therefore, it’s really important for the economy to generate a large number of jobs that can productively absorb the talented and ambitious youth that you’re seeing around here, because the numbers are large.

And I think the scale of job creation that needs to happen is probably larger than we’ve seen in many other places, in many other economies. So that’s what I worry about at a large scale.

The scale of job creation that needs to happen is probably larger than we’ve seen in many other places, in many other economies.

Now, business schools, of course, cater to all segments of society. As you know, there are a couple of thousand business schools in India, and probably the top 20 business schools look and feel and act a lot like Western business schools, with the caveat that they also need to recognize this other part of India and be able to operate in this other part of India, not just in the westernized part of India. So the aspirations of the top 20 business school students here are probably similar to that of their global peers.

[03:48] Varun Nagaraj: You know, they aspire to successful careers, global multinational influence over time, career building that actually also gives them career satisfaction over time and so forth.

Now what I do worry about are sort of the other thousand business schools where we are producing folks. The question is, is the economy producing enough jobs to really absorb all of them?

And that’s part of the reason the Indian economy has focused a lot on entrepreneurship, recognizing that perhaps more than in any other country, it is going to be necessary for young business school graduates to soon take control of their own destiny and not just rely on the state and the industrial apparatus to create the jobs for them, but for them to become job creators. And that might be a little bit of the reason why you see a greater focus on entrepreneurship in business schools here.

[04:37] Varun Nagaraj: Because I think at a macro level, that is a necessary component of absorbing the growing workforce.

[04:43] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes, and just taking that point about entrepreneurship so that the country is empowering or enabling young people to take on their own destiny, to create their own futures, to build their own companies or products and work through.

Just moving along. One of the reasons we’re here today is the U.K.-India dialogue, arranged by CABS, Chartered ABS. India is making it easier for foreign universities to establish campuses in the country. Institutions like Deakin, Southampton, who we’ve met here today, and they’re already established in the market. So do you think this could fundamentally change how we think about international student mobility, bringing international education to the students, rather than, as when I was a dean, we had delightful numbers of Indian students coming into the UK market?

[05:37] Varun Nagaraj: Young people, I hope, continue to be curious and adventurous, ambitious. And the world is a big place. So I do think young, talented people will seek global opportunities always, and they should.

Now, that said, not everybody will have an opportunity to go abroad. And so bringing international home, if you will, is, I think, a good thing to do. And there are many formats for doing it. One, of course, is foreign schools setting up campuses here. The other are joint programs where you can have a 2+2, a 3+1. These kinds of configurations would work also in terms of providing exposure.

You can also do it in small chunks. At SPJIMR in January, for example, even though half our students go abroad for the whole term, because we are fortunate enough to have many good partnerships, half of them don’t.

[06:24] Varun Nagaraj: And so the question was, how do we bring the world to them? And so we have a week that we have set up called International at Home, and we have a slate of distinguished scholars and faculty coming in from abroad. We’ve curated a program that’s very much around sort of international geopolitics, international marketing, international supply chains and so on.

Not everybody will have an opportunity to go abroad. ... And so the question was, how do we bring the world to them?

And that’s something we’ll be running to make sure that the remaining 50 percent of our students have the global exposure that they may not have got because they chose not to go abroad for the term.

[06:54] Varun Nagaraj: So I agree fundamentally with you that we should bring international home in every country, frankly.

Whether the best format is foreign schools to set up a full campus here or not, that I’m not so sure about, because Indian students do have an expectation that their university is their gateway to careers here. And so I think it will take a little bit of time for Deakin and Southampton, etc., to set up that kind of a career network or career pathways that students look for as well.

[07:23] Eileen McAuliffe: Yeah. I’ve got a slightly tangential related question, and that is one about the competitive market of business schools. In the U.K., for example, business schools tend to live in harmony with each other, but it is still nevertheless a competitive market. You know, myself and [AACSB] president Lily Bi and my colleague Geoff Perry have been visiting Indian business schools while we’ve been in Delhi. How are they feeling about these interlopers coming in and setting up new campuses in their back garden, so to speak? I mean, how does that feel? It’s like a new competitive force. Right?

[07:56] Varun Nagaraj: Look, you know, we train our managers to work in a global competitive environment, and we should be willing to drink that same medicine. So I think it’s perfectly fine for anybody to come in and set up a university and to compete. That said, I do track them because, I mean, as you said, we are a fraternity, but they’re competitors too. So we are tracking to see what it is that they’re doing that might be that fundamentally different. I do think there might be certain structural challenges that they might face for a period of time, such as career services and so forth.

[08:28] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes, that’s a very good point. Because the home institutions, if you like, will have those long-established alumni relationships that often facilitate such good pipeline relationships for graduates coming through. So building up that community and those networks, I think, will take some time, as you say, Varun.

Let’s move on to our second question. I’d like to draw on another part of your experience. So you spent three decades in industry driving technology and product innovation before you moved into academia, where much of your work looks at innovation through a different lens, asking not only what we can create, but what we should create and why. And I love this because it sits very nicely alongside the research impact work that we’re both so passionate about.

Question 2: What have you learned from organizations and how they innovate?

[09:15] Eileen McAuliffe: So, drawing on both sides of your experience, what have you learned about organizations, particularly about how they can innovate in ways that create business value as well as positive outcomes for society?

[09:30] Varun Nagaraj: See, I think we all fundamentally share, and when I say we all, I mean people in industry and academia and good people in general, you know, to give everyone the benefit of doubt.

We all want to do the right thing. It’s just that things get in the way of us doing the right thing. And sometimes there are time pressures, sometimes there are competitive pressures, and therefore it’s always easy to justify our way out of doing the right thing.

[09:51] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[09:51] Varun Nagaraj: So the question is, how does one do the right thing? I mean, one part of it is awareness, but I think the other part of it is really structural in nature. Organizations work like an operating system. There are meetings that happen at a certain time, there are checklists, there are certain criteria for decision-making and so forth. So I think a good management operating system would embed some of these deliberations and these kinds of responsibility discussions and what people might look at as trade-offs into the way companies operate.

So a lot of my work is about how does one take structure inside an organization and embed into that structure these checkpoints, if you will, for responsibility, where the question of “Why are we doing something?” is asked as well, not just “How fast are we doing it?” and so forth.

One of the things we need to do is inculcate in our students the fact that you don’t always have to make a choice, that you can actually chase more than one competing alternative.

[10:34] Varun Nagaraj: So I think that’s one part. The other part is sort of on the mindsets. And I think this is where we as educators come in as well. And we are partially at fault. Strategy is about making choices to a large degree. And so it’s very much an “or” mindset. Do you want to take this hill or do you want to take another hill? And I think that unfortunately can get taken too far, because many times in life the right answer is “and”; it is not an “or.” And the paradox mindset—that’s why it’s increasingly important.

I think as educators, one of the things we need to do is inculcate in our students the fact that you don’t always have to make a choice, that you can actually chase more than one competing alternative, even if they appear to be competing.

[11:16] Varun Nagaraj: So I think it’s that shift in the mindset we need to make, besides the shift in structures in organizations we need to make.

[11:22] Eileen McAuliffe: How do we actually teach future leaders to help them understand that shift in mindset?

[11:28] Varun Nagaraj: So the paradox mindset, if you remember, Eileen, at an AACSB event, maybe it was two years ago, we had Marianne Lewis of Cincinnati actually talk about her book on cultivating a paradox mindset. So this is not necessarily an innately born trait. This is something that can be cultivated.

Now, the question is, how do you, in our students, cultivate the ability to be comfortable with the fact that there’s more than one solution and you can actually pursue them at the same time? And I think that creating of that particular paradox mindset is something we educators should focus on.

And that means putting people into unstructured situations or ambiguous situations where there is no clear answer. It means having people take time to reflect as opposed to come to answer as quickly as possible.

[12:13] Eileen McAuliffe: I love that perspective, situating students so that they can experience ambiguity in a safe way.

[12:21] Varun Nagaraj: I think the thing a business school can do is to, as you said, provide that sandlot or provide that safe space where students get to try different things. You know, this is kind of like a simulation environment almost for a couple of years to build these kinds of skills that you would never get from AI and YouTube, frankly.

[12:38] Eileen McAuliffe: Absolutely. I love this notion of ambiguity and, you know, lack of clarity. I think that’s an area young learners don’t experience. In fact, I think they shy away from it.

Let’s move on a little bit. So S.P. Jain uses the term “wise innovation”—I love it—to describe innovation done for the right reasons and in the right way. So what distinguishes wise innovation from simply responsible or successful innovation?

[13:05] Varun Nagaraj: That’s a fair point. So I think responsible innovation is probably the closest cousin. Responsible innovation—Owen and Stilgoe with the scholars that got that going in 2013 or so—it is very much around outcomes that try to balance societal, environmental, and economic needs. Similar to the way we would discuss wise innovation as well. It also talks about risk reduction in that sense. In today’s day of AI, the whole idea of responsible innovation is extremely compelling.

Wise innovation builds on responsible innovation. ... We want those outcomes that lead to flourishing, not just risk reduction.

They also recommend a set of procedures or approaches to trying to get to responsible innovation. For example, they say people must include others, people must reflect, and so forth.

Now, where does wise innovation differ? I think wise innovation builds on responsible innovation. Our goals are the same. We want those outcomes that lead to flourishing, not just risk reduction.

[13:56] Varun Nagaraj: So maybe it’s a little more new-age in nature in terms of the outcome being flourishing.

[14:01] Eileen McAuliffe: So when you talk about flourishing, are you referring to the kind of Otto Scharmer/Michael Pirson/human flourishing piece?

[14:07] Varun Nagaraj: Human flourishing piece, and societal flourishing as well, right, which is maybe a little more ambitious than risk reduction, which, frankly, is necessary, but flourishing is a little more ambitious goal.

Then, in terms of the how, is where I think wise innovation has a little bit of a difference. So in addition to the structures that Owen and Stilgoe and the responsible innovation scholars talk about, the fact is that still is a bit on the formulaic side.

Now we know, coming from the Greeks and practical wisdom and phronesis, that practical wisdom is about recognizing that every situation presents a different context, that a decision that might have been right one hour ago may not be right now.

[14:44] Eileen McAuliffe: Indeed.

[14:45] Varun Nagaraj: And therefore that ability to have that situated judgment is really what wisdom is. And I think we need to bring that kind of wisdom into our operating systems of companies and into the way students think, as well. That’s what then makes innovation go from being a responsible innovation to being wise innovation—that ability to have that agency and apply that judgment.

I think that’s that sort of meta-ability that we would like to layer on top and that then helps us hopefully shape students who have the ability to make good judgment, which comes back to what you said earlier. Let’s give them a sandlot. Let’s give them a safe space to practice judgment, to get it wrong, to discuss what right might have been in a given context, and so on.

That ability to have that situated judgment is really what wisdom is. And we need to bring that kind of wisdom into our operating systems of companies and into the way students think, as well.

[15:27] Eileen McAuliffe: Let’s move on. You describe yourself as a pracademic. How has your industry experience changed the way you approach research and teaching? And has academia changed how you think about your years in industry?

I think it’s interesting because we’re both pracademics. We’ve both spent a long time in industry. So can you tell me a little bit about your view on the notion of a pracademic and how it feels?

[15:50] Varun Nagaraj: Taken to the extreme, I think everybody should have some practical experience, and I know that’s not the reality of our ecosystem. You wouldn’t have somebody training a doctor to be a doctor who wasn’t a doctor themselves. People who teach lawyers are lawyers themselves. And therefore, in my mind, a faculty member who’s teaching someone to be a manager should have experienced what being a manager means.

[16:13] Eileen McAuliffe: I love that analogy. I think that’s super.

[16:16] Varun Nagaraj: But I know that’s not the case. Now, that said, therefore, within the ecosystem, what can we do to work within that ecosystem? So, you know, yesterday, Lily [Bi] was talking about sort of the evolution of the AACSB and I wanted to tie it back to that, to a phrase that I think both of us, you know, that’s what is driving us.

So you begin in 1916 with the idea that networking is really the primary value proposition of AACSB and the community. It’s really around legitimacy and sort of accreditation. Frankly, in the ’40s and the G.I. Bill—

[16:44] Eileen McAuliffe: It absolutely was. That was the initial motivation.

[16:46] Varun Nagaraj: The ’60s becomes rigor. Now I’m using the word rigor carefully because I want to use the word relevance shortly.

Then you move into the ’90s and perhaps globalization. I’m just picking up one phrase to describe it, but I think the time right now, for a variety of reasons, is that of relevance. It is the relevance of management education, both in our roles as teachers, where I think it’s being challenged not only by the pracademic angle, because one could argue, how relevant are you as a teacher if you’ve never done it yourself?

[17:14] Eileen McAuliffe: Exactly.

[17:15] Varun Nagaraj: But it’s also being challenged by AI. What is the relevance of us as anybody—pracademic or otherwise?

So the point is, I think relevance is what we as academics need to be looking at. And it’s the relevance of our teaching, which has us questioning the value of practical experience. Because judgment is what we can bring to the table that AI can’t. And where is judgment formed? Judgment is formed in the crucible of the battle. And unless you have been there, you’re not going to have judgment other than having read about judgment. So that’s one reason why I think the relevance and why pracademia is also an important part of being relevant from a teaching point of view.

Now, the second part is relevance from a research perspective. And this is a topic that really brings us on the same page.

Judgment is formed in the crucible of the battle. And unless you have been there, you’re not going to have judgment other than having read about judgment.

[17:58] Eileen McAuliffe: It’s absolutely close to both our hearts, isn’t it? Yes.

[18:00] Varun Nagaraj: And so if you look at relevance from a research point of view again, look at how often a classic academic will start with a gap in the literature and say, “That’s the one I’m going to study.” A pracademic will start with a problem of practice.

[18:13] Eileen McAuliffe: But even when it comes to PhD supervision, one of the first conversations your supervisor will have with you is, “Well, what’s the gap in the literature?” So there’s a fundamental flaw in the whole—

[18:24] Varun Nagaraj: So, you know, I know that DBAs are kind of a distant cousin or a cousin of the main MBA and the PhD programs in management, but I think there are lots of great elements in a DBA program that we really need to absorb into the mainstream academy. And one of them is the fact that most DBA theses will start with problem of practice and not necessarily with a gap in the literature.

Now, there is a problem of practice because presumably the literature hasn’t studied it. So usually it is correlated. But it’s much better to start with the problem you’re trying to solve than the gap you’re trying to fix. Right.

And then the other part is engaged scholarship. You know, you and I both, as we look at Professor Hoffman from Michigan—

[19:00] Eileen McAuliffe: One of Andy Hoffman’s—probably one of his smallest books in terms of size—

[19:05] Varun Nagaraj: The new one, right?

[19:06] Eileen McAuliffe: But mighty in power and in terms of getting you thinking about the engaged scholarship notion.

[19:13] Varun Nagaraj: And Professor Van de Ven, who passed away a few years ago, was the one who got it started. Now, ideally, this is a concept that should have spread across all of business school education. The DBA schools picked up on it more than the others. But I think there’s a fundamental truth there that the two sides need each other if they can’t be each other.

[19:31] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[19:31] Varun Nagaraj: They at least need each other in order to make each side better. Right?

[19:34] Eileen McAuliffe: Yeah. That kind of coexistence. Correct.

[19:36] Varun Nagaraj: And so therefore, coming back to the relevance of research, the question is, how can we then change the research enterprise in our limited capacity in order to emphasize the problem of practice, in order to emphasize the idea of impact, not just sort of vaguely and in an abstract manner, but being able to actually pinpoint it all the way through.

Now, some of these are difficult attribution challenges, and it’s very easy to wave your hands and say, “This must have caused that.” But those are anecdotal.

[20:04] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[20:04] Varun Nagaraj: So therefore, you know, I’m issuing a call, to the extent I’m allowed to issue a call.

[20:08] Eileen McAuliffe: Oh, knock yourself out. If you can’t issue a call on a podcast, then when else can you? Please.

[20:15] Varun Nagaraj: The call that I’m issuing is, you know, let us emphasize tools that help us bring relevance into research. And these could be tools that are prospective in nature. That is, even as a researcher is conceiving of a piece of work, how do you get them thinking in the front of their mind what the potential downstream impact could be? Because I bet you if you had them shift that a little bit, think prospectively about what the potential downstream impact would be, I think they would actually write a better article, frankly.

Even as a researcher is conceiving of a piece of work, how do you get them thinking in the front of their mind what the potential downstream impact could be?

So that’s a prospective side. But I think the part that really bothers me, if a lot of the research is being funded by student fees, can we really look at them in the eye and say, you know, “I’m spending your money wisely”?

[20:56] Varun Nagaraj: And therefore, now I might be able to look someone in the eye and say, “It may not be benefiting you as a student per se, but it benefits the larger industry you work in.”

[21:05] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[21:05] Varun Nagaraj: And the student could challenge me and say, “Show me.”

[21:07] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[21:08] Varun Nagaraj: And therefore, we have to have some ability to show that all this research—Andrew Jack, I think, estimated $5 billion a year that goes into management research—what is it producing?

What can we attribute in the field today that owes itself to the investments in R&D?

[21:25] Eileen McAuliffe: Exactly. And this is where we get to the measurement of impact that we’ve talked forever about and will continue forever.

[21:34] Varun Nagaraj: Just a couple of years now, please.

[21:35] Eileen McAuliffe: You and I, we’ll keep talking about it and create impact in our own way.

Varun, let’s move on to our third and final big question. And I’d like to turn that innovation lens onto business education itself.

So we’ve talked about the need for business to innovate responsibly, but business schools are also facing enormous pressure to evolve. You know, we’ve got adjacent disciplines that are sort of morphing into what was business school territory. We’ve got bespoke business schools being set up, you know, in health, for example, or in engineering, for example.

[22:10] Varun Nagaraj: And within companies.

Question 3: Where can business education innovate to stay relevant and impactful?

[22:11] Eileen McAuliffe: Yeah, and absolutely—the Deloitte EMEA University is a new thing that’s just opened up as an extension of the American version of it. So you have a particularly interesting vantage point on those challenges as both a dean and an AACSB board member. So where do you think education most needs to innovate to remain relevant and impactful?

[22:31] Varun Nagaraj: OK. I think two areas. One, I think we should say at the start of one’s career, our job as management educators should be to provide that safe space in which judgment can be built.

[22:43] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[22:44] Varun Nagaraj: Now, whether that is done through an extended undergraduate program, whether that is done through management disciplines sprinkled into liberal arts programs, or whether it’s done through a dedicated fifth year of an MiM and so forth, I’m not so sure. But I do think early in someone’s career is a great opportunity for us in order to bring in this ability to judge in a safe space.

Our job as management educators should be to provide that safe space in which judgment can be built.

Then I think there is the ongoing part of one’s life where we have to stay relevant to them in some manner. And here again we’re competing with Substack writers and Medium people and so on and so forth. So how do we continue to deliver what folks need throughout their careers? So I think as AACSB collaborators here and colleagues, I think those are the two things we should focus on.

[23:28] Varun Nagaraj: Now, one could argue that this notion of the MBA in between, in your late 20s, two years, you take it out from work to do it—that might be the one that is the old-fashioned view.

You know, it’s kind of like with my faculty group, I was using the idea of the barbell and in the barbell strategy, you know, you have two things on either side and a bar in between. And that bar in between might be the MBA.

[23:49] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[23:49] Varun Nagaraj: You know, and everything I talked about, the early career stuff is on the left-hand side of the barbell, and the ongoing stuff is on the right-hand side of the barbell. But we tend to spend a lot of time in the middle of the barbell.

[23:59] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[23:59] Varun Nagaraj: So I think that’s kind of what we would want to think of. Take a life cycle view.

[24:03] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[24:03] Varun Nagaraj: And maybe the value and the focus should shift a little bit compared to where we are right now.

[24:08] Eileen McAuliffe: I mean, the origins and the destiny of the MBA are a whole other conversation for us, I think. But I think you’re in the right territory there because it’s the closest thing we have to experienced, whatever level of experience, five years, 10 years of experienced industry leaders coming into academia. And that’s a great opportunity.

Let’s go to the traditional degree. Do you think that will remain in the center of business education? We heard a colleague yesterday from EY-Parthenon based in Delhi, saying that her view was that actually business degrees will no longer be taught in business schools and business schools will no longer exist because business will be taught in business. Do we have things like lifelong learning or alternative educational pathways becoming equally important or even overtaking some of the traditional business degree programs that we see today?

[25:03] Varun Nagaraj: So if I come back to the barbell, I think what the lady from EY-Parthenon was attacking was the middle of that barbell.

[25:09] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[25:09] Varun Nagaraj: Right. And she was basically saying, “I’m not sure I need to go to an MBA program to recruit people. I could have built them myself.”

[25:16] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[25:17] Varun Nagaraj: So I think that emphasizes the left-hand side of the barbell. You know, between the ages of, I don’t know what it is, 17 to 21, 17 to 22, 23—that time is when you’re trying to create good critical thinkers, you’re trying to hopefully shape good human beings, you’re trying to build good judgment.

So that’s the safe space we need to provide. And I say “we,” I don’t necessarily mean a business school. I think the education enterprise needs to provide that safe space.

[25:42] Eileen McAuliffe: So there’s that crucial formative period in a young person’s, well, physical, mental, and emotional development that we’re sort of trying to protect, I think.

[25:50] Varun Nagaraj: So I think that remains something that has to be there and that I refuse to believe that technology can do this just as much as I refuse to believe that I would entrust AI and technology to take care of my kids.

I don’t buy the fact that the company can teach you everything you need to learn through your career because they have an agenda.

Now, in terms of continuing education, you’re absolutely right. I think there are multiple channels and avenues through which people can learn. Being within your own company, of course you’re learning, but you have aspirations outside your company. So I don’t buy the fact that the company can teach you everything you need to learn through your career because they have an agenda in teaching you what it is they want to learn.

[26:21] Eileen McAuliffe: There’s bound to be an inherent corporate bias within that.

[26:25] Varun Nagaraj: There’s a conflict of interest. They want you to know what they want you to know. You may want to know what you want to know, but there are now contenders who can provide what someone might want to know. And these are online agencies, it’s a new Khan Academy, there’s all kinds of contenders for ongoing education.

So I do think we need to up our game. And one way to up our game is perhaps through more emphasis on consulting.

[26:46] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[26:47] Varun Nagaraj: Which requires you to rethink teaching schedules and a whole bunch of things because consulting has to be delivered quickly. So I think that might be another way in which business school education might evolve. Just as doctors teach doctors, I think business school faculty who are actually actively consulting will be better business school faculty.

[27:04] Eileen McAuliffe: I agree. I do a lot of these interviews and you’ve probably just hit the nail right on the head in terms of the sharpest articulation of where we are going in the future. So from that, do you think that business schools have been too slow to innovate? I almost feel like we’re a bit paralyzed at times by our structures and our even promotion and tenure kind of paralysis.

[27:29] Varun Nagaraj: It’s a disruptor’s dilemma. Exactly what Christensen said. You know, we have a cash cow and we have a legacy we try to protect. There are all these alternate players coming in, whether it’s Parthenon, whether it is online academies and so forth, all of which we look at initially and say, “Well, they don’t really deliver the quality we deliver.” Isn’t it ironic that we’re falling prey to the exact same theory that we teach our students how to avoid?

[27:53] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[27:54] Varun Nagaraj: And I think that’s what’s going on. So therefore, the approach is you have to disrupt yourself, you have to take chances, you have to blow up certain assumptions, and we hesitate to do that.

We tell our students to do that, but we ourselves are not willing to blow things up.

[28:10] Eileen McAuliffe: Yeah. Why? Is it because we don’t have brave leadership that are willing to take on the university or the board or—and say, “We’re going to stop doing things in this way, we’re going to do things in this way”? What is it that’s stopping us from being brave in that way?

[28:28] Varun Nagaraj: At a level, most business schools are part of a larger institution. So, you know, that’s difficult to do.

But even if you are in an individual institution, maybe it comes back to the academic side. Perhaps if there was more practical experience that the leadership had and faculty had, they would embrace ambiguity themselves, much more so as opposed to just teach how to handle ambiguity.

[28:50] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes, absolutely. So we talked a lot, Varun, about time in industry and time in academia. And maybe this is a point in the conversation where we just rebalance the scales a little bit.

What shouldn’t business schools borrow from industry? What are the things that happen in business that we shouldn’t bring into our business school environment?

[29:12] Varun Nagaraj: See, I think purpose, which we try and teach as something that businesses should use as their north star or their compass, that I think we as business schools should actually exemplify. We have a purpose of educating managers who will successfully do the right thing. We also have a research purpose, as we said, of actually producing scholarship that matters. Right. That is our purpose.

The talk that we’ve been having on disruption has not been about disrupting the purpose of what we do. It’s been just disrupting the methods we use, the how we use it, how we get there.

Now, how we do it has to change in time with the context. So I think businesses are guilty sometimes of forgetting the purpose and perhaps reacting to one stakeholder more than others. I think academia should hold the highest bar and say, unlike industry, our north star, we know what it is: to create impact through students, through our research. Now, the techniques available to us, the alternatives available to others, those are changing.

[30:03] Varun Nagaraj: So we should be fearless about the how. So all of the talk that we’ve been having on disruption has not been about disrupting the purpose of what we do. It’s been just disrupting the methods we use, the how we use it, how we get there.

[30:15] Eileen McAuliffe: That’s great. So we’re just coming into our closing few minutes now. So looking further into the future, we’ve talked about the business education landscape and how quickly it’s changing in India and around the world. And we’ve also talked about some of the ways that schools could respond.

If we were having this conversation in 10 years’ time, which I hope we do, what do you think you and I, or collectively our sector, would have fundamentally changed about business education?

[30:48] Varun Nagaraj: So I think in the best-case scenario, we have created this continuous learning space that we’re discussing, each right for somebody’s stage in the journey. We have created essentially a redefinition of what it means to be a successful faculty member where we have emphasized relevance and connection to industry a lot more. And if not at the start of their career, certainly during their career, I’d like to see the time that faculty members spend maybe shift a little bit to paying more attention to the outside as opposed to just the internal academy.

And as I said, this space that we would create lifelong would be some combination of a physical and a virtual space. And I think we would use AI quite aggressively.

[31:32] Varun Nagaraj: As an interesting example, I built a digital twin for myself that now my students interact with post-class and I’ve tried to train it very hard with lots of things I know and the way I think. It’s even picked up some of my sarcasm.

So it was assessing a student’s CV and said, “Your timeline is so confusing, even Christopher Nolan wouldn’t understand it.” And I sort of said, “You know what? That’s exactly what I would have said. How did my twin know how to do that?”

[32:00] Eileen McAuliffe: That’s amazing. Do you not worry, though, that you’re going to do yourself out of a job completely at some point? Particularly with what’s going on in the news today about AI taking over the world?

[32:09] Varun Nagaraj: Well, let’s assume that we still have good judgment on our side. That we do, right?

[32:13] Eileen McAuliffe: So.

[32:13] Varun Nagaraj: So I think this blend of man, machine, physical, virtual, a lifelong blend, people’s focus being a little bit different, that’s sort of where we are at.

Will we still have universities and business schools? Yes, I think we will because we do have a purpose and nobody else can completely take that purpose away from us. But how we do it, I think in 10 years, I hope best case is different and not as hidebound as where we currently are.

[32:39] Eileen McAuliffe: I’m going to hold you to that date. In 10 years, we’ll come back. OK.

[32:42] Varun Nagaraj: 2036. All right. We’ll have to remember that.

[32:45] Eileen McAuliffe: Varun, thank you for joining us here in Delhi today and for sharing your insights with us. It’s been wonderful and an absolute pleasure as always talking with you.

[32:53] Varun Nagaraj: Thank you, Eileen. It was lovely being on this podcast.

[32:55] Eileen McAuliffe: Wonderful. And to our listeners, if you have enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow AACSB Pulse on AACSB Insights, Apple, PodBean, or Spotify. We’ve got more great episodes coming up on the biggest issues shaping global business education today.

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About AACSB Pulse

A podcast produced by AACSB International, AACSB Pulse explores current topics impacting global business education—three questions at a time—with business school deans, industry leaders, and other big thinkers of today.

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