The case of ‘Case based teaching’

Almost all of the course outline out here proudly display ‘case based learning’ as a part of pedagogy. It was a feel good factor in the beginning but not now. No doubt, it plays a critical task, i.e. to instil real life problem solving aptitude in students. The complexity involved in real business problems, the uncertainty involved with every decision and the trade-offs. Professors expect students to sit in groups and discuss the case in detail, brainstorm, come up with alternatives and evaluate each alternative against short-term vs. long-term impact on the decision problem and business. But is it really happening?

All that I wrote is too good to be true. There are many reasons for that, some systematic and some random. I can’t discuss about random reasons out here, but what I want to discuss is the systematic ones. The IIMs are known for their hectic study schedules and numerous courses compressed into 2 years. I think they have just managed to compress it in two years, I say this on the basis of experience that people have had while student exchange. All the students who have gone for student exchange have one thing to say, the study there is balanced, i.e. you get sufficient time to study on your own, any topic of your interest. And if not, you at least get time to discuss the cases in detail.

The scenario is different here, if you have 2-3 cases on an average to solve every day, coupled with the regular lectures, projects and quizzes, what justice one can do with the case analysis. If you are fortunate enough to have good team members, willing to work, the maximum you can do (showing your management skills) is distribute the case amongst group members and somehow able to finish each of the case in time. No wonder professors here say “Students do individual assignments in groups and Group assignments individually”. On the contrary if you have an unfortunate group, well I need not write the usual method people adopt to do cases and assignments.

The idea is not to remove the case analysis completely, but the idea is to give students sufficient time to prepare each of the cases. I think we have adopted all of the ‘good practices’ from other B-Schools altogether, without even thinking that the time available is limited. Like you say in operations, if all the machines are individually efficient it doesn’t mean the process as a whole is efficient. The problem is amplified by the fact that groups formed here work as more of groups and not as a team (I hope you know the difference). So at the end of the day the objective of case analysis is not achieved.

I think I should end this on the same note as other cases end, the problem is out there, the situational analysis is almost done but like all other cases the ‘case of case based teaching’ is still there. The good part (or bad?) is that there are no exhibits in this case.

Scratch Pad – Store the ‘Waste’ Energy

I have written earlier about wind energy, the usefulness and the disadvantages. But one thought has troubled me for long, isn’t that the energy that we derive from wind is a cost to the ecology. Whatever efficiency we consider for wind turbines, still we are absorbing the energy from the winds and reducing their power. This wind power should definitely have some role to play in the ecology for e.g. monsoons in India is a result of Wind. I am not saying that if we build a lot of wind power stations then monsoons will stop but definitely we are reducing the power of winds that has some role to play in the ecology. The point I am trying to make is that we should be proactive and should start thinking of possibilities of storing the energy that gets dissipated in our daily course of actions.

During one of my recent air journey I realised that when the airplane touch down on airstrip and apply brake to stop, it surely dissipates a lot of energy. With a touchdown speed of 250km/hr and weight in the range of tonnes, the brake surely dissipates a lot of energy to decelerate the airplane. Instead of just exhausting it by applying brakes can we devise some method to store that energy?

If you have seen the way a fighter jet takes off from an aircraft carrier, there is a hydraulic piston that provides the much required speed for takeoff in minimum distance. Same is seen when a fighter jet lands on a aircraft carrier, a rope is used to quickly slow it down. Can we replicate this phenomenon? I want to say that when an airplane touchdown it should store its energy in some high tension spring/coil that can be stored. Remember the toy cars that we have used during childhood days, when we push it back and release it, it speedily moves ahead, while pushing it back we store a lot of energy in a metal coil placed inside the car. I am hoping of similar technique here. Yes, all of it does have a aspect of safety as the touchdown is itself risky but then if fighter jet can do it, the same may be possible with civilian aircrafts with required modification.It’s not just aircraft, think of driving your car, think of the same toy car here, and when you apply brake let the energy get stored in some metal coil inside the car. The same energy can be released by some push button whenever required; it will surely save some fuel. One can think of all other forms of energy that we knowingly or unknowingly dissipate and if something can be done to store/conserve that energy then I call this being truly proactive.

Corollary

Corollary, a word that one encounters many times in the engineering studies. Like the Fick’s Law for Diffusion, Newton Law for Momentum Transfer or Fourier Law for Heat Transfer.
Do not worry if you do not know these laws, I have no intention to talk about these laws. The point I am trying to make is that there exists some basic fundamentals in all streams upon which the rules are built. We can easily visualize one concept in terms of another one that we have already studied earlier and it becomes easier to digest.

After such a long time, I recently found another corollary in management discipline and though not extremely helpful, I felt good in founding the analogy. Let me start with Operations Management and the concepts of inventory management. The key aspect is that the inventory should be minimal possible because it is a capital blocked with no returns. But it is required to tackle the uncertainty in the operations arising due to market or processes. If there is a sudden increase in demand you can push more products into the market by utilising the inventory of finished goods and at the same time you can increase the throughput utilizing your raw materials inventory. So you keep inventory at various levels. If everything is predictable, one does not require the inventory. Do not worry I am not going into more detail!

Now comes the Macroeconomics. You have deposits with the bank and then you have deposits (reserves) with the central bank. The more reserves in central bank, more capital is blocked with no returns. The more deposits available with the bank, more money it can lend to the market forces for investments/operations/production. Reserves with Central Bank are like buffer kept for unforeseen demand/supply. So if everything is stable in the market, the reserves maintained by the central bank are of no use. To meet the daily transaction requirement with customers banks also keep cash with them in their vaults which again yield no return as such.

So you see corollary here. The Reserves with Central bank are nothing but an Inventory of money to provide for uncertainties in the money market. I wonder if Dimensional Analysis can be applied to the management science discipline.

Marketing 'Marketing'

Well, the first word represents the verb and the second word represents the subject. What else do you expect? If marketing is not able to sell marketing then it will defy its name. You will recollect what you might have already heard many times that Marketing is an Art. Now do you think there is any way to teach something which is an art, perhaps Not. Still, marketing is a subject well written and taught in B-schools.

Just to give you some background, I had one of the courses in the first term on basics of marketing. It was nothing but a collection of approaches that marketers take in different situation. There are no laws, theories no rules. This is because marketing deals with human mind, human behaviours and catering to human desires. If it were to me marketing is best taught by field work and the approaches one should take to market product will automatically evolve over a period of time.

For e.g. when one realizes that there are competing products in the market he will automatically highlight the attributes that differentiate his product from the other competing products, marketers call this POD (point of differentiation). Many times he will select a few individual who he thinks are more likely to purchase his product, they have glorified it by giving it a term ‘targeting’. If the customers seem a little reluctant to purchase the product at a given price, he may offer them some free gifts/discounts/rebate coupons, they call it ‘promotion’. He decides upon whether to sell the product by a retail outlet or directly sell the product or sell over the internet, they call it ‘Marketing Channels’.

These points as I have discussed above still is not loaded so as to compete with other disciplines in MBA. So, they have packaged these terms into different terms and called them Mix. So there we see all the Mix of Mix. Marketing Mix, Promotion Mix, Brand Mix etc. and 4Ps, 4Cs etc. There is a book written about these CONCEPTS and it is termed as the Bible of marketing. But at the end of the course I realized that all that 400 pages (or 500, I do not know the exact number of pages) can be summarized into 40-50 pages and the book will lose identity. The book itself is a well packaged product. It includes graphics, visuals and real life examples from the industry. The colour combination and paper quality is good. Finally, marketing as a management discipline and the book, both are selling successfully in the market.Now this is what we call marketing isn’t.

Scratch Pad - Science and Society

At the beginning of earth formation, we know all the continents were joined together, they separated. Then the continents got divided into nations, nations into states and states are fighting with each other and within themselves we have more states, practically.

Almost all the nations are troubled with internal conflicts within the state, some states demanding separations from the nations. Within those states there are communities/tribes demanding separate states. Take an example in India, Pakistan, Russia, Afghanistan etc.
The human generation got divided into races, races into religions, religions into caste and caste into sub-caste.

Let us go back to our solar system. The distances between every two heavenly bodies are increasing, i.e. the universe is expanding. Why is it expanding rather than shrinking owing to the gravitational forces of the other heavenly bodies? Is it because of diffusion, i.e. the heavenly bodies are very much concentrated in the Milky Way and they are diffusing outside where the density (if I can use the term here) of heavenly bodies is less.

How do we see all these things put together?
I recall a Law that I studied in my engineering course, Law of entropy, which states that every mass of body/molecule behave in such a manner to increase the entropy of the system. Entropy means the degree of randomness in the system.Does it apply here? Can we say that the law of entropy holds here?

Let us say that it may hold in the solar system but what about human civilization, the continents, countries, states, culture, religion, does it apply here as well. Can I take it further and say that if it follows these laws, the it may follow equilibrium lar as well. How we can fit the equilibrium into this? What will be the equilibrium state of division of human civilization into religion, cast and sub-caste.

Say, the religion continue division into caste, caste into sub-caste etc. At one point, people will realize that they are very few left, so they will again dilute the last criteria of division. So there is a threshold size of a group (political or social) that seems to be sufficient for self sustainence. Any less than that people are afraid of sidelined by the other groups, so either they will merge their group with other group or they will break other bigger group and import some group member into their group. This is what happens in the society, small religious groups regroup with others and bigger groups split into smaller one. Some groups are dissolved completely and at the same time new groups are evolved.

Can someone fit a equation on this phenomenon and find the equilibrium state, with groups as molecules and individuals as atoms, so at equilibrium atoms are changing their association with molecules but at a larger level the composition remains same. It will be a nice world then!

All for a brand IIT, Contd....

http://infotech.indiatimes.com/Careers/Second_list_IITs_break_tradition/articleshow/3342429.cms
This is what I was afraid of, and have written in the previous post.
This is just the begining, now after 3-4 years there will be demand to reduce the academic rigour and that will be the last nail in the coffin.

Advantages of Democracy...........

All this for a Brand IIT

All for a Brand IIT

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/IIT_physics_cut-off_down_to_zero_as_seats_increase/articleshow/3316557.cms

I had no plan to write blog today, but the article made me write.

It hurts! You increase the seats, You pull the OBC up, You pull the poorer people up, You do anything that you want to do but not at the cost of the quality.

The brand IIT is only because of the quality and quality is what people value. It has taken at least 40 years to build the brand IIT, if not more. One wrong decision can undo all this. I feel very sad if all this happens for votes and politics.

I am not against increasing the seat, giving ‘allowances’ to some, but do the politicians care about people not making it in the IITs. They can push people in, but believe me it’s not easy to get out. I have seen people spoiling their 4-7 years and not making it out. Those who are getting the all sympathy for increasing the seat will be responsible for spoiling the lives of the same people who they think they care. Media only covers when politician (decision makers !) announce ‘increase in seats’ for the benefit for ‘Aam Aadmi’, media fails to cover how these students are performing in IIT, I think they should start presenting that picture to the public. It’s only us, the insider who know the truth.

This will only increase the pressure on the ‘not so elite’ students once they are in the IITs and competing among the other ‘competitive’ ones.

Just by pushing them in does not mean the job is done. This will increase the drop out rates in IITs, another intelligent politician will then order IITs to relax on the academic rigour to help people get out of IIT!

They will sight reasons for increased pressure amongst students, increase in number of suicides (believe me I won’t be surprised), and I am sure they will succeed in lighten the academic rigour.
There are very few things that world values for India, preserve it, I want to preserve it and am sure every alumni do as well.