Prof. Rishikesh T. Krishnan is the Director and Professor
of Strategy at Indian Institute of Management Indore. He was a Visiting Scholar
at the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania and
at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. He was listed among the Thinkers50
of India, the most influential thinkers in management from India (2013) and he
jointly received the special Thinkers50 India Innovation award (2013). He has
more than 140 publications including two books on innovation: From Jugaad to
Systematic Innovation: The Challenge for India (2010) and 8 Steps to
Innnovation: Going from Jugaad to Excellence (co-authored with Vinay
Dabholkar,2013). The latter won the Best Book Award 2013-14 from the Indian
Society for Training and Development.
Q. How has this first day of the HR Summit been for you?
A.It
has been very good so far. Thank you.
Q.You were here earlier in January. How different is it
now from then?
A.
In January, my visit was really short. I had just come here for a couple of
hours. I could not meet much people. But this time, I have been able to do
something in the campus and interact with more people. In that way this might
be a more fruitful visit.
Q. Tell us about your involvement in social works?
A.Overtime,
I have been associated with many social organisations.But right now in my
current job as director, I don't have so much time. So, I have reduced my
involvement in other activities. But I
continue to be involved with one organisation called Foundation for Excellence.
It basically is an organisation to provide scholarships for engineering and
medical undergraduates. Those students who do well in their 12th boards but
whose families don't have enough resources to provide them higher education are
given scholarships. Currently the organisation gives around 10 crore worth of
scholarships. We have a proper selection process and also provide them
mentoring support and support to develop their communication skills. This is a
nationwise program and I am one of the trustees of that trust.
Q. You have gone so far in the management and technology
sector. With so much experience, suggest us some important things in order to
achieve success.
A. To
achieve success, one thing that we should do is that we should build our own
strengths. We should have a subject in which we have interest and further go
deeper into it. We should build our own own expertise so that people look to us
as an expert in that area. What is important is to focus and to be distictive
in our field.
Second thing is
that you should be aware of what is going on. One thing that I find in
managerial students is that they don't keep track.They dont visit those various
business related websites. But when it comes to placements, companies
particularly don't want to see a guy who has been immersed in textbook in all
these years. Thay want to see a person who knows the current challenges and
trends. They want to see the interest in you. If you have gone to the interview
without any special interest, then it is very difficult to fake with them
around.
Q. You have talked about urban upgradation and logistics.
Could you please provide us more details?
A.
If we look anywhere in the world, urban centres are often the most important
part of economies. In India, most of the economic activities take place around
big cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai,Pune etc. So urban areas are generally the
core areas for industrial development. So economic activities in the urban areas should be supported.
In India, historically, most of the politics has been supportive of the rural
areas. The logic was that most of the poor people are from the rural areas and
therefore, we should invest there more. This thing neglected the needs of the
cities. In about 6-8 years back, the government of India started the Jawahar
Lal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission. I read from somewhere that it was the first
nationwise program for urban development initiation. So, after more than 60
years of independence, reforms were being tried to be made in the cities. If we
look at the city management system in most of the cities, it is very poor.
Municipal Corporations are not run well. These things reduce the ability of
businesses to run. No country in this world has developed without urban
development. Hence we should look after this as a challenge and do something
towards it.
Q. With this topic of urbanisation in mind, what needs to
be done?
A. The problem is our entire planning cycle and
execution needs to be faster. For exmaple, in Bengaluru, they are building
metros. This metro was planned 15-20 years back. During the last 20 years,
Bengaluru has completely changed. Today all the major economic hubs of the city
are in the surrounding areas and in one paricular part of the city. When the
metro was planned, all those areas were almost non existent. So the metro does
not run in any of these places. Hence, here we see the effect that a delay has
had on the effectiveness of the programme.
Q. You have concerns on technology getting more and more
involved in our day to day lives. Robots becoming affordable and threatening at
the same time.
A.
(Chuckles) The problem comes when something that is exceptional starts to
become general practice for us. The problem becomes more severe when it becomes
economically viable and acceptable. For example, robots are getting affordable.
They are also becoming easily programmable. This is a dangerous thing. This
might create job insecurities in the future. The things that human beings are
doing now, if they get started to be done by robots, this would create a
scarcity of job opportunities.
Q. Regarding technology, do you have something in mind
that you think should be present but is hampered by today's technology?
A. Technology is greatly required in
the election process. Today, it is very costly. In democracy, we need to get
people involved in order to get new ideas. Technology helps us to get people
participate who otherwise would not have been able to participate. Therefore,
to make the democratic processes more efficient, we need a more advanced
version of the technologies that we have.
Q. One of the big problems of today's world is that the
rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. How can we overcome
this problem?
A. A
lot of it has to do with the modelling. It also has to do with taxation. The
best way to understand this problem is
to follow the US presidential elections debate. The Republican Party
does not believe in the concept of redistribution. The same is different in the
Democratic Party. They believe that there sould be an equal division of
resources among the people. So, everybody has a different view on that. People
who do not believe in the concept of wealth creation, they more or less depend
on the trickle down effect. This means that as people get richer, some part of
them will go down to everybody. For people who don't believe in it, they
purposefully make sure that the wealth gets more evenly distributed through
taxation.
Q. Any words for us that would motivate us to have a
future in management?
A. I
think that today in India, there are a lot of challenges but at the same time,
there are a lot of opportunities. And I hope that you would contribute us
towards those challenges. You should pick a career where you not only can do
good for yourself but also do good for the country. Sometimes it will happen
that people are so much towards doing good for themselves that they only chase
money. Now, here I am not saying that money is not important. What I am saying
is that there are enough jobs available where you can do something good for the
country,society, etc. and take care of yourself
too. We hope that this institute will produce a lot of people who choose
that right combination.
