New Dean to make INSEAD truly business school for the world

For the American-Indian Dipak C. Jain it is a rare double achievement. The feat is heading two of the world’s most prestigious business schools.

The latest is INSEAD, which styles itself as the Business School of the World with campuses in Fontainebleau, France and Singapore along with footprints in Abu Dhabi in the Middle East and the USA.

When INSEAD Board selected Jain to be the Head and steer by far the world’s largest graduate business school, in a new decade starting from March 2011, it well knew his impressive achievements. Jain was completing 23 years of his engagement with Kellogg School of Management. Between 2001 and 2009 Jain was the Dean of the Norhwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management whilst he has been a member of the faculty since 1987 serving as the Sandy and Morton Goldman Professor in Entrepreneurial Studies and a Professor of Marketing.

Kellogg’s stint is part of Jain’s enduring and illustrious career spanning nearly three decades both as an educator and as a business school administrator. Prior to his appointment as Dean, he served as the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for five years and worked closely with former Kellogg School Dean Donald P. Jacobs to set the agenda for the school’s curriculum, faculty and research activities.

Hailing from India, Jain has received numerous honours from Kellogg for teaching and research. He was awarded the Outstanding Educator Award from the State of Assam in India in 1982; the Gold Medal for the Best Post-Graduate of the Year from Gauhati University in India in 1978; the Gold Medal for the Best Graduate of the Year from Darrang College in Assam in India in 1976; the Gold Medal from Jaycees International in 1976; the Youth Merit Award from Rotary International in 1976; and the Jawaharlal Nehru Merit Award, Government of India in 1976.

At Kellogg, Dipak Jain taught courses on marketing research, new products and services, and statistical models in marketing. Jain’s areas of research include the marketing of high-technology products; market segmentation and competitive market structure analysis; cross-cultural issues; global product diffusion; new product diffusion; and forecasting models. He has had more than 60 articles published in leading academic journals.

His long career in education began as a student in Tezpur (Assam), India. He went on to earn his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and statistics in 1976 and his master’s degree in mathematical statistics in 1978 from Gauhati University in India. He taught at Gauhati for the next five years before leaving for Dallas to pursue his Ph.D in marketing at the University of Texas. In addition to his positions at the Kellogg School, Dipak Jain has been a visiting professor of marketing since 1989 at the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

In 2003, he was appointed as a foreign affairs adviser for the Prime Minister of Thailand. He has served as a consultant to Microsoft, Novartis, American Express, Sony, Nissan, Motorola, Eli Lilly, Phillips and Hyatt International. He also serves as a member of the board of directors of Hartmarx Corporation, Deere & Company, Northern Trust Corporation and Reliance Industries (India). He is also a former director at United Airlines and People’s Energy.

Professor Jain has served as the departmental editor for the journal Management Science, the area editor for Marketing Science and associate editor for the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics. He is also a former member of the editorial board of the Journal of Marketing Research. As a true and passionate marketing expert Jain treats the new position of INSEAD Dean as an “exciting opportunity.”  He also finds himself honoured and blessed as he puts it “very few people get a second chance.” The latter is in the context of being a Dean twice in two different business schools.

Recently in an interview with Daily FT on the sidelines of INSEAD Asia Leadership Summit in Singapore to coincide with the Asia Campus 10th anniversary celebrations Jain sounded more excited with the new appointment.

“I sincerely believe in the value proposition INSEAD makes as the ‘business school of the world’ given its rich diversity,” he said. “Diversity leads to innovation and gives a greater entrepreneurial feeling,” Jain added.

He also said that INSEAD also firmly believes in having a true global footprint instead of the common concept of one campus and affiliations elsewhere. He said that INSEAD after being founded in France 50 years ago and expanding its profile, 10 years ago took a bold step of taking root in Asia. The Campus in Singapore has provided a unique platform for INSEAD to nurture and benefit from diversity. He said that Asia is the economic powerhouse of the world today but INSEAD had the right foresight to identify this much earlier and the Asia Campus in Singapore is a testimony. With the two Campuses combined INSEAD now provides world class executive education for thousands. Latest to its list of accolades and global recognition is the Bloomberg Businessweek MBA ranking results for 2010 placing INSEAD’s as the world’s number one. Reaching the pinnacle is significant as in the 2008 ranking INSEAD was placed third.

Encouraged by the success in Asia, INSEAD has expanded the footprint to the Middle East initially with a Campus in Abu Dhabi and last year began its foray into the United States as well. INSEAD also has a research centre in Israel.

As one of the world’s leading and largest graduate business schools, INSEAD brings together people, cultures and ideas from around the world to change lives and to transform organisations.

“A global perspective and cultural diversity are reflected in all aspects of our research and teaching,” explains Jain who succeeds Dean J. Frank Brown who too played a pivotal role in INSEAD’s progress in the recent past.

With its business education and research spanning three continents, INSEAD has 145 renowned Faculty members from 36 countries. They inspire over 1,000 degree participants in MBA, Executive MBA and Ph.D programmes. In addition, over 9,500 executives participate in INSEAD’s executive education programmes.

Apart from programmes on the three campuses, the INSEAD-Wharton Alliance delivers MBA and co-branded executive education programmes on Wharton’s U.S. campuses in Philadelphia and San Francisco. In China, INSEAD awards a joint Executive MBA with Tsinghua University, and in Brazil, its executive education association with Fundação Dom Cabral has existed for 21 years.

According to Jain INSEAD continues to believe in conducting cutting edge research and innovating across all its programmes in order to provide business leaders with the knowledge and sensitivity to operate anywhere. These core values have enabled INSEAD to become truly “The Business School for the World.”

Jain said that executive business education often gets subjected to economic fluctuations. However he emphasised that executive business education is important and must be pursued by corporates and entrepreneurs to remain competitive, innovative and successful.

Looking forward to his leadership of INSEAD, Jain said he will focus on delivering its world class executive education to more people who value it.  “Executive education is the core foundation. You can’t build a tower if you don’t have a solid foundation. As the Business School of the World, INSEAD shares knowledge relevant to the times and regions,” he added.

Commenting on the notion that some of the successful global entrepreneurs didn’t have or fell out of MBAs, Jain said “There is only one Bill Gates in the world but there are millions of MBAs. So it is not prudent to miss out on a MBA.”

He said formalised business education is always helpful in managing midst highly challenging environments. “Executive education helps someone to put a structure on an unstructured problem. Ways of analysing the structure gives him or her more options. The process leads to make a decision or reach a judgment when dealing with issues in a complex and competitive environment,” Jain explained.

He also said that talent attrition, development and retention are also major issues for companies and entrepreneurs. In that context executive business education plays a key role in addition to empowering innovation among senior employees.

Jain also expects Asia’s influence in the world to grow stronger on to the future. “We have seen the browning of the West and greening of the East. At INEAD there is an excellent opportunity for the pollination of the best of West and East.”

“West also has the technology whilst East has the human resource dynamics. Each can be a resource to one another. What and how they can build on it by themselves and each other’s help must be pursued vigorously. In this process greater collaboration with each other will ensure the world wins,” he added. As a personal initiative he also plans to empower women in poorer countries via a proposed Asia University for Women in Chittagong in Bangladesh, preferably with inputs from INSEAD. He says that most influential person of a human being or a child is the mother and empowered women can play a catalyst role for global peace and harmony.

Jain’s take on Sri Lanka

Touching on Sri Lanka, Jain said Sri Lanka must build on the advantage achieved via the elimination of terrorism. “With peace best days are ahead of Sri Lanka provided the country develops its human resources and infrastructure,” the incoming INSEAD Dean said.