The Exec-Ed Zone

As if to add some early promise to my 2008 prediction that India would be at the heart of the exec-ed developments this year, this morning we are told that Oxford Saïd Business School will be opening an India Business Centre in Oxford with the backing of construction mogul, Shri Ajit Gulabchand, chairman of the Hindustan Construction Company (HCC).

The announcement was made by Dr John Hood, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, as he tours India with the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Mr Brown and his entourage of 30 of the UK's most senior business leaders had started their tour in China - although none of the three university vice-chancellor's announced any link-ups whilst there.

Like many of these announcements, the project had been mooted some time ago. Back in July an MoA for an India Business Centre had been signed between the Confederation of Indian Industry and Oxford - this is a re-iteration of that, backed with funding from Mr Gulabchand. The £7.4m donated by Mr Gulabchand has been given in the name of Lavasa Corporation however, and not Mr Gulabchand's main business HCC. Lavasa is a huge development project to create the first new Hill Station (resort town located in the coolth of the hills) since Indian Independence was granted in 1947. Situated on the side of a man-made lake it is aimed at the burgeoning aspirational Indian classes and the presence of occasional classes/executive programs being run there by an institution as prestigious as Oxford University will do its marketing and international profile no harm at all. Mr Gulabchand has bagged a win-win deal here.

The India Research Centre is an institution that is in prime health at the moment. Harvard have had one since 2005, located in Mumbai, and will be running its first India-based executive education program centred around the IRC's research in Hyderabad next month. The Ross School at  the University of Michigan opened its IRC a year earlier. In Europe London Business School has the Aditya Birla India Centre, and Cambridge's Judge Business School has recently annouinced its own India Centre. INSEAD announced back in 2006 it was to establish an Indian Entrepreneurship Centre, although it is still yet to appear.

The exciting thing about all these school's India centres is that the research they are undertaking is being funneled directly back into the executive programs. Research-backed programs will continue to be the big draw for exec-ed over the coming years.