Corporate summit organized at MDI during aBizknosisa08a

The summit started with Mr. Majumdar talking about aManaging cultural diversity in times of changea. He stressed on the importance of the topic in the current scenario of large numbers of mergers and acquisitions made necessary due to global competition. Citing his own companyas recent acquisitions of Natwest Bank and Charter One, he pointed out instances of cultures becoming a barrier to achieve the goals of his organization. To emphasize on the importance of keeping the commitments the corporations made to their customers at any cost, the speaker listed down 9 principles his own company follows-employee welfare, attitudinal orientation, innovative & creative thought leadership, elimination of communication barriers and building & sustaining superior business processes.

The second speaker, Ms Arora started her interaction on aEmpower your Managerial Expeditiona by pointing out at the increasing complexity of todayas organizations from vertically integrated to a globally encompassed networks. The strategic shift of playing bigger than the size by leveraging networks also needs shift in managerial task masters with higher flexibility, adaptability, cross functional and cross cultural risk assessment capabilities. The other aspects which need consideration to build successful networks are the understanding of regulatory, resource and infrastructure spreads, varieties in culture and strategy as well as laws protecting intellectual properties. She also pointed out the importance of broader business understanding besides functional skills to play a vital role as the node in the network.

The congregation also had an opportunity to listen to Mr Gopalakrishnan, a serial entrepreneur of 4 start ups including his last venture, mobile2win. As part of his talk on aInternational Entrepreneurship a Opportunities and Challengesa, he shared his experience in the aspects of setting up, raising funds for and exiting businesses. According to him, the important steps no entrepreneur should skip in setting up the business are defining milestones & grand vision and interacting with domain specialists to determine the nuances. Quoting his experience of setting up mobile2win in China, he stressed the need to delve into cultural aspects in addition to the above issues. He shed light on alearning the hard waya and the issues involved, the people and their values and dilution of control during fund raising for such ventures. The third aspect he dealt with related to entrepreneurship was putting together a leadership team, handling day-to-day operations and ethics.