S P Jain School of Global Management
Supporting Students to Leverage Global Opportunities
Product categories with unique nuances are what build powerful brands. A brand is a promise towards what a customer may expect from an organisation. The closer the promise is to the key USP of the product category, the more customers will like and engage with the brand.
S P Jain School of Global Management is a standout in the education category, re-routing from the usual rat race, offering learning on wheels in four of the world's leading business capitals – Dubai, Singapore, Sydney and Mumbai.
So, how has 15-year-old S P Jain built a strong and differentiated brand? By studying and understanding what student wants but wouldn't get in other top business schools, shares its President, Nitish Jain. "Students want global jobs. They are keen to be global citizens; they want to work in multicultural teams and this insight has helped us stand out."
Indeed. Global business today is all about embracing diversity in people, languages, cultures and business ethics as well as adapting to variable economic, political and competitive market forces, all of which can be taught in classrooms but never really understood until and unless experienced first-hand.
"How you do business in India or China is different from how you would do business in Australia, Canada or even the US. All the knowledge and skills gained in the classroom is incomplete if you are unable to collaborate with people across countries and cultures," shares Nitish Jain.
At S P Jain Global, young future business leaders travel with fellow students (from all over the world) to Singapore, Dubai and Sydney. Each country represents a dynamic regional economy and a great backdrop to study global business. "When it comes to global jobs, our graduates have the distinct advantage of having lived and studied in three of the world's top business cities.
They have first-hand knowledge of how to operate in a global environment – a skill that is much valued by recruiters.
They undertake projects with top companies, interact with business leaders and thinkers, go on cultural tours and as a result, develop important global skills and become relevant to the companies of the 21st century," Nitish Jain shares how young leaders are equipped with skills in S P Jain Global.
He further adds, "These graduate outcomes – be it global jobs, the ability to work in multicultural teams or graduating with a deep appreciation of how business is conducted around the world – has led to us being ranked by every leading international publication in the world."
The Global MBA program of S P Jain was recently ranked #12 in the world by Forbes, even ahead of the 2-year MBA programs of NYU, USC, Georgia Tech, UNSW Business School, Schulich School of Business, Penn State and other top international business schools.
The Forbes ranking is based on the return on investment achieved by business school graduates in their first five years post-MBA. Previously, the School has also featured in prominent international rankings by the Financial Times, the Times Higher Education-Wall Street Journal, Nielsen and The Economist.
"When we introduced the multi-city learning model in 2004, we were met with a lot of scepticism. Living and studying for extended periods in more than one city was practically unheard of.
So, our initial challenge was to gain acceptance from students, parents, our industry partners, regulators and several of our other important stakeholders. As our students started to graduate with global opportunities, better jobs, salaries and overall, better graduate outcomes, everyone started to take notice," shares Jain.
While the multicultural exposure in the three cities is believed to help students become more emotionally intelligent and global-minded, in the classroom, the focus is on helping them develop real-world skills.
"We are a futuristic business school and we believe in crafting future-ready graduates with the ability to succeed in a world where change is the new normal. Our classrooms and programs are designed to help students develop the 'human skills' that will keep them relevant and on top of their game at work.
As robots and automation threaten more jobs, critical thinking, creativity, decision-making, business intelligence and leadership are qualities and skills that will set you apart, and we're focusing heavily on these areas," shares Jain.
While 'global business education' set the pace in the early years of S P Jain's growth story, in 2018, the School's learning model underwent a radical and rapid transformation. And, so did businesses worldwide. At the heart of this transformation was technology.
"I am a technology enthusiast and a firm advocate for technology being a game-changer for many industries and businesses alike. One of our most recent investments has been in the area of online education.
Although online learning is convenient, it has a fatal flaw in that it is not engaging students to the best possible extent. Late last year, we launched a powerful new way for students to learn online. We call this Engaged Learning Online or ELO for short," shares Jain.
Using ELO, students could log in from any part of the world and get all the benefits of an on-campus education such as interacting with world-class faculty, sharing ideas with peers from all over the world, collaborating on assignments, leading team discussions and debates, all in real-time and without any loss of engagement.
"Currently, only a handful of top schools in the world offer such immersive online experiences to their students, and S P Jain is amongst the very first in Asia to do so," he adds.
Jain shares that ELO is just the start of many new technology initiatives the School has planned. "It's thrilling to imagine what the future holds for us. At the pace at which technology is evolving, it won't be long before you can connect your brain to a computer chip. I hope that when that day arrives, S P Jain will be the first in line to enable this technology," shares Jain.
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