Useful Webinar on R&D Talent in India

On Tuesday, November 18, 2008 I attended a webinar put on by a colleague who has presented for us at the ICA Institute, Gunjan Bagla, managing director of Amritt Ventures, Inc. . This webinar was presented by The Caltech Industrial Relations Center as part of their Critical Business Discussion Series.

He presented on leveraging India's talent for R&D: - R&D opportunities and business models in India - Challenges to making Indian R&D opportunities a reality - How to leverage investment with a distributed development model - and What impact open innovation will have on future development in India.

2 quick comments:

1) I always gather useful information and insight from Bagla's presentations and appreciate his reflective approach to topics. This is a topic of particular interest for my research, and I am glad to have access to Bagla as a resource.

2) I attended this webinar because of my interest in the topic, but I was also glad to be an audience member instead of the host. It reminded me how easy it is to get distracted at your desk while the webinar is going on, and I noted that Bagla's use of polls worked very well to get my attention back. I have been encouraging presenters to use the poll feature in our Around the World in Asian Days series, but now I will emphasize it even more.

What's Driving India's Rise as an R&D Hub?

What's Driving India's Rise as an R&D Hub?

India has long enjoyed a reputation as a destination for IT and business process outsourcing. Now, the country is fast emerging as a major center for cutting-edge research and development (R&D) projects for global multinationals such as Microsoft and Motorola as well as Indian firms. More and more companies in industries ranging from IT and telecommunications through pharmaceuticals and biotech are setting up ambitious R&D projects, in part to serve the Indian market, but also with an eye to delivering new generations of products faster to the global market.
What forces are shaping these trends? What does the future hold? To answer these questions and more, Knowledge@Wharton collaborated with The Economic Times Intelligence Group in Mumbai, India, on this special report on R&D in India. The articles below explore the factors driving global R&D toward India, the opportunities and challenges of contract research, and the human capital challenge that India faces, among several others.

NASA scientists ring up ISRO, want to work in 'desi' missions

Press Trust of India

NASA scientists ring up ISRO, want to work in 'desi' missions

Bangalore, Oct 25 (PTI) Several NASA scientists -- of Indian origin and foreigners alike -- are knocking the door of Indian Space Research Organisation looking for opportunities to work in future 'desi' space missions following the success of Chandrayaan-1 launch, a senior ISRO official said today.Project Director of Chandrayaan-1, India's first unmanned lunar mission, Mayilsamy Annadurai says he definitely sees a "small trend" of what he calls "reverse brain-drain"."Some of my friends and juniors working there (NASA) are looking for opportunities for working in ISRO," Annadurai said here.He said at least half-a-dozen of them had approached him seeking openings in the Indian space agency and he knew that "a good number of foreigners" were also looking for such jobs.Other senior ISRO officials sure would have got similar calls, he said. The question they are all asking is: "Is there any opportunity for working in future missions of ISRO".India's Chandrayaan-1, launched on Oct 22, is carrying 11 payloads (scientific instruments) -- two from NASA, three from European Space Agency, one from Bulgaria and five from India."Fifty per cent of the instruments have come from outside. It's symbolic. Instead of we going there, they have come along with us as co-passengers," Annadurai said.ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair said "comments and observations with envy that have come from overseas after Chandrayaan-1's launch reaffirms ISRO's matured and advanced technologies." After the launch, US Democratic Presidential nominee Barak Obama had said India's mission should be a wake-up call to America, and should remind his nation that it was getting complacent or sloppy about maintaining its position as the foremost nation in space exploration. PTI

Bridgeport Looks to India to Fill Teaching Gaps

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/nyregion/connecticut/21teachct.html?pagewanted=all

BRIDGING Brindavani Tallur says she is getting used to differences between teaching in India and at Harding High.

By MOINA NOOR

Published: September 19, 2000
Bridgeport

Thomas McDonald for The New York Times

BONDING Satya Mohan, in his physics class at Bassick High, says he feels he is part of the “Bassick family.” Kye Jackson, right, a student in Dr. Mohan’s class.

BRINDAVANI TALLUR, a 39-year-old science teacher from India, stands outside her classroom at Warren Harding High School here, and greets each of her ninth-grade students by name. “Welcome to Physical Science,” she says. “How was your weekend?” A few students return her greeting, but most look past her and enter the room noisily.

In India, Ms. Tallur was revered. When she entered her classroom, 70 students would rise, stand by their desks, and greet her in unison. “In India a teacher is next to God,” she explained, noting the contrast in behavior.

Now after a year of teaching at Harding in an international program, Ms. Tallur has become used to less respect. She is no longer surprised by profanity in the hallways and students talking out of turn in the classroom.

Ms. Tallur, who holds a master’s degree in chemistry and education, is one of 14 teachers from India, 10 men and 4 women, hired by the Bridgeport Board of Education to fill a shortage of math and science teachers in the district.

“We had eight vacancies in 2006 that we were desperately trying to fill,” said Carol Birks, the principal of Harding. “Our biology teacher had to teach extra physics classes. Sometimes we used long-term substitutes.”

Across Connecticut there is a shortage of math and science teachers for grades seven to 12, according to the State Department of Education. The problem is more acute in urban areas like Bridgeport with lower teacher salaries, said Carole Pannozzo, executive director of human resources for Bridgeport schools. The teachers from India are paid under the same formula as the local teachers, Ms. Pannozzo said.

To address the problem, the State Education Department created a Visiting International Teacher program in 2006, which allows school districts to hire certified math and science teachers from India on three-year contracts.

Last year, Bridgeport was the only district to sign up for a pilot program. This year the program has expanded — Bloomfield has hired three Indian teachers and Hartford has hired one. (This year Connecticut also initiated a program to bring volunteer teachers from China to teach Mandarin. There are 15 Chinese teachers working across the state).

In February 2007, Sharon Pivirotto, a recruiter for the Bridgeport public schools, and Mary Ann Hansen, a world languages consultant at the State Education Department, traveled to New Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore to interview potential candidates. They met more than 100 teachers. Most were mid-career teachers, ages 30 to 40. Many of them had master’s degrees and some had Ph.D.s. Dr. Hansen’s main criteria during the interview process were fluency in English and an ability to adapt to a different system and culture.

Dr. Hansen said: “I asked them, ‘What is calculus?’ I wanted to make sure they answered in words, not formulas.”

Ms. Pivirotto presented the prospective candidates with scenarios about discipline. “How would you handle a verbally abusive student?” she would ask.

Of the 14 Indian teachers eventually hired, 10 are at Harding High School and 4 teach at Bassick High School across town.

The Indian teachers view the opportunity as a way to advance their careers and explore new methods in education and classroom management, said Raj Vanjani, vice president of the Teachers Placement Group, a Long Island-based agency that worked with Dr. Hansen to develop the visiting teachers program and that only works with teachers from India.

“In India, global experience is highly prized, and many dream of visiting America,” Mr. Vanjani said.

Discipline is probably one of the biggest challenges facing the new teachers, some of whom came from rigorous private schools.

Ms. Tallur taught chemistry to high school and middle school-age students in Hyderabad, where she said that discipline was not an issue.

“In India, most of the disciplining happens when children are younger,” she said. “It’s easy to bend the stem of a plant when it is young. Once the stem gets strong, it is much harder.”

At Bassick High School, Satya Mohan, a physics teacher, said he was surprised the first time a student put his head down on his desk and said, “I am not in the mood to listen today.”

“I thought to myself, well he is being honest,” Dr. Mohan said.

In spite of extensive training before starting in Bridgeport, Ms. Tallur admitted that the beginning of last year got off to a rocky start.

“I was told about discipline issues in my early orientation, but the intensity of the problem was very high,” Ms. Tallur said. “At first I got angry and frustrated. I tried to diagnose the problem and understand the children’s needs. I saw they needed guidance, love and affection. Now I touch them when I talk to them. I kid with them, but I also enforce my rules.”

Students said it took some adjustment on their part to have teachers from another country.

“The kids made fun of her accent, her shoes, anything,” said Lisel Martinez, a 10th grader at Harding who was in Ms. Tallur’s class last year. “But she didn’t show that she was upset. She really helped us, broke things down step by step. I think she really cared about us.”

Ms. Tallur said that the number of disciplinary infractions in her classroom decreased considerably by the end of the year. “Now when someone is not behaving, I take out my cellphone and start to call their parents,” she said. “I learned this trick from one of my colleagues.”

School administrators offer supportive services to the teachers. The new teachers were assigned mentors in their department, and they also had regular meetings with the school principal. “We knew it would be challenging in the beginning,” Ms. Birks said. “We wanted them to feel part of the community.”

Today, Ms. Tallur car-pools to school with a non-Indian colleague. “We no longer feel like outside teachers,” she said.

Dr. Mohan said he also had to analyze the challenges of urban education.

“Every child cannot be the same,” Dr. Mohan said. “We have to understand his setting. As teachers we try and match the gap in knowledge of each student and lift him up. That’s our job. We don’t want to be another challenge in their life.” He was director of the physics department at a college in Hyderabad, India, before coming to Bridgeport. He now considers himself part of the “Bassick family.”

School officials say they have benefited from the visiting teachers in other ways.

“These teachers have reminded me that we have to maintain high expectations for all our students,” said Ronald P. Remy, the principal of Bassick High School.

Not all of the Indian teachers had similarly successful years in Bridgeport. Two teachers at Cesar A. Batalla Elementary School, kindergarten to eighth grade, were asked to leave after a few months because they were not able to handle the discipline issues of middle school students. Two new teachers from India were placed at Harding this year, replacing the teachers who left.

Dr. Mohan said he particularly liked the hands-on approach to learning and the use of technology in American classrooms. Last year, he enlisted several of his students to participate in the citywide Science Fair where a few of them won prizes. This year he said he planned to get more students involved.

“Dr. Mohan encouraged me to be a part of the science fair,” said Darren Thompson, a sophomore at Bassick High. “We worked together after school on an aviation project.” This year he plans to work with Dr. Mohan on a solar energy project.

To date, there are no test scores that indicate student performance in math and science has improved since the arrival of the teachers from India, but administrators are optimistic. “We are hoping to see gains after a couple of years.” Ms. Birks said.

Several of the teachers live together in apartments. In the evenings, they cook together and discuss the day. “We spend a lot of time discussing problems and solutions with each other,” Ms. Tallur said.

Ms. Tallur and Dr. Mohan came back early from their summer vacations so they could be instructors at new teacher orientations at their respective high schools.

A few of the teachers have brought their families over for visits. On weekends, when they are not attending school basketball games and community forums, the teachers go on road trips.

“So far I’ve been to Boston, Niagara Falls, New York, Las Vegas and Disneyworld,” Dr. Mohan said. “We came to see America.”

Industry leaders, policy makers and international experts to address skills deficit issue at CII Summit

Industry leaders, policy makers and international experts to address skills deficit issue at CII Summit
MBAUniverse.com Bureau
Sep 16, 2008

Given the shortage of skilled manpower in fast growing sectors like Banking, Retail, Healthcare, Construction, Automotive sector and several other sectors, there is increased need for understanding the importance of Skills Development in India.To address the challenges and opportunities in the area, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) will be holding the Global Summit on Skill Development on September 17-18, 2008 in New Delhi. India's first portal on employability development – EmployablityUniverse.com – is the official media partner of the summit.

The two-day summit will see host of national & global speakers from Government, Industry, Academia, Multi-lateral Agencies, etc. The Summit shall be attended by Senior Industry representatives & experts from Australia, Germany, US, China, Korea, Singapore, New Zealand and Britain. Together they will offer perspectives on bridging the skill divide & sharing international best practices. Australia is the partner country for the Summit.

The Day 1 of the summit will have sessions on Global Practices in Skills, Engaging Stakeholders-Delivering through PPP, Universalizing Skills - From Policy to Practice where senior representatives from both industry & government shall discuss the skills needs for the country. Day 2 will have focused discussion on Sectoral Skills needs & the role of industry. The Sessions that will be covered this year are Automotive, Construction, Health, Retail & Financial Services.

Higher studies not priority for Indian engineering students

Silicon India News
Sat Aug 23

Higher studies not priority for Indian engineering students

The companies demanding higher degrees for candidates will have to wait. Higher education is not a priority for engineering students in India, despite a lot of new institutions being set up across the country. According to a study by two professors of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B), about 2.3 lakh students graduated in engineering in 2006 but only 20,000 master degrees and 1,000 PhDs were awarded in the same year.

Only one percent of B.Tech graduates opted for an M.Tech. and merely two percent of M.Tech graduates opted for PhD. The study named 'Engineering Education in India,' involved higher education institutions including the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Science (IISc).The study suggests that India needs to start a series of initiatives, including partnerships with industries, strengthening existing PhD programs and research facilities.

But while in India, many companies are insisting upon higher academic performances of their staff, many U.S companies are just looking for the pure employable talent, no matter what their college scores are.

By 2012, Georgia, U.S., will require bachelor's or higher degree for only 20.1 percent of the total jobs, says Georgia Workforce Trends in Brief report, published by the Georgia Department of Labor. Eight percent - the fastest-growing sector of the jobs market - will require some postsecondary education. The remaining 71.8 percent - the majority of which are low-skilled, low-paying jobs - will require no formal education beyond high school, reports reflector.com.

TCS, Infy, Wipro may replace IT megavendors

Silicon India News

http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/45462/2

Bangalore: Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Technologies, and Wipro Technologies will emerge as the next generation of IT service mega-vendors.A Gartner study says that these vendors, which are collectively referred to as 'India-3' and are increasingly being considered for strategic service deals, will perhaps replace today's mega-vendors by revenue - IBM Global Services, Accenture and EDS - in this space by 2011.

Though much smaller in size when compared to the current mega-vendors, these emerging mega-vendors are increasingly competing for the same mega-deals that had been the exclusive domain of the incumbent mega-vendors. The 'India-3' have leveraged their strong success with meeting client needs to achieve record growth levels during a long period of time (30 quarters continuously) and have outperformed the incumbent mega-vendors by almost a 3:1 margin in growth rates. The market capitalization of the Indian providers is significantly higher than that of EDS, and almost on par with Accenture that are much larger companies in terms of revenue.

"The emerging mega-vendors have made dramatic progress in the past few years and have more than doubled their revenue in a four-year period, with the 2007 revenue being 2.6 times the 2004 revenue," says Partha Iyengar, VP and Regional Research Director, Gartner.The emerging mega-vendors have leveraged four critical competencies to achieve their status as emerging mega-vendors. The competencies are: process excellence; world-class HR practices; providing high quality services at a low cost; the achievement of significant and disproportionate 'mind share' compared to their actual size.

However, as per the study, it is clear that there is a divide between today's mega-vendors and the aspiring Indian mega-vendors. The Indian providers will have to address the issue of moving away from resource-intensive revenue growth to a model that provides higher leverage and increases revenue without a linear relationship to head count, which is the situation that exists today.

"There are strong indicators that 'India-3' (TCS, Infosys and Wipro) will be the next mega-vendors in IT services. However, to achieve this, the current standing of the India-3 will need to expand quickly to keep pace with the changing client environment for IT delivery in the future," said Iyengar.

What the U.S. Can Learn from Indian R&D

What the U.S. Can Learn from Indian R&D

Engineering companies in India play a leading role in educating their research employees, a practice the U.S. can adopt to help keep its global competitive edge

BusinessWeek

by Vivek Wadhwa

We've heard the dire warnings before. The U.S. is falling behind in math and science. A recent admonition came from the Business Roundtable, which cautioned that the U.S. could lose its competitive edge to India and China unless it doubles higher education graduation rates in engineering and science. Intel (INTC) Chairman Craig Barrett, a member of the influential association of executives, said America's economic future lies with its next generation of workers and its ability to develop new technologies and products. This means we must strengthen math and science education, he said. Yes, we need to keep improving education.
But too great an emphasis on education at the university and high school level lets off the hook another crucial contributor to the education of U.S. workers: the workplace.

Innovation clusters to drive growth

Innovation clusters to drive growth
FIRST PERSON: Ganesh Natarajan, Vice-chairman, Nasscom, and global CEO, Zensar Technologies
BS Reporter / Mumbai February 15, 2008


It’s time the Indian IT-BPO industry asked itself – has it given the world its Nano yet – or are we at least planning something on those lines which can put our industry firmly in the spotlight?

With innovation becoming the watchword of the Indian IT and BPO industry, the recognition by Nasscom of a series of sustaining innovations in companies ranging from Media Labs to Mango Technologies to multinational TI has left the industry asking for more – and some disruptive breakthrough innovations too. (A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is a technological innovation, product, or service that uses a “disruptive” strategy, rather than a “sustaining” strategy, to overturn the existing dominant technologies or status quo products in a market.)

Disruptive innovations have the potential to add over $50 billion of revenue to the industry by 2012 and it would be wonderful if all the partners in the innovation ecosystem took on a mission to make this transformation a reality.

Unlike in Cuba and Singapore, where innovation is almost entirely government-led and funded, there is a truly participative approach in our country, where large firms, entrepreneurs, academic institutions and of course the government have equal roles to play in the National Innovation Mission.

The formation of innovation clusters – IT for automotive innovation in Pune and for telecom innovation in Chennai have already been initiated – and the evolution of collaborative programmes with educational institutions needs to be intensified this year.

The outstanding work done by Professor Michael Porter of Harvard Business School has amply demonstrated that the cluster approach could transform the fortunes of any industry or country and needs to be embraced in a collaborative format in our own industry to see breakthrough success.

Business model innovation is manifest in the global delivery platform which could well draw inspiration from Dr Kalam’s mention of virtual collaborative networks on the opening day of the summit.

The global delivery platform, in place already with various firms who are using talent from around the country and locations in Europe, China and Latin America to build new applications, has transformed the way businesses interact with IT by enabling disaggregated software development using collaborative tools and leverage the best talent from various locations.

Through this platform the domain expert is at the customer site taking requirement specifications, design and development happens at another location, and testing at a completely different location, capturing the best of all worlds.

Innovation is the best long term response to the input and environment pressures that the industry will continue to face. In the short term, Nasscom will continue to lead the way – through its well established initiatives in IT workforce development, accreditation and registration programmes for young hopefuls and the wide ranging data security initiatives that are making India the best destination to build and support world class software.

This year will see the building of communities where our young talent can interact with business leaders and customers in a truly collaborative environment to reinforce India’s thought leadership in the exciting knowledge universe.

Piramal Prize

Piramal Prize

The Piramal Prize seeks to enable cutting-edge entrepreneurial ideas that bring the highest standards of health to India's masses. Entries, for-profit or not-for-profit, should emphasize both profitablity/sustainability and maximum social impact. The most viable business model will receive INR 10,00,000 (10 Lakh / 1 million) in seed funding in addition to potential venture capital.
The Piramal Prize evaluation process involves three stages: The first stage requires teams to outline the problem being addressed, the nature of the innovation(s), and design of the enterprise. After submission, stage one entries will be viewable to the public on our website and will be open to comments and suggestions. Additionally, stage one entries may be modified by entrants until the submission deadline of April 1st, 2008. The second stage requires semi-finalists to submit detailed business plans and financial projections; the third stage invites five finalists to the Piramal Prize weekend at IIM-Ahmedabad in June 2008.
Entrance Requirements: Plans must directly or indirectly address the health crisis in India. Entries may be for-profit or not-for-profit, and should be sustainable business models that have a significant social impact. Applicants may enter as a team, with a maximum of three members. All participants must be over the age of 18.

Global Advances Challenge U.S. Dominance in Science

Global Advances Challenge U.S. Dominance in Science

The United States remains the world leader in scientific and technological innovation, but its dominance is threatened by economic development elsewhere, particularly in Asia, the National Science Board said Tuesday in its biennial report on science and engineering.
The United States’ position is especially delicate, the agency said, given its reliance on foreign-born workers to fill technical jobs.
The board is the oversight agency for the National Science Foundation, the leading source of money for basic research in the physical sciences.
The report, on the Web at nsf.gov/statistics/indicators, recommends increased financing for basic research and greater “intellectual interchange” between researchers in academia and industry. The board also called for better efforts to track the globalization of high-tech manufacturing and services and their implications for the American economy.

Visual Communications Portfolio

Visit my recently completed Visual Communications Portfolio, with India and China's economic development as the primary theme.

Tata & Infosys manage talent crunch

TCS and Infy step efforts to manage talent crunch (Silicon India, November 6)
Top software services firms of India, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys Technologies are keen on acquisitions to boost their manpower, but are cautious of very large targets. TCS was keen on acquiring new potentials, "We have to acquire capabilities we don't have, that's our strategy," says S. Padmanabhan, Head of Global Human Resources, TCS.

India firms to enhance China's BPO skills

Indian firms to enhance China's BPO skills (Silicon India, November 8)
Two Indian firms signed an initial pact with a Chinese industry body to train Chinese students in skills required in the booming outsourcing sector. To enhance the level of certification and training required for the BPO industry, China-based Xi'an Service Outsourcing Development Association signed a MoU with Starting Point Competence Training and Snam Abrasive. The MoU, signed at the Xian-Bangalore Service Outsourcing conference, stressed on joint efforts to encourage, stimulate and formulate competency developmental activities. This would favor the BPO industry in Xi'an. The city in western China is referred to as the capital of that country's BPO industry.

The Changing Face of American Innovation

An interview with William Kerr in Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge: The Changing Face of American Innovation

The contributions made by immigrant scientists and engineers for developing new U.S. technologies have been formidable—but not always well described.

What we do know: While the foreign-born account for just over 10 percent of the U.S. working population, they represent 25 percent of the U.S. science and engineering workforce and nearly 50 percent of those with science and engineering doctorates. And at the Ph.D. level, ethnic researchers make an exceptional contribution to science as measured by Nobel Prizes, election to the National Academy of Sciences, patent citation counts, and so on.

Now new research based on patent and trademark data by Harvard Business School professor William Kerr drills down to further identify the probable ethnic composition of U.S. inventors, the industries they influence, and the geographies they work in.

But the paper, "The Ethnic Composition of U.S. Inventors," also documents a significant transformation in ethnic composition of U.S. scientists and engineers over the last 30 years, as Chinese and Indian inventors grew in importance as drivers of U.S. innovation...

India's Youth Set Sights Beyond Call Centers

India's Youth Set Sights Beyond Call Centers
(Forbes, October 8)

As India's economy booms, its young workers are no longer so keen on trying to soothe the irate customers of the global companies that outsource their call center jobs in the country. Industries like aviation and retail are among the new favorites for job seekers, says a study. The business process outsourcing sector, which now has attrition rates ranging from 25% to 30%, could see that number climb to 30% to 40% over the next two years, says the study on urban youths; emerging career choices, conducted by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

Diaspora Knowledge Network

India moots online global knowledge network CIOL
R Jai Krishna

The electronic platform to enable the Indian Diaspora to work on projects in the country without relocating

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Aimed at enabling the diverse Diaspora to work on projects in India without having to relocate, the Indian government will soon launch an electronic platform, which will serve as an online global knowledge network. The Diaspora Knowledge Network will enable the Indian Diaspora to deploy its knowledge and skills and transform ideas into individual initiatives and community action in India. The platform will enable the Diaspora to work on projects in India without shifting the base. The government will also soon establish a Global Indian Foundation, to provide the Overseas Indian Community a credible window to lead Diaspora philanthropy into deserving causes such as education, health and rural development in India. The Overseas Citizenship of India scheme, which is similar to the Green Card of USA, engages non-resident Indians.The newly-established Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre, a not-for-profit trust, promoted by the ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs will also act as the Diaspora’s window to invest in and benefit from India, and will serve as a ‘one stop shop.’The network will bring together about 30 million Indians living in 130 countries across the world. The move assumes added significance in the wake of the estimations that Diaspora will be generate an annual income equal to about 30 per cent of India’s Gross Domestic Product. At present, Indians living abroad produce an economic output of about $400 billion. The Diaspora is estimated to generate an annual income equal to about 30 per cent of India’s GDP. India is already the highest recipient of remittances from overseas at over $23 billion last year. Interestingly nearly half of these remittances – about $12 billion annually - comes from just five million overseas Indians in the Gulf.

India's up-n-coming see the glass half full

Youth In India Are Most Optimistic (Forbes, September 22)

When it comes to global happiness, young Indians score the highest, while Japan’s “now” generation rounds out the bottom of the list, says a new survey. “Indian youth are strikingly more optimistic about their own future and also about the future of society. The general picture in other countries is that young people tend to be personal optimists but societal pessimists,” said Mats Lindgren, CEO and founder of Kairos Future Group. He is visiting New Delhi Friday to present the Indian findings of the survey by the Swedish group.

Quest for Humanity in Corporate Atlanta

Quest for humanity in corporate Atlanta: Finding a place for the teacher idealist in corporate workforce development

IT&D On-site: Fortune 500 Logistics Company

Hosted by:
Learning & Development Manager
Head of Training & Development
Organizational Development
Instructional Design Supervisor
Information Systems
Learning & Development Manager, Corporate Schools
Enterprise Technology Hub
Compliance & Ethics Group

Philosophy: In the case of this organization, the philosophy of the company seems to be the philosophy of the instructional teams we met: “One company; one brand; one vision.” As a classmate ferreted out, the leadership philosophy is also “Servant leadership.” The presentations about the Career Development Process and the Management Learning & Development Process also revealed a strong philosophy of investing in their employees and providing a myriad of opportunities within the organization. Since this company is 100 years old and this training session was the first time we heard the word “union” mentioned, I was reminded of the important roles IT & D and organizational development theories have played in reshaping the employer/employee relationship over the last century in the US.

Taking clues from what we were presented, most of the teams seem to function primarily under objectivist principles. This is not surprising. They must set Health & Safety as its highest priority; similar to the Public Transportation System, as a transportation company, they have no room for mistakes when it comes to training drivers. Yet, in addition to the objectivist style training, the components of social networking shown by the Enterprise Technology Hub are decidedly the most constructivist learning environments we’ve seen in our site visits so far.

Strategy: As with the philosophy, the strategy of the company as a whole informs the strategy of the learning & development team:

Four Strategic Imperatives:
1) Value Added Solutions;
2) Enterprise of Excellence;
3) Building a Winning Team; &
4) Customer Focus.

They also showed signs of using the typical ADDIE model as their strategy for understanding needs, and shaping, developing, implementing and evaluating their solutions. For example, they performed a needs analysis by asking local teams to identify needs for their shared services initiative.

Like the Fortune 500 Printing Services Company, this organization wants their training to be just in time and more mobile.

Tactics: We were introduced to several interesting and innovative tactics during this session, but the word count limit on our site reports will limit me to list only a few of the highlights here:
Shared Services Initiative
Professional and useful interactive simulations
Muscle-memory training for walking
Social networking
Learning Management System: SCORM (Reiser & Dempsey (2007) provide detailed information of this on pg. 293 and point us to a website for more information http://www.adlnet.org/)
Community Internship Program

Resources:ASTD
Maisey Consortium

I was very interested in the Community Internship Program and wanted to post a note about it to see who else might want to discuss it.

They introduced this program to develop more understanding between managers and their staff by requiring managers to spend time in the communities of their fellow employees.

This is a particularly interesting strategy to me in the context of my research into the US-India workforce connections. The external pressures and infrastructural challenges of living in India are quite overwhelming, and it seems that an understanding of this environment could go a long way in bridging the gap between US & Indian team members.

This program also reminded me of McClusky's (1963) theory of margin that posits a ratio of load and power in an adult learner's life. The theory of margin provides a framework to consider the real world context of the adult learner's life circumstances when designing instruction.

What better way to understand the external load of your participants' lives than to live within their community for an extended period of time?

The next best resource for this for India so far is Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days Episode 2 on Outsourcing.