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Executive Interviews: Interview with Bala V Balachandran on Government and Business
December 2009
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By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary
Firstly, congratulations for being
an illustrious and distinguished
professor and for having taken ‘Great
Lakes’ to great heights in such a short
time? What was the trigger for you to
have conceptualized Great Lakes
model of management education?
My tryst with Institution building for
higher management education goes
back to the days of 1973 when the
first six faculty of IIM Bangalore, were
hired at my home in Chicago with N
S Ramasamy at the helm of affairs.
Looking back, I realize that the seed
for Great Lakes was sown right then. I
had a plan, but no resources or more
importantly – no experience. The
opportunity came with MDI,
Gurgaon, where I worked with the
UNDP grant of US$700,000 and the
rest as they say, is history.
The MDI experience at Gurgaon laid
the foundation and watered the
seedling between 1991 and 1997
where I gained significant exposure to
the creation and launch of the PGPM
program. This also allowed me to
explore the nitty-gritties of
collaboration with a foreign
university as the PGPM at MDI
Gurgaon was set up with a generous
grant from UNDP to Kellogg. Soon on
the heels of the MDI, came ISB. My
stint as the Chairman of Curriculum
and Faculty and as the founding
faculty of the ISB at Hyderabad
during 1998 and 2004, was replete
with more learnings and insights into
the various components of the PGPM
program concept, delivery and liaison
with industry and academia. Thus,
the time was ripe, I had not only a
plan, but also reasonable resources
and substantial wisdom and with the
help of Dean Donald Jacobs and Dean
Jain at Kellogg, Great Lakes Institute of
Management was conceived at
Chennai with the help and
encouragement from my friends all
over the world during 2003. We
identified some differentiating points
while exploring the strengths of the
other institutions I built and felt 3
important themes.
Global
Mindset, Indian Roots,
Highest
Quality at Affordable cost or US Top
Schools Quality but Indian Prices
and
Meritocracy Transparency and
Innovative Curriculum with a 12
months model. In other words, a
Super Convex combination of IIM A,
B or C and ISB. The result is Great
Lakes leveraging my relationships,
networks and experience. We
announced in July 2003 and the first
class started in April 29, 2004 with
124 students. Again the trigger is
location and timing which I did, in
spite of my quintuple bypass surgery
in 2002.
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During your very distinguished
and illustrious career you would
have witnessed several economic
crises and for many you would have
been consulted. How do you describe
the global economy’s mood right
now?
Beaten by the impact and intensity of
the economic crisis that was felt in
September 2008 and beyond, there
was awe and shock though there
were many forewarning signs of
massive collapses and lapses that
probably started in 2003 with the
subprime mess and obscene bonuses
based on illusory profits and
revenues mainly based on greed by
many individuals unchecked and
poorly regulated. However during
this late months may be from July
2009, signs of recovery as we see in
the stock markets both in US and in
India and some other indicators like
the relative ease in credit and in
banks, as well as CAPEX investments
in many corners signs of recovery are
seen in spite of growing
unemployment rates in US and in
spite of
pumping funds in the stimulus
packages. I will describe it as slight
recovery with cautious optimism;
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