One of the top graduate business schools in the world, INSEAD, is not currently planning to establish a campus in India, but it is nevertheless dedicated to advancing and bolstering industry-academia research in the future with prominent Indian multinational corporations and unicorn startups. Since taking over as the institute’s dean in September of last year, Francisco Veloso claims that Indian students make up the largest minority group at the global business school, accounting for roughly 12–15% of the student body—a greater percentage than Chinese students, who make up 9–10%. In a special conversation with Rica Bhattacharyya of ET, Veloso discusses how AI is starting to permeate classrooms and how corporate leaders in India are becoming more and more interested in learning about this game-changing technology. Revised passages:
Over the years, INSEAD has established its physical presence in several nations. Are you planning to open a campus in India?
India is a rapidly developing nation that is becoming more and more significant on the global stage. India is closely connected to INSEAD. One of the most represented nationalities in our faculty is India, home to about 10% of our academic members. We have significant ties and a large number of alumni in India.
But at this time, we have no plans to open a campus (in India). We interact with people everywhere. We are not now thinking about having a presence in India in an Asian context because we launched an Asia campus in Singapore. However, we already have a number of these partnerships with Indian entrepreneurs and corporations, in addition to a wide range of other partnerships in research and education that we plan to expand in the future.
Our faculty is involved in research about India and with India, so our engagements range from unicorn startups to top Indian MNCs in banking, telecommunication, pharmaceutical, public sector, and consulting firms—TCS, Bharti Airtel, Rajasthan Royals, Tata Group, Aditya Birla Group, etc.—and they truly cover a wide range of topics.
Indians are choosing to pursue their education abroad at a rising rate in recent times. Have you noticed a rise in the representation of Indians?
The most prevalent nationality in our programming is Indian. About 12–15% of our cohort are Indian students, which is a larger percentage than the 9–10% of Chinese students. Since our school is a global one and we place a strong focus on exposing kids to a variety of perspectives, experiences, and ideas, it is crucial that even the most represented nationality does not exceed 10% to 15% year. This is a crucial component of the experience, which is why we value our relationship with India since it plays a big role in the educational initiatives.
Given the recent excitement surrounding GenAI, how do you envision technology changing business education? Do you plan to include it in your curriculum?
Education will be drastically impacted by the revolutionary technology known as artificial intelligence (GenAI). Students will be able to have a far more personalized and assisted journey thanks to it. Some of these resources will be available to the students to aid in their educational process. Additionally, it will assist the faculty in closing some gaps. We are interacting with GenAI on many fronts and taking it extremely seriously.
The second goal is to get students, who will become tomorrow’s leaders, ready to lead this change from the front, so we can see that they are aware of how AI is changing the workforce and the work they do. We have a ton of electives on analytics and artificial intelligence. For startups and C-suite executives, we offer a course on AI strategy.
In addition, we are actively involved in executive education; for example, we run an AI for Business program. We have established an AI business roundtable to bring together executives from many industries to discuss the broad ramifications of AI.
Many of the corporate courses we create for clients in India and other countries across the world incorporate a range of these reflections and solutions.
Do business leaders in India have a growing desire to learn more about GenAI?
We are seeing a lot of interest from businesses and individual leaders in learning about applying AI in business transformation, which is why the number of participants in our AI in business program increased by 300% in the previous year. Using AI techniques, we are creating additional content on organizational behavior, strategy, and novel simulations. The leaders have no desire to become AI gurus. They want to use it in business to use the tool to produce better items more quickly rather than developing that.
How are you delivering your courses with GenAI?
A significant number of our faculty members employ artificial intelligence (AI) in their courses; in fact, one-third of our faculty members teaching MBA programmes tell us that they use AI in some capacity. In addition, there are a growing number of electives that make use of AI. In order to help others learn, we have created an internal forum where people can share their initial experiences with using AI and where it is being used. The tool’s capabilities are evolving quickly, so we have no idea what the future will bring. To stay ahead of the curve and remain receptive to the various ways artificial intelligence is influencing society, we must be at the forefront of both its application and research. In addition, we must be acutely conscious of the ethical and responsible aspects.
