Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Raipur successfully hosted the first day of its 3rd International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) and 14th International Sustainable Development Studies Institute (ISDSI) Annual Conference 2020 on Monday. The conference was inaugurated by Professor Bharat Bhasker, Director IIM Raipur, Professor Bhasker delivered an opening note in which he welcomed the dignitaries and mentioned that the future of the industry lies in the optimal use of technologies where autonomous systems will work together.
The Guest of honor, Prof Bhimaraya Metri, Director IIM Nagpur, congratulated Prof. Satyasiba Das and Professor Bhasker for building the digital ecosystem at IIM Raipur. He further pointed out that we need to redefine the possibilities in today’s world, and it is extremely important that the liquid workforce follow the norm of lifelong learning.
The Guest of Honour, Prof E B Khedkar, Vice president- Asia Pacific and Board Director of the Decision Science Institute, Houston, Texas observed that meteoric growth is achieved in India with the support from Dr Metri. He hoped ISDSI would grow in leaps and bounds in the spirit of inclusiveness. He concluded his address by stating that with a strong foundation of digital infrastructure and expanded digital success, India is poised for its next stage of growth.
The Guest of Honour, Prof Mahadeo Jaiswal, Director IIM Sambalpur and ISDSI President, projected his view on India emerging as a growing economy from 1990. Moreover, he talked about the emergence of Industry 4.0, which has led to many disruptions in the business models and with the new ecosystems like Blockchain, the eventual growth across various sectors will be witnessed in the coming years.
C P Gurnani, CEO & Managing Director of Tech Mahindra, honourable chief guest of the event, highlighted the importance of building a digital ecosystem. He shared a three-legged approach for problem solving – First, understanding the problem followed by taking into account the multiple technological solutions available. Finally, he highlighted the need to learn to be ahead of the curve and constantly adapt by changing business models to match the digital ecosystem. He emphasized that critical thinking, penultimate thinking and entrepreneurship were the crux of the solution to drive the change forward and concluded that now is the perfect time to drive this change.
Professor Tobias Schoenherr, Editor of Chief IJOPM, Associate Editor, Journal of Operations Management, & Decision Science Journal, Michigan State University, USA, explained about the evolution of Digital Ecosystems and pointed out that developments in ERP have driven digital transformation in the last two decades. He encouraged the companies to not be a data squirrel, i.e., to collect anything and everything. He emphasized that we need to adopt the status quo of the current ERP infrastructure and make the most of it. To make sense of the data, analytical capabilities have to be developed. He concluded his address by explaining the critical elements for building the Digital Ecosystem.
A series of academic paper presentations were conducted across 15 tracks which provided wonderful insights by academicians from renowned B-schools across the country.
Dr Pallab Saha, Chief Architect, The Open Group, discussed the topic of digital ecosystems by taking a few cases and examples in the Indian landscape.
Professor Jie Yu, Associate Professor in Information System, University of Nottingham Business School, China, shared his views from the customer perspective about how the digital ecosystem services have changed their lives. He mentioned how technology has revolutionized the digital ecosystems by discussing in detail four aspects – Food, Clothing, Shelter and Transportation in context of China. Adding to his point, he talked about use cases in China such as Taobao Live for streaming and its services that it provides to its users for enhanced streaming experience.
