Getting Prof. Willy Shih from Harvard to the Alliance classroom ..

Harvard Business School 1908 (Courtesy media room, HBS)

Over the years, all of us have been reading a lot of interesting articles from Harvard Business Review and have been documenting them. I do it in my blog. (click here). 

It was in one of those readings that I came across the interesting article by Prof. Willy Shih of Harvard Business School on the post-pandemic global supply chains. After going thru it, I decided that I will be one day asking my students to read such masterpieces and wanted my students also to get the same intellectual stimulation that I got from it. My sister, also from HBS, prods us to strive for greater heights and accomplishments. 

At the first opportunity, I asked my first sem MBA students of sections B and C to read the above article (click here), each of the 13 groups was also asked to write a 2-3 page write up and in addition, groups 1 and 2 had to make class presentations. The students willingly took it as a challenge and gave good 10 min presentations in the class, followed by a Q&A session. I had put the students into a loop of reading intellectually stimulating articles, taking the learning from it and internalising it in due course.

 

It was a good effort from the first sem students and who is a better person to be informed than Prof. Shih himself on what the students felt about his work. Prof. Shih was happy to hear of the student response and forwarded me links to some of his recent articles relating to the challenges faced by the post-pandemic global supply chains. I also shared my writing on the Hambantota port in Sri Lanks, south of India, slowly slipping into Chinese hands and how that would impact global supply chains (click here).

 

In our mail exchanges that followed, I asked Prof Shih of his willingness to do an exclusive online session for my students. Much to my disbelief, Prof. Shih immediately agreed to talk to my students and that is how we managed to get this illustrious personality with great global experience to talk to the future CEOs and supply chain managers of the world. I get to understand that Harvard professors do not generally interact with students from other Institutes across the world unless they have a very solid reason to do so. 

Prof. Willy Shih

Prof. Willy Shih patiently waiting for the students to join 

Here are the details of the interaction of Prof. Willy Shih, Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Management Practice in Business Administration at the Harvard Business school, Boston with students and faculty of Alliance School of Business, Bangalore. 

 

Date and Time : 28 july 2021. 6.30 PM IST (9 AM EDT)

Topic : Post pandemic global supply chains. 

Yours faithfully was hosting the event .. Click here to the link for the event recording, 1 hour 7 minutes.

 

In short, though I am not exaggerating, it is a fact that the students could not have listened to a more insightful speech from anyone else on planet earth. There was lot of value in the 45 minutes Prof spoke and the other 17 minutes he answered their questions and answers. 

This is an experience I would not want to forget for many years to come.

 

George