Academy of International Business and IIMB Hosts 4-Day Meet on ‘Global Networks: Organizations and People’

Dr. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairman & MD, Biocon (India), awarded the 2015 AIB Fellows Executive of the Year Award

Bengaluru, June 29, 2015

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and the Academy of International Business (AIB) is hosting the 56th Annual AIB Conference with 121 paper sessions, 6 special sessions and 33 panels across 15 tracks in Bangalore. At the opening plenary session of the conference, Dr. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairman & MD, Biocon (India), was awarded the 2015 AIB Fellows Executive of the Year Award by Sri Zaheer, Dean, Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. During the conference many practitioners and scholars were awarded for their contribution to their respective fields.

Themed ‘Global Networks: Organizations and People’, the AIB Annual Global Conference 2015 focuses on responding to three megatrends—the rise of trade in activities, knowledge-intensive intangibles and emerging markets. The prestigious conference that comes to India for the first time ever, brings practitioners and scholars from 62 countries together.

On winning the prestigious award, Dr. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairman & MD, Biocon (India), said, “I am deeply honoured and privileged to receive this prestigious award from AIB. Thank you very much for all those who made this happen. I am very honoured that I am sharing this award with Professor Nick Binedell of GIBS who has been awarded educator of the year”.

Delivering the keynote at the opening plenary session, she said, “Information Technology, Communication Technology and Biotechnology are rapidly and disruptively changing the way we communicate, educate, medicate and eradicate. To me perhaps the most transformational power of technology is that of entrepreneurship. Technology is unleashing innovation to entrepreneurial zeal like never before. These technology led entrepreneurs are all focused on break through ideas. This has created start-up revolution the world over. Bangalore today is the start-up capital of India and accounts for nearly 30% of the country’s start-up. It is forecasted that Bangalore will soon join the ranks of Silicon Valley and Boston to be amongst the world’s leading entrepreneurial systems”.

“The future belongs to those country and companies that can unleash the power of cross border collaboration, invest in innovations and most of all embrace entrepreneurship as an economic model for growth”, she added.

AIB also announced a start of a new tradition this year by visiting a third sector, social organizations, to give the AIB members a chance to go beyond the walls of the conference venue and witness how innovative organizations are dealing with some of the challenges facing India.

Delighted to host the prestigious meet, Dr. Sushil Vachani, Director, IIMB, said: “Bengaluru is one of the best cities in the world to observe the confluence of the megatrends. It is a vibrant center for both the creation and export of knowledge-intensive intangibles in the information technology and biotechnology industries. It also symbolizes the opportunity presented by the rise of entrepreneurship in emerging markets, captured in the billion dollar valuations of homegrown e-commerce companies such as Flipkart.”

Dr. Tomas Hult, Executive Director, AIB, said: “Following recent meetings in Brazil and China, the Bengaluru AIB meeting represented a great opportunity for the international business community to engage with each other in one of the most important global cities for business in Bengaluru and one of the world’s largest economies in India.”

Dr. Nakiye Avdan Boyacigiller, AIB President, said: “We are very excited to be holding this year’s Annual Conference of the Academy of International Business, in Bengaluru, India as it has been a goal for many of us for years. The conference as always will provide a venue for us to discuss the latest developments in international business research, teaching and practice, as well as looking at the policy implications of our work. There will also be a number of specific sessions focused on the context, management and multinational enterprises of India that should attract much interest by our members. With conference attendance at over 800 participants from 60 countries as always, old ties will be rekindled, and new ties will be made between scholars as well as institutions.”

“Bangalore is particularly appropriate since it encapsulates megatrends in a single location. It is at once a center of high value, focused IT activities that appear within a wide range of GVCs, from avionics to financial services. Its location in an emerging economy enables visitors to see for themselves the juxtaposition of gleaming, globally connected IT campuses and economically isolated communities disconnected from the world economy, ”said Prof. Ram Mudambi, Vice-President, AIB.

Drawing attention to the fact that India is the growing destination for foreign investment and International business, Dr. S. Raghunath, India Chapter Chair, AIB and Professor of Corporate Strategy and Policy, IIM Bangalore, said, “India has regained its position in the list of top 10 destinations for foreign direct investments (FDI) in 2014, according to the World Investment Report 2015 released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad). India is ranked ninth in the latest report as against 15th last year. FDI into India through the approval route shot up 162 per cent to US$ 1.91 billion in the first ten months of the ongoing fiscal year, indicating that government’s effort to improve ease of doing business and relaxation in FDI norms may be yielding results.”

The AIB 2015 conference serves as a forum for interaction, sharing and exchange of ideas among academics, practitioners, consultants and policy researchers from multiple disciplines from across the globe. Some of the leading practitioners and academicians who will be part of the Global leadership conclave include leaders from the Corporate world such as Harish Manwani, Chairman, Hindustan Unilever Ltd and former COO, Unilever; Dr. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairperson and Managing Director, Biocon; Ashutosh Raghuvanshi, Deputy Chairman and Group CEO, Narayana Health;, Sanjeev Vohra, Managing Director for Accenture Digital; Aditya Menon, Managing Director, Global Digital Strategy at Citi; K. Suryaprakash, Senior Vice President and Global Head – Digital, Infosys; Anil Menon, President, Smart+Connected Communities, Deputy Chief Globalization Officer, Cisco.

The conference will host eminent academicians from across the globe including Prof. Srilatha Zaheer, University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management; Prof. Stefanie Lenway, Michigan State University The Eli Broad College of Business; G. Tomas M. Hult, Michigan State University; Prof.Paul Beamish, Ivey Business School, Canada; Prof.Peter Buckley, Professor of International Business and Founder Director of CIBUL; Prof. Nakiye, The Sabanci School of Management at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey; Prof. Ram Mudambi, Temple University; Prof. SumitKundu, Florida International University; Prof.Elizabeth Rose, Otago Business School; Prof.S.Raghunath, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore; Prof.Abhoy Ojha, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore; Dr. Pulak Ghosh, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore; Dr. Sai Yayavaram, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore; Venkatachalam Anbumozhi, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA); Siva Viswanathan, University of Maryland among others.

The conference features panels and paper discussions that are designed to initiate and stimulate discussions between academicians and practitioners in business and government. Some of the interesting panels are:

Multinationals in Big Emerging Markets; Globalization, Cities and Institutions; Internationalization, Distances, and Entry; Leveraging India’s Locational Competitive Advantage and the Internationalization of Indian MNEs; Global Value Chains, Innovation and Performance; Big Data for Innovation, Competition and Productivity; Technology & Science-Based Innovation in Emerging Economies among others. BWI