Bengaluru: Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore is all set to launch a Doctoral Programme in Entrepreneurship, leveraging its expertise in mentoring and incubating entrepreneurs and start-ups.
India is an emerging hub for entrepreneurship. Over the years, entrepreneurship has had its share of ups and downs, with many sectors potentially facing uncertainties of the unknown. Pegged as a significant initiative that is going to redefine India’s business and job ecosystem, entrepreneurship clearly demands extensive research to aid a better understanding of the different cultures that it has given rise too, with implications on business performance and sustenance of incomes. While there is a lot of discussion on how entrepreneurship is going to disrupt the future, there is a still a paucity of rigourous research on the subject.
“Towards this objective, the PhD program in Entreprenuership aims at providing an impetus to the increasing need for scholarly research in entrepreneurship and to create a vibrant pool of faculty specializing in that domain,” said Professor Rejie George Pallathitta, Chairperson, Fellow Programme in Management (FPM) at IIMB. The FPM is IIMB’s doctoral programme.The details regarding the application process to the doctoral programme in Entrepreneurship, the eligibility criteria, and other admission details, are at: http://iimb.ac.in/programmes/doctoral/fpm .
Professor K Kumar, Chairperson, Academic Programmes at the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) and senior faculty at IIMB, said: “There is also a strong movement the world over to incorporate entrepreneurship as part of the curriculum of general and mainstream education. The need for teachers and scholars to develop curriculum and pedagogy to support this is going to increase tremendously and a doctoral programme will help meet this need. IIMB is the first management school in the country to offer an FPM with a specialization in entrepreneurship.”
Explaining that IIMB has always approached entrepreneurship as a scholarly discipline that supports practice, he pointed out that IIMB has deep academic expertise in entrepreneurship, faculty who are active researchers in the field of entrepreneurship, who bring state-of-the-art knowledge to impact the practice of entrepreneurship through its education and incubation programmes.
A doctorate degree is typically the highest level of academic degee granted by an academic institution. Award of a doctoral degree connotes deep research in a specific field. At IIMB, the doctoral program takes typically 5 years to complete, the first two years being for coursework. Established in 1973, IIM Bangalore has since then built on its base of highly accomplished faculty, world-class infrastructure and motivated student body to emerge as one of the premier institutes for management education and research, promoting managerial excellence in the country.
IIMB’s mission is to ‘build leaders through holistic and innovative education’. Located in India’s high technology capital, IIM Bangalore is in close proximity to some of the leading corporate houses in the country, ranging from information technology to consumer product companies, giving it the added advantage of integrating classroom knowledge with practical experience. Additionally, IIMB established its own incubating centre named NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) in the year 2000.
NSRCEL incubates start-ups and provides free mentoring for budding entrepreneurs. At present, NSRCEL incubates 18 start-ups – the largest number for an incubation centre in an academic institution; 100 plus ventures are supported by the centre; 15,000 plus entrepreneurs are engaged; 1,000 plus million dollars portfolio valuation; total valuation of 55 active companies from the incubator is around $1 billion; 4,500 plus jobs have so far been created.
