Lessons for Leaders hosted by CEE, IBA

Center for Executive Education (CEE), IBA, Karachi hosted Prof. Dr. Shailendra Raj Mehta is the President and Director, MICA, Ahmedabad and Distinguished Professor for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at MICA. This was the fifth visit of Dr. Mehta to Karachi. The following sessions were held in April 2018:

• Thought Leaders Session – April 20, 2018
• Strategic Thinking & Execution for the Top Management – April 18 to 20, 2018
• Senior Leadership Program for Pakistan Petroleum Limited - April 23 & 24, 2018

The thought leaders' session was attended by Leading Academicians, Industry Practitioners, Functional Heads and CEOs of Leading Companies. The objective of this session was to share experiences with the audience on Business Strategies and how strategies fail, the reasons for this, the consequences and some of the solutions that used to remedy this. This lecture presented some real examples of strategies issues and how these can be addressed.

In addition CEE hosted a two days customized program for the Senior Leadership of Pakistan Petroleum Limited.

CEE also hosted a three days high-end workshop on Strategic Thinking & Execution for the Top Management with CxOs, Business Owners and Functional Heads from some of the leading Public and Private Sector Organizations including GroupM Pakistan (Private) Limited, MindShare Pakistan (Private) Limited, Kot Addu Power Company Limited, Chenab Foundries Limited, SSGC LPG (Pvt.) Limited, World Call Telecom Limited and many others.

These programs were well received by the Industry. CEE plans to bring similar high-level programs and engagements in 2018-19.

During the week, CEE hosted exclusive sessions of Dr. Mehta with Dr. Farrukh Iqbal, the Dean & Director IBA and Mr. Shahid Shafiq, Member BoG.

Faculty Profile:
Dr. Shailendra Raj Mehta is the President and Director, MICA, Ahmedabad and Distinguished Professor for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at MICA. Before joining MICA, he was the Chairman of the Board of Management at Auro University where he served as Acting Vice Chancellor and Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Provost/Vice Chancellor of Ahmedabad University. After a 16 year stint at Purdue University where he taught Economics and Strategic Management, he returned to India in 2006-07 to head the collaboration between Duke CE (Duke University's Corporate Education Arm) and IIM-Ahmedabad as Regional Managing Director for India, West Asia and the Middle East and as Visiting Professor of Business Policy at IIM-Ahmedabad.

He has his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Delhi University (St. Stephen's College and Delhi School of Economics, respectively), M.Phil from Balliol College, Oxford, and Ph.D. from Harvard.

Dr. Mehta has done extensive research in the areas of Entrepreneurship, Industrial Organization, Information Economics and Experimental Economics. His research was the subject of a full-length review by The Economist. His work on creating world class universities has been discussed around the world and profiled in over ten languages including Chinese, Russian, French, German and Arabic among others.

He has also done ground breaking work (along with Dr. Alok Chaturvedi) in the area of Synthetic Economies by creating a comprehensive framework for agent-based research using a combination of human and artificial agents. The technology is currently being used worldwide to model Homeland Security Issues. To commercialize the SEAS technology, in 1999 he founded (along with Prof. Alok Chaturvedi) SEAS LLC which in 2001 morphed into Simulex Inc., a successful high-tech company in Purdue Technology Park.

Dr. Mehta has authored and co-authored several proposals that brought in over nine million dollars of research funding to Purdue University from the National Science Foundation, 21st Century Fund, Microsoft, Intel and others. He has been on over 25 doctoral dissertation committees. He is also an award winning teacher, having successfully taught undergraduate, master's and doctoral students. He has been awarded one of Purdue University's highest awards, the Class of 1922 Award for Teaching, Innovation and Helping Students Learn. For six years he led Purdue's Entrepreneurship Initiative as part of which he organized the flagship Entrepreneurial Competition and in the process worked with over two hundred teams of students on their business plans, several of whom went on to get venture funding. The program that he set up was rated among the top programs in the world.

Over the years, Dr. Mehta has consulted with and taught senior executives worldwide including executives from North America, Europe, Africa and Asia (including CEOs in Pakistan). The companies that he has worked with include Bharat Petroleum, Black Management Forum of South Africa, Eli Lilly, Genpact, Honeywell, IBM, Infosys, Lockheed Martin, Medtronic, Microsoft, P&G, Price Waterhouse Coopers, State Bank of India and the Tata Group, among others. He has conducted long-range scenario planning, envisioning and simulation exercises with a wide variety of executives in government and in industry.

He has been a member of numerous high-powered committees convened by the Government of India. He has conducted several programs for senior civil servants including IRS, IFS and IAS officers, including one for all Secretaries to the Government of India. According to a recent paper by Sahoo, Singh, Mishra and Sankaran (2015) from IIM-Bangalore and XIM- Bhubaneshwar, in terms of the global impact, he is rated as one of the top researchers in the field of Strategy in India.

At IIM-Ahmedabad he continues to teach a popular course on Strategy Execution and the Art and Science of Creating High Performance.