The Department of Industrial & Management Engineering (which conducts the MBA Program), IIT Kanpur organized a two-day workshop on globalization at its campus. The workshop witnessed enthusiastic participation from not only the MBA students but also the M.Tech & B.Tech students of the institute.

The guest faculty for the lecture was Dr. Anup Sinha, Professor (Economics), IIM Calcutta. Globalization is a special research interest area for Dr. Sinha and he has authored a number of books in this field. He also has more than 20 yrs of teaching experience and has also been a consultant to organizations such as ICICI Bank, ITC, ASSOCHAM etc.

At the very outset, students were asked to organize themselves into four groups. Each of these groups was allocated an industry (FMCG, Heavy Engineering, Knowledge based, Financial Services). The students were then asked to specifically focus their thought process on their allocated industry, drawing inferences from the ongoing presentation and decide upon the impact of globalization on their business and to devise ways to cope with changing business environment.

Dr. Sinha started his presentation by tracing the origins of Globalization, late 17th century, to the present times. The focus then moved towards analyzing the features of a globalized economy and how it is affected by the various factors at play. The main focus centered on the following features of a globalized economy:

1.Integration of Markets

2. Innovation in technology

3. Instability of GDP growth

4. Inequalities of Incomes and Wealth

The analysis was deeply enriched by facts and figures providing empirical justification of the thoughts presented. This coupled with some astonishing realities as pointed out by Dr. Sinha (for ex. How many of us know, that, today out of total international trade of $1.4Trillion, the share of goods and services is only 20%, rest all is currency trading!) made the workshop really interesting.

At the end, the students were asked to make brief presentations on the kind of learning they had from this exercise and apply the knowledge gained to their allotted industry domains.

All in all, an extremely enriching experience!