From Jack Welch to the Korea bourse, Coca Cola’s aborted Brazil plans and the TCS phenomenon, Dibeyendu Ganguly sits in on Harvard’s Indian-focused advanced management programme.

As a teaching team, they’re the perfect triumvirate. The stern, serious Krishna Palepu, whose classes everyone took care to prepare well for. The jovial, easygoing Das Narayandas, whose tongue in cheek humour brought a dose of entertainment to the learning process. And the intense, passionate Nitin Nohria, whose flair for the dramatic brought every case study to life.

The three Harvard Business School (HBS) dons each had a role to play at the Advanced Management Programme organised by the All India Management Association (AIMA) and the Tata group last month, and they pulled it off with practiced aplomb. From the high energy case discussions in the classroom to the informal conversations over cocktails and dinner, the trio made quite a few fans among the 80 top executives attending the programme. And created some enduring brand equity for the HBS method of executive education in the process.

Customised for India, the programme designed by the HBS faculty was built around the themes of developing competitive advantage, leading change and creating customer value. Beginning with a comprehensive study of GE’s two-decade transformation under Jack Welch, the 15 cases taught during the course of the programme had a global sweep.

These included the Korea Stock Exchange in the aftermath of the currency crisis, Scandinavian Airlines at the cross-roads, strategy choices before Argentina’s Zucamore after the economy was opened up to global competition and the problems of Germany’s FAG Kugelfischer after it patriotically bought up several east German beating manufacturing plants, post unification. The dilemmas faced by these companies are recognisable to Indian executives— ranging from the problem of surplus labour in a culture where retrenchment is taboo to the issue of corporate governance in an environment where the stock markets are not yet the arbitrators of value.

And there were some classic American case studies, like the remarkable competitive strategy of Dell Computers, customer loyalty programmes at Hilton Hotels, the difficult situation created by a fiery young broker named Rob Parson at Morgan Stanley and most entertaining of all, Coca Cola’s aborted idea of vary-prices at vending machines in Brazil according to ambient temperature. The programme ended with a case study of our very own TCS, written by HBS professor Robert E Kennedy, meant to give insights into the Indian IT phenomenon and explore the growth options before CEO S Ramadorai in 1999.

Many of the case studies were accompanied by videos— such as Jack Welch speaking at HBS during different periods of his reign and SAS CEO Jan Carlzon explaining the issues crucial to the airline industry ahead of his remake of the airline. Some of the videos simply told the story of what actually happened in these companies after the case was written. Which served to validate— or sometimes, invalidate— the classroom discussion that had gone before.

Despite the gruelling 12-hour schedule— and that excludes the individual case preparation time— the participant’s unanimous feedback during the concluding session was that they had been ‘delighted’ by the experience (an oft-used marketing expression picked up in the course of the programme).

For AIMA senior VP, R Gopalakrishnan, who’s also executive director at Tata Sons, the success of the programme was a coup of sorts. Led by Noel Tata, 40 top executives of the Tata group attended the six-day programme at the Tata Management Training Centre in Pune. And for the AIMA, this globalised Advanced Managed Programme, made for a quantum jump in quality over previous years. The fee was Rs 2 lakh per participant, arguably a record for a management programme conducted in India, but that didn’t deter a diverse range of corporates from sponsoring their star executives to the programme. These included ACC, Hindustan Lever, Britannia, ITC, Castrol, DCM, Thermax, Ranbaxy, Eicher, Crompton Greaves, Indal, Maruti as well as public sector majors like HPCL, Bhel and NMDC. Also in attendance were entrepreneur CEOs of upcoming private companies like Gala Equipments and SBM Chemicals from Mumbai and Kshema Technologies from Bangalore.

For the trio from HBS, it was a harbinger of more such programmes planned for the years ahead. With research into emerging markets now in vogue in American business schools, such programmes actually offer the HBS faculty a great opportunity to interface with the Indian economy. It has the makings of a symbiotic relationship and it shouldn’t be long before more Indian corporates start featuring in HBS case studies.