Business management is shifting with the growth of knowledge economy and the effects of globalisation across the world and there are a number of motives for the persistent challenges that students face at the time of employment. The gap between theoretical knowledge and the practice of skills is broadening. The industry can play a direct or indirect role in addressing the root cause for this spreading gap. Hence, ‘Industry Connect’ programs for students are emerging as an useful and operational model that can bridge the gap between academic research and knowledge needs of working managers.
Communication and technology has made it conceivable to rise above boundaries and join forces with partners across the globe. The first step to fostering professionals with a global standpoint is to implement world-class academic programmes and institutional infrastructure at par with top global educational institutions. Industry-academia partnerships should be fortified more than ever before in today’s fast-changing corporate and education field. The early implementation will help foster deeper international partnership and help leverage digital tools and technology to bring about sustainable growth and progress for the organization, country and the world at large.
Why students’ needs industry connects:
Industry based internships augments education by linking theories and its practices. It develops understanding of analytical concepts and tools, builds confidence in their use, and refines skills essential for their successful application.
It also forces students to learn to recognize and explain problems understand and navigate formal and informal structures, identify implementable actions, and exercise judgments when making decisions.
It teaches students skills based on finding and framing problems, collecting, synthesizing and filtering large volumes of vague data, engaging in multiplicative and lateral thinking, and helps them persistently experiment and learn.
Engagement in challenging real world projects helps students learn how to work in a team, develop relational skills, engage and stimulate each other to complete a task, and resolve conflicts, which are all essentials of leadership skills.
Industry based internships support students challenge real business challenges with real stakes in real time. It also helps them learn to overcome unforeseen obstacles and successfully steer organisations, perspectives, and cultures. Dealing with "unanticipated eventualities" helps students identify, appreciate, and acclimatize to organization realities by mitigating knowledge with practical limitations.
Students are able to understand the pressure between regulatory activities aimed at preventing social harm and market-based inducements designed to inspire innovation and efficiency.
It helps students grow integrative thinking. The ability to practically face the tensions of differing models and choosing one at the cost of the other produces a creative tenacity of the tension in the form of a new model that contains essentials of the individual models
The "straight happenstances" with organizations allow students to learn about organizational veracities. The learner is directly in touch with realities being studied. It involves direct encounters with the phenomenon being studied rather than thinking about the encounter or only considering the possibility of doing something with it. It helps students create knowledge through grasping experience and converting it.
Communications with frontline and middle level employees such as assembly-line workers, clerical staff, and salespersons can help students learn about the objectives, motivations, and desires of individuals different from themselves and thereby help students develop empathy.
Industry based internships make students for entirely different careers such as managerial positions at large multinationals, entrepreneurial roles at high-tech start-ups.
Various deliverables under Industry Connects programs are:
It envisions industry collaboration with universities and colleges to help design, develop and deliver modules for training students in a way that they are made industry-ready.
It also provides an occasion to the faculty to understand what each industry needs so that they can align their teaching to the needs of the specific industry.
It eases internships for students to ensure that they get industry exposure during their campus days itself and are fully aligned to the industry at the time of employment.
Immersive industry exposure through internship and project / social initiatives under the oversight of faculty members and executive industry sponsors, ensures integrated professional and career growth for the students.
The leading edge of positive outcome is already visible and underway, as most of the students aspiring for various academic programmes (BA/B.Sc./B.Com/MBA etc.) are flocking to those schools where industry connect internship program is embedded in the course curricula.
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