Our experiences and learning in Confluence 2004

Success in emerging markets – home to 75% of the world population - will require a whole new set of strategies to unlock their true potential. In the context of globalizations, corporations cannot afford to ignore these markets. The quality of our insights into how emerging economies function can be the difference between failure and success.

Confluence 2004 was organized by Indian Institute of Managmeent, Ahmedabad, India (IIMA) between October 22, 2004 and October 24, 2004. IIMA is one of the most respected business schools in the Asia-Pacific region. The theme of this year’s event is “Mantras for emerging markets”. This year’s annual event attracted prominent speakers from the academia, business and government sharing their perspectives with B-School students from around the world including students from Australia, China, Europe, USA, India, Pakistan, Singapore, etc.

This was the second year that Krannert received an invitation to send a team to the conference which has been growing since its inception in 1999.Our Krannert team consisted of Lakshminarayanan (Lax) Seshan, Ramiro Cabral, Peter Vrsansky, Yash and Dalal.We fared well in most of the events especially in operations management and strategy management events - ranked 1st overall among the North American programs and 4th among all the teams.

Confluence 2004 was divided into different fairs each representing a branch of management viz. Finance, Technology, Marketing, Strategy and Operations. In each of these fairs, paper contests, quizzes, case analyses, online games, etc were conducted where students from nearly 100 teams from B-Schools across the world participated. These events and competitions allowed us to gain insight into international business especially related to Emerging markets, gauge our skills against other top MBA programs, and expose the Krannert name to business and academic leaders including executives from Reliance, ONGC, McKinsey, GIL, TATA, etc.We were also able to interact with MBA candidates from different backgrounds and nations and share our perspectives with them. We participated in cultural events like Dandiya (a traditional Gujarati Folk Dance), Indian Ramp, etc.

In addition to these competitions and cultural events, we attended lot of lectures and panel discussions. Some of these are:

• A panel on “Comparative Advantages on FDI destinations” with special focus on China and India.This panel gave us insight into the challenges and opportunities that Investors face in two of the fastest and biggest emerging markets in the world
• “Advertising Workshop” where speakers from some of the reputed advertising agencies from India participated. In this workshop, the Vice President, Marketing of Pepsi India discussed 3 case studies on Pepsi’s successful advertising campaigns in rural and urban Indian markets.
• “Program on Media Field”, in which the who’s who of the Indian media and publishing houses participated and discussed the various media options available in India. The discussion was lively and really helped to increase our understanding of the practices of media from emerging markets.
• “Managing during crises” . The speaker, Mr. Anil Mukim was an administrative officer working for Government of Gujarat state. He shared his experiences when handling the Gujarat Earth Quake, which killed nearly 20,000 people. He explained how these learning can be applied in the corporate world during crises.

Krannert team had a very exciting and positive experience in Confluence 2004 in which Krannert should continue to be represented in years to come.The event provided us with a forum where we can examine the issues germane to success in emerging markets, and benefit from the perspectives of those who have already succeeded.