For a country saddled with corruption and yet aiming to be a superpower it is essential to keep the youth motivated and focussed on national goals. And that is exactly where INK Conference aims to do.

Talk of inspiration

Business Standard

The battle for the skies is moving to a new orbit &ndash; fuel efficient narrow body planes. While Airbus has cashed in on the first mover advantage in this space with its A320 Neo (full form for New Engine Option) bagging orders for 1579 planes across the globe, Boeing, which launched its plane in August last year, is catching up fast with nearly 1,000 orders for the 737 Max.

Sky war: Neo versus Max

Discovery Networks had an early mover advantage in the infotainment genre as it launched its channel in India way back in 1995. The company today operates eight channels with multiple-language feeds. In an interaction with Gaurav Laghate, Discovery Networks Asia Pacific&rsquo;s Senior Vice President &amp; General Manager Rahul Johri spoke about the channel&rsquo;s future plans. Edited excerpts...

Discovery will offer the biggest non-fiction content: Rahul Johri

    The name for this start-up brand was taken from a character in the song-poem composed by Roscoe Mitchell, an African American composer and Jazz instrumentalist. It was founded by 3 musicians from California, who sold freshly squeezed juice from the back of an old Volkswagen van. It was NASDAQ Company till it was bought by a global MNC. Name the founders, the brand and its current owner.

Answers to last week's quiz (#283)

The top 10 business bestsellers

The 15-odd students of MBA in actuarial science programme at Mumbai-based Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) will be the last ones pursuing this course at the institute. NMIMS has decided to discontinue the programme.

Dearth of actuarial science graduates

As the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bill is being drafted, Debashis Chatterjee, director of IIM-Kozhikode (IIM-K), talks about how the Bill will offer definitive powers to the IIMs like granting degrees. In an interview with Vinay Umarji, he explains the way ahead for the IIMs.

The IIM Bill will make the IIMs more holistic: Debashis Chatterjee

A host of education institutions in the country, including the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Shiv Nadar University and Manipal among others, are offering dual degree programmes.

Check list for dual degree programmes 

Thomas Babington Macaulay&rsquo;s famous Minute on Education (1835) underscored a simple fact: Britain was the world&rsquo;s most powerful nation at the time. It was from this perspective that he argued eloquently that the government of British India would be better off spending its education budget teaching Indians English rather than on local language education.

Kanika Datta: Jefferson's Children?

In India management is synonymous with IIMs, technology with IITs, MBBS with AIMS, Law with National Law College, Basic Sciences with St. Stephen's and so on. We have already seen even after so many years of incorporating MBAs and humanities into the IITs they have not come at par with other top institutes in their respective discipline.

Student's corner

A deep dive into the investment strategies and financial habits of the online Indian consumer has revealed some interesting facts. A study by Nielsen shows the online Indian consumer is a smarter and more independent investor in comparison to the average Indian consumer, as they have a higher level of financial awareness.

What the online consumer wants

The Indian cricket team may have taken quite a few hard knocks of late, but all that is forgotten &mdash; at least by advertisers. The reason: when India is playing Pakistan, it&rsquo;s not just a game.

Indo-Pak series bowls over advertisers

The world&rsquo;s most admired companies excelled at driving accountability right down through their organizations, while the rest of the sample were significantly less good at holding people accountable. The other companies tended to hold people accountable for metrics, instead of the strategy, and did not follow through, letting executives &lsquo;off the hook&rsquo; (see Figure 1). The most admired companies reinforced accountabilities by monitoring and managing performance. The best organizations reinforce accountabilities through a very strong focus on managing poor performance, through the use of forced distributions and through standardized global processes.

Driving accountability

Unlike in factories, waste is usually hidden when it comes to services.

Lean principles for services

    The company that was established in the 1890s made Cigars and Cigarettes out of chocolate as an alternative to the tobacco variety.&nbsp;During the Second World War, the company&rsquo;s machine shop even turned out parts for US Navy&rsquo;s antiaircraft guns. Name the company.

Answers to last week`s quiz (#284)

One among the most influential higher education thinkers, Philip G. Altbach, author; researcher and professor at Boston College, is clear what India needs to do to solve its higher education mess. India, says he, is characterized by some pinnacles of excellence in a sea of mediocrity. Overall the system is not at par with best standards but there are really some good institutions in it.

India is world-class nation without world-class varsities: Philip G Altbach

Indus League, set up in 1999 by eight ex-Madura Garments executives with just two brands, have grown its portfolio to nine, including Indigo Nation, John Millers and Scullers.

The key to brand success

LN Welingkar Institute of Management Development &amp; Research (WeSchool) has tied up with telecom major MTNL to offer courses in telecom management. The institute will offer a 11-month PG diploma course in telecom management and a three-month certificate programme in telecom marketing and management.

WeSchool ties up with MTNL to offer telecom management courses

LAST WEEK WE ASKED: Parliamentary panel has opposed the NCHER bill.

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has yet again identified 309 institutions offering courses in business management, hotel management, fashion technology, etc, without its approval.

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