The innovation & Entrepreneurship area at SME seeks to research new standalone enterprises, renew existing businesses, and the dialectic between new
ventures and society at large. We are particularly interested in the pre-founding and early phases of entrepreneurship. We would delve upon various forms
of value-creating innovations that engender new markets and organizations. While our primary focus is on the enterprising culture emanating within India,
we remain open to global research opportunities to understand convergences and divergences. We intend to create a knowledge base from the seamless melding
of the theory and practice of entrepreneurship. Given the broad base of longstanding family-driven and indigenous entrepreneurship in India, we retain an
active interest in this domain. The new-age entrepreneurship sprouting from newer ecosystems such as academia, small-city entrepreneurship, and business
incubators is of particular interest.
Faculty members of the area have a strong research background and are collectively proficient in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research approaches.
Besides this, faculty members have developed a strong network amongst entrepreneurs and actively engage in developing case studies for classroom teaching,
which explore various facets of entrepreneurship practices in India.
The expertise and research interest of the faculty members in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship
area lie in:
In recent times, digital technologies have touched almost all walks of life, personal and professional. As it is said, we are living in a Digital Era now.
The Digital Transformation and Business Intelligence Area at SME IIT Jodhpur prepare leaders and experts for critical roles in industry and academia, of
which technology forms an integral part.
The area strives to accumulate and disseminate knowledge through teaching, research, consultancy assignments, and projects in the current and emerging
areas of digital technologies like Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning, Blockchain, Cybersecurity, ICT for Development,
Digital Business Strategy, Multi-objective Optimization, Social Media Analytics, Digital Marketing Optimization, among others.
Along with the focus on IT/ICT and analytics, the area also works with various interdisciplinary engineering, management, healthcare, humanities
& social sciences, etc.
The research focus of the area includes the following: Healthcare IT, Digital Transformation, IT and Practice Intertwinement, Information Security Management,
E/M-Governance, ICT for Development, Cybersecurity, Big Data & Advanced Computational Applications, and Sociological & Economic Analysis of Digital Applications
and Implementations, to name a few.
The research activity in the area of Economics at SME is broad-based. We aim to produce impactful and quality research outcomes across various verticals,
rather than limited to particular sub-fields. Our research broadly seeks to encourage economic analysis to understand the emerging analytical and financial
issues further.
Being a part of the broader IITJ ecosystem encourages an interdisciplinary approach. Our research in the area of Economics follows a multidisciplinary approach
that lays considerable emphasis on economics to provide an integrated framework within which the various national and global economic and development issues
can be addressed, and policy prescriptions can be drawn. The expertise and research interests of the current Economics faculty at SME predominantly lie in:
Decision Sciences & Operations area at SME, IIT Jodhpur is dedicated to identifying, developing, documenting, practicing, and disseminating the
seminal and novel approaches in the business decision-making through interactive teaching and rigorous research. The area focuses on communicating
various methods, different optimization modeling tools & techniques for data analysis, modeling, and optimizing business problems useful in real-world
academic and managerial decision-making. Particular emphasis is placed on the model building aspect and introducing the students to various real-world
issues and modeling and solving them using different mathematical, statistical, and optimization techniques.
Additionally, as per the recent academia and industrial demand, the area has redesigned its curriculum by including few advanced topics, such as Industry 4.0,
Behavioral Operations, etc.
The area has set its sights on the following points:
Carrying out rigorous research and advisory work on critical topics in operations management and decision-making sciences, such as Production and Quantitative
Methods, Decision Sciences, Operations Management, Operations Research, Project Management, Service Operations Management, Logistics & Supply Chain Management,
Stochastic techniques, Behavioral Operations, etc.
The area's objective is to motivate and train the aspirants of the 'operations management' area, who want to excel in their academic, research, and industrial career.
We encourage our students to search out the gaps in the current markets of interest to a young or an experienced entrepreneur. Broadly, the faculty members in
this area work on the following topics:
Financial accounting involves the process of recording, summarising, and reporting the monetary transactions resulting from business activities
over some time. Finance focuses on predicting and analyzing the potential for profit and growth, assessing economic resources, utilizing accounting
statistics and reports, and exploring funding options. Financial accounting looks back to a company's past transactions, whereas Finance is a forward-looking
area that helps plan the future business course.
Accounting and Finance area research in SME focuses on the following areas:
Marketing is concerned with decisions related to a firm's customers, competitors, and partners' network, including channel members and promotion agencies.
It focuses on how firms design products, services and create value for their customers and related partners. Marketing is genuinely interdisciplinary,
drawing theories and methods from disciplines such as anthropology, economics, psychology, sociology, and statistics, among others.
SME's doctoral program in Marketing prepares students to advance knowledge of the complex interactions between consumers and markets.
Students work collaboratively with faculty and industry experts to gain the practical, quantitative, and analytical skills necessary to conduct
their research work. The doctoral program in Marketing aims to bring theoretical rigor and business application and offer students an unmatched
interdisciplinary environment to generate creative ideas and hypotheses.
Research interests of marketing faculty and doctoral students include consumer decision-making, marketing communication, innovation, pricing,
marketing strategy, and product development.
People are at the heart of modern economic activity. Their capabilities and attitudes make possible new ideas and innovations that, in turn,
fuel economic prosperity. The Human Capital and Organizational Dynamics area at the School of Management and Entrepreneurship, IIT Jodhpur,
has been conceptualized to further the people-centric approach to understanding modern socioeconomic settings' structure and functioning.
Instrumental to this vision, the area's pedagogy is conceived on two related lines. One line of academic offerings systematically explores how
people learn and build their capabilities to suit and push socioeconomic contours. The second line of reasoning attempts at understanding how
people put to use their abilities within microcosms of socioeconomic systems, i.e., organizations.
The area offers various core and elective courses to train young professionals on these two counts. Besides, the site also nurtures experienced
professionals to augment their contributions in their pursuant endeavors through short term and long term training engagements. Through these offerings,
the area hopes to enable budding professionals to seamlessly integrate into the socioeconomic settings and find a niche to grow in their careers and make
meaningful contributions.
Strategic Management is a dynamic engagement process.
While modern strategic management has its roots in the military realm, the strategic thought process required in administration, business,
and military have already been discussed and codified in early treatises such as "Arthashastra" by Kautilya Chanakya as early as the 4th century BC.
In a military sense, the strategy was conceived as the art of leading the army, and Sun Tzu's classic "The Art of War," an early treatise on the subject,
is still referred. Throughout the human history, numerous military generals have contemplated strategies to deal with opponents such as the first generals
of Cholas who used both army and navy, Mauryas who used large armies, and Greeks led by Alexander to more recent generals such as Chhatrapati Shivaji,
Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Karl Von Clausewitz, Napoleon, Stonewall Jackson, Douglas MacArthur, and Field Marshal Manekshaw. Such business leaders voiced
the need for strategy in a business context as Chester Irving Barnard of AT&T and Alfred Sloan of General Motors. Peter Drucker argued for an active
approach to management than a passive response. Henry Mintzberg highlights the importance of organizational configurations and emergent strategy.
C.K. Prahalad brought into popular discourse the importance of core competence, future of competition, innovation, and the bottom of the pyramid.
Strategic Management has also taken a micro-foundational and behavioral approach by researchers such as Cyert and March, who laid cognitive foundations
of firm strategy. Penrose highlighted the role of individuals in firm growth and system. It is often argued that a firm's plan was an integral component
of performance. Some companies were observed to have delivered high performance in severe conditions. In contrast, many others did not, and the reason
was those successful companies adopted strategies at all levels of their operation. As a strategic resource, individual managers' role is highlighted
aptly by Dr. Penrose – "There are important administrative restraints on the speed of the firm's growth. Human resources required for the management
of change are tied to the individual firm and so are internally scarce."
The strategy has been defined by researchers and management thinkers from multiple perspectives leading to an evolutionary trajectory of the concept.
The rise of consulting firms further reinforced the trend and made seminal contributions by introducing many nuanced aspects of strategy. Strategists
do not subscribe to any general theory of strategy. The business managers' practical needs have remained the ultimate driver in unfolding the journey
of strategic thinking.
In its dynamic complexions, strategy acts as a Decision Support system, sometimes as a navigation tool, sometimes as a science of choices.
The strategy has proved to be collective wisdom, an instrument of analytical prowess, a coordinating device, a directional compass reflecting
aspirations of the organizations, an embodiment of intent, and has always been a forward-looking intellectual underpin the business managers.
The Course on Strategy at SME has been conceived with the above perspectives to familiarise the students with strategy formulation tools and techniques,
teach a quest for strategic thinking, and delve deep into various streams of strategic management. Strategy execution is another area in which the business
managers find challenging. Topics intended to be offered technology and innovation outlook, business models, strategic foresight, and strategic decision making.
How to bring brilliance in the execution of strategies? What kind of skill the future business managers need for implementation? What are the tools and techniques
they should use? - These are also integral parts of our learnings. A variety of contemporary topics/areas that are also part of learning are listed below.