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Category: Student Experience, Action Learning, MBA

What will the international job market look like in 2021? Still cloudy with a chance of lockdowns. But the advice given to Asia School of Business in collaboration with MIT Sloan’s graduating MBA Class of 2021 goes like this: keep expanding your fishnet of connections, so that when Covid-19 turns and the floodgates open, opportunities will come flushing in.

That was among one of the many pearls of wisdom shared during a virtual panel organized by ASB’s Career Development Office focused around working in the North Asia region. In the hot seats were Fernando Diaz, Director of Divestment Lead Technology of Budweiser Brewing Company APAC based in Shanghai; Ryan Chan from Nissan Motor Corp’s Future Retail Strategy Team in Tokyo; and Gordon Dudley, a global HR entrepreneur and Country Manager of RDI Worldwide based in Seoul.

All three originally came from non-Asian countries, but they pursued MBAs educations in Asia and have all remained in the region ever since.

Here are my 4 key takeaways from the talk:

1️) North Asia (China, Japan and Korea) is open (but be smart about it!)

Talent who can drive innovation and transformation are in demand

“The perception that Japanese companies only hire foreign nationals if you speak the language is a myth,” said Ryan. The country is increasingly looking to hire from beyond its shores due to a lack of innovative talent and the need for economic transformation. “Japan is ripe with opportunity, even if they don’t know it themselves,” said Ryan.

Networking is crucial – cold interactions alone aren’t enough

Fernando shared that China is hard to crack for foreigners going through the traditional job application route. Instead, you should rely heavily on networking and making connections. His own journey to getting employed in Shanghai came through an introduction made by a friend.

This allowed him to plant the seed and go for several more interviews, eventually landing his current job. “In China, you need to spend a lot of time trying to build relationships and spending time with your colleagues, for instance by going to karaoke,” said Fernando.

Gordon, who set up his own recruitment consultancy in Seoul five years ago after working at Hyundai for a decade, noted that South Korea is undergoing a massive transformation to tech and service-based industries.

As the expatriate population grows in South Korea, English is also becoming more widespread on the back of a more globalized workforce. However, networking and relationships should still remain central to any job application strategy in South Korea.

“A lot of people go on LinkedIn and end up applying for 250 jobs and waste hours and hours throwing their resume into the digital vacuum, and they don’t get a single response back,” said Gordon. “If you’re a foreigner who’s not currently in South Korea, the odds of landing a job through online applications are slim to none,” he added.

It is vitally important to have some kind of relationship with recruiters in South Korea. The best practice is to create a list of target companies or jobs, and then reach out to the hiring manager via email or Linkedin messaging to ask for more information.

Don’t ignore hierarchy

Mainland Chinese society is generally hierarchical and employees often address each other by seniority. It goes without saying that there will be cultural challenges and you are also advised to learn Mandarin. However, these barriers also serve as opportunities. “It’s important for people to see you’re serious about working with them,” said Fernando.

2️) Spray and pray isn’t going to cut it

Which leads me to the next point: don’t rely on Easy Apply. “People love talking about their jobs and themselves, and the higher you climb in an organization, the more it’s part of your job to develop talent and network,” said Gordon. “So, don’t be scared to reach out to C-level people and ask them questions about what it’s like to work in the company.” Make it an opportunity to start a conversation and to learn how you can offer something of value to the company.

Quality trumps quantity

“It’s going to be much more effective to reach out to a smaller number of people and develop a dialogue with them, rather than shooting off dozens and dozens of applications,” Gordon added. But if striking up conversations with random people on the internet sounds intimidating, Gordon has the following suggestions: “take small steps, and make it a weekly habit.”

You can start by putting a weekly reminder in your calendar. For example, set aside time every Friday morning at 10am to send one e-mail to someone in your existing or targeted network. That one e-mail will lead to another and another, and it will spark a positive chain of events. And just like that, you’ve reached out to 52 people in a year.

3️) Figure out how to get people to trust you

How do you get people to trust you? According to Ryan, this is the foundational question every job seeker needs to wrestle with and have a convincing answer for. “If you’re being interviewed and someone asks you that question, can you answer in a way that makes you stand out?” said Ryan. “I’ve heard answers like: I really listen to people. I consider what they say. And I get things done. I’ve heard people say that in so many different ways. But how does that make you unique?” he adds.

And the trust question is a non-trivial one – making change happen is really about getting people to trust you. In addition, Ryan also thinks that soft skills are underrated. “You can easily test for hard skills, but it’s in later-stage interviews that the trust issue becomes paramount,” he said. The questions will quickly go from ‘are you qualified’ to ‘can I trust you’ or ‘can I see you on my team’ and ‘can you manage people.’ After all, people are the vectors of change.

4️) Covid-19 lockdowns will end… someday

Foreign hiring may be at a standstill – but don’t get disheartened. “Given the vaccine developments, things could change very quickly in the next six months,” said Fernando. Gordon agreed, saying it’s never too early to start looking at opportunities. But if physical presence and relocation isn’t an option right now, then this is the time to get creative. For instance, many internships have made remote options available.

The point is exactly this: As a job seeker, you need to keep trucking on. “These (Covid-related issues) are external factors,” said Ryan. “It’s not within your control. But what you can control is expanding your fishnet so that once the pandemic risks abate, your net is going to be so big you’ll be rolling in opportunities. It’s not a matter of if, but when.”

Just do it

And those were my four key takeaways from the discussion. I’ll wrap up by stealing this quote from Ryan, originally said by the hockey Hall of Famer, Wayne Gretzky, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Even if the opportunities seem slim on the ground for foreign hiring at the moment, you can give yourself a fighting chance and maximize your chances by simply not giving up.

Regardless of whether you’re a C-suite executive at a multinational company or an aspiring tech founder, everyone can benefit from thinking like an entrepreneur. Matthew Osofisan, for example, happens to be one of those people.

On behalf of Poets&Quants’ premiere CentreCourt MBA Festival, Asia School of Business (ASB) alumni, Matt, shared about his entrepreneurship journey and how a modern MBA program was an essential puzzle piece to his success. If you’ve always asked yourself the question “Is entrepreneurship taught or are you born with it?”, Matt is living proof that a combination of both answers is possible.

From Student Business Awards to Raising $11 Million

“I’ve always had entrepreneurship in my background. My father was an entrepreneur, and my mother was a homeroom teacher and a real estate agent as well,” he says. Hailing from the city of Providence, Rhode Island, this was perhaps the catalyst that has led Matt to pursue an entrepreneurship and marketing undergraduate degree at Northeastern University, which allowed him to get serious about his passions.

“While I was in Northeastern, I actually started my first business there. It was a clothing and retail company,” he adds. During his time there, Matt and his team won the “Best Business on Campus” award several times. Their business went on to raise $25,000 from the program in total. “I ran that business for up to 5 years in Boston.” He continues, “We opened 3 stores in Boston in that time period, and that was really where I could sharpen my teeth in terms of my ability to build a business.”

However, in 2013, Matt and his business partner amicably decided that it was time to take on different ventures, separately. Matt’s next chapter? To explore another area, he was passionate about: the tech industry. “Before my MBA, I co-founded a company called Jobble,” Matt elaborates. Jobble was an online marketplace for temporary work, similar to an “Uber for marketers”.

Here, Matt and his team went on to develop a solution for companies to hire individuals to help with marketing a specific event or campaign. Today, Jobble connects more than 60 million gig workers looking for jobs with brands across the United States. Under Matt and his team’s guidance, Jobble managed to raise $11 million USD in July 2019.

Taking Things to the Next Level at ASB

Matt’s journey didn’t stop with his early entrepreneurial success. Eager for a new challenge, he began to look beyond the US. “I tried applying for jobs across Europe and Africa. At the time, Asia felt a bit too far,” Matt starts. So how did business school come to be on Matt’s agenda? Typically, an MBA is viewed as a pre-requisite for those who wish to become C-suite level bankers, consultants, engineers, or directors… but not for entrepreneurs.

ASB came into the picture when Matt heard about the school from one of his mentors at MIT. At that time, even though ASB’s MBA program was still being developed, he decided to take the leap and apply to be part of the inaugural class. As the dominoes fell into place, Matt’s application was approved — and he found himself on a one-way plane ticket, heading to Kuala Lumpur to start an exciting new chapter.

“Southeast Asia is a tremendous hub and gateway to the rest of Asia,” Matt emphasizes. “I imagine there’s nothing else like it,” Matt states when asked about his experience over at ASB. “In terms of what I was looking for, such as exposure to a lot of new modules and tools, this was perfect.”

Matt talks about ASB’s effective module-based learning, which involves intense, accelerated weeks where MIT Sloan professors would fly down to Kuala Lumpur to teach a full semester’s worth of class, compressed into just a few weeks. During other weeks, students are onsite at real-world companies and/or start-ups, putting the tools they have just learnt into practice.

Learning in Action at the Forefront of the Emerging World

For Matt, it was this Action Learning curriculum that was undoubtedly the highlight of his ASB MBA experience. ASB’s Action Learning curriculum project is an immersive and rigorous module that allows students to experience working with corporate, start-up, government and NGO hosts to join them on-site with selected projects.

As Matt explains, “Most of the time, you’re actually out in the field, in the real world, in whichever country across Southeast Asia, multiple countries at times working for real companies, trying to solve real challenges that they’re facing.” “I can’t overemphasize the amount of learning that comes from [the experience], especially for me as an American, my culture, and my learning styles are very different.”

“Working with people from different cultures really allowed me to build empathy in ways I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. It really stretched me, and forced me to confront things I was really bad at or things I needed to build in order to grow.” His advice for those trying to figure out if ASB is the right fit for them:

“If you took a traditional MBA, you might not be exposed to that type of environment. If you’re looking for an unconventional MBA, or if you’re looking to challenge yourself, and expose yourself to new people and environments while also handling the same (educational) rigor as MIT Sloan — this might be the program for you.” To see the full version of Poets&Quants interview with Matt, watch this video below:

As a business school professor, I am constantly asked: what skills do I need for my future? Is it AI, coding, bitcoins, fintech? Or do we need to work on communication, negotiation, managing people, etc. And this is a question in everyone’s mind: career professionals, employers, students and graduates, academic and practitioners. What “soft” skills should we work on and what “hard” skills should we invest in?

But what if the skills of the future are not “soft and hard” but rather “smart and sharp”?

In 2019 I published an article in BizEd proposing a new semantical framework that evolved the traditional “soft and hard1” skills to “Smart Skills” (replacing soft) and “Sharp Skills” (replacing hard) and a new interpretation of how we should think of these skills in action. You are probably asking yourself now, “Does it matter how we name the skills, as long as we have them”? UC San Diego Professor Lera Boroditsky, a leading cognitive scientist in the fields of language and cognition and former faculty at MIT says:

“By choosing how you frame and talk about something, you are cuing others to think about it in a specific way. We can drastically change someone’s perspective by how we choose to talk about and frame something.” We assign new meanings to words every time we speak in a particular context and hence, we believe that both these skill sets i.e., smart and sharp, need to be looked at in light of the roles that each play in our day to day lives.

“Smart skills are co-developed with other humans, and sharp skills are co-developed with computers.” ASB Professors Willem Smit and Ong Shien Jin

The same goes for “sharp skills”. We need to constantly learn how to optimize business solutions using science based management, data analytics and analytical reasoning, we have to become digitally literate and employ system dynamic thinking. And we cannot say once you have learnt these skills, you are done. These skills need constant updating, they need to be sharpened at all times!

“The Job is Easy; The People are Not” is my professional mantra. Working with people is hard! We are complex algorithms: think computers but with mood swings, hunger pangs, and plenty of ego that need constant validation therefore the need for “smart” skills to “augment our own humanity”.

As the Faculty Director of our award-winning Action Learning Program, during which, our global students work with companies from all over SE Asia and beyond to solve various business challenges, I see firsthand my students’ struggles: dealing with diverse peers and hosts, managing their emotions in a climate of constant change, the need for humility and followership, the struggle to listen and to adapt, and so much more.

To help them in this journey, we empower them with smart skills! So without further ado, here are the Top 10 Smart Skills I am helping my students develop:

The Top 10 Smart Skills at ASB

1. Emotional Maturity = “The ability to understand, and manage your emotions as well as the emotions of others and especially your reaction to your emotions.”

Emotional maturity allows us to have an argument and then reach a compromise and find a solution; to take responsibility for ourselves and our actions in order to subsequently recognize the other person’s point of view. Emotionally mature people are able to regulate their impulses and feelings to not let a conflict or a difficult challenge get the best of them. They act with empathy for themselves and others and recognize is a lifelong process of learning and self-improvement.

2. Validation = “The ability to provide or ask for recognition or affirmation that a person’s feelings or opinions are valid or worthwhile”.

Working with people is a constant exercise in validation. After all, like Oprah2 said, is the one thing all humans have in common! “I’ve talked to nearly 30,000 people on this show, and all 30,000 had one thing in common: They all wanted validation…I would tell you that every single person you will ever meet shares that common desire.” Offering validation is the simple act of letting people know: I see you. I hear you. And what you say matters.”

As a manager and professor, I had to learn that validation helps someone feel heard and understood: it calms fears and concerns, can reduce or resolve conflicts, make and allows people to open up. I have also learnt how to recognize the excessive need for validation and how to deal with it.

3. Listening = “The ability to focus completely on the person/s speaking, understand their message, comprehend the information and respond thoughtfully.”

How many times have you been in a situation where you felt unheard or misunderstood and only wish for the person in front of you to listen! And that’s what I ask my students to do – listen more, focus on the problem before you focus on the solution.

4. Followership = “The capacity or willingness to follow a leader, a mission, a cause.”

The truth is, we follow more than we lead and while we talk a lot about leadership, we don’t value followership enough. Followership doesn’t mean following directions or blindly accepting everything a leader says. Good followership is characterized by active participation in the pursuit of organizational goals. A skilled follower will help the team reach the goal and support an inexperienced leader to succeed. Even with a strong leader, if teams are unable to carry out the vision, the organization will fail.

5. Managing Up = There are two definitions of this concept:

5.1 Classic Definition – Managing up is about developing a good working relationship with a superior.
5.2 Modern Definition – Managing up is solving problems that your stakeholders need solved.

One of the biggest challenges my students identify in their action learning projects is managing various stakeholders: their host, faculty advisor, faculty director, business coach, each other and they always ask me: Who do I listen to? Who is my “boss”?

The truth is that modern managing up requires balancing the needs of multiple stakeholders but once you know how to master this skill, you can become truly essential to your organization.

6. Humility = “To recognize your value and others value while looking up. It is to see there is far greater than ourself into who we can become, who others can become, and how much more we can do and be.”

Our ASB President, MIT Sloan Professor Charlie Fine says: “The world is full of smart and arrogant people out there. I want to work with the smart and humble ones”. The truth is that most MBA’s lack this skill but the ability to be humble is constant practice and awareness that “the more I know the less I know”. So, you want to learn how to become humble? Learn more so you realize how little you know!

7. Adaptability = “an ability or willingness to change in order to suit different conditions”.

One of my favorite fields of knowledge is evolution and like Darwin said, the only species who survive are the fast and adaptable ones (have you seen any dinosaurs lately?) Same with the humans. Professionals with strong adaptability skills will make it. The rest are probably going to spend their time in Jurassic Park. 😉

8. Cultural and Ethical Literacy = “The competence and knowledge of understanding the differences between yourself and people from other countries/backgrounds/race/religion, especially differences in attitudes and values and the willingness and ability to identify moral and ethical contexts and dilemmas”.

And because of the global expansion of the workforce, there has never a better time in our history when these critical smart skills are more needed.

9. Strategic and Critical Thinking = “The process of conceptualizing applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach a goal, and have a plan for execution”.

Every time I ask an employer about what skills they value the most, strategic and critical thinking come on top. Obviously, right? This smart skill empowers you to solve complex problems in the absence of a blueprint and SOPs.

10. Cognitive Readiness = “The mental preparation (including skills, knowledge, abilities, motivations, and personal dispositions) that a person needs to establish and sustain competent performance in our complex and unpredictable environment”.

This is a hard one and that’s why I left it for the end… Leaders and their teams have to be constantly prepared to face ongoing dynamics, ill-defined, and unpredictable challenges in the digital, highly disruptive and VUCA-driven business environment.

So now the question left is how do we do it? How do we teach these smart skills? In action and through reflection. When our students go on site in a remote corner of the Philippines to formulate an integer programming model for scheduling a food processing factory, and teaching the plant staff how to use the model they developed, they think, “Wow, this is a big challenge!”

What we actually learnt is that the first onsite experiences are all about smart skills: knowing when to listen and when to speak, keeping your ego in check, accepting that you are no longer the smartest person in the room, balancing your emotions when you had a 12h day that is still not over. Believe me when I say that the programming model looks a lot easier in comparison!

By the second time they go onsite, they might recognize some of the patterns not just in themselves but in their team mates and stakeholders, they have probably received some painful feedback in your 360-peer evaluation and they are a lot more introspective. And by doing this over and over again, each semester for at least a couple of times, they learn about highly diverse cultures, they start to see various political and strategic perspectives, and they get exciting opportunities to test their growing smart and sharp skills in various industries, companies, and positions before graduation.

This is our recipe to develop principled, transformative and market ready leaders: smart and sharp in action!

At Asia School of Business we are just at the beginning of our journey and we have so much more to learn. But we confidently believe that the latest generation of management students and practitioners need a full suite of smart skills to navigate the complex organizations and ecosystems that drive today’s economy, as well as sharp faculties for cutting-edge analysis of complex systems.

So, let’s get smart and sharp at ASB and stay tuned for the Top 10 Sharp skills.

Professor Loredana Padurean would like to extend special thanks to her co-author Professor Charles Fine, and recognize the editorial contribution of ASB MBA student Devika Manoj Made, ASB Professors Professor Willem Smit, and Professor Shien Jin and Ms.Iwona Fluda, Founder and CEO Creative Switzerland for their thoughts and feedback.

 

As part of ASB’s MBA Core Action Learning curriculum and Entrepreneurship Trek, prolific entrepreneurs are invited as guest speakers to share their wisdom and lessons learnt along their entrepreneurial journey with students.

One of these entrepreneurs who recently took some time out to speak to us is Manish Sabharwal, the co-founder of India’s second largest private sector employer, one of India’s most influential and respected entrepreneurs, and advisor to the government of India on matters related to central banking, labor reform, and education.

He shares his perspectives on why some companies grow while others stay small, the balance between innovation and stability while scaling, and the key attributes to succeed as an entrepreneur. For Manish, an MBA-educated entrepreneur who spends 30 per cent of his time on public policy, his relentless focus on job creation and talent development is ultimately about changing the world for the better.

Recently, I had the privilege to attend a guest talk by Manish Sabharwal, and spend some time after that learning more about his life, journey, and invaluable lessons he’s learned as an entrepreneur. My conversation with him was insightful and inspiring, filled with thought-provoking insights into what it takes to succeed not only at business, but in life.

If you are an entrepreneur in the early stages of your journey, or considering entrepreneurship as a pathway for you, Manish is someone with the ability to stir up that fire in your belly and inspire you to see entrepreneurship as more than a career path, but also an opportunity to change the world.

Bakhadir: Tell us about the journey that got you to where you are today.

Manish: There are three things you need to know about me:

First, I’m the CEO of TeamLease. We are a publicly listed “people supply chain” company that has been hiring a person every five minutes over the last five years.

Second, I spend over 30% of my time on public policy, which was a conscious decision I made between five to 10 years ago. These roles give me a perspective and develop parts of my brain which I would never have developed with my Wharton MBA or running a company.

Third, my parents are civil servants. Early in life I realized that we don’t live in an economy, we live in a society. Most importantly, I realized the importance of frugality – a very important virtue for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is the art of staying alive long enough to get lucky. You get lucky by buying more time. And you buy more time by being frugal with capital.

In addition, there are three WHY questions that keep me going for life.

1. Why is our country poor? Countries are path dependent. It took 72 years for 1.3 billion Indians to cross the GDP of 66 million Britons. While I was living in the USA, I kept on asking myself: “Americans aren’t smarter than us, why are they richer?” That set me off on this journey because cultural explanations for poverty don’t work.

2. Why do some companies grow, while others stay small? There are two kinds of companies an entrepreneur can create – a baby, which start small and continue to grow, or a company that stagnates and stays small. The fundamental difference between them is that babies tend to have big dreams, while small companies tend to believe that a 10-year plan is 10 one-year plans.

The biggest mistake I made with my first venture was to make 10 one-year plans. But with TeamLease, we have big ambitions of “Putting India to work” and our goal is “To become India’s largest private sector employer”. We are still second, but by our 25th year of existence we will cross #1. “Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine once said:

‘The most important question to ask is: Are you being a good ancestor?’. That’s a question we don’t ask enough as boards, as institutions, but particularly as entrepreneurs.” – Manish Sabharwal

3. Why do some individuals make good CEOs and others just become managers? My favorite quote is Dumbledore telling Harry Potter in Chamber of Secrets: “It is our choices more than our abilities, that reveal what we really are”. There are some people with average abilities who make great choices, because those choices come from mindfulness, thoughtfulness, and a recognition of context.

It’s usually non-cognitive skills that set the great apart from the good – curiosity matters more than intelligence and persistence matters more than strength. Those three facts and three questions help to draw a clear thread between where I come from and where I am going.

Is it always in an entrepreneur’s best interest to become a large company or is there value in staying small?

If some entrepreneurs choose to stay small, there’s nothing wrong with that. But let me answer your question from two perspectives: From an entrepreneur’s perspective, it’s the same amount of work with less resources. People whom I see managing $5 million companies probably work harder than I do at my company. They just don’t have the ability to attract the resources we can or hire the people we can.

But from a society and especially from an Indian society perspective, I concluded that we had too many small companies. 12 million out of 63 million Indian enterprises don’t have an office, and just 1 million pay social security. There are only 22,500 companies in India with a capital of $2 million. Companies are small not because of size – it’s because they don’t have the productivity to grow and to pay the wage premium.

And since they don’t, they’ll never attract the human capital to grow. They’re stuck in this low-level equilibrium, while most jobs are created by scaling companies. That’s why I’m a big advocate for more “babies”, companies with potential to grow bigger. “We wanted our company to be fun, profitable and good for India. I worked for an oil refinery, which was profitable and good for India, but wasn’t fun.

For Ashok (Co-Founder and Managing Director of TeamLease), his family had a cola franchise – fun and profitable, but not good for India. To have all three with TeamLease in a country with 1.3 billion people, we needed to have scale. So, we’ve hired 1.8 million people over the last 18 years. That’s more important than market cap or revenues.” – Manish Sabharwal

Were you entrepreneurial ever since you can remember?

I think so. I got very lucky with my first job as an executive assistant to a successful Indian entrepreneur. I was watching him do business with other people’s money. That was very liberating to understand that you don’t have to have money to be an entrepreneur, which was the big myth for me as a civil servant’s child. Having a role model who started a group, attracted money, and had two IPOs made it real for me. Suddenly, the possibility of entrepreneurship didn’t seem as distant as it originally seemed.

You had an interesting experience with investors in your first venture. What did you learn about how companies can balance funding requirements and loss of control?

When I graduated from Wharton, I wrote a business plan for pension funds and insurance and met a someone from Lazard private equity who came to teach a course. He bought 50% of my company for $2 million, which in retrospect was a bad deal. Think of entrepreneurship as the continuous seeking of balance across various dimensions. There are three types of balance that matter for an entrepreneur:

  • Balance between the long term and short term. It’s really what good entrepreneurs get right – the next quarter and the next quarter of a century. It depends on what kind of business you’re going to aim for. You shouldn’t raise less money than you need. But you also shouldn’t raise more money than you need, because in the earlier rounds that’s the most expensive money you are ever going to raise. This will dilute your company. I probably sold India Life a few years earlier than I should have, but I was comparing it to zero. Me and Ashok reflected back on this experience. So when TeamLease came around, we did not take money for seven years until becoming a 100-million-dollar company. This allowed us to take the private equity on our terms.

“The educators through history, be it Socrates, Tagor or Vygotski, say “We don’t learn from experience, we learn by reflecting on experience.” – Manish Sabharwal

  • Balance between poetry and prose. Entrepreneurs write business plans and conduct IPOs in the language of poetry, but they execute and report quarterly in prose. At different stages of your company the balance of poetry and prose will need to be different and that requires different skills. Eventually, I had to replace my earlier partners with people who have run big companies. The hardest part of such a decision is to make it at the right time. Because if an entrepreneur converts a high-energy startup into a bureaucratic company too early, he will take away its birthright. But if he does it too late – he will take away its destiny.
  • Balance in the team. This is the most important, because the skillset for getting the train out of station is different from keeping the trains running on time. My co-founder Ashok is an introvert and I’m an extrovert. He is good at operations and I’m good at sales. Our board members say: If only Manish been around, the company would have not survived. And if only Ashok had been around, the company would have been 100th of its size. If you can find that balance between your co-founders, that’s the biggest gift you can give your venture. Also, knowing what you don’t know makes you actively seek out cognitive diversity.
What was your biggest take-away from your MBA journey?

Business school is what you get out of it. It’s not an academic degree; it’s a professional degree. Most people convert an MBA into a two-year job search, but I had decided that I was not going to do that. I used my time at Wharton as an incubator for my business plan. Every weekend I used to meet many alumni in New York and Washington to talk about insurance and pensions, funding, and outsourcing.

Wharton professors became my board members. I engaged many of my peers in joint projects. “MBA is the ultimate intellectual wine tasting – enjoy the journey and make it as broad as you can.” – Manish Sabharwal I used 16 out of my 21 courses for my final presentation, India Life, which turned into a venture that was acquired by Hewitt associates in 2002 for USD 300 million.

My favorite courses were around Entrepreneurship and Corporate Finance and the intersection of these two. And the funniest course for me was Public Policy, because I went in realizing that I wanted more. Public policy is much more complex than corporate strategy, because you have infinite variables and an infinite time horizon. This makes the job of policymakers harder than CEOs like us who have financial reporting and just two or three goals.

In my policy work with the Central Bank, controlling inflation can be contradictory to maximizing growth, which can be contradictory to maximizing employment, which can be contradictory to so many other issues of equity and inequality. Wharton most fundamentally changed the size of my thoughts. That’s what I will be grateful for.

Is entrepreneurship the right thing for someone who gets excited about every business opportunity?

“Every week I get a call from CEO of a big company saying, “I’m so bored with my job and I would quit if I found the perfect opportunity”. That’s a misunderstanding of the entrepreneurial process. There is no such thing as a perfect opportunity.” – Manish Sabharwal If by the end of the MBA you don’t know what venture you want to start, find crossroads positions like venture capital or consulting or even investment banking to be exposed to a lot of different ideas, people, industries and sectors.

Figure out what makes you excited. Entrepreneurship is hypothesis testing, like science. Taking it where you are starting from and then iterating and actively learning. Very few people implement exactly the business plan they write. My first business plan was supposed to be a life insurance company. Since life insurance deregulation didn’t happen, I changed it to India Life Pension Services.

Since pension deregulation didn’t happen, I changed it to India Life Outsourcing Services and that’s the one which was successful. Whatever business you are in, do not take the inch-wide, mile-deep risks, take a lot of mile-wide, inch-deep risks from which you can learn. Then, when you finish your learning, you will take that big risk. And in your heart, you will know when that comes.

Seven years ago, the world’s largest staffing company wanted to buy TeamLease with a substantial premium. That’s when Ashok and I sat down and said, “We never going to get an idea of this scale and impact in our lifetime again. Let’s make this our life’s work. We won’t solve India’s people supply chain problems, but we’ll die trying”.

What are some failures you faced along the way and how did you recover?

The only way to recover from failure is to not let that failure be fatal. And the only way to let failure not be fatal is to become a better listener. That’s really hard as an entrepreneur, because in the first 10 years we succeed by not listening, but in the next 10 years we succeed by listening. Nobody will tell you when this will flip – you’ve got to judge for yourself.

Once in the past, I made a bad acquisition, which my board warned me not to do, but I used my trump card to overrule everybody. As a result of that acquisition, we had to write off $50 million. I told my board then, “Why didn’t you physically stop me from doing it?”. Now I listen to them a lot more.

I don’t think you should even aim to prevent failure, because if you’re not taking enough risks you’re never going to learn. Architect your life in ways that you have people around you whom you listen to and who get through to you. Because the most dangerous lies are the lies we tell ourselves.

I am fascinated by the amount of knowledge that you have. You seem like a lifelong learner. Is it thanks to the numerous books in your library?

I’ve read a book a week for 27 years. I was recently asked – What is the one thing you want your kids to learn? And I said, it is the power of compounding in four things:

  • Compounding in relationships. You can’t parachute into great relationships. You have to build them over many years.
  • Compounding in entrepreneurship. A great company takes 25 years to build, in my mind.
  • Compounding in knowledge. People walk into my library of about 1,000 books and say, “Give me the five books which I should read”. I say, “That’s not how it works. One book connects with another paragraph from another book which connects from another line from another book and it’s that compounding which makes the difference.”
  • And Compounding in money, which is the least important.
A big part of innovation is the entrepreneur’s ability to manage stakeholder relationships instead of only managing technology. Is this true for TeamLease?

TeamLease has been successful because other companies thought they live in an economy and focus purely on that, while we realize that this is about people. And that allowed us to think much longer, broader, and to engage with the outside world in ways that I don’t think our competitors did. If you think you live in an economy, there are only two stakeholders. If you think you live in a society, there are 10 stakeholders.

There are 200,000 kids who come to me for a job every month and I only hire 10,000 of them. I realized that employability is a bigger problem than unemployment. But more importantly, I needed to do something about this problem. I was able to convince the team that spending 30% of my time outside the company would de-bottleneck the regulatory cholesterol that was holding India back.

So, when I started engaging with policy, we set up a Skill University, which is a degree-linked apprenticeship program. We now have 100,000 students in that nonprofit university. At this fundamental point, you recognize you have multiple stakeholders. Not all stakeholders are equally important, but you can’t ignore society as a stakeholder. That’s not the way to build a great institution.

Does age or experience matter for successful entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurs are un-modellable. Short or tall, men or women, MBAs or non-MBAs – it seems like a stochastic variable. I would rather define the main characteristics of an entrepreneur – curiosity, patience, and courage would probably be the three things. You can be that at 20, at 40, and at 50. All that matters is the courage in your heart and the strength of your back and the sweat on your brow. I no longer think of this as an opening balance.

If you believe in the compounding of relationships, knowledge, and organizations – you can change the world. Not in one or two years, but over decades. Just be careful not to define success as being rich and good-looking. There are so many marvelous opportunities calling you out there for a pilgrimage. And if you hitch your wagon to that broader purpose, your company will more likely be a baby that will start small, but continue to grow and impact the world.

Manish Sabharwal is one of India’s most eminent entrepreneurs and thinkers, with a long history of people management, entrepreneurship, and advocating for labor reform in India. He is currently the Chairman, co-founder and CEO of TeamLease Services, India’s largest staffing and human capital firm. Founded in 2002, TeamLease has since grown to 95,000 employees in 1,800 cities and is India’s second largest private sector employer.

Prior to founding TeamLease, in 1996 he co-founded India Life, an HR outsourcing company that was acquired by Hewitt Associates in 2002 for USD 300 million. Consequently, he was CEO of Hewitt Outsourcing (Asia) in Singapore. In addition to leading TeamLease, Manish serves on the Boards of India’s central bank, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

On December 10, 2020, eight fearless teams made their way through ASB’s first-ever digital “Law of the Jungle” – the entrepreneurial event of the year during which ASB students showcase new products and services they have developed over the semester. This event marks the culmination of the students’ fifth and final Action Learning trek, where they put their learning into action as part of ASB’s full-time MBA program.

Fun fact: Why the name “Law of the Jungle”? At ASB, Professors Charles Fine and Loredana Padurean teach the Nail It, Scale It, and Sail It framework outlining what companies required to succeed at different stages of growth. For start-ups, it’s all about nailing the basics and hacking your way through an untamed jungle – and that is exactly what our students learned and are showcasing during this semester!

“Law of the Jungle” was a true testament to the ASB spirit, with 32 ASB MBA students, working across 4 continents from 15 countries taking part in this LIVE event. The eight teams who faced the scrutiny of the Jungle Chieftains (aka judges) included: 

  • Chorak – Reimagining Malaysian cultural patterns through batik-centric lifestyle products that invoke national pride and heritage
  • MediBook – A mobile app that allows you to store and share your medical records anytime, anywhere
  • Vietphin – Building an authentic Vietnamese coffee experience in Malaysia
  • Puzzle Peace – A jigsaw puzzle membership service for stressed-out adults, designed with sustainability, connection and ergonomic comfort in mind
  • Mancealer – Developing an all-in-one tinted moisturizer with natural looking coverage for Asian men
  • BlindIn.co – Solving unemployment for blind and visually impaired people
  • Katha – An interactive app for connecting grandparents with grandchildren through story-telling
  • CORONAVital – Identifying a pocket-sized multi-functional lifestyle accessory (ProteKit) to help individuals decrease contact transmission of microbes
Collaborating across time zones and continents

Working across time zones and not having the ability to collaborate, prototype, and brainstorm in the same location was one of the biggest challenges the students faced along the path to Law of the Jungle. “Action learning is a group effort, and ideas come when every team member is present and contributing. Working across time zones definitely put pressure on the team,” said Hrishi Eathakota from Team Katha.

“However, we were really committed to the project, and found creative ways of communicating ideas through the use of online whiteboarding tools like Miro,” he added. Showcasing how the students were taking the challenges in their stride, Amjed Ali from Team BlindIn.co added,  “One challenge of working completely online and across countries is that there is no separation between work and non-work hours.

It’s good practice in preparing for the new normal and finding new ways of balancing work and life.” Despite the challenges, it was clear that the students took away concrete learnings and tried-and-tested entrepreneurial frameworks including those used by the world’s leading design firms. As Abhiram Keremane from Team Katha explained, “We learned ways to brainstorm and build on each other’s ideas.

We used some of the methods used by IDEO, especially in the ideation phase, which required coming up with ideas, building on each other’s ideas, and talking to potential customers across the globe to quickly validate our hypotheses.” “To innovate, we had to first nail the problem down. This required defining our users and customer persona and understanding what problems they are facing.

To do this, we applied tools we were taught during the semester, such as design thinking and consumer behavior analysis. When pitching our project, we also kept in mind the ‘Ethos-Pathos-Logos’ framework and aimed to engage with the audience on three levels: Ethos = Authority, Logos = Logical Argument, and Pathos = Emotions,” said Franco Bravard from Team Katha.

Wowing the judges with their pitching skills

During the event, an impressive line-up of judges reviewed and critiqued the students’ pitches. Said Hisyam Hassim from team CORONAVital, “Presenting four months of work in eight minutes was certainly challenging – keeping things concise was part of the education. It was definitely intimidating, but at the same time extremely rewarding to have angel investors and successful entrepreneurs alike provide feedback to our project.”

The students’ efforts paid off – the judges were certainly impressed. One of the judges, Francesca Chia, CEO And Co-Founder of GoGet, said “If this is the product of ASB teaching, each team has learnt great storytelling skills!” Meanwhile, Alan Lim, President of Malaysian Business Angels Network, said, “As an angel investor, I feel the teams really stand up compared to real-world pitching.

In addition to that, they are very well prepared to answer questions with their back-up slides. Congrats to the ASB teams on the good job done!” “The students’ pitches were well thought through, succinct and impactful,” added angel investor and NEXEA mentor Looi Kok Loon. Thinesh Kumar, founder and CEO of Lapasar, agreed with the other judges.

“Their pitching and storytelling abilities could actually raise money in the real world,” he enthused. “I learnt a lot from the MBA students today!” Other judges that joined the formidable judging panel included Lavinie Thiruchelvam, Co-Founder and Director of Babydash.com.my and Peter Wee, NEXEA mentor.

Connecting grandparents with grandchildren

The judges cast their votes, the results were tallied, and the result? A tie for kings of the jungle! The overall winners, as chosen by our Jungle Chieftain judges, were Teams Katha and BlindIn.co. Team Katha won the crowd over with a heartfelt story told by team mate Hrishi of the close relationship shared by his son, Natty, and Natty’s grandfather, Bhanu.

During Covid-19, Natty and Bhanu were no longer able to enjoy regular visits to see each other in person, but wanted to spend time together even while being apart. That’s when the members of Team Katha came up with the idea of creating a storytelling platform that would allow grandparents to digitally connect with their grandchildren through the medium of stories.

Said Hrishi Eathakota from Team Katha, “Winning both the judges and popular vote has been a confidence booster and much-needed validation for our idea. The Action Learning experience has been a great way to test ideas in the safety of a school, and feedback from faculty, judges, and fellow classmates have been very helpful in this journey.”

“Moving forwards, drawing on the lessons learnt from the “Nail It, Scale It, Sail It” framework taught by Professor Loredana, we are in the process of nailing the product and launching the app on the App Store and Google Play store. we received a lot of validation for our idea, with many people telling us that such an app is needed for users across different demographics. But execution is key. We want to nail this product first for the Indian market before releasing it in different markets,” he added.

Creating equal opportunities for blind people

Meanwhile, Team BlindIn.co also captured the hearts of the audience and judges through their job-matching platform designed specifically for the world’s 42 million-strong population of blind people. The platform aims to reduce the 70% unemployment rate in this under-tapped segment of the population, by allowing blind job candidates to showcase their skills and capabilities to prospective employers through a video-based platform that employs AI technology including Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services (for speech-to-text services and key word/phrase extraction) and machine learning (for curated recommendations).

Said BlindIn.co team member Ilham Bazi, “I am incredibly happy and proud that our project to solve the challenges faced by the blind and visually impaired community won not only the Microsoft Hackathon but also Law of the Jungle. It was an amazing experience and validation that we are heading in the right direction. We are so excited about this project and making an impact on this community!”

In addition to Team BlindIn.co and Team Katha, the Mancealer Team won the Crowd Favorite Award and came in at 2nd place for the Judges’ Choice for making skincare products more versatile and appealing to Asian men.

Impact beyond the classroom

The projects culminated in one of the teams (BlindIn.co) receiving a double validation and also being crowned the Malaysia winners at the prestigious Microsoft AI for Accessibility APAC Hackathon.  Said Vy Nguyen, who was not part of the original BlindIn.co team but who joined the team for the Microsoft hackathon, “We’re thrilled that we could utilize cognitive services and machine learning to develop a solution that allows blind and visually impaired individuals to showcase their skills and potential to employers.

This journey wouldn’t have been complete without my amazing teammates, who all believe that we need to make a change in this world that was not designed for the blind.” Summing up the Law of the Jungle and Action Learning Trek experience, Professor Loredana Padurean, who taught this course, said: “At ASB, we take pride in learning in action, on working hand in hand, minds to minds and hearts to hearts with our partners all around the world.

Once again, in 2020 we have been globally recognized as one of the most impactful b-school innovations of the decade, ranking Number 5 in Poets&Quants’ Top 10 Most Innovative MBA programs in the world just a year after we received the MBA Roundtable Innovation Award for our leadership in initiating and achieving curricular reform through its use of Action Learning.”

“I am so proud of the effort the MBA Class of 2021 students put into their projects, creating real-world impact and giving students the exposure needed to prepare for their next career move. The judges’ feedback at Law of the Jungle certainly validated what we have been teaching, as well as the students’ own commitment and dedication towards making excellence the baseline,” she added.

Some define success as the ability to start their own business. Some, view the pinnacle of success as being able to spend more time with their loved ones, and on the things they love. For Ranjini Pushpa, her true definition of success lies in her ability to upskill herself in every level of her life. Ranjini started out her career immediately in the heart of corporate.

As an Operations Analyst in Goldman Sachs, this was Ranjini’s first major feat –even as a fresh graduate, right out of college. “All through this time, I was actually thinking of doing an MBA,” Ranjini told us with a laugh. “But after doing a lot of research, I realized that the full value of an MBA will be even better with work experience attached to it.”

So, that’s what she did. Ranjini’s plans to initially join Goldman Sachs for 2 years soon turned into 5 years; and she found herself in the middle of a huge promotion. However, she had a big choice to make. Would she continue with her aspirations to enroll for an MBA, or grab the promotion of a lifetime?

“It was a very difficult choice to make. I had some financial commitments, so it was very hard to quit my job.” But her thirst for upskilling would overtake her worries. Ranjini would go on to take the plunge, and send in her application letter to ASB. The rest, Ranjini told us, is history.

Breaking New Ground

Although excelling at her position as an Operations Associate at Goldman Sachs, Ranjini harbored a deep-rooted passion for digital marketing from the get-go. So when it was time for her to start her Summer Associate Program (SAP) with ASB, she jumped at the opportunity to work with Creative Switzerland, a platform whose main goal was to involve small-time entrepreneurs with the larger picture tourism industry in Switzerland through online workshops and other activities.

“A lot of these entrepreneurs were affected by COVID-19. So my role as a Marketing Research Associate was to analyze and implement ways we could change their business models from offline only to a combination of offline and online events.”

“Keep in mind I had zero experience in digital marketing,” Ranjini said, reminiscent of her time in that position. But admittedly, Creative Switzerland was a startup that would allow her to work from the trenches of SMEs, innovative strategies, and the frontlines of innovation.

“I was very fond of the founder that I worked with. She allowed me to experiment with new things, fail fast, then get back on my feet and have a great learning experience only in a few months.” During her time at Creative Switzerland, Ranjini managed to lead several initiatives on the startup’s social media front, as she built a solid footprint for the brand on various social platforms.

Was it challenging for Ranjini to carry out a 3-month project 100% virtually, while in India? On the contrary, it was a challenge perfectly executed. “Actually the challenging phase was not during the internship,” Ranjini explained. “ASB has allowed me to get used to taking classes online, so completing an internship wasn’t that much different.”

“I think we all need to be positive at a time like this. COVID-19 and the restrictions and the pandemic are all factors that aren’t in our control.” With travel restrictions in place, ASB has implemented a solid online classroom experience for all of its MBA students, both living in Malaysia as well as the rest of the world. At a time like this, ASB’s innovative and forward-thinking team are going online-first to deliver on the same value of the world-class MBA with the foundation of it’s MIT syllabus.

Upskilling At Every Level

On the verge of a brand new promotion, situated in a comfortable office in one of the most renowned companies in the world –Ranjini Pushpa made the bold choice of pursuing her lifelong dreams of an ASB MBA. Why is an MBA wildly important to Ranjini, above all else? “The answer to that question is very personal.” Once again, it’s clear that Ranjini is deep in thought.

“There was this school called Shanti Bhavan that made a very big impact on my life in India. Its overall mission was to break the cycle of poverty in India by choosing one child from each family to pursue an education.” Through a stroke of fate, Ranjini was chosen by the officials of Shanti Bhavan to complete her entire education in the school. Ranjini -who was the only one who was picked from her village-, enrolled at age 4 and studied until her 12th grade at the non-profit organization.

“While I was in that school, I realized the power of education.” “Even when I was in university surrounded by naturally rich kids, I didn’t notice the difference between them and me. Because when I think about where we all were right now, it was through education, and that gets you anywhere.” In Shanti Bhavan, she would never forget the wise words from its own founder.

“When I graduated from Shanti Bhavan and went straight into college, he would always remind me. Even when I got the offer letter from Goldman Sachs, he always told me not to forget about doing an MBA, and that stuck with me forever.” Ranjini’s story is as inspirational as it is beautifully simple. She told us, “Education is simply the best gift you can give someone.”

What would she do with her own gift of an ASB education? “My aspirations will always remain to give back to society somehow. I want to pay it forward, and somehow give back, even if it’s through sponsoring one child in the future.” Ranjini continued to voice out her support for the esteemed MBA in today’s climate.

“An MBA, I believe, is something that truly has the opportunity to put you on a different career path. It opens up opportunities, enriches your skill sets, and gives you access to industries that are picking up the pace in today’s environment.” And that, is truly a gift like no other.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology is nothing new. It has already seeped into our daily lives. This technology is what completes your keyword search before you finish typing, similar to how your AI assistant processes your voice command. A chatbot is an NLP application that is driving a huge part of the automation revolution.

Even though it isn’t as good as human customer service (no way near actually, from my experience), 24/7 immediate response capability and reduction in cost are what is attracting many companies to adopt this technology. If you’ve thought that these are the end of the road for NLP and polishing up the technology for existing applications is all that is left, think twice.

Recently released GPT-3 is showing a glimpse of what the next level NLP looks like. It appears that the next level of NLP implies so much potential to change the business landscape. Even if you are not an A.I. enthusiast, you might have heard people talking about GPT-3. GPT-3 is a computer program created by a non-profit artificial intelligence research laboratory OpenAI in San Francisco. If you haven’t heard about GPT-3 check out some unbelievable results from the advanced NLP models below.

GPT-3, unlike its predecessor GPT-2, is not open to the public and only available for selected developers as a closed beta service. However, the cases mentioned above are just a few examples that I’ve found based on research on the internet. Even with the given limitation of accessibility to the model, the used cases show that GPT-3 can be programmed to write an article, that can be easily passed off as written by a human; make webpage designs; write a computer code from plain English description; and simulate dialogue with a historic figure. This is insane!

Since it isn’t the easiest thing for a non-expert in machine learning to comprehend what GPT-3 is (wasn’t easy at least for me), let’s break down GPT-3 in a simple language understandable by everyone – What is happening under the hood of this text generating model? Why is it attracting so much attention? What are the anticipated obstacles? Let’s go through them one by one.

Why is GPT-3 so good?

175 Billion parameters, and Few shot Learning [i]. These are the words you would often encounter when you search for information about GPT-3. What is a parameter and what does this number, 175 billion, mean?

On the left, this is how the deep learning model looks like. Just like many other machine learning algorithms, deep learning is an algorithm that tries to find an optimum weight(W) that minimizes the bias(B). Thinking about simple linear regression would help the intuition.

However, as you can see from the diagram, deep learning consists of multiple connections that contain the weights. We call each of these weights a ‘parameter’ and GPT-3 consists of 175 billion parameters that define the relationship between nodes. As mentioned above, the deep learning model works in a way of finding optimal W that minimizes B and then the model repeats the training (we call each trails epoch) of the data set which updates to more optimal parameters.

A change in a single parameter will influence the whole model because of the interconnectivity and so you can imagine the complexity of a model that consists of 175 billion parameters, right? OpenAI trained the model using 45TB web-scraped text data (which filtered down to 570GB after tidying the data) plus some other data sets from other sources such as books and Wikipedia. The total data set consists of 499 billion tokens (token refers to the smallest unit that a corpus consists of).

Why is this figure, 175 billion parameters, important? It is because the success of GPT-3 implies that the size of the model matters. The machine learning model architecture of GPT-3 is a transformer-based neural network. This architecture has been around since 2017 and it has been quite popular for a while. Google’s NLP model BERT and GPT-3’s previous version GPT-2 are both using transformer-based architecture.

The most important factor that makes GPT-3 such a high performing and human-sounding is the size of the model. This means that with a bigger size you can have a more sophisticated NLP model. What is ‘few shot learning’ then? Before we deep dive into few shot learning, let me introduce you to the concept of transfer learning and fine-tuning. To understand these concepts easier, let’s assume that I have trained a deep learning model that can identify an animal species from an image.

I have trained the model to identify hundreds of animal species, and you want to make an application that can tell the difference between cats and dogs. If my model can successfully identify cats and dogs from an image without any further data, it is zero shot learning model. If the model can perform after you give one image of a cat and one image of a dog respectively, it is one shot learning.

Few shot learning is when the model works after giving fewer than 10 examples. We call this process ‘transfer learning’ (zero shot learning doesn’t require any transfer learning). Usually, transfer learning for NLP model requires thousands of examples. What you would want to do is take advantage of a pre-trained model (that’s the whole point of transfer learning) and then update the model to reflect the newly added task-specific examples.

This process is called fine-tuning. In addition to the initial training of the model, fine-tuning itself is a very elaborate process. Few shot learning is an enormous breakthrough for NLP model! GPT-3 had a big enough size that the model that had mastered the structures of human-generated texts and after looking into a couple of examples it can perform similar tasks. Think about it. GPT-3 can be a journalist, a programmer, a scriptwriter, and so many other things after feeding it a few examples.

What are the shortcomings?

I am pretty sure that you are super excited about this technology at this point. But is GPT-3 really a Deux ex Machina for NLP? No. The answer is No. There are certainly a lot of hypes (quite some contribution from the media) around GPT-3 and I can say this with 100% confidence because this is what came out of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s mouth.

How would GPT-3 look like after adding the right dosage of reality? Let’s talk a little about the caveat – the limitation of GPT-3. Before we move on to this specific topic, let me provide clarity on one thought. GPT-3, although it seems like it understands the context of the text like humans and generates the output, is not comprehending things. The output GPT-3 comes out with is not an outcome of logical inference.

All it is doing is looking at the text you’ve fed into the model and presents an outcome based on a statistical likelihood. If you’re giving it a common sentence it will perform well, but when you give the model something unusual it will present an absurd output based on statistical likelihood (here’s my personal favorite, English speaking unicorn experiment).

The creators of GPT-3 also points out the limitation of GPT-3 in their paper. “Although as a whole the quality is high, GPT-3 samples still sometimes repeat themselves semantically at the document level, start to lose coherence over sufficiently long passages.”

Also, GPT-3 which has been trained using text from the internet, also has some gender and racial bias issues. Below are some examples when GPT-3 was prompted to write tweets from one word – Jews, black, women, holocaust. We don’t know what’s OpenAI’s plan for addressing this problem but companies would certainly not want to use a racist A.I. system.

Another problem is that the model will decay over time. What do I mean by this? As mentioned above GPT-3 was trained using a dataset from 2016 to 2019. It means GPT-3 knows nothing about what happened after 2019. For instance, the model doesn’t know about Covid-19. Now when we talk about ‘social distancing’ or ‘lock down’ we would all understand it with the context of a pandemic situation, but GPT-3 is not capable of doing so because it never learned about it.

What is relevant now might not be as relevant in the future and pretty much all machine learning models in a sense are open to the threat of model decay. However, human society is very versatile, and therefore NLP, which is an algorithm processing human language is more prone to model decay. Of course, this problem is often addressed by re-training the model using a new dataset. But considering the size of the model, it is very consuming and requires a budget.

Finally, GPT-3 is a few shot learner capable of performing quite a range of general tasks. While this may be true, if you want to make GPT-3 to perform a specialized task it might not be the best model. OpenAI is also very aware of it and the CTO Greg Brockman hinted that they will add the fine-tuning feature in the future. In fact, I’m pretty sure OpenAI is aware of all the problems I’ve stated above and more. Whether OpenAI is going to successfully address these problems and become a game-changer is something I cannot answer right now, but it will be revealed soon as OpenAI expand their API customer base.

Where is GPT-3 now?

OpenAI’s GPT-3 is not likely to be open-sourced. Microsoft has exclusively licensed GPT-3 technology and OpenAI is only planning to provide GPT-3 through subscription-based API access. The cost for training GPT-3 for OpenAI was approximately $4.6 million. I think the size and complexity of the model justify the cost.

But then what about the price? OpenAI announced GPT-3 API’s price scheme in September 2020, which started to take effect to begin the 1st of October 2020. GPT-3 is still on beta service and this price pricing scheme for beta service seems adjustable, yet there are lots of mixed reactions from the A.I. community.

A large part of the negative reaction attributes to the fact that OpenAI is a non-profit organization. OpenAI describes their mission as “to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity.” Given the track record that GPT-2 was open-sourced, there have been some reactions from the crowd who thinks OpenAI has lost their original intention.

OpenAI explains themselves by releasing commercial products on their official website “Ultimately, what we care about most is ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits, everyone. We see developing commercial products as one of the ways to make sure we have enough funding to succeed.” However, increasing the price from free to $100 per month is still a huge difference and the introduction of a pricing scheme is expected to drive out the hobbyist from their beta customer list and target the start-ups/corporate users.

A few shot learner NLP API is not really something that has been around in the market and hence whether this pricing is too high or not is still very controversial. OpenAI explains two million tokens will be sufficient to process 3,000 pages of text. They also added that it will take 1.2 million tokens to process the entire works from Shakespeare. On the other hand, Murat Ayfer, a developer of Philosopher AI which generates interesting text-based on a single keyword or phrase using GPT-3, has a different view.

From an interview with Computer Business Review, he stated “So far PhilosopherAI.com has had 850,000 queries entered and generated 612,949,783 characters. This would cost around $6,000 if it was all generated in one go, but the background prompt juggling I do probably multiplies it by three, putting me at close to $18,000 already.”

What do you think about the pricing scheme from OpenAI? Is it too pricy? Should the token be the base of the pricing scheme? We don’t know the applications and business models for those applications yet. How should we approach pricing in this case? This could be a perfect material for a business school case study. If anyone reading the article has thoughts to share, I’d be happy to discuss it.

To cover the cost of initial training and operation costs that will incur, OpenAI will need quite a number of subscribers for their API. There are some startups who’ve already launched their service powered by GPT-3 at this early stage. Here’s a fun example. Latitude has introduced a GPT-3 powered text-based adventure game. Their product is called AI Dungeon, and it was initially launched in December 2019.

Its original version is powered by GPT-2 and it’s freely available for you to try it. They’ve also recently launched a premium version of AI Dungeon called AI Dungeon Dragon powered by GPT-3 ($9.9 per monthly subscription). There aren’t many yet, but I believe there is going to be a lot of products released in the near future. You could take your MBA lenses on and think about some clever applications!

This article was originally published on LinkedIn. 

[i] Tom B. Brown. (2020). Language Models are Few-Shot Learners. arXiv:2005.14165.
[ii] Soheil Tehranipour (2020). https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/openai-gpt-3-language-models-are-few-shot-learners-82531b3d3122
[iii] Kevin Lacker (2020). https://lacker.io/ai/2020/07/06/giving-gpt-3-a-turing-test.html

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The COVID-19 pandemic might have disrupted many sectors and industries across the globe, but healthcare’s position as the evergreen industry remains unshaken. A recent Deloitte report, “ 2020 Global Health Care Outlook” states that global health care spending is expected to rise at a CAGR of 5 percent in 2020-23, presenting many opportunities for the sector.

One country in particular where the health care sector shows promising signs is the UAE. Dubai is very well known for its Tourism, Financial, and Real Estate industry. The next strategic target for the city is its health sector, which is already rising in prominence as a hub for medical tourism in the Middle East. In addition to its tourist attractions, Dubai and Abu Dhabi boasts some of the region’s best infrastructure, facilities, and medical treatments available, making it easy to combine medical care with tourism.

This makes the UAE a fantastic place to kickstart or pivot a career. Recently, I had the opportunity to connect with experienced healthcare industry expert, Pankaj Paul, Principal at Vicaara, who shared his expert insights on opportunities in the industry as part of the Virtual Dubai Trek, an annual career trek organized by the Career Development Office of the Asia School of Business.

If you’re considering a career in the Middle East, here are the top 4 reasons why you should consider the healthcare sector in UAE:

1. UAE has strategically strengthened its healthcare position

Over the last decade, the healthcare industry has emerged as one of the prime sectors for economic diversification in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Dubai’s healthcare market alone in the Middle East is forecasted to reach USD 19.5 billion this year from USD 15 billion in 2018. Experts predicted that UAE will play an instrumental role in propelling the MENA healthcare sector growth from USD 144 billion in 2020 to USD 243.6 billion by 2023.

The UAE has already cemented its position as the destination of choice for medical tourists due to its state-of-the-art technology, affordable treatments, and highly specialized and well-qualified doctors. The growth of the UAE’s medical tourism industry has been exceptional, in line with its global aspirations for medical tourism and focus on increasing its healthcare infrastructure in terms of quality and quantity.

2. Dubai and Abu Dhabi attracting global healthcare providers and promoting medical tourism

Rising healthcare costs in Western countries, an aging population, and lack of insurance coverage for specialist procedures in many countries make a solid business case for Dubai and Abu Dhabi to be the next medical tourism hub. Dubai is home to the world’s largest medical free trade zone with its creation of Dubai Healthcare City (DHCC).

The Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT) recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Medical Tourism Association (MTA) to create successful medical tourist programs. These programs are being promoted to markets such as Russia, China, and the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), with a focus on affordable specialty areas such as cardiology, oncology, and executive screenings. The aim is to become the region’s leading medical tourist destination.

3. The healthcare ecosystem is booming

The UAE, in its quest to become a leading healthcare destination, has been making efforts to strengthen the healthcare ecosystem, which consists of hospitals, pharmaceuticals, and medical device companies. Currently, the country is focused on adding 40 primary healthcare centers and three major new hospitals in the master plan, and medical tourism is expected to contribute USD 705 million to GDP by 2020 with 13% year-on-year revenue growth according to the next few years.

Pharmaceuticals and medical devices are prioritized sub-sectors listed under the 2030 Dubai Industrial Strategy which aims to promote the UAE as a base for knowledge-based, sustainable, and innovation-focused businesses. The UAE Ministry of Health has also proposed for 34 indigenous pharmaceutical manufacturing factories to be up and running by end of 2020. According to Omania Heath, the market value of the UAE’s pharmaceutical industry is set to go up by AED 9.5 billion (USD 2.59 billion) at present to AED 25 billion (USD 6.81 billion) by 2025.

4. A plethora of opportunities for MBAs seeking a career in health care

With the sizeable chunk of economic investment going towards healthcare, this calls for experts to run and manage the healthcare facilities towards the profits goal post. Here is where the “management doctors” – the MBAs – comes into the picture.

Where industries are booming, opportunities are plenty. As COVID-19 has pushed many industries and countries like UAE to rethink its strategies, operations, and management, MBA graduates would benefit from considering UAE as a potential destination to build a career. Some define success as the ability to start their own business. Some, view the pinnacle of success as being able to spend more time with their loved ones, and on the things they love.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur or aspiring to be one, the Asia School of Business’ (ASB) Action Learning 5 (AL5) is the best kind of pressure cooker. A three-month simulation of the start-up life, AL5 takes every MBA student from the conceptual stage to minimal viable product. You’ll be challenged to think outside the box (there is no box!) and to apply key concepts from celebrated gurus like Eric Ries.

So what did I gain from the experience? In this article, I’ll walk you through five key takeaways from my journey with Professor Loredana Padurean, the Action Learning team and the ASB Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center.

#1 – Hone your entrepreneurial instinct

Being an entrepreneur is scary. I remember how I felt when my company had to pivot from its original business, forcing the team to shrink to four people. We built one sales deck after another and because it was a new service, we didn’t have a track record. Yet we had to articulate the services we provided and the value it brought. It was scary every step of the way because the failure rate was high – but we had to succeed at all costs!

The only thing I could depend on were my instincts. There was no recipe for success, only pure hustle, listening to customers, and continuous learning. And that’s exactly what we got from this Action Learning experience. There was no right or wrong, only what made sense instinctively. Where tools are concerned, many tools were introduced to us in class.

But it’s not about knowing the tools – it was knowing which tool to use and how to use it effectively, within the limited time we had, to guide our decision-making. In this Action Learning journey, we were challenged to identify a problem that we felt strongly about. But just because we feel strongly about something doesn’t mean there’s a market for it.

We had to deploy whatever resources and intellect that were at our disposal to validate the problem. At every step of the way, my team had to trust our gut instincts to figure out what should come next, the problem we wanted to solve, and whether our approach would bring about positive results.

The thing about being an entrepreneur is that the more you try to crack a problem, the sharper your instincts and decision-making skills become. There’s no book to adequately prepare you for this journey, only trial by fire – and that’s what this Action Learning program is designed to do.

#2 – It’s a safe place to fail

If you’ve been an entrepreneur, you know it’s a lonely journey. The fear of failing and uncertainty are high, and the outcome of every decision is on your shoulders. Worse, your decisions don’t just affect you but those around you too. This is why entrepreneurs often look for a place where they can generate ideas, get constructive feedback, and most importantly, find people who are on the same mission. Incubators and accelerators tend to fill this important role.

Think of this Action Learning project as your in-house incubator at ASB. Together with your talented and intelligent classmates, you’ll be working on your ideas together. It’s like being in the same jungle but each team is taking a different path as they try to crack an idea they’re passionate about. The environment makes it safe for you to present your ideas as they are and get constructive feedback from your classmates.

You’ll get different perspectives and articulation of your problem and solution which will sharpen your instincts and critical thinking. They would also understand how challenging your journey is and offer support. It’s a safe place where many entrepreneurs have the opportunity to incubate their ideas and build their start-ups from scratch. The best thing is that it’s fine to fail as you go.

When leading your own start-up, failure might mean going without pay and unhappy employees. In this Action Learning program, you get to make as many failures as you want and pivot until you arrive at a clear problem statement, a viable solution, and a minimal viable product – all with minimal downside risks.

#3 –Market research is not market validation

Entrepreneurs are often confused by the difference between market research and market validation. They assume that just because they have done research on the market, then this somehow validates the problem and solution. To help us understand this better, we had the privilege of hearing from Natasha Shazana, Co-Founder of Soko, on her start-up journey.

“We have done a lot of market research, but do we have market validation?” Natasha said . “I would only think we have market validation when somebody spends their hard-earned money on my product.” That’s some perspective right there! She also emphasized the importance of focusing on your target persona.

“In all that I do, I know very clearly who I am targeting, what is her profile and what does she represent… I always bear in mind that it’s less about [my] brand, but more about the person, the consumer.”

#4 – It’s not just about what you do, but also what you say

If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you’ll need to be able to sell. During a pitch practice session, we learned about the different types of pitches – from demo to elevator and customer pitch. After learning the tips and best practices on what makes a great pitch, we had the opportunity to think through our deck and refine our pitches. Even a great product can’t tell its own story!

#5 – Entrepreneurship is as much about personal as professional growth

As part of the course we had the privilege of meeting Manish Sabharwal, a seasoned entrepreneur from India who is chairman of his second venture. The one-hour conversation left me hungry for more!

My biggest takeaway is how entrepreneurship is not only about starting a business, but equally it is about a way of life, making decisions, and being a person. Seven gems I captured are:

  1. Curiosity matters more than intellect. There are many smart people but it’s the curious ones who break new ground because they’re always learning. So always be curious.
  2. Being an entrepreneur requires you to make careful choices, and frugality guides you to choose and invest carefully.
  3. Entrepreneurs are always proving hypotheses, and that takes a lot of risks and learning before you can make the big leap.
  4. We do not learn from experience, but from reflecting on our experience.
  5. It’s not failure but persisting with a failure that kills an entrepreneur. Don’t prevent failure, as we learn from failure and not success. That said, don’t dwell on your failures.
  6. Surround yourself with people who love you and will call you out when you make a mistake. They are the people who will get through to you and the people you will listen to. Build that circle for yourself.
  7. Don’t neglect the power of compounding. In life, four things compound– relationships, entrepreneurship, knowledge and money. Of the four, money is least important, and relationships are the most important.
The road less travelled, but packed with growth

What you’ve read can’t encapsulate all the learning I’ve gained so far – and we’re only halfway through! As far as experiential learning goes, this program is packed with opportunities to apply what we’ve learned, inspiration from experienced entrepreneurs, and best practices from across the globe. Not many would dare to take the risk of being an entrepreneur, but this program allows you to do just that, minus the risk.

You get the chance to identify a problem you really want to solve, understand the problem deeply and understand why the world functions as it does. Then, you identify a solution for that problem, and get feedback on your ideas. Who knows, you might even find someone to pay you to solve the problem! If that happens then voila, you’re a founder of a new venture!

As for me, it’s validation that the entrepreneur’s journey is packed with the excitement I love. The pace, the hustling, and the continuous strive to be better (in all aspects) fill me with an unquenchable excitement I don’t have the words for. What I do know is, if you’re an entrepreneur or intend to become one, then this might be the experience you need to help you decide if the start-up life is for you.

Deciding to pursue the dream, especially when the world is in a state of crisis is a feat reserved for the brave, and unconventional. When negativity and uncertainty run rampant, only those bold enough to step into the next phase of their lives will experience true growth. But even as the world shapes itself around this new norm, taking a backseat to a life-changing education isn’t an option to consider.

In the halls of ASB, Emily Preiss, Senior Director of Admissions, and Sean Ferguson, Associate Dean too, stand by this conviction. “It’s the ‘new norm’ like everyone says. Regardless, I believe that ASB has truly been one of the first institutions to foster this sense of ever-changing, innovative culture in all our students.” “It’s not without challenge, but we’ve been equipped for something like this for a very long time,” said Emily.

Beyond “Beneficial”, the MBA Deals New Cards to the Table

“A lot of people think that all MBAs are created equal. They’re not.” Sean is on the topic of the Return on Investment (ROIs) of an MBA, or how it’s success is truly measured in an ever-changing ecosystem. “For instance, in our class of 2019, 35 of the students there went to work in 14 different countries across 5 different continents. “It’s the ASB MBA that allows them to make that transition from local education to something global, and have a salary scale to reflect that arc in their career.”

On that same note, the average salaries for 2019 ASB graduates ranged around the USD $73,000 mark. Emily also elaborated on this. “It’s important to understand that our students come from two backgrounds.” The first group of people that would benefit from the ASB MBA would be those from emerging countries, looking to get their foot in the door of international careers and with it, access to working in global markets with a reflecting salary.

Second, would be those already in a mature market, but still looking to participate in the growing Asian economy and job market. Backed by data, the rate of salary increases after an Asian MBA outperforms USA-based MBAs by 27% and other international MBAs by 42%.

All MBAs Are Not Created Equal.

But salary and job titles are hardly the only two reasons one should opt for doing an MBA during this time. “However you want to look at it, there is massive growth in Asia,” said Sean. He continued. “One of the reasons can of course be attributed to how Asia has been very effective and proactive with handling the COVID-19 situation. That in itself is accelerating Asia’s contribution to hot sectors like health and tech.”

Aside from the COVID-19 management, ASB has also noticed other significant trends. These include the demand for smart factories, the massive power of China moving up the manufacturing chain and the pools of talent to be found in the Southeast Asian region; which in turn makes an MBA based around Asian principles a powerful tool in any professional’s arsenal.

Access to a global platform for your career, and foreign currency are still very strong factors as to why an MBA continues to not just be relevant. Instead, it’s an ideal fast track for any professional looking to expand into C-suite positions and higher roles very quickly on, without having to take on 20-30 years moving up the ladder.

Be that as it may, it’s obvious that the ASB MBA has a new value proposition this time. One that capitalizes on Southeast Asia’s immense and developing prowess around the new norm, shaped by post-pandemic demands and emerging trends.

How ASB’s Battle-tested Syllabus Still Over Delivers on Value

How does someone take full advantage of the MBA experience in the midst of a pandemic? The ASB MIT Track is a 5-week long excursion to the US, 4 of those weeks spent in the MIT faculty in Massachusetts as students live, study and discover the roots of their world-class syllabus. But even with travel restrictions, ASB’s MIT Track, one of the main highlights of the entire programme, will still be carried on — if only slightly revamped.

ASB’s Action Learning projects are one of the many highlights of their student experiences. A true opportunity to interact with global markets via project-based learning, the Action Learning experience goes above and beyond the classroom–right into the real-life businesses around the world. “In terms of how we’re approaching it, MIT has agreed to extend the duration of time.

This means students are able to carry out their US excursion within 3 years of their graduation, so there’s flexibility there for them,” explained Emily. She continued. “We also do have a China Track, and we’re exploring the possibility of doing an online virtual experience, if we’re not able to physically be there.” ASB’s tuition fees will also cover room accommodation, boarding necessities and insurance.

“Data still shows ASB to be the market leaders when it comes to scholarships and financial aid, which we encourage every potential student to look to and see if they qualify before enrolling,” Emily said. Yet, ASB remains true to their promise of global-tier education. It’s entire syllabus is not just “infused” with MIT teachings, but built around the strong foundation of courses led by MIT faculty, core values and student culture.

When on the subject of class sessions as of the moment, Emily categorized ASB students into two groups. “Right now we’re in what’s called dual delivery mode. We have the roomers (those already living on campus) when the lockdown was initiated and the zoomers (students who are taking their classes online).” “We also have pre recorded sessions to cater to people in every single time zone there is.”

Throwing Out the Textbook, Moving on to a New World

Both the textbook and rulebook should be thrown out by any educational institution, in order to prepare their graduates for the modern day. Thankfully, ASB has been preparing for this for a very, very long time. “Rather than learning from a textbook or old case studies, our students have the opportunity to engage with the companies who are accelerating due to the changes of a COVID world,” Sean explained.

Emily continued, on that note. “I think what really sets us apart is the fact that ASB has embedded Action Learning into each semester.” “Now, there’s tons of schools trying to play catch up. They’re only just figuring out how to get their program integrated with whatever has been passing them by.” “We’ve also got a huge majority of students who go on to work in the technology sector which, as we know, will only accelerate in a post-COVID world.”

Emily and Sean continued to explain that ASB’s syllabus has always been immersive-first, regardless of how it’s delivered. This would mean that they’re still getting the Action Learning experience, the Summer Associate Programs (SAP) carried out, with just a different tailored approach.

Without missing a beat, ASB opens her arms wide to shaping the new generation of leaders. Because although not every single MBA will remain equal, ASB’s ROI-focused syllabus is a prime example of how education will never take a backseat–regardless of the climate we’re in.