True Value

By Ramesh Akkineni

A K Kautilya writes in Business Standard

The IIMs have reached such heights due to the quality of the students who pass out from the institutes. And this quality is created not by the faculty of the institute but primarily by the admission process. The IIMs are known worldwide not for their intellectual capital — the faculty — but for the degree of difficulty in getting admission there.

In IITs and IIMs most of the Value is created by the admission process and not by the teaching process. Similarly most of the 'great' managers are 'great' because of the inherent advantages of the business that they got to 'manage'. Warren Buffett says that when a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact. So a lot depends upon the context.

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