Fascinating insights on business and workforce in digital age at International Conference by Jaipuria School of Business

Ghaziabad: Business leaders and academic minds shared some fascinating insights on the present and future of business and workforce in the digital age at the International Conference organized by Jaipuria School of Business, Ghaziabad, on Saturday, February 13.

The topic of the virtual conference was ‘Re-Imagining Business and Re-Skilling Workforce For Emerging Digital Ecosystem’. The conference featured a keynote address by Saurabh Goel, President of Havells India Ltd. and guest address by Ravichandran Venkataraman, Founder CEO, Alive Consulting and Smrti Academy. The conference’s Chief Guest was Dr. Uttiyo Raychaudhari, Vice-provost for Internationalization at University of Denver, USA.

The event started with a Saraswati Vandana at 9.30 am and was followed by a welcome address by Shishir Jaipuria, Chairman of Seth Anandram Jaipuria Group of Educational Institutions.

“Businesses across all sectors have to keep an eye open for the technological developments that are transforming the corporate landscape and demanding re-skilling of the work force for the business environment of the digital age. Only then can we hope for a holistic societal development and true progress,” Shishir Jaipuria said in his address.

The keynote address by Saurabh Goel highlighted the great digital transformation that has happened as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. “The transformation that we previously thought would come from CEO or CTO actually came from Covid. The business leaders today recognize that digital technology is the key driver of revenue. Over 80 percent of business leaders are making the move to adopt digital tech and 65 percent expect to increase their budgets in digital.”

 

Ravichandran Venkataraman took the discussion forward with his talk on the rise of the cyber-physical age.

 

He said, “The world has transformed from the machine age to information age and now to the cyber physical age. The factors driving the change are: mobility, data, internet of things, and content creation. For the future-ready organizations, the speed-to-value and radical collaboration will be the driving forces. The organizations would need clarity of purpose, radical collaboration across ecosystems, rigorous talent management, rapid data-driven decision-making, new organizational structures, and fresh entrepreneurial culture to move ahead in the digital age.”

 

Chief Guest Dr. Uttiyo Raychaudhari spoke about the subject from a global point of view. He said, “The digital ecosystem has disrupted the monolithic chains that we were used to. We are transforming from the age of information to the age of collaboration. The exponential growth of technology has given us so much information that data virtually guides every business decision. It’s also causing disruption to existing structures. The most important factor today is that we must navigate data and process this data with efficiency. The world economic forum in its report estimated recently that about 75 million jobs will be disrupted by machines, that is by the AI-driven automation in the next few years. The same report also found that the division of labour between humans and machines and algorithms, while disrupting jobs, is actually set to create 133 million new job roles.”

 

The keynote addresses by the guests were followed by elaborate panel discussions on the topics of ‘Reimagining business for emerging digital ecosystem’ and ‘Reskilling workforce for emerging digital ecosystem.’

Dr Jitendra Kumar Mishra, director of Jaipuria School of Business, proposed the vote of thanks and said that the conference yielded some fascinating viewpoints which will facilitate reimagining new business models for the digital age and accordingly reskilling and upskilling the workforce to lead such businesses.“We are proud to have such an elite panel of speakers coming from industry, academia, and not-for-profit domain to deliberate on the theme of International Conference and unfolding the nuances of digital disruptions and its implications on business and society for all us attending virtually,” he said.

 

The international conference was attended virtually by entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, teachers and students of Jaipuria School of Business.

 

Jaipuria School of Business is a premier institute for business studies in the Delhi NCR region. Both Saurabh Goel and Uttiyo Raychaudhuri are alumni of Seth Anandram Jaipuria Group of Educational Institutions.