By: Nophakhun Limsamarnphun

January 8, 2006, The Nation (Thailand)

East meets West in Dipak C Jain, the first Asian dean of the Kellogg School of Management. Bangkok seems to occupy a special place in the heart of Professor Dipak C Jain, the first Asian dean of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, ever since he and his wife first visited the City of Angels late in the 1980s.

An Indian by birth, Dr Jain, 48, spent the first three years of his married life in Bangkok, from 1989, before leaving for the US with his wife.

"I first went to the US in 1983, when I was 25, to study for a PhD in marketing at the University of Texas in Dallas. Having got my doctoral degree, I became an assistant professor and spent the next 19 years teaching at Kellogg," says Jain, who was born in the Indian state of Assam.

Today Jain is a professor of marketing and the dean of Kellogg, one of the world's top business-management schools. He earlier co-authored a ground-breaking book on marketing with one of his top students, Suwit Maesincee, vice-minister for commerce.

Since 1989 Jain has returned to Bangkok every year to teach at the prestigious Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration, which has a cooperative agreement with Kellogg.

"I annually teach now at Sasin and at the Indian School of Business. The rest of my teaching time is spent in the US and Europe. I like Kellogg, which is the world's No 1 management school in terms of professional development. I think the strengths of Western educational institutes lie in their strong work ethic, their research culture and their global accumulation of students.

"In the East, I think, we have a strong foundation in basic education. Asian students have a strong desire to learn, and they work hard. I also like the so-called Asian values of mutual respect and trust as well as Asia's 'inclusive' culture," says Jain, who has recently completed teaching a semester at Sasin.

Of Sasin, which has recently entered into a joint venture agreement with Kellogg to build an executive education centre in Phuket, Jain says many students there have a high level of curiosity and willingness to learn more from their teachers, reflecting the respect they have for them.

Jain says the world's leading corporations have at least three things in common: they are very innovative, enjoy strong continual growth and have effective leadership. For example, US-based Dell came up with an innovation that altered the retail trade in personal computers by selling directly to customers on a built-to-order basis, eliminating an inventory and making for competitive pricing.

To achieve continual growth, all CEOs and presidents are now obliged effectively to manage risks in a global context.

In other words, a lot of calculations should precede taking risks, for they make or break companies. At the end of the day, marketing and competent management are all about how you differentiate your products and business processes from the competitive influences around, how you treat your customers and how you invest in people for your organisation to grow. Jain says the biggest threat to the world's airline industry is not another new airline but the fast-advancing video-conference technology, which may eliminate or reduce the need for business travel in the long run. Airline executives should consider redesigning cabins so passengers, especially business people, are more productive and happier on long-distance flights, say from North America to Asia.

An option is to turn a business-class cabin into a convenient and friendly workplace, with computer notebooks and Internet facilities. And executives should also be able to take part in video conferences with their head offices or clients when flying.