What a week!

Life at GREAT LAKES is always eventful. Notice how I didn’t say interesting or exciting. But, in all fairness, it is eventful- there is something to look forward to everyday. But the week I am going to write about is one that definitely deserves special mention.

So, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my latest post. I know it’s been long overdue and I shall not dwell into the reasons. Well, the saying goes-‘it’s better late than never…’

The week started with a lecture from Dr. Eli Goldratt- if the name sounds familiar and you can’t place him- he’s the man behind the theory of constraints and the author of many bestsellers including ‘goal’. The sheer energy and passion that Dr. Goldratt brought to the class was unparallel. He is on a mission to make management a hard science like physics or chemistry. He urged us to question everything and take nothing for granted. To quote him “You know your mother loves you. But don’t trust your instincts- question it” This Israeli management consultant spoke with a sense of conviction that got us nothing short of inspired. Speaking of conviction, two recent guest lecturers that I was especially impressed with were Ms. Kiran Bedi (IPS) and Dr. Subramanya Swamy (Janata Party). As diverse as these speakers may seem, there is an underlying commonality- the conviction to cause.

Well, not all guest lectures are interesting. We do come across some speakers that, for lack of a better word, are simply boring. But all it takes is one lecture to get inspired. And in my opinion that is the true vision of our Uncle Bala.

Later in the week, we hosted our flagship event ‘L’attitude 13° 05’. I was lucky enough to MC for the event and we had a whole host of power talks. It started with Dr.YV Reddy (Governor, RBI), Mr. Sailesh Rao (Country Head, Google), Prof. Tom Anderson (Associate Dean, IIT-Chicago). Followed by a special address from Dr. Sam Pitroda and the icing on the cake was none other that Mr. Narayana Murthy (Chief Mentor, Infosys)

We also had tamil movie director Vasanth add some variety to the evening as well as a talk from Mr. Rajiv Rai. On top of all this we had many management related competitions for b-schools and corporates. Power-packed would be an understatement

Kudos to L’attitude Factory! Great show guys!!

Well, we also released our bi-annual magazine GRAVITY. The theme was “celebrating the spirit of entrepreneurship” and it who better to launch this than one of the greatest business leaders of all time- NRN. The magazine has some great articles from all the various dimensions of entrepreneurship and was well received by one and all. Needless to say, Team Gravity has done it again!

We hosted the NASMEI International Marketing Conference with professors from many of the ‘ivy league’ universities from the US. And last but not the least, the second annual Yale-Great Lakes International Research Seminar took place today.

Are you dazzled by the plethora of star-studded speakers and events we’ve had?

Don’t be…it was just another week at GREAT LAKES.

As usual, thanks for reading!

Cheers!