Patel, also the chairman of the Zydus Lifesciences Ltd, was speaking at IIMA’s convocation ceremony of 105 students of e-Mode Post Graduate Programme in Management (ePGP) and e-Post Graduate Diploma in Advanced Business Analytics (ePGD-ABA).

Addressing the students, he said the “vision to anticipate change, an appetite for risk, clarity of focus and ability to bring in convergence of thoughts and actions will be important as new growth opportunities emerge”.

IIMA director Errol D’Souza told students, “We have an inflation shock that stems from disruptions caused by a pandemic and an energy shock caused by a war. Rising inequality, the slowdown in growth, and cheap credit have obstructed political stability in many affluent democracies. Additionally, there is the peril of climate change… To navigate the volatility of today we need to look at the interconnectedness of things, to do systemic thinking.”

Pointing out that UK PM Rishi Sunak holds an MBA, a first for a head of the state, with training in ideas of competitive advantage, asset pricing, market segmentation, organisational behaviour and spreadsheets, D’Souza added that it may not be necessarily a reassuring qualification if one goes by the example of Mark Zuckerberg.

“If we consider the equivalent of what the bond markets thought of Liz Truss’s plans for the UK, it is what the stock markets think of Zuckerberg’s plans for Meta. The shares have lost two-thirds of their value in a year — $700 billion, and the company has been forced out from the ranks of the world’s 20 largest companies… Meta has made a huge and expensive bet on huge uncertain investments at a time when its core business is no longer growing… However, unlike Liz Truss who loses her job, Zuckerberg is equivalent to a dictator and cannot be fired, thanks to a dual class shareholder structure,” said D’Souza, while urging students to be “poets and quants”.