We believe that an important aspect of institution building is a record of the trajectory of the growth of the institution. The IIMB History Project is an attempt to document the evolution of the institute. The project is envisaged as a multi-pronged exercise with regular outputs, leading up to a comprehensive institutional account of IIMB. We visualize a series of manuscripts and video/audio outputs to be published over the next few years, covering different aspects and themes, leading up to a comprehensive history of IIMB ahead of the Golden Jubilee year.
One prong of the project is to develop a well-researched and contextually grounded chronology of events of significance in terms of the institute's evolution after a perusal of archival records such as annual reports, minutes of board and faculty meetings. This prong would focus on theme-based manuscripts such as the history of various academic and executive programmes, the arc of governance, the growth of the campus, the alumni perspective and so on. A second prong is tapping into remembered experiences of key players by way of personal interviews, supported by prompts about events and issues identified through archival research. A third prong is a pictorial/ video representation of important events, the development of the campus infrastructure, the flora and the fauna.
The curtain raiser to the IIMB History Project was the panel discussion on "Building the IIMB Institution – A Directors' Perspective" held on October 27th, 2017, as part of the 44th Foundation Day celebrations, in which the former directors of IIMB, Professors KRS Murthy, MR Rao, Prakash Apte and Sushil Vachani participated, sharing their perspectives on the building of IIMB. Over the course of 2017 – 2018, we followed up with video interviews with the directors on the panel, as also Professor J Philip. These interviews have been transcribed and edited and are in the process of being cleared by the interviewees, supported by us with the necessary archival references. We are working towards bringing out a publication based on the Directors' perspectives in the course of 2018-2019. This would fall under the second prong of the History Project as described earlier.
We launched our theme-based accounts of the evolution of IIMB with a panel discussion titled "Raising the PGP Flag: The Evolution of the Post Graduate Programme in Management" on October 28th, 2018, as part of the 45th Foundation Day celebrations. The panel discussion featured perspectives from former Chairs of IIMB's flagship PGP programme on its evolution. Over the course of 2018-20, we will follow up with these Chairs and other PGP Chairs, and Chairs of the PGP Review Committee to chart the course of the PGP. Similarly, over the next two years, we plan to track the footsteps of other programmes and facets of the institute. On the anvil is a coffee table book on the campus.