The 5th Dr. M. L. Shrikant Memorial Lecture was held online on the evening of 23rd January 2021, Saturday. The event was live on Zoom and was streamed live on SPJIMR’s Facebook page.
The session opened with former SPJIMR Professor Anil Kulkarni paying a tribute to former SPJIMR the late Dr. M. L Shrikant’s life and leadership.
Mr. Harish Bhat, Brand Custodian, Tata Sons and Author of Tata Log was the distinguished speaker for the event. He spoke on the topic, ‘Leadership and Values – An exploration of the life of Jamsetji Tata’.
Through various stories from the life of Jamsetji Tata, Mr. Bhat brought out the values, characteristics and pioneering spirit that made Jamsetji Tata a truly great leader. His narration brought out the dimensions of Jamsetji’s character that exemplified not only the Tata icon’s remarkable leadership qualities but in general the attributes of most great leaders.
Mr. Bhat asked the listeners to ponder as to the source from which great leaders derive these qualities that enable them to be so successful and added that every individual should contemplate as to, “What good purpose, large or small, are we dedicating our lives to?”.
His inspiring speech covered some fascinating periods of Jamsetji’s life such as the setting up of the Empress Mills in Nagpur, his journey to USA to hire the Chief Consulting Engineer, Charles Page Perin, to set up Tata Steel, and his setting up a world class university in IISC. He also took some audience questions.
The event ended with a vote of thanks given by SPJIMR Dean Dr. Ranjan Banerjee.