Hindustan Times ST (Jaipur)

BITS PILANI TO SET UP B-SCHOOL IN MUMBAI FOR ₹1,500 CRORE

- Prashant K. Nanda prashant.n@livemint.com

NEW DELHI: There is a need to reimagine management education in a dramatical­ly altered business environmen­t, Aditya Birla group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla said on Thursday. He also announced that BITS Pilani will set up a B-school in Mumbai at an investment of ₹1,500 crore.

The BITS School of Management (BITSOM) will be establishe­d in Kalyan in Mumbai metropolit­an region as a “zero carbon footprint campus”, said Birla, who is also the chancellor of the institutio­n. The 60-acre permanent campus will be ready by 2024. The B-school will start academic operations from a temporary facility in Mumbai from July with 120 students.

“As we grow in our next generation of leaders a question that we must ask ourselves is whether management education has evolved enough. In my view, there is most definitely a place to reimagine management education in this dramatical­ly altered business environmen­t. There is a need to redefine the content, the format, and the delivery of an MBA programme,” he said in his virtual address.

“We need to prepare a generation of leaders who are capable of not just solving problems presented to them but …leaders who see merit in both technologi­cal proficienc­y and social consequenc­es, leaders who believe that profits and purpose can coexist, leaders who can balance the power of big data, and have respect for an individual’s privacy.”

SAN FRANCISCO: A feud between tech giants heated up Thursday as Apple’s chief executive implied Facebook’s business model promotes disinforma­tion and violence, while the social network reportedly prepares an antitrust lawsuit against Apple.

The suit accuses Apple of abusing control of its App Store by requiring outside app developers, such as Facebook, to abide by rules not applied to its own apps, tech publicatio­n The Informatio­n reported.

“As we have said repeatedly, we believe Apple is behaving anti-competitiv­ely by using their control of the App Store to benefit their bottom line at the expense of app developers and small businesses,” Facebook told AFP, declining to confirm or deny the report.

Apple did not reply to a request for comment, but chief executive Tim Cook seemed to take aim at Facebook when he blasted “disinforma­tion and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms” during a virtual data privacy conference in Brussels

on Thursday, according to reports by CNBC and the Wall Street Journal.

Cook did not mention Facebook by name, but skewered business models built on targeted advertisin­g, which accounts for most of the social network’s revenue, media reports indicated.

“If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitati­on, on choices that are no choices at all, it does not deserve our praise,” Cook was quoted as saying.

He reasoned that letting online platforms serve as stages for extremist groups or for sowing doubt in life-saving vaccines can result in “polarizati­on, lost trust and yes, of violence,” according to media reports.

The tech giants have been clashing over changes in the latest version of Apple’s IOS operating software, which includes a tracking transparen­cy feature that Facebook claims will cripple its ability to serve up targeted ads.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said during an earnings conference call with investors on Wednesday that Apple was becoming one of his company’s biggest competitor­s.

“Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do to preference their own,” Zuckerberg said.

“Apple may say that they’re doing this to help people but the moves clearly track their competitiv­e interests.”

Facebook is not alone in its complaints about how Apple runs the App Store, where it collects 30 percent of sales or subscripti­on fees from third-party offerings.

Some developers say Apple takes too big of a bite of the revenue and maintains rigid policies that may hamstring competing services.

Fortnite-maker Epic Games has taken Apple to court over the practice.

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