1. THE TOP 10 BEST INTERNATIONAL ONE-YEAR MBAS
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FORBES MIDDLE EAST GUIDE 2016
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With a global approach to teaching world-class
skills, S P Jain President Nitish Jain is reimagining
business education for the 21st century.
GAME CHANGER
GUIDE 2016
EDUCATION
The Leaders
Teaching
Tomorrow’s
Trailblazers

2. I
n 2009, when Captain Sullenberger stunned
the world by safely landing a packed Airbus
A320 on the Hudson River, Mr Nitish
Jain, President of the S P Jain School of Global
Management, was one of the millions watching
in awe. And when the Captain credited his train-
ing in simulators as teaching him the skills to
achieve such a feat, it struck a powerful cord with
the businessman: “Pilots get trained for all condi-
tions, including cyclonic weather for example. So
do they wait for a cyclone to appear then go into
the sky and learn how to fly the plane? No, else
we would have no pilots, they would all be dead!
Business is no different. It has an equal factor of
cyclonic conditions and there’s a lot of unpredict-
ability. People need to know how to weather the
storms.”
This simulation-led, practice-makes-perfect ap-
proach is behind the blended, real-life skills training
being offered to MBA students at S P Jain. Barely 12
years old, in the last five years the school has picked
up a string of accolades that have seen it appear on
the top rankings from Forbes, The Economist and
the Financial Times, putting it firmly on the same
prestigious ground as legacy heavy-weights such as
Harvard, Stanford and the London Business School.
This is no small accomplishment—the competition
is more than 10,000 strong, meaning the most in-
fluential listings only recognize the top 1% at most.
Nitish credits the rapid success of his brainchild to
methods built on analysis and innovation, mak-
ing its graduates some of the most sought after in
the world, and making the school something of an
anomaly.
“We have achieved something that, to the best
of my knowledge, has not been done before, which
is to become a global top ten business school in
11 years. Other well-reputed schools have been
around for over a hundred years—to see a school
born in the 21st century listed in the top rankings is
something completely unusual.”
Since opening its doors in Dubai in 2004, the
school has implemented a global learning approach
for an international and rapidly-evolving business
environment. A key part of this model is to source
the most talented students from emerging coun-
tries and help them to acquire first-world jobs. The
stellar results speak for themselves. Of the thou-
sands of hopeful applicants for the one-year MBA
course, only the top 9% are accepted. Once graduat-
ed around 97% find employment within 3 months,
and they can expect to demand significantly higher
salaries within five years—according to figures
from Forbes the average pre-MBA salary of the
class of 2010 was $12,000; by 2014 it was $57,000.
Nitish found his inspiration while climbing
the career ladder himself. The President spent his
formative years building up a successful business
before selling it on to a large international cor-
poration. The experience opened his eyes to the
EDUCATION COVER STORYGUIDE 2016
Game Changer
Nitish Jain’s vision for a global approach to teaching world-class business
skills has helped him to create one of the region’s most innovative and
successful international business schools.
BY CLAUDINE COLETTI
RAJA/FORBESMIDDLEEAST
34 FORBES MIDDLE EAST I GUIDE 2016

3. Nitish Jain, President of
the S P Jain School of Global Management, is
reimagining business education for the 21st
century.
GUIDE 2016 I FORBES MIDDLE EAST 35

4. changing needs of multi-national corpo-
rates and the resulting gaps in traditional
curriculums.
“In 2004 a lot of businesses were be-
coming global, and when you looked
around and saw what business schools
were doing, they were local. The philoso-
phy under which S P Jain was set up is that
if business is global, business schools too
should be global. So in rapid succession
we opened four campuses—and if you
come back in two years’ time we’ll have
another two.”
These campuses—so far in Dubai,
Singapore, Sydney and Mumbai—each
offer students a unique experience. By
following a tri-city model and working
in no less than three cities, with cultures
that epitomize widely varying western,
eastern and Arabic working practices,
graduates are taught to think flexibly and
make quick, effective decisions while con-
sidering differing international values and
social issues.
Safiyah Alli, Regional Operations
Director for Manpower in the Middle
East, agrees that an international angle is
becoming vital in the current job market:
“Employers now increasingly want their
employees to acquire a global outlook in
business. Given the importance of global
markets, organizations understand that
knowledge of international markets, as
well as the cultural practices pertaining to
them, is closely tied to a company’s success
overseas. Someone already possessing in-
ternational awareness and working experi-
ence will be attractive to many employers.”
And it’s not just employers that rec-
ognize the benefits of combining travel
with further study. According to a 2015
survey from the Graduate Management
Admission Council (GMAC), across the
world 52% of prospective students look to
go abroad to pursue their education. And
this is rising most sharply among those
from the Asia-Pacific and Middle East
regions, with 72% of candidates from the
Middle East preferring to study abroad in
2014 compared to 58% in 2010.
Providing students with this oppor-
tunity is at the core of Nitish’s approach:
“Many of the top schools do a good job
when it comes to the classroom learning
and technical skills, but how you do busi-
ness in Dubai can be very different to how
you do business in another country. You
may be a great success in Dubai, and you
may be a miserable failure in Singapore
if you have not understood that business
practices, political systems and consumer
preferences can differ. If you do not un-
derstand this then you will fail. I think this
is something that we do uniquely.”
“When you look under the surface
there are many things we do that other
schools don’t, and that is what creates a
pool of talented students who get jobs
with the top companies. They do ex-
tremely well, their salaries go up, and that
gets measured. So we get the rankings
because we get the results. And when you
think about how you make your students
more employable, it’s firstly about find-
ing out what traits 21st century recruit-
ers look for.”
This isn’t done randomly. Nitish has
brought together a number of indus-
try kingpins to form advisory boards for
each of the school’s campuses, and works
with them to share insights so that new
programmes and ideas fulfil the recruit-
ment needs of world-class organisations.
Some of the names on these boards in-
clude CEOs and directors from Facebook,
Google, Hewlett Packard, Bayt, McKinsey,
Microsoft, Landmark and Rolls Royce, to
name a few—representing an unrivalled
wealth of experience and opportunity.
This should be music to the ears of
applicants. GMAC figures show that
65% pursue graduate management edu-
cation to increase the job opportuni-
ties available to them, including those
seeking to enhance their current career
(34%), switch careers (38%), or aspir-
ing entrepreneurs (28%). Suresh Kumar,
Chairman of Values Group, believes that
future employers will hunt out applicants
with a strong sense of “team work and
the adaptability to change”, particularly
valuing “the innate sense to seek solu-
tions in ‘problems’ as well as opportuni-
ties in every challenge.”
EDUCATION COVER STORYGUIDE 2016
I chose S P Jain
because I wanted
an education that
gave me excellent
academic content,
but also exposed me
to global business
and a cultural environment. I also
specifically wanted to discover Asia
as most emerging economies are there
and Africa will be trading more with
Asia than any other part of the world
in the coming years. My S P Jain MBA
positioned me strongly as a business
leader, allowing me to transition
completely from a tech background.
S P Jain stands out
from the crowd as a
top-ranked school
thanks to its emphasis
on problem solving,
team work and the
ability to discover
several cultures through spending time
in several campuses.
It helps its students to feel comfortable in
a fast-changing environment and gives
them the skills to recognize challenges
early, identify potential risks and
prepare for them, rather than staying in
denial for too long and reacting too late.
Jean Philbert
Minister of Youth and ICT in
Rwanda
(Global MBA alumnus)
Jean-Marie Pean
Chairman at Bain & Company
Middle East
(Industry Advisory Board)
IMAGESFROMSOURCE
Voices of Experience
36 FORBES MIDDLE EAST I GUIDE 2016

5. Safiyah can see that what employers
are looking for is changing: “As organisa-
tions continue to evolve with the pace of
technology and demographic diversity,
employers’ requirements for graduate hir-
ing will alter. Employers may look for
candidates that have advanced techno-
logical experience, leadership qualities
that can relate and align with the new
demographical generation of the busi-
ness, networking and stronger interper-
sonal skills, as well as an understanding
of alternative working methodologies and
change management. For example virtual
offices and smart offices may be the future
for organisations and the new generation
of employees.”
Its focus on producing the savviest
graduates for the best jobs is one of the
qualities that make S P Jain stand out. The
school aims to produce business-ready
employees capable of tackling whatever
may face them from the outset. Nitish
is critical of courses that focus on sim-
ply passing on information to students
and then testing them on how much
they remember: “Most business schools
follow an MBA curriculum that was de-
signed 40 or 50 years ago and they haven’t
changed it much, but I don’t go to school
for knowledge anymore; I go to school
for who I am, not what I know. You don’t
need to go to business school to get infor-
mation; you need to go to learn to think
in a certain way.”
He makes a good point. In today’s
world the abundance of information at
our fingertips is staggering. Many of us
access more information before breakfast
than you could have found in a library 50
years ago. In 2012 it was estimated that
between eight to ten billion devices in
the world were connected to the internet,
by 2015 this had risen to 15 billion and
by 2020 there could be up to 40 billion.
So to shift focus away from testing how
much a student knows at a certain point
in time and onto overseeing how they
find and use data to develop solutions
is a common-sense approach for a digi-
tally-minded society. Nitish believes that
the graduate of tomorrow needs most of
all to be able to “find information, ana-
lyze it, synthesize, create, innovate and
use technology.”
And it’s not enough for students to just
learn these skills; they must be able to work
independently and with minimal direc-
tion so they grow in confidence as well as
ability. To teach this, S P Jain embraces the
concept of blended learning. By marrying
online resources with face-to-face interac-
tion, students are given the power to con-
trol their own progress at the same time as
learning from their peers and teachers.
Nitish is a firm believer in this method,
whichhedescribesasa“recipe”forbalance.
“If you cannot learn by yourself you will be
out of date two years after you graduate.
We have never been taught this because we
are spoon-fed, but how good are you in the
workplace after that? Do you stand out? Do
you come up with new ideas?”
“In the old days we created hard-wired
people, but today you need a program-
mable CPU, because it’s changing all the
time. All the different parts of your brain
need to be sparked up and activated. It’s
called learning agility. When you go to
Google or Facebook they want to know
whether you’re an agile learner, because
the technology is changing by the second.
You cannot stop progress. When you look
at education, you need different graduates
for a new world. You need people that can
operate on their own without supervision
because they are self-driven.”
Other techniques designed to repli-
cate real-life challenges and encourage
independent thinking include intense
classroom simulations and student board-
rooms, so students learn in carefully de-
signed group scenarios how to make the
groundbreaking decisions that top execu-
tives face daily.
As part of its one-year MBA, S P Jain
uses no less than 14 computer simulations
to train students in how to deal with differ-
ent significant events, pitting them against
each other to find the best way of handling
the risk. Nitish explains that once they have
faced the issue, explored how other people
have dealt with it and looked at it again, it
becomes one more problem that shouldn’t
I believe S P Jain is
a modern thinking
new-age school,
and understands
the importance of
providing its students
with a global view. We
live in a world of never-before global
connectivity and an unmatched eco-
system that supports global innovation.
A school that rides on these evolving
trends builds the necessary awareness,
skills, curiosity, decision-making ability,
and global networks amongst its student
and alumni community. This, in my
mind, makes it a top-tier school.
Rajeev Kakar
Executive Vice President & Regional
CEO for the CEEMEA region for
Fullerton Financial Holdings
(Industry Advisory Board)
Across the world,
people are becoming
increasingly dynamic,
cross-cultural and
multi-dimensional. So
companies are looking
for professionals who are agile, adaptive
and ‘T-shaped’, with at least one deep
area of expertise and a broad reach of
other skills and experiences to draw on.
S P Jain imparts this kind of cross-
disciplinary education to help develop
novel and adaptive thinking in
graduates, which when coupled with
hard work and the right attitude, not
only results in great professionals, but
in greatly innovative and thriving
companies.
Rabea Ataya
Founder and CEO at Bayt.com
(Recruiter)
Voices of Experience
IMAGESFROMSOURCE
GUIDE 2016 I FORBES MIDDLE EAST 37

6. EDUCATION COVER STORYGUIDE 2016
TESTIMONIALS
IMAGESFROMSOURCE
S P Jain gained
credibility even in
its earlier start-up
years by setting high
benchmarks and
relentless endeavors.
These standards and
its quality recognition
by global ‘rating agencies’ (such as the
FT) have successfully positioned it as a
preferred business school.
S P Jain helps its students to be the best
candidates in the job market by training
them in preparation, hard work and
diligence, and by raising the bar in terms
of quality and standards.
S P Jain offers students
the most up-to-date
and relevant course
content used by top
tier companies in the
business world. The
strategic location of
the three campuses provides participants
with a diverse business cultural
experience that is invaluable in a
multinational company. The faculty, the
curriculum and the global exposure is a
perfect recipe for participants to succeed
in the real world.
The one year S P Jain tri-city model is
rated as one of the best MBA programs
of its kind in the world by Forbes and the
Financial Times.
Suresh Kumar
Chairman of Values Group
(Industry Advisory Board)
Ajay Sanglikar
Microsoft, Malaysia
(Global MBA alumnus)
Voices of Experience
2004
2006
2012
2010
2013
2011
LAUNCH OF THE
DUBAI CAMPUS
LAUNCH OF THE
SINGAPORE CAMPUS
S P JAIN IS RANKED
AMONG THE TOP 100
FOR THE SECOND TIME
BY THE FINANCIAL TIMES
LAUNCH OF THE SYDNEY
CAMPUS
S P JAIN’S JOURNEY SO FAR
S P JAIN LAUNCHES
THE WORLD’S FIRST
TRI-CITY BBA
S P JAIN IS RANKED
AMONG THE TOP 20 BEST
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
SCHOOLS BY FORBES
S P JAIN BECOMES THE WORLD’S YOUNGEST
BUSINESS SCHOOL TO BE RANKED AMONG THE TOP
100 BY THE FINANCIAL TIMES
S P JAIN IS RANKED
AMONG THE WORLD’S
TOP 50 BEST BUSINESS
SCHOOLS BY POETS &
QUANTS
S P JAIN IS RANKED
AMONG THE TOP 10
BEST INTERNATIONAL
MBAS BY FORBES
S P JAIN IS RANKED
AMONG THE TOP 100
GLOBAL MBAS BY THE
ECONOMIST
S P JAIN IS RANKED #1
BUSINESS SCHOOL IN
THE UAE BY GLOBAL
BRANDS, UK
LAUNCH OF THE
MUMBAI CAMPUS
2015
2014
S P Jain’s Dubai campus is set in Dubai Academic City.
38 FORBES MIDDLE EAST I GUIDE 2016

7. faze them in future: “Every time you see something new, you
develop a new cell in your brain. This is about broad thinking—
every day your knowledge becomes deeper and deeper. And
how you grow in a company is because of your intellectual capa-
bilities and your ability to effectively implement your strategic
plans. It comes down to decision-making.”
Professor Christopher Abraham, Head of S P Jain’s
Dubai Campus and Senior Vice President of Institutional
Development, describes it to me as a type of brain-training:
“This is the neuroscience behind learning. You only become
a better decision maker by practicing. The more you practice
the stronger your neuro-processors become and you become
better at making judgments.”
And learning to make judgments is also the main aim of
the student boardrooms, where students are given a problem
to solve, as well as the tools and techniques to help them make
their decisions: “They do this every day, so their mind gets
trained to think in this way, and when they go join the work-
force they are much more capable and are contributing to the
company straight away, as opposed to somebody who’s just
been taught to learn and sit for exams.”
Considering the demonstrable results, why have these ap-
proaches not been used to such a degree by other schools?
Nitish puts it down to the nimbleness of being a new player:
“Many other schools are very big and bureaucratic. Every
industry needs a disruptor. It’s like the floppy disc industry—
one day we’re all using floppy discs, then one day it magically
stopped. And the disruption is going to come from a private
player like us, not from a government-funded university.
Some of them will get there, but some of them will just plain
die because they can’t change. There’s a tidal wave coming at
you and it will spare no-one.”
“If you ask me what’s in store for the next five or ten years
I think more innovation at a faster pace. That means under-
standing deeply what companies look for when they hire peo-
ple and being ahead of the game in creating the kind of talent
that they need.”
Safiyah agrees that the right MBA can go far when it comes
to finding the right role: “As companies are increasingly look-
ing to create efficiencies, hiring the right people becomes
more important. An MBA from a reputable business school
can boost employability by providing employers with diverse
strategic skills and business principles to succeed in the busi-
ness world. It’s a distinct differentiator in a saturated market-
place, and an attractive one for employers who need people
with high business and commercial acumen.”
As Nitish continues to hunt out the right location for his
next campus, and the one after that, the international reach of
this rankings-winner is set to keep expanding. Good news for
employers, students and global business.
IMAGEFROMSOURCE
S P Jain’s classrooms are
a melting pot of culture,
diversity and experiences. In
2015, the school welcomed
undergraduate students from
over 29 different countries.
GUIDE 2016 I FORBES MIDDLE EAST 39