Dr. Anol Bhattacherjee

July 29, 2019 | USF WORLD NEWS

Dr. Anol Bhattacherjee is a professor of information systems and the Exide Professor of Business Ethics at the University of South Florida, as well as a Fulbright scholar. For his Fulbright experience, he spent 4 months in India teaching a Ph.D. level class on research methods and conducting research on India’s product and service design environment and its relationship with the entrepreneurial ecosystem. He taught at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and spent time traveling around the country attending and speaking at research seminars at approximately 20 universities.

The Fulbright Award gave Bhattacherjee the opportunity to revisit his country of birth after 30 years. Throughout his time there, he visited several design schools and business incubation centers, and found that there was a lack of connection between the two. “India has a large pool of young aspiring engineers, but if it were to reap the benefits of this demographic dividend, it must integrate design thinking in academic programs, focus its engineering education on designing new products and services, and build a pathway to translate useful prototypes into commercial solutions,” Bhattacherjee said. It is his hope that his findings will be of interest to India’s policy makers in the education and business development sectors.

This experience also facilitated the formation of new professional relationships in the host country that will likely create meaningful global research opportunities in the future. “I strongly encourage students and professors from the USF to consider a Fulbright in India; it will be a transformative experience.”