Synopsis
Chandrayaan-3’s successful lunar landing, accomplished on a $615 million budget, will serve as a case study for management students at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). The mission, which is an example of frugal innovation, may teach us important lessons about strategy, teamwork, innovation, cost control, resource optimization, and how to deal with failure and move on, according to professors and directors at IIMs.

Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) aspiring managers will have something to think about in the wake of Chandrayaan-3’s historic moon landing, a success story of India’s comeback from setbacks on a meager budget of only 615 crore.

The mission, a case study in frugal innovation, has many lessons that management students can learn from, according to professors and directors of the IIMs in Ahmedabad, Kozhikode, Sirmaur, and Sambalpur. These lessons include strategy, collaboration, innovation, cost control, and resource optimisation.

According to director Prafulla Agnihotri of IIM Sirmaur, faculty members are working on creating a case study on the subject.

“Chandrayaan-3 is an ideal example of great teamwork, charismatic leadership and how an organisation achieves its goal with minimum resources. It will be an excellent case study in the areas of corporate strategy and strategic leadership,” he said. “It’s an amazing example of how an organisation should learn from its experiences, improvise its efforts and achieve a near-impossible goal.”

It marks a turning moment in the history of space travel, and India’s victory might be viewed as an evolutionary step in the development of scientific knowledge.

Leadership perspectives
According to Debashis Chatterjee, director of IIM Kozhikode, this occurrence would have consequences and lessons for leadership and management practice as well.

There are various perspectives from which to view the endeavor.

“It’s not just about landing on the moon. It’s about at what cost it was achieved, what the process was. How do you look at strategic intent, not how much you need from outside but how much you can source within the country? It’s a study in strategy, tech, innovation, research,” said Chatterjee. “The complexity of the process makes for an interesting case study, including how leaders process failure and move on. You can decode it in many ways – that’s what a good case study is all about.”

According to Mahadeo Jaiswal, director of IIM Sambalpur, many faculty members will be eager to write a case study on this.