Academia and Industry are two different worlds which operate on different pedestals. Both have different purposes and different ideologies. Nevertheless, the rapid pace of change in the outside environment is compelling these two different worlds to come together to address and solve some of the real-world challenges. Realizing the immense urgency of the situation, 1st International Conference on Business and Management (ICBM 2017) organized an Academia-Industry Discussion session on September 21 at the evening at The Westin Hotel, Dhaka, Bangladesh where professionals from both sectors participated to analyze the current scenario and find out probable ways to minimize the gap.

From the Industry arena, Mr. K. Joaddar, Deputy Managing Director & CFO, BRAC Bank, Mr. ASM Mainuddin Monem, Deputy Managing Director, Abdul Monem Group Ltd., Mr. Syed Mahbubur Rahman, Managing Director of Dhaka Bank Ltd. and Mr. Syed Ferdous Raihan Kirmany, Deputy General Manager-Operations of BBS Cables Ltd., participated in the session to highlight the current scenario of the job market, industry’s expectations from graduates, universities role to prepare the future leaders and finally the overall hurdles industries face to screen out appropriate candidates for their particular industries. Moreover, to improve the current state and ease the screening process to filter out the quality graduates, they proposed to have collaboration with the universities.

Moreover, the Vice Chancellor of BRAC University, Prof. Syed Saad Andaleeb, Ph.D, pointed out businesses’ lack of interest in investing in researches and how this phenomenon is widening the gap between Bangladesh and the advanced nations. On financing, he said the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has an annual budget of $3.5 billion, 90 percent of which comes from some form of research and the rest from tuition but unfortunately in Bangladesh business communities are not really interested in making investment for research in universities. Therefore, Prof Andaleeb called on the businesses to make direct investment in universities for research purposes. He also expressed his anxiety that unless research-based institutes are developed and nurtured, our nation will fall behind compared to developed world.
From the International Academic field, Prof. Premkumar Rajagopal, Vice-Chancellor, Malaysia University of Science and Technology, Prof. Pairach Piboonrungroj, Associate Dean, Maritime Studies and Management, Chiang Mai University, Thailand and Prof. Mark GOH, Business School, National University of Singapore shared the challenges faced by them during the early stage to make research- based universities. However, they also shared several keys to surmount those obstacles.

Apart from them other prominent scholars like Dr. Mirza Azizul Islam, Former Adviser of Caretaker Government, People’s Republic of Bangladesh and Professor of BRAC Business School; Dr. Akbar Ali Khan, Former Adviser of Caretaker Government, People’s Republic of Bangladesh and Professor of BRAC Business School; Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed, Former Governor of Bangladesh bank (The Central bank of Bangladesh) and Professor of BRAC Business School; Prof. Dr Abdul Hannan, Vice Chancellor, Primeasia University; Prof. ATM Nurul Amin, Chairperson of ESS, BRAC University; Assoc. Prof. Dr. Md. Mamun Habib of BRAC Business school and Program Chair of ICBM 2017; Dr. Erne Suzila Kassim and Dr. Siti Noorsuriani Ma’on from UiTM, Malaysia; Dr. Mahbubur Rahman (NSU, Bangladesh), Dr. Ireen Akhter (IBA, JU, Bangaladesh), were also present in the session where they urged the necessity to create strong affiliation with different industry professionals to meet the needs of the overall employment of the country.