As a 2025 graduate of IIM Lucknow, what stays with me most is not the volume of material covered, but the moments when learning felt real. Moments where decisions had consequences, where assumptions were tested, and where outcomes forced reflection.

The most impactful experiences were those that moved beyond discussion into application. Courses that required us to engage, decide, and adapt created a far deeper and more lasting understanding.

Business on board: Learning strategy through application

The Business on Board course, led by Prof. Mrityunjay Tiwari, was built around an immersive setup where business concepts were taught through five strategic board games designed to mirror real-life business situations. Each game recreated a competitive business environment with defined rules, constraints, and evolving objectives.

Participants went through multiple rounds of decision making, balancing growth, risk, liquidity, and competition. In one instance, an aggressive early expansion strategy that seemed promising quickly led to resource constraints in later rounds, forcing a rethink of priorities. In another, underestimating a competitor’s move resulted in a loss of strategic position. These were not theoretical outcomes but lived experiences within the game environment.

One of the strongest takeaways from the course was the importance of risk and liquidity management. Even a healthy and profitable organisation can fail if it does not continuously monitor and manage risk. Across multiple games, decisions around expansion, investments, and operational moves constantly tested the balance between growth ambitions and financial stability.

The course also brought alive the concept of valuation. It highlighted that the quality of an opportunity alone does not justify paying any price for it. Overvaluing opportunities can destroy value, while failing to invest in the right opportunities can leave room for competitors to capture long-term advantage. The learning was not just about identifying good opportunities, but about evaluating them rationally and acting with discipline.

Another important lesson was around capital structure and the balance between debt and equity. The games demonstrated that there is rarely a one-size-fits-all answer. A business financed entirely through debt or entirely through equity may both face challenges depending on the context. The right balance changes with the situation of the organisation, market conditions, and growth stage. Experiencing these trade-offs within the course made financial decision making far more intuitive and practical.

What made the course particularly impactful was the depth of debrief after each round. Decisions were broken down to understand intent, assumptions, and consequences. The focus was on identifying patterns, recognising biases, and improving decision quality over time.

The course reinforced that strategy is shaped by context, competition, and timing. It is iterative in nature and improves through cycles of action and reflection.

SCAS: Understanding systems in motion

The Supply Chain Analytics and Simulation course, delivered by Prof. Yash Dhaultani, offered a different but equally powerful learning experience.

Structured as a live simulation, the course placed us in teams of four, each handling Procurement, Operations, Supply Chain, and Marketing or Distribution. The goal was to manage a company’s supply chain and optimise performance, measured through ROI.

The learning emerged from interdependence. A decision to increase procurement without aligning production created inventory buildup. A push on distribution without adequate supply led to missed opportunities. In one cycle, a seemingly optimal decision within a function negatively impacted overall performance, highlighting the cost of working in silos.

The simulation also introduced variability through demand fluctuations and operational constraints, requiring constant adjustment. Success depended on coordination, clarity, and anticipating second-order effects.

SCAS built a strong foundation in systems thinking and demonstrated how alignment across functions drives outcomes.

The pedagogy that endures

Across both courses, the common thread was clear. Learning involves participation, decision making, and reflection that leaves a lasting impact.

Globally, management education is increasingly moving in this direction. As Steven Rosenberg of Harvard, author of ‘Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education’, argues, there is growing evidence that purely lecture-driven teaching is often ineffective, and that participatory, student-centered methods create deeper and more lasting learning experiences. Institutions and accreditation bodies are placing greater emphasis on experiential learning formats that replicate the complexity of real business environments. Harvard Business School, for instance, has significantly expanded the use of simulations where students make decisions under pressure and experience real-time consequences of those decisions. AACSB, one of the world’s leading accreditation bodies for business schools, has also highlighted experiential learning, business simulations, and industry-connected pedagogy as central to future-ready management education.

This is where courses like SCAS and Business on Board become especially relevant. They are not isolated experiments in pedagogy, but part of a broader global shift toward immersive learning. Such courses should be an indispensable part of every business school curriculum. Increasingly, global standards are recognising that the quality of management education is not defined only by placements or rankings, but by how effectively institutions prepare students for real decision-making environments.

Accreditation frameworks today emphasize assurance of learning, cross-functional thinking, problem solving under uncertainty, and measurable application of concepts. Institutions that adopt immersive and experiential pedagogy are naturally moving closer to these evolving global standards in both teaching quality and learning outcomes.

The real impact of such pedagogy becomes visible in the workplace.

In professional environments, problems rarely arrive neatly structured. A pricing decision impacts operations, a supply constraint affects customer experience, and a delayed decision in one function creates consequences elsewhere. The ability to navigate these interconnected situations is developed through repeated exposure to dynamic learning environments.

For instance, while working in cross-functional teams, it becomes immediately clear how important alignment and systems thinking are. The instinct to evaluate second-order effects before taking decisions, or to assess how one team’s action influences another’s outcome, directly mirrors lessons from SCAS. Similarly, stakeholder management, strategic prioritisation, and adapting quickly to changing conditions often feel familiar because of experiences from Business on Board.

The true outcome of these courses is not visible during the semester itself. It becomes evident later, when classroom learning quietly translates into workplace judgment, collaboration, and decision making.

Carrying the learning forward

These experiences continue to shape how I approach problems today. They reinforce the importance of thinking across functions, aligning decisions with broader objectives, and adapting to changing conditions.

The true value of my time at IIM Lucknow lies not just in what was taught, but in how we were taught to think.

(Meka Charan, IIM Lucknow, Batch of 2025)