AI can find answers, but can it make managers? IIM Ahmedabad director explains

IIM Ahmedabad is allowing students to use AI while preparing business case studies. The approach shifts assessment towards independent reasoning, adaptability and judgement under uncertainty.IIM Ahmedabad Director Prof Bharat Bhaskar (Image: IIM Ahmedabad)New Delhi,Oct 16, 2026 09:00 ISTGenerative AI can analyse business problems, generate strategies and recommend solutions in seconds. But can it prepare someone to lead a business when the facts change, assumptions fall apart and there is no obvious answer?At the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM Ahmedabad), the answer lies not in banning AI, but in changing how students learn to make decisions. Director Professor Bharat Bhaskar tells India Today Digital that the real test of management education is not finding answers, but learning to navigate uncertainty.“We have taken already a decision where we allow them to use AI rather than restricting them to use AI because AI is a fact of life. It's like saying that internet should be banned for studying,” Bhaskar says.IIM Ahmedabad has provided official AI licences to students, faculty members and academic associates. Prof Bhaskar argues that students must learn to use the technology because their future workplaces will expect them to do so. “Organisation will encourage me to use AI in order to produce more and be more productive for the organisation. So, why should we be banning that at this stage? After all, our objective is to prepare these managers who are going to be industry ready,” the director says.However, AI access does not extend to every examination. Faculty members can decide whether assessments are closed-book, closed-internet or closed-AI. “Whatever you have acquired, if you have not learned enough, you use it as a tool of learning and then come back to the class,” Prof Bhaskar says. IIMA classroom (Image: IIM Ahmedabad) WHEN AI SOLVES THE CASE, WHAT NEXT?The challenge is particularly relevant to IIM Ahmedabad's case-study method, which asks students to assume the role of a manager confronting a real business problem. With AI generating recommendations before classroom discussions, faculty members must push students beyond readily available answers.Prof Bhaskar puts the central question bluntly: “If I can learn everything in AI, why should I even do an MBA programme?”His answer is that management education must focus on developing decision-makers, rather than teaching students to solve routine problems using fixed formulas.“We are teaching them to become the professional managers, decision-makers,” he says.“Leaders deal always with the uncertain environment where information is not available at times, information is probabilistic at the time... and under those situations, imperfect information available to you, you have to make best of the decisions,” the director adds.THE REAL TEST: WHEN ASSUMPTIONS CHANGEAI may produce a convincing recommendation based on the available facts. But what happens when market conditions shift or the assumptions underlying a decision no longer hold?Prof Bhaskar says faculty members can change a case's assumptions, introduce new developments and ask students to reconsider their decisions.“I change the assumptions which are not in the case. I change the scenarios and now I ask you, given that, now this has happened or this is likely to happen, the probability is 50%, these are the new developments which are going to happen. How do you go about thinking about the decision process?” he explains.The objective, he says, is to develop the ability to make decisions amid uncertainty.“We are actually conditioning a brain or training a mind which will make them a decision-maker which is capable to fathom that complete uncertainty,” Prof Bhaskar says.This also raises expectations of faculty members, who must take discussions beyond AI-generated solutions.“The discussion is even more richer because lots of things which you had to take them forward in building the platform for the further discussion, they are already there. So the training is of a higher quality,” he says.The underlying bet is that management education should not compete with AI at generating answers. It should teach students to question recommendations, understand their assumptions and adapt when circumstances change.AI may crack the case. The harder test is whether a student can defend the decision, recognise when it might fail and know when to change course.- Ends