SIMSARC

4C’s; Communication, Commerce, Connectivity and Culture are the building blocks of an economy. How well an economy will grow or perform will depend on how strong these four pillars are. Communication leads to sharing of information among individuals. It is important for any business to have the right kind of communication channel. Commerce, provides goods and services for the society and its people. Connectivity provides the right infrastructure and system for those goods and services to reach the market. Lastly, culture helps to retain the indigenous value in those. SIMSARC 2018, organised by Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies, focussed on the aforementioned idea and invited eminent speakers from academia and industry, all over the world, to share their views on the importance of the 4Cs; Communication, Commerce, Connectivity and Culture for businesses and society. The conference had 4 sub-themes viz. Communication, Commerce, Connectivity and Culture which were the plenary sessions for the conference. The highlight of the “communication: Role of AI, Big Data and IoT in Business” track was the papers which were from broad range of Internet of things (IoT), big data, role of technology, Artificial Intelligence among other aspects of communication. The panel speakers gave insight as to how communication is important for business not only for across boundaries but within a country as well. Another session was on “Culture: An indigenous way” where speakers deliberated on the cultures prevailing in different organisations, countries and societies. From a ‘we together’ attitude in some country to a ‘me first’ attitude in the other, cultural similarities and dissimilarities across nations were discussed in this track. The session witnessed some relevant questions from the audience on issues of language barriers and its effect on businesses. Language and cultural barriers are something which are inevitable but one needs to be adoptive and should learn languages to mitigate these barriers. “Connectivity: Backbone for development” was another plenary discussion where increase in connectivity through various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp was discussed and deliberated where the focus was whether human beings are still emotionally connected or not. The critical role of technology was emphasized along with importance of human to human interaction. No matter how much technology comes in play, human connections will never die as this was concluded by speakers as Technolgoy may not be able to take away the emotional connect. Another track, “Commerce: Fuel for economy” where the panellist spoke about growth, price discrimination, financial markets, inequality etc. Investor’s education is one of the most important aspect to take the investors to level where they understand financial market and this will help in investment activity in the market. Sustainability was another concern highlighted by the speakers and they pointed that policies should work towards attaining sustainability in the market and try to bridge the gap between skills and jobs available in the country. Researchers from all over the country, belonging to academic institutes and industry, presented their research ideas on the 4C’s. These research works ranged from digital transformation, IOT, team dynamics and organisation culture to infrastructural issues, e-commerce, banking and corporate governance, the research works presented covered a plethora of policy issues where each one of them is the need of the hour. The deliberations from renowned academicians who came from different parts of the world along with top industrialist, bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, NGOs immensely contributed to the existing bodies of work. They emphasized on the importance of right policies to promote communication, connectivity, facilitating commerce and preserving culture among societies. Overall, the conference witnessed a brainstorming session with scholars and experts and it surely did pave the way for future research.