March is here and convocation is just around the corner. The Convocations page of IIMA Archives provides a rich history of previous convocations and speeches. From our oral history interviews, several people in the 1960s remarked about the short yet memorable convocation speech by Harry Hansen, Harvard faculty who coordinated the HBS-IIMA partnership in the initial years. Accordingly, we are attaching Harry Hansen's1966 speech at the 1st convocation with students such as C K Prahalad in the audience, as the document of the month.

The photo album of the first convocation of 1966 can be viewed here. Before we started using the LKP as the convocation venue in 1974, the space between the line formed by Dorms 6 to 12 and the 400 series houses (where beautiful lawns exist today) was the convocation venue. The stage was towards the D-6 end and the procession moved to the venue from the three temporary classrooms (which no longer exist) near the current KLMDC. Note that by 1966, D-12 and D-6 and the 400 series houses were ready or getting ready to be occupied; D-3 came up a couple of years later in 1968 and D-9 only in 1975.