Soumitra Dutta Oxford Dean (Former): the scholar who measures nations' tech readiness
We recap the career highlights of Soumitra Dutta, co-developer of the Network Readiness Index
Soumitra
Dutta has spent around four decades at some of the world's best
business schools․ One of his major scholarly contributions is
co-creation of the Network Readiness Index.
The
NRI was first co-published in 2002 by Soumitra Dutta, former dean of Oxford Said
Business School․ For fifteen years the World Economic Forum (WEF)
published the NRI‚ which is now published by the Portulans
Institute․ The NRI ranks around 130 economies across four pillars
(technology‚ people‚ governance and impact) and 53 indicators (such as
broadband subscription rates‚ number of artificial intelligence papers
published‚ effectiveness of digital policies‚ number of mobile phone
subscribers)․ The NRI serves as a map of how countries are harnessing
information and communication technology.
Chandigarh is where Dutta was born․ After earning his B․Tech․
from IIT Delhi‚ he completed a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley
in 1990․ Dutta joined INSEAD in 1989‚ where he spent more than 20
years․ On the highlights of his contributions to the school was
establishing the eLab‚
one of the first big-data analytics institutes in Europe‚ and
developing research methods that would become instrumental in global
policymaking․
Cornell
brought him to the United States in 2012, and he was a part of the
institution till 2022. Here he consolidated the Samuel Curtis Johnson
Graduate School of Management, the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied
Economics and Management, and the Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of
Hotel Administration into
a single college․ Dutta became the founding dean of the SC Johnson
College of Business in what was one of the more important institutional
restructurings in recent American business education history‚ and the
college came to fruition partly through a $150 million naming gift․ He
also developed a dual MBA program with Tsinghua University‚ the first
such joint-degree program in the Ivy League․
In 2022‚ Dutta was appointed Peter Moores Dean of University of Oxford's Saïd Business School․ He focused on developing readiness in AI and digital leadership and deepening the institution’s links to industry and governments.
Dutta also serves on the board of Dassault Systemes․ IIT Delhi awarded him its Distinguished Alumnus award in 2017․