Shankhadeep Banerjee
The Best Publication Award 2020

I am thankful to the IIM Calcutta Alumni Association (Mumbai Chapter) and the award selection committee for honoring me with the Best Publication Award, Convocation 2020. When I hesitantly bade adieu to the world of corporate management to pursue PhD from IIM Calcutta in 2015, I had never imagined the journey would be so fulfilling, and the ending so satisfying. While I had experienced the life as a Jokar from the perspective of a PGP in 2010-12, I must say that longer tenure as a doctoral student felt totally different and much more nourishing to my soul. Interactions with professors were more personal and intellectually stimulating, friends became much more like my family, and the enchantingly beautiful campus truly felt like my home.

In such a nurturing environment full of freedom, closeness to mother-nature, intellectual debates over tea, and bereft of most of the worldly stresses, it felt much easier to be creative, and enjoy working hard at my own pace on my own terms. And on top of that I was additionally lucky to find two wonderful research partners - my amazing colleague and friend Samadrita, and our excellent guide Prof. Indranil Bose. By the time I defended my thesis, we already had three research papers published in some of the most reputed international journals of my area (Information Systems), which I believe set a new record for the doctorates from any IIM across the country. One among these, published at the Journal of Management Information Systems (relating to the effects of recognition in online communities), led to the good fortune of receiving this prestigious award.

Now that a new chapter of my life has already begun as a faculty at IIM Bangalore, I can only fondly look back with nostalgia and cherish my blissful memories of Joka. It was without doubt the happiest phase of my life, and it will make me forever consider my alma mater as my little piece of heaven on earth!