Profile
Dr Rajesh K Pillania is the leading researcher and trainer on happiness in India, popularly called India’s Happiness Professor or India's Happiness Guru. He has written 11 books and reports on Happiness such as Amazon Bestseller Happiness Strategy: Strategy and Happiness for Everyone (2019); Happiness Diary: My Experiments with Happiness (2020); India Happiness Report 2020, India Cities Happiness Report 2020, World Happiness 2021, India Happiness 2022 and World Happiness 2022. These works are the first of their kind in India. His work is endorsed by many global leading thinkers in happiness, including professors from Harvard, Stanford etc; HH Dalai Lama and Marshall Goldsmith, the #1 Executive coach; and leaders from industry. He has taught and trained 1000s of students and executives on happiness strategy and gets excellent feedback from participants. His teaching and training focuses on adding value to the participants by explaining concepts in an innovative simple and fun way focusing on application of concepts using experiential learning.
Professor Pillania is rated and awarded the Top Professor of Strategy in India by The Associated Chambers of Commerce of India (ASSOCHAM) and Education Post. He is ranked jointly number one in average research productivity among management faculty (including IIMs/IITs) in India for research output from 1968 to 2014 [By Prof Ramdhar Singh of IIM Banglore and others in 2015 which was published in a reputed international journal titled Omega in 2017]. He is on the advisory board of many esteemed international research journals¸ professional bodies and conferences consisting of leading international academicians¸ industry leaders and policymakers.
He makes strategy, innovation, and happiness, simple, humorous, and applicable i.e. democratisation of strategy, innovation, and happiness.
This has resulted in several articles in popular media and five simple funny books with insights for application namely, Strategic Humour, Startup Strategy Humour, Love Strategy, Learning Strategy in a fun way with The Big Bang Theory, and Happiness Strategy – Strategy and Happiness for Everyone.
All these books are endorsed by senior academicians and corporate leaders. His research is focused on two broad areas. The first one is as shared above where the focus is on the democratisation of strategy, innovation, and happiness. The second is on the frontiers of strategy, innovation, and happiness. For frontiers of strategy, innovation, and happiness, he is involved with several esteemed international research journals, conferences and has written research papers and books. His work is used by practitioners’ and quoted by researchers in various countries. His articles/views appear in newspapers/magazines in Europe, the US, and Asia. He is a sought after a guest editor for special issues by a number of international journals of repute. He has been invited by international conferences (ISMOT, MSKE), professional forums (IASK, Global Forum, etc), industry associations (FICCI, CII, etc), research centers (IPM, Beijing; Chinese Academy of Sciences, etc), and universities (UNU, Tsinghua, etc) as an expert speaker. He has acted as a mentor/supervisor for doctoral students in many universities.
Besides being a prolific writer and a popular teacher, he has conducted various executive development programs for middle to senior management on happiness, humour, strategy and innovation. He has undertaken consulting assignments for top management of organizations. Besides corporates, he advises start-ups and non-for-profits. He is the chief mentor and advisor for Happiness Strategy Foundation, a not-for-profit think tank for research on happiness and sharing research findings with masses and industry. His academic and/or research experience includes University Business School, Panjab University (Chandigarh, India); Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (Kozhikode, India); R. H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland (Maryland, USA); Harvard University (Boston, USA); and MCI Management Centre (Innsbruck, Austria) among others. He is a Professor of Strategy at Management Development Institute (MDI) Gurgaon and holds a Ph.D. in Strategy.