The Future of Education Is Personalized

• Learner-centric pedagogy—that delivers personalized educational experiences based on each student’s strengths, aspirations, and career goals—better prepares students for career success and empowers them to fulfill their chosen purpose.
• True learner-centric education reflects the institution’s vision and values to drive meaningful, mission-based educational outcomes.
• Personalized education begins by selecting students whose individual values align with those of the institution and who share a deep connection with its mission.

 
Personalization is not just a trend—it’s a foundational element of modern business strategies. Companies such as Netflix and Amazon have built their success on designing home pages and product recommendations that cater to individual user preferences. Dell transformed the personal computer industry by allowing buyers to customize the configuration of their computers, setting a new standard for consumer-driven innovation.

Similarly, companies are increasingly tailoring work experiences to employees’ interests and strengths. Accenture researchers Susan M. Cantrell and David Smith aptly describe this shift as the “workforce of one.”

In management education, integrating personalized approaches can significantly elevate the learning experience. India’s progressive National Educational Policy 2020 recognizes that learners have unique strengths and talents and seeks to nurture these individual qualities, rather than adopt a one-size-fits-all model. By combining outcome-based education with each student’s unique strengths, interests, and aspirations, we can create a more humanized pedagogy that propels business education to new heights of effectiveness.

This tailored approach enhances engagement and ensures that education is more relevant and impactful for each learner. In turn, a personalized educational model improves each learner’s chances of achieving career success and societal impact.

I have developed a conceptual model of personalized education, based on my research on “employee strengths at work,” as well as on the principles of outcome-based education. I developed this concept as part of my doctoral work and practical experience of leadership roles in business firms.

In academia, this pedagogical approach was initially conceptualized during my tenure as the chairperson of the doctoral program at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management (LBSIM) in New Delhi. It is currently being further researched and developed—as part of my consulting work—at several other higher educational institutions in India.

How Can We Humanize Business Education?

While many business schools claim to emphasize learner-centricity and personalized education in their programs, they often limit their efforts to superficial practices. These practices might include addressing students by their first names, promptly responding to inquiries, or sending welcome emails before the course begins.

While these actions are important, true learner-centricity involves a deeper commitment. An effective approach encompasses three core elements:

• Understanding what the learner aims to achieve, whether in research outcomes or career goals.
• Recognizing the specific attributes of each learner.
• Integrating the learner’s characteristics and career interests into the learning experience in ways that enable students to joyfully achieve their research or career objectives.

But the model goes further than that. Rather than existing in isolation, personalized education also should be deeply intertwined with institutional priorities and shaped by the institution’s vision, mission, strategy, and core values. This process begins by selecting students whose values align with those of the institution and who share a deep connection with its mission.

Coupling Pedagogy With Mission

The vision and mission of a business school are pivotal in shaping its learner-centric pedagogical strategy, which encompasses several aspects of a learner’s educational journey (see chart below). 

However, during my experience in conducting peer reviews for business schools for national-level accreditation, I have observed two key obstacles that often hinder the adoption of learner-centric teaching. First, a school might only weakly couple its commitment to learner-centricity with its vision, mission, strategy, and values. Second, a school might treat these principles as largely symbolic—and, in the process, fail to implement them in its programs effectively. 

To address this, I recently worked on an action research consultancy project with a leadership team at a higher educational institute in the state of Kerela in India. For this project, we developed the “Conceptual Modeling Technique,” which is designed to support an evolving strategy that is tightly coupled with the vision and mission of the institution. The technique involved six steps: 

• We developed a causal conceptual model for the institution’s vision and for each of the four elements of its mission statement.
• We combined these models into an integrated framework that aligned the vision and mission.
• Next, we adopted appreciative inquiry methodology to come up with creative initiatives for each dimension of the integrated model.
• We then distilled these various initiatives into overarching meta-initiatives, forming the foundation for a unique, inimitable, and differentiated strategy. For instance, two variables in the school’s integrated model were “inspiring culture,” and “holistic development and engagement.” Based on those variables, the school chose meta-initiatives that emphasized personalized education and the implementation of a comprehensive performance management system that supported goal-setting, resource allocation, and faculty development.
• We created an action plan for each initiative.
• Finally, we determined how the school could integrate these plans into its performance management system; align them into its vision, mission, and strategy; and ensure their practical application.

Articulating Values and Principles

Often business schools focus on mission and strategy but fail to clearly articulate their values or define the principles that align with those values. Here, it is important to make the distinction between the two: Values refer to concepts such as integrity and creativity that guide the institution’s day-to-day decision-making, while principles refer to actions the institution takes to uphold those values.

For example, at the doctoral program at LBSIM, we articulated the vision, mission, and values at the program level so that we could better focus on the students’ educational experience. We determined that we wanted the program to uphold the values of psychological safety and dignity, imagination, cognitive courage, the pursuit of excellence, the humility to learn, and purpose-focused and dharma-driven scholarship.

We then defined the principles those values inspired. These included:

• Enabling students to joyfully create socially relevant knowledge.
• Making space for students to express their authentic selves.
• Empowering them to engage in creative thinking to build impactful theories that positively influence practice.

Adopting Competency-Based Selection

Accordingly, we used a competency-based candidate selection process, through which we handpicked scholars whose work and aspirations aligned with the mission and values of LBSIM’s doctoral program. To identify the essential competencies for conducting impactful research, we conducted a focused group discussion with faculty members who had recently completed their doctoral studies. We also examined relevant literature to distill competencies for doing impactful research and aligned our findings of focused group discussion and literature review with the program’s vision, mission, and values.

Through this process, we identified six competencies that we wanted scholars to possess. These include critical thinking, imagination, a growth mindset, antifragility, ethics, and achievement motivation.

We wanted the doctoral program to uphold the values of psychological safety and dignity, imagination, cognitive courage, the pursuit of excellence, the humility to learn, and purpose-focused and dharma-driven scholarship.

Additionally, we assessed candidates for writing skills, conceptual ability, passion and commitment, articulation and persuasion skills, and reading habits. We also employed validated instruments to evaluate growth mindset and achievement motivation.

We used the Thematic Apperception Test to gauge candidates’ imagination and values, as well as a case study method to evaluate writing skills, conceptual abilities, and critical thinking. We employed a behavioral event interviewing technique to identify competencies such as antifragility, growth mindset, and ethical values.

Finally, we asked candidates to present the research topics they were passionate about and to articulate their motivation for pursuing them. A panel then assessed their levels of passion and commitment and the quality of their articulation and persuasive skills.

An Emphasis on Joy

The pursuit of doctoral education is often characterized by its challenges and rigorous demands. Through numerous conversations with doctoral program graduates, I discovered a recurring theme: While their experiences were intellectually stimulating and professionally formative, these individuals noted that their programs frequently lacked elements of joy or personal fulfillment.

This observation resonates with my own doctoral journey, which encompassed both moments of profound satisfaction and considerable difficulty. I saw the potential for redesigning doctoral programs so that they not only emphasized academic rigor, but also infused knowledge creation with a sense of joy and personal growth. Such an approach could lead to more engaged scholars and potentially more innovative research outcomes.

Motivated by these observations, I was determined to design a program that would create a positive experience for our scholars. Therefore, we implemented the following strategies in LBSIM’s doctoral program:

We integrated our core values into the classroom through art. For example, we brought our values to life via song (a doctoral anthem that I composed) and theater (a play that I wrote and that students performed). This approach fostered a sense of psychological safety among our scholars, encouraging them to exercise cognitive courage and imagination to generate novel insights.

We offered personalized learning experiences. We utilized data from psychometric assessments—which we conducted during the selection process—to better understand our scholars. This allowed us to customize learning experiences to fit their unique needs and aspirations. For instance, we might have offered more challenging learning goals to a scholar who demonstrated a strong growth mindset.

We respected each scholar’s motivations. We dedicated significant time to helping scholars articulate their research questions, and we remained open to diverse methodologies in addressing those questions. Importantly, we ensured that we never imposed specific research questions or methodologies on scholars, allowing them to explore their areas of interest freely.

Throughout this process, we aimed to create an environment where knowledge creation was not only intellectually stimulating but also deeply fulfilling and enjoyable for our scholars.   

Customized Course Design

Since each student’s career objectives and personal attributes are unique, a standardized course design can hinder the achievement of their goals and drain the joy from the learning process.

We can see this one-size-fits-all approach in many PhD programs. Doctoral students are typically categorized into specific functions such as finance, organizational behavior, supply chain management, and marketing. They are required to take standard courses or electives, regardless of their individual research questions and motivations—for instance, doctoral students pursuing research in organizational behavior might be compelled to take a course on change management, even though it doesn’t align with their interests.

This approach, in my view, is outdated. Schools can create more engaging and effective learning experiences by taking an alternative approach.

The future of business education lies in how well schools deliver personalized learning experiences that honor each student’s unique strengths and align students’ career aspirations with institutional values.

Consider a doctoral student who uses the lens of Vedic literature to explore how promoting employee happiness leads to sustainable growth. Instead of requiring the student to follow a conventional educational path, it would be more effective for the school to form a thesis advisory committee for this student early on. This committee would design customized courses that help the student build the capabilities needed to address the important research questions that also reflect their passions.

Such a tailored approach does not just enhance the impact of a student’s research. It also makes the student’s research journey more fulfilling and enjoyable. Initially conceptualized for the doctoral program at LBSIM, this model is now part of an action research project at the institute in Kerela mentioned above. The school is delivering a personalized curriculum to students at the graduate level based on psychometric assessments of their career goals, learning styles, and personalities.   

Empowering Students to Contribute

The future of business education lies in how well schools deliver personalized learning experiences that honor each student’s unique strengths and align students’ career aspirations with institutional values. But achieving this outcome requires a paradigm shift, in which business schools move from adhering to standardized models to adopting flexible, tailored approaches and implementing competency-based student selection.

While designing customized curricula is challenging, its potential rewards are immense. This model enhances student engagement, improves learning outcomes, and increases innovation in research and practice. It ensures that students experience more engaging and effective educational journeys. And it equips them with not just knowledge, but also the adaptability, critical thinking skills, and self-awareness needed to thrive in their future careers.

Through customized pedagogical approaches, we will educate a new generation of business leaders who are professionally competent, deeply fulfilled, and ethically grounded. Even better, we will create leaders who are poised to make meaningful societal contributions.