Reflecting on the Value of Business Schools

• Business educators must define and communicate the ways they are preparing leaders to find comprehensive solutions to society's complex challenges.
• To ensure that students develop strong leadership and problem-solving skills, business schools need to break out of their disciplinary silos and collaborate with complementary fields both within the school and across the university.
• Helping students understand innovation—and its relationship to industry disruptions—can shift their thinking about the value of business education.

Transcript

Alex Triantis: [0:14] There's a lot of questions around the value proposition of a business school. In particular as it's become more expensive to go to educational institutions in general, and certainly business schools, and also during a strong economic period where there are alternatives, where folks are giving up income.

[0:33] We've understood that leadership is very valuable. That companies are looking for strong leaders. Companies are looking for folks who have strong business skills that apply within businesses, but to all problems, to become problem-solvers.

[0:52] I think that we need to figure out exactly how it is that we define the value proposition of a business education. That it's not simply learning basics of finance and accounting, but also creating leaders and those who will be able to deal with some of the very complex challenges that we face.

[1:11] We know that companies are very focused on ESG these days and on the importance and power of DEI in their organizations. These are areas where business schools are increasingly taking a leading role in helping to train the young generation.

Companies are looking for folks who have strong business skills that apply within businesses, but to all problems, to become problem-solvers.

[1:27] One area that we're seeing business schools start to differentiate themselves from where they were maybe 10 or 20 years ago is working together with the rest of the university in understanding that to solve the complex challenges that we face as leaders in organizations, we need to have an appreciation of other functional areas.

[1:49] We need to have been in teams together with students from other functional areas at engineering, public health, and so on. That allows us to train stronger leaders. That interdisciplinarity is going to become increasingly important over time.

[2:03] As business schools consider their value proposition going forward, there are a number of issues in terms of what we teach, in terms of areas such as, just to pick one, ESG in accounting.

[2:17] We know that accountants are increasingly being called on to try to measure things that we've never done before and to do so in a consistent fashion that we can rely on and that companies can be transparent on.

[2:30] Part of it is functional areas like that, supply chains, and so on, and understanding what some of the complexities are, but the other part is how we're teaching. The increased emphasis on experiential learning in business schools is allowing us to move away from the silos of different disciplines and allow students to learn how to solve problems in a more holistic fashion.

Innovation is all about trying to understand pain points, understanding opportunities to create value.

[2:55] We see all the time that need. When we talked to companies, that they're looking for young professionals that are able to do that, that have that skill set. Understanding innovation and being able to implement new ideas has become increasingly important.

[3:11] Certainly, that the disruptions that we're seeing on all industries that are happening because of technology are more important to appreciate how an institution, how an industry, evolves over time based on those disruptions, but it's also critical to understand the needs.

[3:27] As we do at a business school, understanding the needs of our consumers, our customers, our students, our alumni, the businesses that we work with, that innovation is all about trying to understand pain points, understanding opportunities to create value.

[3:42] We as business schools need to do that, to innovate [laughs] ourselves, but we also need to teach our students how best to be able to do that so they go into an organization and they're able to affect change once they start in those organizations.