How should prospective students evaluate MBA programs beyond marketing claims to avoid disappointment?

Remember, everyone is putting their best face forward, including schools and students/candidates. Both parties need to pay attention to what’s being said and what’s not being said. And to ask questions! If you have particular interests or specific concerns, you must learn as much as you can through the evaluation process. Additionally, what has happened in the past is an example of what MAY occur when you attend school, but remember that in today’s world, everything changes quickly. Your classmates will be different from those you meet on a campus visit, and your employment opportunities will be different too – companies and economies change.

What has happened in the past is an example of what MAY occur when you attend school, but remember that in today’s world, everything changes quickly.

Part of the evaluation process from the school side involves application essay questions – that’s a first step in the school getting to know you. Answer the questions. Don’t try to figure out what the school wants to hear. What we want to hear is your honest response to the question.

From your experience, what signs during orientation or early weeks predict whether an MBA program is well run?

The only predictable thing is that something will go wrong – not drastically, but enough that the team will need to pivot. The hallmark of a well-run program is its ability to pivot, doing so without a lot of drama. When there is a sense of calm in what could be a chaotic situation, that demonstrates that the program team knows what they’re doing, they have created a plan, confirmed all that can be confirmed, and if one thing hits a snag, it’s dealt with and things continue as otherwise planned. When a hiccup occurs and that throws folks into a frenzy, that may be a sign of concern.

Many applicants find MBA essay prompts vague or abstract. What’s their real purpose, and how can schools make the process fairer?

Application essays are a critical part of the MBA application. Every school and admissions committee will consider them differently, but we believe most of us are trying to get to know you better. What is your thought process? How are you organizing your thoughts? In the case of the question – Why are you applying now? Or why my school? Or how is the MBA going to further your career? We really want to know – have you thought about these things? Can we help you meet your goals?

What are the most common mistakes MBA applicants make during interviews, and how can they better prepare?

Being unprepared is a big red flag. It’s very evident when a candidate is ‘going through the motions’ and has not researched the school or the program. When they fail to ask any questions or ask very simple questions that could be answered with a quick look at the website. A candidate who treats every application and interview to business school as generic will not come across as one who is interested, or interesting.

Another mistake is focusing too much on yourself. Have all your accomplishments been individual efforts? If so, we are going to be concerned with how you’ll do working on a team. A lot of Business-school assignments and teaching are team-oriented. Have you led a team or a project? How did that go? What about when you were NOT the leader, how did you handle that?

How can students make the most out of their MBA network during and after the program?

There is no substitute for showing up. Attend networking events, introduce yourself to class visitors, go to alumni events, tap into the alumni network, create a plan or a strategy, and execute that plan. If it’s not working or you’re not getting the results you were hoping for, seek feedback, re-evaluate, and amend your strategy. Opportunities are not going to wait for you to be ready; they will happen on their own time – it’s up to you to manage your time, prioritize appropriately, and start networking from day one. Your classmates are a good place to begin. Long after you graduate, this is the group you will remain most closely aligned to – create those bonds early, and often.

In your view, how has the MBA degree evolved to stay relevant in today’s economy?

The MBA continues to evolve. The inclusion of more technology-driven content, the responsible use of AI, and the management of a remote workforce. All of these factors are part of what students will learn, along with foundational business content in the MBA of today.

The MBA is one of the most applicable degrees available. Every organization, for-profit, not-for-profit, arts organizations, healthcare organizations, banks, consultancies, and higher education, are ALL dependent on sound business practices and principles. As the world of work evolves, so must MBA programs.

What kinds of roles or industries are most in demand for recent MBA graduates right now?

If it’s not working or you’re not getting the results you were hoping for, seek feedback, re-evaluate, and amend your strategy.

Organizations are looking for individuals who are fluent in the technology of the workplace.  The tools will continue to change and evolve, and people want to hire those who have proven they can and are eager to learn and stay current. Every role touches or is touched by technology – leading and managing in tech-driven environments – this is true across industries, more so now than in the past, partly due to the rapid nature of change and adoption of technology.

How do you see AI and tech changing the way business education is delivered?

We believe there is wider acceptance of technology as a tool to deliver education. We don’t foresee AI replacing humans teaching content, but we do believe it will help reinforce concepts, aid in the iterative process of learning, applying, gathering feedback, and applying again. We think AI will impact both sides of the education process, those who are delivering and those who are receiving – faculty and students will discover new ways to employ AI and AI tools. These lessons are part of the learning process, one that will continue long after graduation.

Executive Profile

Kate Klepper is the associate dean of graduate studies at D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University, US.

David De Cremer is the Dunton Family Dean of D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University, US.

The post Inside MBA Admissions: What Applicants Get Wrong and Schools Look For appeared first on The European Business Review.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, Mr Fangruo! Antai College has become one of China’s top-ranked business schools. What are the key strategies and milestones that have driven its development in recent years?

Indeed, Antai College is widely regarded as a top business school in China, but we have not slowed down our pace for innovation and development. In 2018, we redefined our strategy, to focus on strengthening the connection between theory and practice. We use a picture to describe this strategy, consisting of horizontal and vertical lines. The horizontal lines represent academic discipline-based research, while the vertical lines represent industry research. Therefore, in our minds, knowledge creation has two different paths, one geared toward theory building and the other serving industry needs. The horizontal and vertical paths crisscross each other, reinforcing the connection between theory and practice. This strategy has fundamentally changed every aspect of the college life, from research to teaching, creating a healthy ecosystem for business education.

You’ve emphasized “interdisciplinary integration and the connection of theory and practice” as central to Antai’s vision. How does this philosophy shape the college’s teaching?

The impact on the college’s teaching can be delineated at three different levels. First and foremost, the industry-research strategy has changed the teachers, i.e., serving the purpose of training the trainers. Every year, we organize around 30 industry research teams, consisting of faculty and students. These often-interdisciplinary research teams frequently visit companies and see for themselves the real problems and the innovative solutions that the frontline managers have come up with. This experience has expanded their knowledge base and provided the professors with increased confidence when teaching classes. Second, we have introduced many industry-focused courses. Our industry research effort has covered most of the important sectors, such as energy, health, finance, manufacturing, distribution and logistics, etc. The principal industry researchers have taken the lead in offering elective courses along the lines of their industry research efforts. Third, every time a team visits a company, it is often the case that a number of students will come along. The students contribute to the industry research effort while gaining first-hand knowledge about industry operations. Such experiences often lead to internship or employment opportunities.

Antai has a strong reputation for industry collaboration, as well. Can you share examples of how partnerships with leading companies and institutions enhance students’ career opportunities?

The college has built a multi-level, systematic framework for industry collaboration. It has moved beyond traditional one-off project cooperation to establish an “ecosystem-based” model of university–enterprise partnership that responds to the evolving needs of both companies and students at different stages. This model covers the full collaboration chain—from resource sharing and curriculum co-design to joint talent cultivation. The college regularly invites industry experts to engage in career development programs and to serve as student career mentors, co-establishes internship and training bases with leading firms, and jointly develops practice-oriented professional courses, building a solid foundation for students to excel in top institutions.

As one of Antai’s flagship talent development initiatives, the Career Navigation Program invites distinguished industry leaders and accomplished alumni from diverse sectors to serve as career mentors for current students, providing personalized guidance and sharing professional insights. Launched in May 2004, the program has now reached its 30th edition, engaging over 1,000 mentors and benefiting more than 3,500 students, continuing to serve as a cornerstone of Antai’s efforts to bridge academia and industry.

As one of Antai’s flagship talent development initiatives, the Career Navigation Program invites distinguished industry leaders and accomplished alumni from diverse sectors to serve as career mentors for current students, providing personalized guidance and sharing professional insights.

Since early this year, Antai’s industry collaboration initiatives have continued to expand and deepen. In April, the college launched the inaugural Finance Class with the Bank of China Shanghai Branch, recruiting students from SJTU’s 2026 graduating cohort. Through a four-dimensional training model—specialized coursework, cross-sector visits, practical training, and mentorship—the program provides six months of structured learning to cultivate talents specifically for the financial sector.

In July, the college further partnered with Tencent, L’Oréal, UBS Group, and China Telecom to establish the “AI + Career” Joint Talent Development Alliance. The initiative aims to equip business school students with enhanced employability and interdisciplinary literacy in the AI era, helping them adapt to the emerging industry trends.

In specialized talent development, Antai’s full-time MBA program has formed long-term strategic partnerships with prominent domestic and global enterprises such as Apple and CIMC Vehicles. Within these collaborations, companies present real-world project challenges drawn from their business operations, and students apply to participate based on individual career interests. These projects are fully integrated into the MBA curriculum, enabling students to translate theory into practice while fostering two-way evaluation and recruitment opportunities. Each year, we have students who secure positions with partner firms through these collaborations, realizing an efficient and precise match between talent training and corporate needs.

Globalization is central to modern business education. How is Antai College strengthening its international presence and partnerships, particularly in today’s evolving global landscape?

Driven by our mission, we strive to develop internationalization on all fronts—actively joining and leading international organizations, closely collaborating with top business educational institutions worldwide, and increasing the number of overseas-educated faculty, international students, and full English programs. Our aim is to further elevate Antai’s international impact through achievements in student education, scientific research, and societal engagement. Through our Asia Pacific Center in Singapore, we seek to expand our international standing in Asia and beyond, thereby achieving our vision of “a world-class business school firmly rooted in China.”

The IMBA program at Antai is unique in offering a global perspective with a Chinese focus. How does this program prepare students to navigate both Eastern and Western business environments?

This mission is central to our educational philosophy. We have built a comprehensive developmental framework that moves beyond teaching international and Chinese business in isolation, instead creating a deeply integrated learning experience. This is achieved through a purposefully structured ecosystem comprising three core pillars:

First, our integrated curriculum establishes a robust foundation in global management principles, systematically contextualized within China’s unique economic and social landscape. This fusion ensures that students gain not only universal business knowledge but also a nuanced understanding of its application in local contexts.

Second, our pedagogy emphasizes practical applications. Our distinguished faculty employ case studies and team projects that synthesize Eastern and Western business practices. This approach enables students to navigate real-world scenarios, applying theoretical frameworks to solve complex problems involving both multinational and local enterprises.

Finally, our experiential global learning component offers extensive international exposure through dual-degree programs, exchanges with top-tier partner schools, and study tours. A defining feature is the emphasis on bringing these global insights back into the classroom, creating a continuous cycle of learning that solidifies the ability to operate effectively across cultures. This cohesive developmental architecture is designed to cultivate leaders who are adept at bridging business environments and leveraging a truly global perspective.

What kinds of students are most attracted to Antai’s IMBA program, and how does the program support their professional aspirations?

We attract proactive, forward-looking individuals who come to us not merely for a credential, but for genuine transformation. Our students generally fall into two broad categories: career accelerators who are experienced professionals aiming to fast-track their growth within a global context, especially with a focus on China; and career transformers seeking to pivot across industries, functions, or geographic regions by leveraging our network and curriculum to build credibility in new fields.

The transformative impact of our program is consistently affirmed by our alumni. Some of the graduates, now developing their careers as entrepreneurs, emphasized how the program instilled the ability to use an international vision and mindset to make decisions. Some alumni highlighted the immensely diverse classroom with students from varied cultural, ethnic, and professional backgrounds which expanded horizons and enriched their social network, a network that proved instrumental during exchanges at institutions like Bocconi University and subsequent careers with multinational companies.

To reach these aspirations, we provide a comprehensive support system. Students gain immediate access to our extensive, engaged alumni community, where a culture of “helping your younger sisters and brothers” ensures ongoing mentorship and professional advantage. We encourage students to align their thesis with a company project or internship, transforming academic requirements into tangible career opportunities that often lead directly to job offers. Furthermore, our commitment extends beyond graduation through lifelong learning opportunities, including course audits, exclusive events like the annual forums, and ongoing alumni activities, ensuring that our graduates continue to grow and adapt throughout their careers.

How can you ensure that Antai continues to grow as a global leader in business education?

Antai aims to become a world-class business school firmly rooted in China. There are two key words here: “China” and the “world”. We want to be closely connected with China’s business community, which offers a fertile ground for business research and business education. We also want to redouble our internationalization effort, to be a bridge between China’s business community and the business communities of other countries, and to be an active collaborator with our sister business schools around the world. To be a global leader in business education, we need to embrace our local economy / society and, at the same time, to reach out for international cooperation.

Looking ahead, what is your vision for Antai College over the next decade?

Over the next decade, I hope Antai will continue to pursue the industry-research strategy. This will keep us on the right track, and will continue to provide us with endless ideas for innovation. We are developing a framework for doing industry research in a business school context, much like Harvard Business School’s introduction (and perfection) of the case method. We hope this will encourage more business schools to join us on this journey, because to really change the business school culture, we need a critical mass of business schools marching in the same direction.

And finally, how do you define success?

In my mind, the ultimate definition of success is the business school’s contribution to mankind. This, of course, is a very broad stroke. To get there, there are many intermediate steps, including research, teaching, and service to society at large. An accurate measurement of success is perhaps an immense task, or simply impossible, but let’s make sure we are moving in the right direction, one step at a time.

Executive Profile

CHEN Fangruo is the Dean and Guangqi Chair Professor, Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. A researcher in the area of Operations Management/Supply Chain Management, he has published widely in renown international journals. He has served in many leadership positions in the field, and has received numerous awards and recognitions. In 2007, he founded the Chinese Scholars Association for Management Science and Engineering (CSAMSE). Since joining Antai in 2018, Dean Chen has launched an ambitious initiative to reform the business school through promoting industry research. He was the MUTB Professor of International Business, Columbia Business School. He has a bachelor’s degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a Ph.D. from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

The post Following the Twin Paths to Knowledge – Interview with Chen Fangruo of Shanghai Jiao Tong University appeared first on The European Business Review.

Interview with Siobhan Frank, Oxford Executive MBA

In this TEBR interview, Siobhan Frank, Programme Director of the Oxford Executive MBA, highlights the school’s excellence through its world-class faculty, adaptive curriculum and global exchanges, making it the top choice for leaders seeking a globally relevant MBA.

It’s great to have you with us today, Siobhan! To start, the Oxford Executive MBA has been ranked best in the world by Quacquarelli Symonds for two consecutive years now. From your perspective as the Programme Director, what makes it consistently stand out in such a competitive global field?

Thank you, it’s a privilege to be here. The Oxford Executive MBA stands out for its unique combination of people, place, and perspective. Oxford draws an international audience, and our participants are no exception. They come from across the globe, eager to learn from one another, motivated either by the demands of their careers for a truly global outlook or by a personal desire to broaden their perspectives. Our UK location and modular format also make it easy for participants to join us from every corner of the world, further enhancing the diversity of the cohort.

The combination of traditions, networks, and the sense of belonging to a community that is both intellectually rigorous and globally connected makes Saïd Business School truly stand out on the world stage.

That diversity is matched by our world-class faculty, who combine cutting-edge research with real-world insight. Their teaching is anchored in the programme’s core themes, strategic leadership, global complexity and risk, and entrepreneurial thinking. Each is more relevant than ever in today’s interconnected world.

And of course, all of this is enriched by the Oxford experience itself. The combination of traditions, networks, and the sense of belonging to a community that is both intellectually rigorous and globally connected makes Saïd Business School truly stand out on the world stage.

Last year, the Oxford Executive MBA also celebrated its 20^th anniversary. How has the programme evolved since its first cohort in 2004? What remains unchanged at its core?

Celebrating 20 years of the Oxford Executive MBA was a wonderful opportunity to reflect on how far the programme has come. Since welcoming our first cohort in 2004, we’ve continually refreshed the curriculum to reflect the changing world, with greater emphasis on areas such as global complexity and risk, sustainability, technology, entrepreneurship, and responsible leadership. The programme has also expanded in scale, most notably with the introduction of a second annual intake in 2018.

What hasn’t changed, and what I don’t think ever will, is our core. The programme remains rooted in bringing together outstanding people, world-class faculty and the unique Oxford experience. At the heart of this is the University’s deep commitment to research with impact; research that not only advances knowledge, but also drives cultural, societal, political, and economic change on a global scale.

At Saïd Business School, we reflect that commitment through what we call ‘impact from within.’ We believe solving the world’s challenges is not solely the role of governments; business leaders have a vital responsibility too. Our mission is to develop leaders who go into business with purpose – transforming themselves, their organisations, and ultimately the world. That commitment to meaningful, lasting impact is as central to the Oxford Executive MBA today as it was 20 years ago.

It scored exceptionally high in Diversity, Thought Leadership, and Employer Reputation. Could you share some examples of how these qualities translate into real-world impact for your graduates?

Absolutely. Diversity, thought leadership, and employer reputation are at the heart of the Oxford Executive MBA, translating directly into the impact our graduates make.

Diversity is more than demographics; it’s lived experience. Our participants join us from every sector and continent, and many choose Oxford precisely because they want to learn from different perspectives across regions, industries, and cultures. That richness of exchange develops leaders who are confident navigating across cultures and adept at leading in complex, global contexts.

Thought leadership comes from our world-class faculty, whose research shapes debates on everything from sustainability and AI to global risk. Their work spans our core strengths, including responsible leadership, technology and innovation, sustainability and social impact, and global strategy. Crucially, our participants don’t just study these ideas in theory; they put them into practice immediately in their organisations, often leading initiatives that deliver measurable change.

Employer reputation reflects the confidence placed in Oxford graduates. Our alumni are sought after because they combine academic rigour with purpose. Many move into C-suite roles, launch new ventures, or lead major transformations in sectors such as healthcare, finance, and energy, making real impact on their industries and communities.

The programme includes two international modules. What kind of cultural and business insights do participants typically gain from these experiences?

That’s a great question. To clarify, we offer two international modules as part of the core curriculum. However, participants also have the opportunity to further their international experience through electives and co-curricular global exchanges, for example, through the Global Network of Advanced Management (GNAM).

These experiences allow participants to move beyond studying global complexity and strategic leadership in the classroom to experiencing them firsthand. By engaging directly with new markets, business practices, and cultural contexts, they gain a deeper appreciation of how leadership plays out differently across regions. Just as importantly, they learn how to adapt their own leadership approach, preparing them to lead with confidence in an interconnected and often unpredictable world.

Oxford Saïd’s approach has been described as an “intellectual playground.” How does this environment shape the mindset and skillset of your participants?

I love that description, because Oxford Saïd really is an ‘intellectual playground’. In practice, it means participants are constantly challenged, not only absorbing knowledge but testing ideas, debating perspectives, and learning how to navigate ambiguity.

This is amplified by the wider University and city. From public talks in the historic centre to major forums, conferences, and the Entrepreneurship Centre’s programming, participants have countless opportunities to shape their co-curricular experience around their own interests, making their time here uniquely rich.

Together, this develops both mindset and skillset. Participants become more curious, adaptable, and confident in managing complexity, while sharpening core skills in areas like strategy, finance, and entrepreneurship. Crucially, they are also encouraged to think beyond their own organisations and embrace their wider role as leaders in society.

So the ‘intellectual playground’ is not only stimulating in the moment, it shapes reflective, globally minded leaders who go on to make meaningful impact long after the programme.

The programme also has world-class facilities in the Thatcher Business Education Centre. How have these resources contributed to the learning and networking experience for participants?

The Thatcher Business Education Centre (fondly referred to as TBEC) is at the heart of the Oxford Executive MBA. Purpose-built for senior executives, it combines state-of-the-art classrooms and technology with spaces that foster connection. Our participants study, debate, dine, and network there, and over time, the TBEC becomes more than just a building; it’s the hub of their Oxford journey.

We’re enormously grateful to the endowment from Mr Wafic Saïd and the ongoing support of the Saïd Foundation, as well as to all our generous benefactors, whose contributions make this possible and continue to underpin the School’s success.

Looking ahead, we’re excited to soon open our Global Leadership Centre as the next step for Saïd Business School in executive education. It will provide a world-class home for leadership development, giving participants even more opportunities to learn, collaborate, and shape the future of business.

Many participants speak of a shift in how they define leadership over the course of the programme. What kinds of personal or professional transformations have you observed?

One of the most striking changes we see is how participants redefine leadership. They may begin thinking of it as a technical skill or team management, but over the course of the programme, it becomes about purpose: asking better questions, empowering others, and making an impact in complex environments.

The results are powerful. For example, Dr Rebecca Weston has applied her Oxford learning to lead in the highly complex nuclear sector. James Hall channelled his experience into building a carbon-credit insurance venture and went on to lead our Entrepreneurship Centre. Dr Owoicho Adogwa is using the programme’s insights to transform healthcare in West Africa, while Aline Daoud draws on Oxford frameworks as she supports more women leaders and women engineers in the Middle East.

These stories show what we mean when we say, ‘enriched minds perform better.’ By broadening perspectives and deepening purpose, the programme empowers participants to drive meaningful change in their organisations, industries, and communities. That is Oxford’s impact in action.

How do you define ROI in executive education today, and how does your programme deliver on that promise?

That’s an important question. ROI in executive education today goes far beyond salary uplift, though many of our participants do see that. The real return is harder to quantify but deeply felt. It’s about ‘transformation’; new perspectives, lasting networks, greater comfort with risk and uncertainty, the confidence to lead responsibly, and clarity about the legacy they want to leave.

At Oxford, participants are challenged by world-class faculty and diverse peers, which builds both confidence and purpose.

At Oxford, participants are challenged by world-class faculty and diverse peers, which builds both confidence and purpose. Madonna Okpaleke, a 30% Club Scholar, has spoken about how the Executive MBA gave her the confidence to raise her voice against bias and make it count. Meanwhile, Andrea Guzzoni, a former start-up founder, used the Executive MBA to pause and reset after years of rapid growth. Today, as Venture Capital Sector Director at Founders Factory, he applies those insights to back early-stage founders and shape the next wave of ventures.

These stories show the true ROI of the Oxford Executive MBA: not just career advancement, but expanded horizons, resilience, and leadership that embraces uncertainty while focusing on lasting impact.

Many of your alumni are now in high-impact roles around the globe. Is there a particular success story that embodies the leadership values Oxford seeks to instill?

We are lucky to have many great alumni on the programme, many of whom still keep in touch and continue to exemplify the values of responsible leadership that Oxford Saïd seeks to instill.

For example, Axel Addy, former Minister for Commerce and Industry of Liberia, played a pivotal role in guiding Liberia’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), demonstrating how business acumen can be applied to shape inclusive economic growth at a national level.

One of our earliest participants, Mark Carmichael, built a distinguished career leading major mergers and acquisitions around the world, and now returns to the School as a guest speaker, inspiring current participants with his insights.

Looking ahead, what is your vision for the Oxford Executive MBA in the next decade? How do you plan to maintain its leadership position in global rankings?

Looking ahead, our vision for the Oxford Executive MBA is to continue developing leaders who are not only successful in business but also purposeful in addressing the most pressing global challenges. We will do this by continuing to strengthen our global diversity and reach, innovation in teaching and learning, and focus on impact and responsible and sustainable leadership.

Regarding rankings, our strategy is simple. Stay at the forefront of thought leadership, maintain a rigorous and transformational curriculum and foster a vibrant alumni community that continues to achieve the highest levels across industries and borders.  By measuring our success not only in terms of career progression, but also in contributions to society, we will ensure the Oxford Executive MBA remains distinct, relevant and globally recognised for years to come.

Executive Profile

Siobhan Frank is Programme Director of the Oxford Executive MBA at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. She leads strategy, development, and delivery of this globally top-ranked programme, overseeing recruitment, admissions, and participant experience. Passionate about purposeful leadership, Siobhan fosters diverse, global executive communities that drive meaningful impact.

The post Oxford Executive MBA: Shaping Global Business Leaders through Learning and Research appeared first on The European Business Review.

Interview with Renata Blanc of Porto Business School

Portugal is renowned for its early navigators’ audacious journeys of global exploration. What better home, then, for an International MBA programme that equips its students to navigate global ambiguity with purpose, curiosity, and courage?

Great to have you with us, Ms. Blanc! To start off, could you share the vision that drives Porto Business School’s International MBA?

Our MBA vision is to cultivate “market-ready explorers” — leaders who are equipped not only to respond to change but to lead it. We believe the future belongs to those who can navigate ambiguity with purpose, curiosity, and courage. Our International MBA is designed to empower professionals to shape their own path, with a deeply personalized, future-focused, and impact-driven learning journey.

The programme is described as one that empowers leaders for the “future of work”. From your perspective, what key leadership qualities does today’s evolving business landscape demand, and how does your MBA programme help cultivate them?

That’s such an important question — and one we reflect on constantly. We’re in a moment of profound disruption. It’s not just about technology anymore, although of course the pace of technological change is enormous. It’s also about climate urgency, shifting geopolitical landscapes, and major social transformations. All of these forces are converging to create a business environment that’s more complex and fast-changing than ever before.

The traditional models are no longer enough. Today’s leaders need to be visionary and emotionally intelligent.

So, what does that mean for leadership? Well, it means the traditional models are no longer enough. Today’s leaders need to be visionary and emotionally intelligent. They need to be inclusive, adaptable, and deeply comfortable with uncertainty. It’s no longer about keeping up. Leaders now must be future-shapers — able to imagine new possibilities and mobilize teams and communities to bring them to life.

That mindset is at the heart of our MBA. We’ve built the program to actively cultivate these capabilities. Our Leadership Track, for example, is designed to strengthen self-awareness, improve team dynamics, and help students develop an inclusive leadership style. It includes both group and one-on-one coaching, so students really work on their own leadership identity.

And then we challenge them to apply those skills in the real world. A few examples:

• In the AI Business Impact Challenge, students work in teams to develop strategic solutions for a real company problem — with support from an AI Lab that equips them with the latest tech insights.
• Our Team Building with Social Impact event pushes them out of the classroom and into collaborative, purpose-driven outdoor challenges that also serve the community.
• And through the NGO Board Fellows program, they actually sit on the board of a nonprofit organization. That’s a rare and incredibly rich leadership experience.

Ultimately, we’re not just preparing students for their next job. We’re helping them grow into leaders who can create meaningful, positive impact — in their companies, their industries, and in society at large. And we want that journey to start from the very first day of the program.

In a crowded global MBA landscape, what distinguishes Porto Business School’s International MBA from more traditional or conventional programmes?

I believe our program offers outstanding value. It combines top-tier, contemporary content with a highly personalized and impactful learning experience. What truly sets us apart is the combination of academic excellence, innovation, leadership development, and strong ties to both community and industry. Key differentiators include:

• Strong Personalization, allowing students to tailor their journey by choosing between 11- and 15-month formats, a wide range of electives, and diverse Capstone Projects and Internships.
• Leadership Development, througha dedicated Leadership Track includes both group and individual sessions focused on enhancing self-awareness, team collaboration, and leadership impact.
• Innovative AI Focus via an AI Track integrates hands-on learning through the AI Lab and culminates in the AI Business Impact Challenge — where students solve real challenges using AI.
• Sustainability Orientation, by embedding sustainability across the curriculum, complemented by specialized elective courses on ESG and the option to earn a Sustainability Certificate.
• Specialized Tracks for those who want to deepen expertise in areas like Leadership, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, AI, and even Biodiversity and Nature-Based Strategies for Business.
• Community Engagement that encourages students to lead with purpose, through a mandatory Team Building with Social Impact and an optional NGO Board Fellows initiative where students take a seat on the Board of an NGO.
• Top-Notch Electives and Specializations, with a wide set of electives and a choice of six areas of specialization from which to select one on which to concentrate — including traditional areas like Finance, Strategy, Marketing, and Operations, as well as cutting-edge domains like Innovation & Entrepreneurship or Data, Tech & AI.
• AI-Powered Personalization, here we’re walking the talk — much of the upcoming cohort journey will already be supported by real-time AI advisors and coaching tools, helping students navigate choices and maximize their learning experience.

And of course, Porto itself is an integral part of our value proposition. It’s a vibrant, charming city with a rich mix of heritage, coastline beauty, and a dynamic business environment that blends established industries with a thriving startup scene.

Two of the programme’s standout components are the Leadership Track and the Business Impact Challenge. How do these hands-on experiences translate into tangible, real-world value for students?

These experiences are not academic simulations — they’re career accelerators. The Leadership Track helps students master interpersonal and executive skills, while the AI-powered Business Impact Challenge (BIC) places them at the intersection of innovation, sustainability, and strategic problem-solving, producing results that add immediate value to their professional portfolios.

The Career Development Center plays a central role in guiding students beyond the classroom. Could you elaborate on the type of support and resources you provide to help participants shape their post-MBA career paths?

Our Career Development Center provides one-on-one coaching, skill mapping, and AI-powered CV optimization. Students receive individualized support to identify the right career paths, develop standout profiles, and connect with global opportunities, whether they’re pivoting industries or accelerating their current trajectory.

With features like the Global Immersion Week and a culturally diverse cohort, your MBA clearly has a global dimension. How does the programme foster a truly international mindset among its participants?

From Global Immersion Weeks in cities like Amsterdam and New York to exchanges with partner schools worldwide, our program immerses students in international contexts. Combined with a truly diverse cohort — 50 per cent international students from over 10 countries — we nurture cultural intelligence, cross-border collaboration, and global leadership.

Professionals today are seeking more than just technical acumen — they’re also after personal growth, purpose, and resilience. How does the programme nurture the holistic development of its students?

We go beyond technical skills. The IMBA nurtures each student’s sense of purpose, resilience, and self-knowledge. Through dynamic learning, coaching, and electives designed around personal passions and market needs, we help students align their career goals with deeper personal meaning.

Porto itself has become known for its dynamic startup ecosystem and innovation-driven business environment. How does being located in this vibrant city enrich the MBA experience and open doors for entrepreneurial exploration?

Porto is a thriving innovation hub, and our students are embedded in it. Whether through the Entrepreneurship Track, local startup collaborations, or integration in projects of the Porto Business School Innovation Exploration Hub, our students access real opportunities to prototype, pitch, and build ventures in one of Europe’s most vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Looking ahead, what exciting developments or evolutions can we expect from the International MBA in the coming years?

Looking forward, we’re expanding our AI-driven personalization tools and integrating more tech-enabled, impact-focused learning experiences. We are also deepening our global partnerships and designing new formats that bring even more flexibility and relevance to tomorrow’s leaders.

And finally, on a personal note — as Programme Director, how do you define success when it comes to your students and the legacy of the programme?

Success, to me, means transformation — when a student not only reaches their goals but discovers new ones, becoming a more empowered, self-aware, and impactful version of themselves. The true legacy of our IMBA is the community of bold, values-driven leaders we help shape across industries and borders.

Executive Profile

Renata Blanc is the Director of the International MBA at Porto Business School, where she also lectures in Problem Solving, Decision Making, Accounting, and Strategy. A passionate educator and coach, she has led PBS and FEP teams to win multiple international business case competitions. With a solid background in consulting and auditing (including at Deloitte), she is a senior advisor on management and strategy projects — from strategic planning to financial and administrative restructuring. Holding a Ph.D. in Business Sciences (FEP), an MBA and a Master’s in Business Management, her academic journey began with a degree in Economics from the University of Porto. Today, she combines academic excellence with hands-on impact in the classroom and the boardroom.

The post Porto Business School: Cultivating Market-Ready Explorers appeared first on The European Business Review.

It is quite rare for a professional education programme to feature small classes, in which, for example, students and teachers have improved opportunities to establish strong working relationships. Copenhagen Business School‘s MBA programme places relatively small but cosmopolitan cohorts of students in a highly conducive and collaborative Nordic setting. 

It’s great to have you with us today, Mr Rasche. First off, we believe congratulations are in order for Copenhagen Business School’s (CBS) ranking 13th in Bloomberg’s top-ranked MBA programmes in Europe, and being in the Top 100 Global MBA programmes in the Financial Times 2025 Rankings. What do you believe contributed to these recognitions? 

AR: First of all, our students! We are a small MBA programme and we have a more direct relationship with the students. I think this matters, and it helps to sustain relationships also after they graduate. And then, of course, our faculty. CBS is one of Europe’s leading business schools with a wide range of excellent faculty that know how to best engage with MBA students. So, I would say it is the mix between being a small programme and being embedded into an excellent larger school.   

The global mindset is a critical aspect of your MBA. With students from diverse nationalities, how does the programme foster an international perspective? 

AR: On average we have 20 nationalities in a cohort of around 50 students. This provides a student experience where the international dimension is built into the programme almost by default. Of course, we also ask students to activate this rich international source of knowledge in class, and it is always fascinating to see how different perspectives come together in case discussions. But it is also the students themselves. They utilize the international character of the cohort also outside of the classroom, for instance through activities like an international food fair. In times where we see some pushback against globalization in world politics, it is very reassuring to see globalization still being alive in our cohort of MBAs.

Leadership development is another major element of the programme. Could you elaborate on the “Leadership Discovery Process” and how it prepares students for leadership roles in a global business environment?

AR: This is a process which runs through the entire year. We did not want just a leadership course somewhere in the curriculum, as we believe that this isolates such fundamental discussions too much. The Leadership Discovery Process, or “LDP” as we call it, engages students throughout the year on different topics related to leadership, including a focus on “leading oneself,” because it is difficult to lead others if you lack knowledge about your own capabilities and challenges. The LDP also has a mentoring programme on the side, and usually students appreciate this a lot, as it gives a more private space to also bring in their own context. Finally, the highlight is usually a simulator where the students are asked to apply some of the lessons learned in a context that is outside of the classroom.  

Since you are based in Denmark, the “Nordic Nine” capabilities framework also plays a key role. Can you explain how these capabilities shape the learning experience for MBA students and how they are applied in real-world business settings? 

AR: The Nordic Nine is CBS’s way to have a consistent framework for capabilities that we expect all graduates to have. This includes things like being able to have fundamental business knowledge but still being able to apply this knowledge in a broad and changing context; or to be competitive but also compassionate and able to reflect on ethical dilemmas. All courses at CBS contribute in different ways to equipping students with these nine capabilities. You can think of it as a platform based on which faculty can discuss how to design and develop a programme. 

Denmark is famously a world leader in sustainability, even among other European countries. How does the programme integrate sustainability across its curriculum and what makes its approach unique? 

AR: We have one larger sustainability course in our core curriculum. Actually, we were one of the first schools to really include this into the core curriculum many years ago, because we believe that sustainability should be more than just an elective on the side. This course gives students the “101” on sustainability. We then also have a so-called “Concentration” that students can choose in order to further specialize on sustainability content. This Concentration includes, for instance, deep dives on sustainable finance, responsible supply chain management, and also corporate governance. A number of other courses in the core curriculum also pick up sustainability discussions (e.g., as case studies), so that the topic is also integrated. What makes all of this unique? I think it is the country and city in which we are placed. We can teach these topics in an authentic way. We can bring in guest speakers from world-leading companies, and we also do field trips to visit some of these companies as part of the core course. 

CBS ranked 57th for ESG and net zero teaching and 83rd for carbon footprint globally. Where do you see business education evolving in these areas and what role does CBS play in shaping the next generation of responsible business leaders? 

AR: Climate change and net zero strategies are part of the teaching, of course. I think this topic is a kind of “given” these days when it comes to business education. You cannot enter business life without at least a basic understanding of scope emissions and possible net zero pathways. We do a lot in this area, and we try to keep students engaged on these debates.

Collaboration with other business schools is a priority at CBS. Can you share more about your work with institutions across Europe and the USA, particularly through initiatives like PRME?

AR: Indeed, CBS has a lot of partner schools and collaborates a lot with schools from all over the world. As our MBA is only one year long and since around 90 per cent of students are non-Danes, we do not offer a formalized exchange programme. But students can opt for a short visit to St. Gallen to experience a course there. We also collaborate with other schools, for instance on case competitions. PRME is a broader platform that is utilized a lot by CBS as a whole, and it helps us to continuously exchange knowledge on best practices in the area of sustainability education. 

The CBS MBA programme can be completed in just one year. How do you successfully condense the learning experience while maintaining the depth and quality of education typically offered in a two-year programme? 

AR: I think it is a lot of about organizing the curriculum in a different way. We have organized the content in blocks, so that courses are less “spread out” throughout an entire term but rather taught in a week or two. We have made positive experiences with this model, as it allows students and teachers to really dive deep into the content and to also build up better relationships. Of course, a one-year MBA means fewer free days for the students, but I think the educational quality is comparable to longer programmes.  

We have made positive experiences with this model, as it allows students and teachers to really dive deep into the content and to also build up better relationships.

Actually, several schools have moved away from the two-year model, as they realize that it is not what students want, because, for instance, the opportunity costs of a two-year education are much higher. In a world where knowledge needs to be updated through life-long learning, I think a one-year MBA is the much more realistic option, if you pair it with knowledge updates in your specific area of expertise throughout your career.  

It’s also been described as a “boutique MBA.” What advantages do smaller class sizes offer compared to larger MBA programmes? 

AR: You learn better when you really know your classmates. If you are part of a cohort of, say, 200 or 300 students, you will only interact with a cluster of students that you define yourself. Our small class size is a deliberate choice because we believe it helps both students and teachers. They can build up much better and lasting relations, and they also need to really think as a cohort when addressing challenges. 

For international candidates, particularly from the U.S., what would you say are the biggest draws of studying at CBS? How does the programme compare to American MBAs? 

AR: The biggest draw is probably the fact that the Copenhagen MBA is embedded into the broader Nordic way of living that you see every day here in Copenhagen. The Nordic countries really differ from the U.S. and other countries in a lot of ways, for instance in terms of the emphasis on collaboration, equality, and trust between different societal actors. This shapes your way of living and business culture, and it also shapes the way we work with students. Many of our students stay in Denmark after their studies precisely because they value these values.  

I do not think that there is “the American MBA”, so it is difficult to make comparisons. But, overall, I would say that we are a programme that puts more emphasis on the interplay between business value and business values. As indicated, this is a natural consequence of our Nordic heritage, and the strong global position of Denmark’s companies in the world economy shows that this approach supports long-term competitiveness. 

What final message would you like to share with prospective MBA candidates about why they should choose CBS for their business education? 

AR: My final advice would be to not just compare programmes themselves when deciding about MBA studies. In the end, it is the environment around the programme that makes the difference, in terms of both the school where you study and the society where you live and maybe later work. I think we strike the right balance between having an excellent programme that is embedded into a leading business school and being an institution that operates in a well-functioning society. I believe this is a very convincing mix. 

Executive profile

Andreas Rasche, Professor and Associate Dean of the Copenhagen Business School Full-Time MBA: A leading expert in corporate sustainability and business ethics, specializes in responsible management and ESG strategies. He plays a key role in advancing research and education on sustainable business practices.

The post Redefining the MBA: Copenhagen Business School’s One-Year Global Programme appeared first on The European Business Review.

Interview with Vanina Farber Dean of Executive MBA at IMD

If you are struggling to find an EMBA program that truly aligns with your own particular circumstances and requirements, how about one that lets you embark on a personalized learning journey? IMD’s Vanina Farber outlines the institution’s highly flexible EMBA offering.

What distinguishes IMD’s Executive MBA program as a leader in delivering high ROI for executives seeking advanced business education?

IMD is a unique business school created by executives who knew that real learning comes from solving real challenges. Our faculty teach and work alongside global companies, bringing current insights and practical problems into each lesson. Every discussion, project, and learning experience is designed for leaders facing real organizational challenges. Our EMBA participants can apply what they learn immediately in their organizations, creating value while they study. With two flexible formats—Elective-Flex and Modular-Flex—leaders can choose how they learn, ensuring that their development aligns with their career demands.

Can you share key features of the new structure of the EMBA program and how it balances flexibility with rigorous personal and professional development?

The Modular-Flex format breaks away from the more rigid, time-bound structure of previous programs. It includes flexible start dates, multiple entry points, and flexible duration. Additionally, participants can choose learning pathways that align with their career stage, professional goals, and personal commitments. Elective-Flex provides more flexibility in terms of content, format, and location, allowing participants to tailor the program to their individual interests through a choice of electives and Global Immersion Weeks. This combination of formats makes the program highly adaptable to individual needs and preferences.

Participants work through real business challenges, manage crisis simulations, and lead transformation projects.

Some key features include:

• Modular design: The program is delivered in several stages, allowing participants to pause and re-enter the program at various points and progress at their own pace. There are also multiple starting points; a variety of programs can serve as a foundation to the EMBA, including the recognition of prior learning in other accredited institutions.
• Flexible delivery options: Courses are offered in a blend of online, on-campus, and international modules. In the Modular-Flex format, participants can, for example, choose to start their learning journey either online or on-campus and, if on campus, in an intensive 3-week introduction, or 1 week followed by online learning. So they really have the freedom to choose what best fits their needs and circumstances.
• Customizable learning paths: Participants can select from multiple electives in the Elective-flex format, with both in-person and online options, and a variety of international destinations for Global Immersion Weeks. This allows each participant to create a personalized learning journey with content that aligns with their interests, development needs, and professional aspirations.

The Mastery Stage includes six intensive weeks. How do these weeks ensure that participants build deep, actionable expertise in key areas such as leadership and crisis management?

The Mastery Stage is part of the Modular-Flex format. It combines intensive learning with practical application. Participants work through real business challenges, manage crisis simulations, and lead transformation projects. Each module builds on the previous one, helping executives develop both the strategic insight and practical skills they need to lead effectively. The spacing of modules allows participants to apply their learning in their own company between sessions, creating immediate impact in their organizations.

Can you share more about the objectives and outcomes of the Global Immersion Weeks? How do these experiences prepare executives for navigating complex international business environments?

Experiential learning is a fundamental part of the program, and the Global Immersion Weeks are a great example of that. They put executives in the middle of different business environments and cultures where they can apply what they’re learning in a context that is different than their own. They work directly with companies facing real challenges, from digital transformations in India, corporate resilience in Japan, entrepreneurship and innovation in Silicon Valley, USA, to social innovation and impact investment in Peru, to name just a few examples. Participants will collaborate with local businesses, challenge their own assumptions and biases, and work together to address current problems, while gaining fresh perspectives on global business dynamics.

With three of the six weeks taking place on the Lausanne campus and the rest globally, how does this blend of locations contribute to a well-rounded executive education experience?

The combination of Lausanne modules and global experiences is a reflection of today’s business world. At our Lausanne campus, executives focus on developing core capabilities and reflecting on their leadership. During Global Immersion Weeks, they apply these skills in different contexts, working with companies and leaders worldwide. This mix helps participants build the versatility needed to lead across cultures and markets. Participants have a choice of destinations and topics for the Global Immersion Weeks so they can select the themes that are most relevant for them. It’s important to note that the curriculum also includes some online modules. This blended learning approach provides a convenient balance for busy executives.

Crisis management is also a unique aspect of the IMD EMBA, especially with the Swiss Armed Forces partnership. What specific leadership skills do participants gain from this unique partnership?

Our crisis management simulation, led by Swiss Armed Forces generals, creates a unique learning environment. It requires a different mindset, which is often counterintuitive for seasoned executives. Participants face high-pressure situations where they must make quick decisions with limited information. They learn when to switch from business-as-usual to crisis mode, how to communicate under pressure with various stakeholders, and how to keep teams focused when stakes are high. These skills prove valuable whether managing corporate crises or navigating market disruptions.

Has IMD started integrating ESG (environmental, social, and governance) principles into the curriculum? Why is this critical for future leaders?

Sustainability and responsible leadership are integrated throughout our program, not treated as separate topics. Participants examine how environmental and social factors affect business strategy, explore sustainable business models, and learn to balance stakeholder interests. Through real projects and cases, they develop practical approaches to embedding ESG principles in business decisions.

How has the program evolved in recent years to address emerging trends and the changing needs of executive leaders?

Innovation in learning is core to IMD’s DNA. Our dedicated learning innovation team constantly develops new ways to enhance executive education, from AI-powered learning tools to immersive simulations. We’ve pioneered the use of technologies like IMD AI+ and virtual reality, while strengthening our hands-on approach through crisis simulations and real-world projects.

Innovation in learning is core to IMD’s DNA. Our dedicated learning innovation team constantly develops new ways to enhance executive education, from AI-powered learning tools to immersive simulations.

We also continuously update our curriculum to address emerging business challenges, from digital transformation to sustainability leadership. Our faculty, actively engaged with global companies, bring current business challenges into every program, ensuring that our learning stays relevant and immediately applicable.

The redesign of the EMBA program is another example of this continuous innovation. This evolution responds to how executive careers have shifted from traditional ladders to more fluid journeys. Throughout all these changes, our focus remains constant: creating immediate impact through practical, relevant learning.

As the Dean of the EMBA program, what is your leadership vision for the program and how do you ensure it remains at the forefront of executive education?

At its core, my vision is about building a program that truly reflects the evolving needs of today’s diverse executive landscape while staying grounded in IMD’s DNA of what I believe is timeless: reflective leadership as the backbone of transformation. To support this continued vision, we’ve designed the EMBA to offer unprecedented agency and flexibility. Executive careers span different cultures, industries, and life circumstances – there’s no one-size-fits-all journey. Our participants deserve the freedom to shape their development around their unique aspirations and realities, whether they’re rising corporates, tech entrepreneurs, established family business leaders, or corporate innovators pivoting their careers.

What excites me most is creating an inclusive, dynamic ecosystem where diverse perspectives enrich the learning experience. The program gives participants access not just to a degree, but to the full power of IMD’s Executive Education offerings, global networks, and partnerships. This is learning without boundaries—where the value extends far beyond the modules, unlocking opportunities to continuously grow and transform alongside a truly global community. To me, this is not just about adapting to the future; it’s about setting a new standard for how management education should empower executives from all backgrounds for whatever lies ahead.

Could you share any standout success stories from recent EMBA graduates, particularly in terms of career advancement or innovative contributions to their industries?

Our alumni create impact in remarkably different ways. Take Taras Panasenko (EMBA 2023), as an example. He is co-founder and CEO of Aurora Multimarket, a retail chain bringing essential goods to communities across Ukraine. When Russia escalated its invasion in 2022, not only did Taras need to pause his EMBA studies, but he was also forced to close 100 stores in occupied territories. The EMBA program had taught him valuable lessons in prioritization and leadership that proved crucial during the crisis. Despite ongoing challenges, Taras has turned adversity into opportunity, expanding Aurora Multimarket into Romania and earning recognition as Forbes Ukraine’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2024. His story shows how leadership skills, combined with resilience, can create impact even in the most challenging circumstances.

Ann-Christin Andersen (EMBA 2013) is bringing fresh perspectives to energy leadership, building on her experience in the EMBA. The EMBA’s personal coaching and direct feedback helped her understand her impact as a leader, particularly valuable as she moved from Chief Digital Officer at TechnipFMC to CEO of Norwegian Energy Partners. Today, she champions diversity in leadership while driving sustainable energy solutions, applying the program’s lessons about balancing different leadership styles and focusing on what matters most.

Hope Murera (EMBA 2002) has transformed insurance in Africa as CEO of ZEP-RE. Drawing on insights from her Silicon Valley Global Immersion experience, she developed innovative solutions for underserved markets. Her team created insurance products protecting smallholder farmers against climate change and pioneered a program helping thousands access home ownership. Hope credits the EMBA’s practical problem-solving approach for changing how she identifies opportunities: “The biggest lesson was creating impact. It’s not just the numbers. And guess what? The numbers follow.”

These stories are just a few of many that demonstrate how our alumni combine EMBA learnings with their experience to create lasting impact – whether navigating crisis, developing innovative solutions for societal challenges, or leading industry transformation.

How does IMD foster a culture of lifelong learning and adaptability among its Executive MBA participants to prepare them for future disruptions?

Learning at IMD extends beyond graduation, thanks to an alumni network active in more than 180 countries. The program’s global network and regular alumni events create ongoing opportunities to exchange ideas and insights. Our approach encourages executives to view challenges as learning opportunities and to constantly seek new perspectives. We also provide continued access to faculty research and executive education programs, helping our alumni stay current as business evolves.

The redesigned IMD EMBA program sets a new standard in executive education by offering a flexible program that adapts to the career trajectories of modern executives. This redesign transforms the EMBA from a time-bound generalist program into a dynamic, evolving ecosystem of continuous learning and growth, empowering executives to stay ahead of future trends, technological advances, and global challenges.

How do you see the role of women in executive leadership evolving? In what ways does IMD empower female executives to drive meaningful change in their organizations?

Traditional EMBA programs often mirror the same structural barriers we see in workplaces: rigid schedules, one-size-fits-all approaches, and hidden assumptions about what a “successful executive” looks like. These barriers have historically affected women executives disproportionately, forcing them to choose between career advancement, family commitments, and leadership development. At IMD, we’ve fundamentally redesigned our program to challenge these constraints.

Our approach extends beyond format to include personalized leadership coaching and tailored career acceleration support.

We recognize that talent doesn’t conform to a single profile or path. That’s why we’ve created multiple flexible pathways, with varied entry points throughout the year, adaptive pacing from 14 to 48 months, and blended learning that combines online modules with focused in-person sessions. This flexibility particularly resonates with women executives, who often navigate complex career transitions while balancing multiple responsibilities.

Our approach extends beyond format to include personalized leadership coaching and tailored career acceleration support. These aren’t add-ons to our program; they’re core features that reflect our belief that the future of business leadership must be more diverse, innovative, and impactful. Diverse cohorts and work environments help enrich discussions, broaden networks, and ultimately prepare leaders who can better address today’s complex business challenges. This isn’t just about gender equity; it’s about developing the kind of adaptable, diverse leadership that organizations need to thrive in an uncertain future.

Learn more about IMD Business School’s EMBA program: imd.org/emba

Executive Profile

Vanina Farber is Professor of Social Innovation and Dean of the IMD EMBA program. She is an award-winning economist and political scientist whose research focuses on innovative, practical, sustainable, and inclusive market-oriented approaches that have the potential to eliminate the root causes of social ills. At IMD, she leads the Center for Social Innovation, which, among other areas of research, explores how the private sector can deploy capital at scale for investments in projects with real social impact, and how private, public sector, and philanthropic investors can collaborate effectively.

The post Business Executive Education: The New Flexible IMD EMBA appeared first on The European Business Review.

Interview with Omar Toulan of IMD

The International Institute for Management Development (IMD) is in first place in Bloomberg Businessweek’s 2024 ranking of European MBA Programs. In this interview with EBR, Omar Toulan, IMD´s MBA Dean, discusses the school´s focus on developing impactful leaders, its dedication to students’ post-MBA success, and its integration of AI in teaching functional business skills and transversal skills.

Good day, Prof. Omar! Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today, especially given your demanding schedule. Congratulations on IMD once again topping the Bloomberg Business School rankings this year! What would you say distinguishes your program from other leading global MBA programs?

Firstly, IMD as an institution is a unique place, founded by business leaders for business leaders. We maintain our close ties to business thanks to our executive programs and advisory work, and our faculty brings that real-world knowledge and experience into the MBA program. So we’re able to adapt it to what the market demands and what recruiters are looking for, keeping it not just current, but future-oriented.

At the core of IMD and the MBA program is our focus on developing leaders who will have an impact. We were one of the first schools to introduce personal coaches 40 years ago. The leadership stream is what really brands IMD.

One of the other things that sets the MBA program apart is our focus on experiential learning, which accounts for approximately 40% of the curriculum. This hands-on approach to learning includes international consulting projects, start-up projects, optional internships, and a new Future Lab module with direct industry interaction. In this way, our students apply what they’re learning, bridging theory with practice.

With next year’s redesign, I am also very excited about our focus on skills-based learning, which is something I think is extremely unique and different from other programs. Skills-based learning ensures our graduates not only excel in the classical functional areas of business but also possess the critical problem-solving and communication skills to adapt to the changing business world.

IMD’s MBA is structured as an intensive 12-month program. What do you see as the main advantages of this shorter format, and how do you support students in maintaining a balance between these rigorous academics and their personal growth?

The leadership focus of the program provides the students with the opportunity to self-reflect in a way traditional programs do not.

A 12-month program brings with it the advantage of being out of the job market for only 1 vs 2 years. That being said, it’s a very intense experience, both academically and personally. The leadership focus of the program, however, provides the students with the opportunity to self-reflect in a way traditional programs do not. Aside from having their own leadership coach, the program also offers 20 hours of psychoanalysis sessions focused on personal development. Students are encouraged to reflect on bigger issues such as: What is really important to them? What kind of environment do they excel most in? Etc.

The program is known for its strong focus on real-world applications. How do you ensure that graduates are equipped to tackle the ever-evolving business challenges they will face in today’s environment?

The world that graduates face today is far more turbulent than 10 or 15 years ago, and evolving at a faster pace. This requires graduates to be agile and adaptable. One of the ways we’re helping our students to prepare for this reality is by not only focusing on functional business skills but also the transversal skills that can be applied across industries and domains. We’ve identified 10 such transversal skills that we think will be essential for students to master in order for them to be prepared for the ever-evolving business challenges of the future:

1. Systems thinking
2. Structured problem solving
3. Pattern recognition
4. Decision making
5. Visioning and scenario planning
6. Divergent and convergent thinking
7. Quantifying strategies
8. Storyboarding and storytelling
9. Asking good questions
10. Strategic presence and presentation

Through a variety of tracking mechanisms, some using AI, we will be able to give students feedback on these skills throughout the year based on existing and additional course material. We want to ensure that students cannot hide in the shadows of a group project without developing these fundamental skills for themselves. By tracking them throughout the curriculum, we’ll be able to identify issues early on and help the student take corrective measures to improve.

Your updated future-oriented MBA curriculum blends renowned leadership development with cutting-edge AI technology and hands-on experiential learning. Can you walk us through how these elements are practically integrated into the program?

As you know, IMD is known for its focus on leadership and all the trainings that go with it. It is the only stream that starts the first week of school and ends the last week. To be an effective leader, however, one must first be able to solve the problem or challenge at hand. As such, the new program has a heightened emphasis on problem solving, as is reflected in the 10 transversal skills described above. The program now kicks off with a new 10-day module on Strategic Thinking and Communication in which these skills are introduced. It will be led by myself, Arnaud Chevallier and one of our most renowned professors Michael Watkins (from The First 90 Days fame). These skills will then be reinforced throughout the year.

AI is embedded in the curriculum both as a topic and as a tool for learning. On the one hand, the tool, our own IMD GPT, will provide students with continuous access to all of IMD’s proprietary knowledge, whether it’s case materials, readings, articles, faculty research, etc., as well as access to the wider internet, so students can ask questions and receive customized responses 24/7 that are most relevant to their own needs, interests and situations; for example: applying a concept from a class discussion to their specific industry. It’s like always having a personal tutor available!

Students also need to learn how to make the most of the tool, which leads me back to the transversal skills I mentioned earlier, such as asking good questions, critically assessing the answer, and drawing the right inferences to formulate effective strategies. As leaders, they will face the challenge of making tough decisions in a data-intensive environment and grappling with the vast amount of information accelerated by Gen AI. Our approach prepares graduates to diagnose problems, critically assess them, come up with recommendations, and succeed in an AI-intensive world.

Students can ask questions and receive customized responses 24/7 that are most relevant to their own needs, interests and situations.

At the same time, we’re placing a greater focus on the human quality of leadership. Leadership has always been at the core of IMD, and while AI may be able to replace certain tasks, given the plethora of information and potential that it provides, leadership becomes even more important. An effective leader is someone who can make difficult decisions, and then get others to follow that decision. So the skills we’re focusing on are, firstly, to help students make those decisions, and secondly, to improve their ability to communicate and effectively implement that decision.

Beyond AI, could you share some other key updates and innovations for the upcoming relaunch? How will these changes enhance the overall student experience?

One key change is the introduction of the Future Lab, a one-month residency module in Singapore, which is an excellent destination for our students on many levels: as a gateway to Asia, a crossroad of cultures, and a technology hub for both the private and public sectors. During this immersive experience, we’ll focus on topics such as AI, digital transformation, and digital analytics, and do a deep dive into the power of technology. Singapore is consistently ranked one of the top countries in the world in terms of government infrastructure and innovation, so it’s a great test site to explore the synergies between the public and private sectors and see how the government can leverage technology for the betterment of society.

Another change is giving the students a choice between electives to customize their learning journey, or a summer internship for additional real-world experience. This option serves as an additional practical bridge to the professional world and helps them to be even better prepared for the job market. To further enhance the career experience, the program also now kicks off with an intense week of career training in January.

The Career Development Center (CDC) is critical in shaping students’ futures. Can you delve into the personalized career services IMD offers and how these services contribute to the post-MBA success of your graduates?

One of the key advantages of having a highly selective small cohort is that our CDC can acquaint themselves with each individual. This starts during the admissions process, with our CDC being involved in discussing student career aspirations and identifying individual challenges before students arrive on campus. Once here, students are assigned an initial coach, and during the program, an alumni mentor specific to their preferred employment outcome.

With an emphasis on personalized coaching and career counseling, how does IMD support students in crafting unique, individualized career strategies?

For us, each student journey is unique with individual opportunities and challenges. We ensure resources are in place to provide the support each student needs, complementing our in-house resources with external insight and expertise where required. As the majority of our students are competing for senior roles in the lateral hiring market, we tailor our offer to their bespoke needs.

IMD provides students with various global opportunities, including the immersive month at the Future Lab in Singapore. Could you elaborate on the significance of this experience and how it prepares students for global careers?

The immersive 1-month Future Lab in Singapore will help students expand their global awareness and deepen their understanding of how technology is changing how we do business. Aside from courses on AI, Digital Transformation, and Ecosystems, students will also engage with companies in one of the world’s most innovative technology hubs. They will experience firsthand how the private and public sectors can work together to the benefit of both. Thanks to IMD’s extensive alumni network in the region, students will be able to meet business leaders and visit leading global companies to see how technology is transforming business and society.

On the topic of opportunities, how do IMD’s extensive alumni network and global partnerships contribute to students’ career development and support their goals?

Our alumni are highly supportive of our students as they remember how alumni once helped them. The community is passionate about helping one another. Alumni are involved in 1:1 mentoring, alumni talks and panels, referring students within their organizations and, of course, identifying career opportunities. The cohesiveness of the students while they are here translates into a very engaged alumni community. I went to big US schools for my education where at our reunions we would receive 20-30% of students coming back. For us, it is not uncommon to have 50-60% of the class return.

What advice would you give to prospective students who are evaluating whether the IMD MBA is the right fit for them?

Come and visit us. Join a class, speak with current students, and experience for yourself what it’s like to be part of the IMD community. If you can’t make it in person, join one of our online events, or contact our Admissions team who will be happy to put you in contact with  students or alumni.

Looking ahead, what do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities facing MBA students over the next five years? How is IMD preparing its students to navigate these?

AI is having a fundamental transformative effect on organizations. It is changing how we work and what we do. Students need to develop a mentality to view these changes as opportunities rather than just challenges.

Overall, the biggest challenges and opportunities MBAs will face in the coming years have to do with the increased volatility and pace of change we are witnessing. As we have discussed, AI is having a fundamental transformative effect on organizations. It is changing how we work and what we do. Students need to develop a mentality to view these changes as opportunities rather than just challenges. The same goes for economic and political volatility. People will need to be more resilient and agile in reacting to these different forms of environmental volatility.

And lastly, as the Dean of such a prestigious MBA program, how would you personally define success—both for the program and for its students?

For me, success as a program is to develop leaders who will have an impact not only on organizations but also on society as a whole. While one can always identify short-term metrics, for me what is important is providing a transformational experience that will help students to not only develop a better understanding of themselves but also how they can make a lasting impact.

Learn more about IMD Business School’s MBA program: imd.org/degree/mba/

Executive Profile

Omar Toulan is Professor of Strategy and International Management, MBA Dean and Hilti Chair. His areas of expertise include strategic and international management, geopolitical and country risk, and growth strategies. His research has appeared in a variety of academic and practitioner-oriented journals, including Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of International Business Studies, and California Management Review. Before joining IMD, he spent two decades at McGill University in Canada where he was a tenured professor and served as Associate Dean Academic and Masters Programs. Prior to entering academia, he worked as a management consultant for McKinsey and Company in its New York and Washington, D.C. offices. He also worked as a researcher at the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Professor Toulan received his PhD in Strategy from the Sloan School of Management at MIT and his undergraduate degree in international economics from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

The post Leadership Development with AI: IMD’s Updated Future-Oriented MBA Curriculum appeared first on The European Business Review.

Since its launch in 2002, the Sabancı University Executive Education Unit (EDU) has progressively climbed the ranks among institutions providing solid and integrative executive education. In this interview with EBR, Gonca Borerkci Baybas, the university director, discusses EDU´s globally relevant program, its research-ready faculty, and its rise from the 78th to 34th place in the Financial Times Custom Programs ranking in six short years!

Good day, Mrs Baybas! We’re grateful for the opportunity to meet with you today. Can we begin with a few words on how your journey with Sabanci University started?  

Sabancı University was established in 1994 with the vision of becoming a global university and welcomed its first students in 1999. Our university’s mission is to educate capable and confident individuals on national and international levels while contributing to knowledge and research in natural sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities, and management. Sabancı University Executive Education Unit- EDU was launched in July 2002 to bridge the gap between the business world and academia. Since then, as the leading institution among universities providing Executive Development Programs in Turkey, EDU has supported many leading organizations in Turkey on their development journeys. EDU’s global recognition continues to grow each year.  

Sabanci University has a distinctive educational approach that merges practical and theoretical knowledge. Could you provide some examples of how this approach has benefited your Executive Development Unit? 

This distinctive educational approach of Sabancı University greatly enhances the effectiveness of EDU’s programs by integrating research with industry insights, fostering collaborative learning and customizing content we ensure that our executive programs deliver meaningful, actionable, and long-lasting benefits to both individuals and organizations. 

Our faculty members are actively engaged in pioneering research across various fields, and this research often shapes the content and structure of our executive programs. For instance, when designing a leadership development program, we incorporate the latest findings on organizational behavior and leadership theories, while simultaneously enriching the content from current industry challenges and trends. This fusion ensures that our participants gain a deep understanding of theoretical concepts while also learning how to apply them in practical, everyday scenarios within their organizations. 

Our approach also gives room for partnering with industry practitioners to co-create content, design case studies, and conduct workshops. This collaboration ensures that our programs reflect the latest industry practices and challenges. For example, in a program focused on energy management, we worked closely with an energy tech company to develop case studies and invite guest speakers from public and private corporations’ energy management professionals. With these sessions, participants not only learn about energy management but also gain insights through experience sharing of real-life problems and scenarios. 

How does Sabanci University EDU ensure its programs remain relevant and aligned with the evolving needs of the business world? 

Yes, we must ensure our programs remain relevant and aligned with the evolving needs of the business world.  

By fostering strategic partnerships and collaborations, we gain valuable insights into industry needs and emerging trends.

First of all, our faculty members -either academic or professional – actively engage in industry-specific research and projects, and we leverage insights from thought leaders, market reports, and sector analyses. All this work strengthens the design and content of our programs, ensuring they address current and anticipated business needs. For example, a recent program on artificial intelligence was developed in response to growing industry demands and technological advancements, incorporating the latest developments and best practices. 

Also, EDU maintains strong connections with leading organizations, corporations, industry experts, and professional organizations. By fostering strategic partnerships and collaborations, we gain valuable insights into industry needs and emerging trends.  

One remarkable point worth mentioning here is our membership in the University-Based Executive Education Consortium (UNICON). UNICON is a global consortium of business‐school‐based executive education organizations including prestigious universities such as Harvard, INSEAD, London School of Economics, IMD, and Columbia. This membership allows us to participate in a comprehensive exchange of knowledge and experience in executive development programs with schools worldwide. We use the insights gained from this exchange to develop innovative programs and create content on the prevailing topics using the most current methods and hence, stay abreast of global trends in executive education. 

In addition, EDU consults with advisory boards and expert panels composed of leading professionals, academics, and industry veterans. These boards provide strategic guidance and insights on curriculum development, program design, and industry relevance.  

Our program design process is inherently agile, allowing us to respond quickly to changes in the business environment and feedback coming from the customers. We use flexible and adaptive methodologies to develop and update program content.

Our program design process is inherently agile, allowing us to respond quickly to changes in the business environment and feedback coming from the customers. We use flexible and adaptive methodologies to develop and update program content. This agility is reflected in our ability to introduce new modules, update case studies, and integrate emerging topics on short notice. For example, when the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need for remote leadership skills, we swiftly incorporated virtual collaboration tools and remote management strategies into our programs. 

Last but not least, we prioritize identifying and incorporating emerging skills and competencies that are becoming increasingly important in the business world. Through consultations with industry leaders and analysis of future workforce trends, we ensure that our programs address skills such as digital literacy, innovation management, and cross-cultural communication.  

What are some of the most successful programs offered by EDU, and what distinguishes them from other executive education offerings in the market? 

Embracing the University’s cross-disciplinary approach, EDU was founded as an exec-ed unit equally distant to each Faculty at Sabancı University so that interdisciplinary and interfaculty programs are designed and executed. EDU has a wide range of highly successful programs with such an interdisciplinary and interfaculty approach including management, social sciences and engineering.  

For example, our outstanding programs address contemporary topics such as innovation and entrepreneurship, sustainability, technology, data analytics, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, new-generation leadership, diversity & inclusion.  

All our programs are designed with a focus on practical application, ensuring that participants can directly translate their learning into actionable strategies within their organizations. We incorporate the latest trends, technologies, and research findings into our programs, keeping our content relevant and forward-looking. We include interactive learning tools through workshops, simulations, and real-world case studies, allowing participants to engage deeply with the material and develop practical skills. Also, we bring together a diverse team of expert faculty and industry leaders to provide participants with insights from both academic and practical perspectives. During the implementation period, we follow our participants closely with an experienced operations team and follow every feedback to ensure a smooth and efficient learning journey in which the learning outcomes are fully achieved.   

Could you discuss the role of local values in the design and delivery of these programs? How are they integrated with global perspectives? 

We tailor our program content to reflect the local values, traditions, and business practices of the region in which our participants operate. This contextualization ensures that the learning experience is relevant and resonates with participants’ everyday experiences. For instance, when designing a program for Turkish executives, we incorporate local case studies, examples, and business scenarios that reflect the unique economic and cultural landscape of Turkey. This approach not only makes the content more relatable but also provides practical insights that participants can directly apply to their organizations. 

While incorporating local values, we ensure that our programs are grounded in global best practices and frameworks. We achieve this by blending internationally recognized theories and methodologies with localized content.

While incorporating local values, we ensure that our programs are grounded in global best practices and frameworks. We achieve this by blending internationally recognized theories and methodologies with localized content. For example, our leadership programs might use global leadership models and competencies but adapt them to reflect local leadership styles and cultural nuances. This approach helps participants understand and apply global concepts in a manner that is consistent with their local context. 

We facilitate cross-cultural exchange and learning by creating opportunities for participants to engage with peers from different countries and cultural backgrounds. This interaction helps to broaden their perspectives and appreciate diverse viewpoints.  

The university has made significant strides in the Financial Times rankings, climbing to 34th place in 2024. What do you believe were the key factors that contributed to this achievement? 

Rankings are not only significant indicators regarding our success in the executive education field but also an important factor that keeps the bar high for all of us at EDU.   

We were ranked 78th in 2018 being the first and only school that made it to the list from Turkey, moreover, the only school in our close geographic region. Ever since, we have been rising, making it to the 34th school on the list among very reputable and well-known institutions.  

The key factor that contributed to this achievement would be our philosophy and approach to learning. We don’t see it as training on a specific competency or topic but as a holistic learning journey. This journey includes academy and industry partnerships and co-creation, bringing together local and global perspectives, the newest learning methodologies, continuous improvement of tools and techniques; and meticulous implementation as I mentioned before.  

As the first institution from Turkey to be included in these rankings, what does this accomplishment mean for Sabanci University and the broader Turkish education sector? 

Being ranked 34th in the Financial Times Custom Programs ranking is a significant and prestigious achievement for EDU. As the first and only institution from Turkey to be included in these internationally renowned rankings, this accomplishment carries profound implications for both Sabancı University and the broader Turkish education sector. 

Being ranked 34th in the Financial Times Custom Programs ranking is a significant and prestigious achievement for EDU.

This ranking serves as a testament to the exceptional quality and impact of EDU’s custom programs. It highlights our commitment to delivering world-class executive education that meets the highest international standards. Achieving a place on this list confirms that our programs are recognized globally for their excellence in design, delivery, and outcomes. 

For Sabancı University, this ranking significantly enhances our global reputation. Being featured in the Financial Times rankings places us alongside some of the world’s leading educational institutions and reinforces our position as a prominent player in the global executive education landscape. This also enhances our attractiveness to international partners, collaborators, and faculty. It opens doors for new partnerships with global institutions, businesses, and industry leaders, enriching our programs with diverse perspectives and expertise.  

This achievement is not only a milestone for Sabancı University but also a source of inspiration for the Turkish education sector as a whole. It demonstrates that Turkish institutions can compete at the highest levels of global education and highlights the potential for other Turkish universities and programs to gain international recognition. It fosters a sense of pride and encourages further innovation and excellence within the sector. 

The inclusion of a Turkish institution in such a prestigious ranking highlights Turkey’s growing influence and potential in the global education arena. It reflects the country’s capacity to produce high-quality educational programs and contributes to Turkey’s reputation as a center of academic and intellectual excellence. 

What challenges and opportunities have you encountered in bringing these programs to a global audience? 

For over 20 years since our establishment, we have successfully developed and delivered professional management programs for employees of numerous national and international companies in Turkey. 

It is only in the past few years that we have fully committed our energy, resources, and dedication to taking our successful programs beyond our borders. Surely, this renewed focus on international expansion presents both challenges and opportunities. 

Understanding and integrating different cultural and corporate contexts into our programs requires a deep and subtle approach. Additionally, navigating various international regulations and establishing strong local partnerships has been crucial to our success. Developing the right partnerships remains a crucial aspect of our strategy. Identifying and aligning with organizations that share our values and dedication to quality has been particularly challenging. 

On the opportunity side, the potential to reach a broader audience of professionals worldwide offers significant benefits. By bringing our executive education programs to an international audience, we can contribute to the development of global leadership and management skills. This expansion also allows us to leverage our expertise and reputation to create new strategic partnerships and collaborations across different regions. We are confident that our recent achievements in Financial Times rankings and membership in the University Based Consortium for Executive Education-UNICON further demonstrate the potential of these opportunities.  

Our focus on international growth is driven by the desire to enhance the quality of executive education on a global scale and to provide professionals everywhere with innovative and effective management training solutions.  

How does EDU adapt its executive development programs to meet the needs of diverse international markets, particularly in terms of cultural and business differences? 

We conduct thorough market research and analysis to understand the specific needs and expectations of different regions. This involves engaging with local business leaders, industry experts, and stakeholders to gain insights into regional challenges, opportunities, and cultural nuances. Additionally, we collaborate with local experts and partners to ensure that our programs are informed by on-the-ground knowledge and perspectives. This helps us to bridge any cultural gaps and enhance the effectiveness of our training.  

Secondly, we tailor our programs to align with the unique business practices and cultural contexts of each market. This may include customizing content to reflect local industry standards, regulatory environments, and business strategies. We also integrate country/region-specific case studies, examples, and scenarios into our curriculum to make the learning experience more relevant and impactful for participants.  

Finally, we continuously gather feedback from international participants and adjust our programs accordingly. This iterative process allows us to refine our offerings and maintain a high level of relevance and quality across different markets.  

What can we expect next from Sabanci University, Executive Development Unit? 

Our rise continues. We aim to enter the top 20 of the FT Custom global rankings and to achieve a strong position in the global rankings for Open Programs as well.  

We will certainly further enhance our achievements in the international arena and become a global reference point for the business world and professionals.  

Executive Profile

After earning her Bachelor of Business Administration and MBA degrees, Gonca Börekçi Baybaş began her career as an auditor at Deloitte in 1988. Over the course of more than a decade, she held various roles across different organizations. From 1994 to 1998, she served as an instructor at Bilkent University, where she also took on administrative responsibilities. Börekçi Baybaş pursued her PhD in “Management and Organization” at Sabancı Business School, joining the University at its establishment. With over 20 years of experience in professional development and executive education, she currently serves as the Director of the Executive Development Unit (EDU) at Sabancı University.

The post Sabanci University: Delivering World-Class Executive Education through EDU appeared first on The European Business Review.

In this insightful interview with Dean Kamran Razmdoost, Dean of ESCP Business School‘s London Campus, we delve into the dynamic evolution of one of Europe’s leading business schools. From substantial growth in student numbers and global recognition to groundbreaking sustainability efforts, Dean Razmdoost shares the initiatives shaping the school’s future. He also reflects on the unique position of the London Campus within ESCP’s multi-campus framework, the importance of inclusive leadership, and the vision for driving impactful change through business education. 

Your journey with ESCP Business School began in 2017, and you became Dean of the London Campus in 2021. Can you share some key milestones or initiatives that have defined your leadership so far? 

Overall, the past few years have been very successful but one of the key highlights for me has been the growth of the London Campus. We’ve had around 70% growth in just five years, from 700 students in 2019/20 to 1,200 in 2024/25 and, crucially, we have also managed to improve student satisfaction year-on-year during that period. 

We have also consistently appeared in the top rankings for business schools, whether it’s through ESCP’s multi-campus programmes like the Master in Management, Master in Finance and Executive MBA, or programmes specific to the London campus like our MSc in Marketing & Creativity.  

At the London Campus, our individual-centric approach places stakeholders, including students, employees, and partners, at the core of our services to enhance educational experiences and community alignment.

The most important milestone has been obtaining UK Degree Awarding Powers. All students through the London campus will get an additional UK degree upon graduation, allowing them to graduate with at least two internationally recognised degrees. This is an important step towards ESCP’s deeper integration within the UK’s academic and business ecosystem. Over the years, only a few international institutions have successfully obtained UK Degree Awarding Powers. We are proud to be one of the first European institutions to pass this threshold. 

We have also reinforced our sustainability commitment by integrating sustainability modules and practical projects into all taught programmes. In London, collaborations with Climate Fresk, Climate Essentials, Better Futures+, Think and Do Camden, and Sulitest TASK, alongside in-depth training with AXA Climate School, ensure that 100% of students and staff can be trained on global environmental and social challenges.   

The London Campus is one of ESCP’s six urban campuses across Europe. What makes the London Campus unique and what is its role in ESCP’s growing international presence? 

Being embedded in the UK business and academic ecosystem is a big advantage for the London Campus. London, and indeed the UK, is strong across multiple industries that ESCP is trying to build and establish expertise in. From banking and investment to luxury and consultancy, London’s business sector provides an ideal platform for our students’ growth and academic development. 

At the London Campus, our individual-centric approach places stakeholders, including students, employees, and partners, at the core of our services to enhance educational experiences and community alignment. 

There is also a multidisciplinary element —our ambidextrous mindset — where we balance disciplines or ideas that haven’t traditionally gone together. You see it in our programmes like the MSc in Digital Transformation Management & Leadership, focused on advancing technology and human collaboration, and our MSc in Marketing & Creativity, which includes both analytics and creativity. 

We have developed an agile culture focused on adaptability and innovation. We respond swiftly to changes, addressing complex challenges to find best solutions for stakeholders. This is specifically demonstrated in the fully customised executive education programmes we offer to clients. 

At the same time, although we have our unique strengths, we are also lucky to receive many ideas and improvements from our sister campuses across Europe. 

The “C-Suite Talk Series: The European Way” podcast that you host explores European values in leadership. What inspired you to start this series, and what key messages do you hope to convey through it? 

Traditional leadership approaches don’t work as well as they used to. New generations require a different type of leader, someone who inspires and will work with them. They want to see themselves in their leader rather than simply following them.  

So, with The European Way, we’ve been thinking about a more democratic and distributed leadership concept. We started this series to really explore that and what it means. We bring in leaders who are breaking boundaries in different ways, but the core message is that we want leaders who are not hierarchical but authentic, who inspire and who lead through collaboration. 

In your podcast series, you emphasize a leadership approach that is collaborative, humble, and authentic. How do you see this approach influencing future business leaders, particularly in the European context? 

There is a strong demand for this kind of leadership in the business marketplace. Humility is a priority for new generations of employees. They are not interested in hierarchy and want to build relationships with their leaders. It’s important that those leaders are humble and treat mistakes as a learning experience, that they open their leadership style so that everyone feels they have a voice. 

People also require authenticity because they want to believe in what they do and associate meaning to it, and not just see work as something that is commanded on them. Another characteristic I would add to that list is mindfulness. At ESCP, we talk about inclusive leadership a lot. We define this as making sure that you are addressing everyone at the same level in every situation, that you are managing your biases and are aware of them. That requires a strong level of mindfulness. 

You are a passionate advocate of inclusive leadership practices. Can you tell us about how you incorporate these practices into teaching at ESCP and what impact do you hope this will have on your students and beyond? 

Educating students on inclusive leadership is difficult because it’s not only about knowledge. The knowledge part is easy thanks to our amazing professors. Our teaching is strong in this area, and we are creating a new institute on inclusive leadership to solidify our position as a leading advocate of these practices. 

Beyond knowledge, inclusive leadership is about mindset. To achieve that mindset, students need to practice it daily. At ESCP, we have created a platform for students to do that. Whether they are working together, interacting with professors, applying for jobs, or chairing meetings, we encourage them to treat every situation as an opportunity to practice inclusive leadership. 

This is a key part of their education and prepares them for difficult situations in future in which they probably won’t have time to experiment. The role of business schools is to create more opportunities for students to practice what they learn about inclusivity and other aspects of leadership so that they are confident applying them in the business world. 

ESCP Business School is renowned as the world’s first business school, with a rich history dating back to 1819. How does the legacy of ESCP influence the school’s approach to modern business education? 

Although it’s been more than 200 years since the School was established by a group of entrepreneurs, that entrepreneurial mindset is still a key pillar of education here. You can see the legacy directly in the Jean-Baptiste Say Institute (named after our Founder), dedicated to teaching about entrepreneurship, as well as in Blue Factory, our start-up incubator and accelerator across all our campuses.  

Most importantly, ESCP was founded by practitioners who wanted to connect business education to what was going on in the world in practice. That is why a highly practical approach has always been a core part of our education. We build strong relationships with corporates and companies, and all our taught programmes have integrated internships, company projects and consultancy elements. This practical approach, beyond just MBAs where you would expect this, makes the ESCP experience truly unique. 

ESCP Business School enables its students to have a truly international education across multiple campuses. Why is this such an important part of an education at ESCP and what are the benefits a multi-campus experience brings to your students? 

A key advantage of ESCP being a multi-campus school is that our students are exposed to multiple cultures. All our students study in at least two and up to four different countries during their degree, spending at least a semester at each location. This allows them to fully immerse into a new culture, while gaining practical experience and a nuanced understanding of how different cultures influence business operations. It encourages them to question any assumptions and biases that they may have and break down those mental boundaries.  

A key advantage of ESCP being a multi-campus school is that our students are exposed to multiple cultures. All our students study in at least two and up to four different countries during their degree, spending at least a semester at each location.

It also means our students have a more global perspective on economic, social, ecological, and technological transformations and can easily work in a multicultural environment with people from different backgrounds. This sort of open-mindedness, adaptability and multicultural insight into business practices and industry trends gives them a considerable advantage when joining global companies. 

Students benefit from the wide range of expertise they are exposed to at our campuses, each with its own unique specialisations, faculty members and business ecosystems. They also benefit from our European Careers Centre, which provides students with extended access to services in the UK, France, Italy, Spain, and Germany, regardless of their teaching campus. 

The London campus has seen significant growth, from 700 students in 2019 to 1,200 in 2024. What factors do you attribute to this rapid expansion, and what are your plans for the campus? 

We are very proud of the growth of the London Campus, which aligns with the overall ESCP growth. This comes down to a range of factors, including our business model strength, reputation, and the success of our students and alumni.  

Another engine of growth is our commitment to innovate and our unique programmes. For example, our BSc programme, where students study and live in a different country every year, attracts talent from across the globe. It’s a new way of studying that is particularly appealing to students wanting to challenge themselves. Our forward-thinking approach also draws in a wide range of faculty, enabling us to offer even more innovative programmes not only in terms of BScs and MScs, but Executive Education and Custom programmes too. 

Our business model at both the Federal and local levels is strong and ensures that our campuses are defined by cutting-edge facilities. ESCP plans to expand and continue to grow over the next five years. In London, our goal is to reach 1,500 students by 2030. This growth will be fuelled by a combination of both planned portfolio diversification and the natural demand and growth of existing programmes. 

ESCP Business School consistently ranks highly in global rankings. What do you believe sets ESCP apart from other top business schools, particularly in terms of its academic offerings? 

Multiple things set us apart. Partly, it’s down to the factors I mentioned earlier like the success of our alumni, our commitment to innovation, practical approach, the benefits of student mobility, and our high-quality business education offering, but another key factor is the diversity of ESCP Business School as a whole.  

Our student body is very diverse in terms of gender, nationality, even socio-economic background. In London, for example, we don’t have a dominant nationality on campus across students or staff. We also have one of the most diverse faculties in the world, which is valued by ranking organisations. 

As ESCP continues to lead in business education, how do you see the school evolving over the next decade, particularly in response to emerging trends in management and leadership? 

We are committed to being a business school that helps society tackle big issues. Whether it’s around geopolitics, economic inequality, rapid technological advancements, sustainability or social impact, we actively try to consolidate our research and maximise impact across our campuses to help address these unprecedented challenges.  

At the London Campus, this commitment already translates to social impact and community engagement. We have launched a scholarship initiative for our Bachelor in Management programme to support Camden-based students who demonstrate both merit and financial need, and will continue collaborating with local organisations such as One Kilburn and Camden Council, to enhance our local impact and share our expertise.            

Our faculty has seen a significant increase in impact-related research activities. Driven by ESCP’s €5m investment in five accelerators for impact research in Inclusive Leadership, Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Geopolitics & Business, Technology, and Sustainability, our focus for the decade ahead is to navigate these turbulent times and build a more sustainable and resilient future, inspiring positive change in Europe and beyond. 

Executive Profile 

Kamran Razmdoost is Dean of ESCP Business School in London. He is also the Director of the School’s Corporate Services Board, responsible for executive education provision to leading multinational businesses. Prior to joining ESCP, he was a Lecturer at University College London and completed his PhD at Cranfield School of Management. 

The post Innovating Education: The Strategic Leadership Behind ESCP Business School’s Success appeared first on The European Business Review.

In this interview with EBR, Daniella Laureiro-Martinez of the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics at ETH Zürich, discusses the emba X program, ETH Zurich’s and the University of St.Gallen’s  Executive MBA program, and its efforts to equip today’s leaders with the skills to navigate complex challenges and inspire meaningful impact. 

Dr. Laureiro Martinez, you have an impressive background in cognitive science, decision-making, and adaptive leadership. Could you share what initially drew you to the field of cognitive flexibility and leadership?  

It is hard to pinpoint exactly one motivating reason. I recall having an admiration for people who show versatility and adapt when their world changes drastically, even when their world crumbles. I recall feeling curious about that from an early age. As my professional career progressed in industry, I made space and had the privilege- to explore my curiosity in a structured manner, and thus did my PhD in this area. 

Your career spans academia and practical consulting. How has your experience in business and government consulting influenced your approach to research and teaching? 

To continuously adapt, leaders need to help their organizations explore new opportunities and exploit good ones.

As a young consultant, I got to work long hours in close proximity to leaders of a multitude of very different organizations. They were often the founders, the successors to the founders, or the CEOs, and I worked with profit, non-profit, and government. The projects were intense and I could closely observe the behaviors of each of these leaders, almost “shadowing” them, but also switching enough as not to be too embedded into any single organization, but rather be able to go in and out, and learn from many of them. Those experiences left an imprint on me and my mind often goes back to those years.  

Your research emphasizes cognitive control, attention, and adaptability in decision-making. How do you see these cognitive abilities impacting leadership effectiveness in dynamic business environments?  

Luck might help adapt once to environmental change. However, in the mid and long term, adapting once is not sufficient because change pervades. To continuously adapt, leaders need to help their organizations explore new opportunities and exploit good ones. This requires a combination of attention control and routinization. These are two cornerstones of my work and that of our group. 

The emba X program aims to shape leaders who are both socially responsible and technologically savvy. How does the program empower participants to blend ethical leadership with cutting-edge technology to drive transformative change in their organizations and communities? 

I think that the responsible take on being tech-savvy is embedded into the learning objectives of the entire program. In my own teaching and coaching, we encourage each participant to depart from improving their understanding in order to better know what they have, what they want to consolidate, acquire, and get rid of to be a better leader of themselves, their organizations, and ultimately, to have a better impact. In my courses, we start from ourselves: our own abilities (for example attention control, our own personality, our values and beliefs). If I better know what I have and what I want, I depart from a better place to act consistently with my own goals and values. Other courses focus on complementary aspects. For example, I can know well what I have and what I want in terms of my own abilities to lead, but I also have to know well what a certain technology might cause, not only in terms of tech efficiency, but in terms of environmental impact, of social impact, and not think only of what we see here and now, but also what might happen down the road. My courses take the individual abilities behind such thinking processes. For example, do I have the empathy needed to make such assessments about others? Do I have a future perspective? The foresight ability? When taken together as a program, looking at the learning journey that we have designed in the emba X program, participants can put together these new pieces of knowledge and adjust them to their specific environments, their work needs, and their personal lives and this, I believe, can help them make better decisions. 

With its emphasis on holistic development, the emba X program addresses self-leadership, team dynamics, and integrative leadership. How does the program use innovative approaches and experiential learning to foster profound personal growth and equip leaders with the skills to navigate complex challenges and inspire meaningful impact? 

We truly focus on the participants’ own learning journeys. Everyone’s path is different: everyone starts from a different place, with different individual personalities, abilities, and goals. The courses offer some foundational topics and training on abilities. Many are organized as active interventions, where each person takes what they need, even the level of difficulty depends on where one stands, and how much one wants to improve on that specific aspect. The experiential learning aspect derives from this: your goals are relevant to yourself as a participant in your daily life – we have learning goals to achieve with the courses, of course, but your goals as a participant automatically make the program your own experience.  

The executive education sector has seen significant changes recently, particularly with the rise of digital learning platforms. How do you see these trends impacting traditional executive education programs?  

I see these new platforms as tools to enrich our toolkit, and to hopefully enrich our experiential learning, involving more senses, and more ways to acquire and store information. I see big opportunities and feel curious to explore new ways. That said, I also see that sometimes a blank piece of paper paired with a sharpened pencil and a sharp curious mind are more than enough tools to facilitate reflection and learning. 

What role does cognitive flexibility play in the emba X program, and how do you incorporate this concept into the course design and delivery? 

Cognitive flexibility is a foundational ability, one that guides and supports our entire thinking, and thus problem-solving, foresight, creativity, etc.

Cognitive flexibility is a foundational ability, one that guides and supports our entire thinking, and thus problem-solving, foresight, creativity, etc. Understanding that it is such a foundational ability, we have a dedicated course to its measurement and training, and we have placed this course very early in the program. In turn, this course is connected with other courses, and as Faculty, we make an effort to highlight these connections, so that participants can cumulatively build on their knowledge about their own cognitive flexibility, and find ways to deploy it. For example, Faculty colleagues refer to it when teaching creativity, integrative complexity, in individual projects, and in the final closing weeks. 

How does the synergy between ETH Zurich’s technology focus and the University of St.Gallen’s leadership expertise in the emba X program create a unified experience that equips leaders for today’s challenges?  

This is more for the participants to answer. From my side, I can speak more about the intention, to bring the excellence of the two institutions into a rigorous program that tries to respond to the current needs from our leaders while anticipating what could be their future needs too.  

Looking ahead, what are the next big questions or areas of research you plan to explore in the realm of cognitive flexibility and adaptive behavior, and how might these influence future executive education?  

There is so much work to do on this. Generally, in our group, we want to provide solid evidence to our trainings, so we are investigating some foundational abilities in two main areas: cognitive flexibility, and multiple-goal integration. We are a multi-disciplinary group, and we want to really understand the components of these abilities, all the way from the brain functioning, to what impact they have in organizations. With that, we then want to have more solid evidence on how to train these abilities.   

Providing evidence is a hard task, but with resources and effort, certainly doable. Solid evidence is a different story: there are many moving parts when we study human behavior in real organizational settings. We are complex beings that operate in multifaceted organizations and the myriad of variables that we need to understand in order to decide whether we need to prioritize them in our research or not is not short. In addition, we are exploring new grounds, so we can rarely rely on existing data, but in most cases, we have to collect it ourselves. And much of the data we rely on comes from samples of participants who are not easily available (like the leaders of our emba X program, for example!). So in all, working on these two foundational abilities keeps us rather busy!  

Executive Profile

Daniella Laureiro-Martinez works at ETH Zurich in the Technology and Innovation Management Group. She leads the Cognition, Learning, and Adaptive Behavior Group (COLAB), an internationally recognized lab that investigates how individuals change and adapt, and how they lead organizations in adjusting to change and generating innovation. 

The post Cognitive Abilities and Adaptive Leadership: How the emba X Program Empowers Leaders with Cognitive Flexibility and Better Decision Making, Leveraging Technology appeared first on The European Business Review.

What was 2023 like for you?

They say that “time flies when you’re having fun” and this truly represents last year for me. In 2023, we saw organisations across various sectors rebounding from the COVID-19 pandemic and we’re starting to see positive progress.

It’s been wonderful to witness the steady return of executives from across the globe to our campus at The Shard. This shift back to the classroom and witnessing colleagues, friends, and participants returning has been invigorating and it’s great to see the resurgence of face-to-face interactions and business activities.

In “The five paradoxes leaders need to embrace in the 2020s”, you mentioned that leaders don’t like paradoxes because it creates uncertainty. Does this belief still hold true for you today? 

Yes, completely. I think that, although we’re seeing recovery from the pandemic, we’re still living in extreme, ambiguous, and volatile environments. My belief is that the business environment is becoming more uncertain than ever and, of course, that creates a lot of headaches for leaders. So, leaders have to embrace a paradox mindset. This is a one-way street. The paradox mindset will enable leaders to embrace uncertainty, rather than work against it. This will enable leaders to become more relevant and add value in what they do for themselves, their groups, their organisations, and society at large. Simply put, a paradox is the result of two imperatives or realities that don’t seem to be able to coexist at the same time.

Leaders have to embrace a paradox mindset. This is a one-way street. The paradox mindset will enable leaders to embrace uncertainty, rather than work against it.

Our research suggests that leaders struggle with the urge to push towards both realities simultaneously and, in paradox language, we refer to the ends of the paradox as the poles. Business leaders deal with paradoxes all the time. For instance, should leaders support stability or change within the organisation? Should they tailor their goods and services to suit the needs of the community? Or should they develop globally standardised goods and services? Which should they prioritise: increasing operational efficiency or funding R&D and innovation? The issue, of course, is that selecting one side of the paradox exposes them to the drawbacks of the other. Businesses that fully embrace change run the risk of ruining their human capital resources and burning out their workforce. However, businesses that completely embrace stability might not be able to adjust to the way the external environment is changing.

Proficient leaders acquire the ability to embrace both business ends. So, to answer your question, I think a paradox mindset is becoming critical for leadership, but many leaders find it difficult to embrace it. This belief still holds true for me today and, at Warwick, we develop tools and knowledge that can help executives embrace a paradox mindset in their everyday practice.

Given your expertise, how do you foresee the role of empathy and emotional intelligence evolving in leadership development, especially in the context of emerging business challenges?

We need to see the emerging business challenges in the broader context of the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world and that means that leadership development has to change and adapt to these circumstances. This means that human aspects of leadership, such as empathy and emotional intelligence, become more relevant than ever. Let’s take, for example, the challenge of automating the business environment without really dehumanising the workforce. Here, empathy and emotional intelligence, as well as the immense ability to be self-aware, become very critical for leaders and their people. This is because automation can create a lot of benefits for businesses, but also profound uncertainty for the workforce. It is critical that leaders should be able to understand and manage emotions and communicate with empathy and the intent to create an environment where employees feel safe, valued and understood. So, these human aspects of leadership are becoming more and more relevant. It’s interesting, because we call those the soft skills of leadership, but these are the hardest to develop, so we need to focus more attention on how leaders can communicate with empathy and become more self-aware about their emotions and how their emotions influence their decision-making.

Your research has been published in leading academic journals, including Organisation Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Human Resource Management, Public Administration, and Human Relations. You were also the lead editor of a 2016 special issue on translational research in the International Journal of Management Reviews. What is the most valuable lesson you’ve learned about leadership? 

Leadership theory and practice is complex and remains complex. However, if you take a deep dive into leadership theory, you realise that leadership theory has romanticised individual heroic leaders and continues to do so. There is nothing wrong with this but, in a VUCA environment, it doesn’t work. For leadership to become relevant in today’s world, we need to redefine the way that academics and business schools at large define what leadership is, where it comes from, and how we teach it. At Warwick, we are really passionate about this and with our research we’re continuously redefining what leadership should look like in the VUCA world, where it comes from, and how we teach it. We do this in order to offer more relevant theories and frameworks with our executive education offerings so as to make our knowledge more relevant and impactful for leaders, their organisations, and society.

Can you tell us more about the Warwick Leadership Pathways?

We developed our Warwick Executive Diplomas to cater to the needs of busy executives. The Warwick Leadership Pathways offer a flexible framework of personal and professional development that enables our executives to design their own development journey and address their unique needs, challenges, and skill gaps.

The Warwick Leadership Pathways offer a flexible framework of personal and professional development that enables our executives to design their own development journey and address their unique needs, challenges, and skill gaps.

We launched a suite of Executive Diplomas into diverse thematic areas, including, in no particular order, strategic leadership and change, future of work, digital innovation and entrepreneurship, decision making and analytics, strategy, and organisational change. The Warwick Leadership Pathways offer the flexibility for participants to pick and choose the courses from each of these areas of expertise to develop a bespoke programme that is tailored to their unique needs. So, rather than us telling potential candidates that this is what we offer, we ask our candidates to pick and choose what they think is relevant to their unique skill gaps and their organisations. All of our programmes with our Warwick Leadership Pathways are taught by world-class academics, professors of practice, and business leaders, but they also offer the pick-and-mix flexibility in order to enable executives to develop and create something that meets their expectations and requirements.

Who would be an ideal candidate for these stackable programmes?

I think a lot of executives can sometimes worry about stepping into academia and whether they’ll be able to meet the demands of an academic programme. But these stackable programmes are certainly not your typical academic programmes. They are theory-driven but problem- and practice-focused. So, an ideal candidate for these stackable programmes is someone who understands how the business environment works and has a passion for learning and a hunger to make an impact. We also welcome candidates who do not have the academic qualifications but are exceptional, with a proven ability to achieve. Equally important is the ability and willingness to come to the classroom with an open and curious mind.

However, if executives expect to come to the classroom for us to use our magic wand (which we don’t have) to make them even better at what they do, then that’s not going to happen. We’re looking for candidates who are ambitious, want to move up, don’t shy away from a challenge, and are willing and able to work hard to understand how to develop themselves and show others how to do it.

How is this different from your other executive education programmes?

I think what makes the Warwick Leadership Pathways distinctively different from everything else we offer is the immense amount of flexibility that’s embedded within the Pathways. Participants can pick and mix from very different themes, such as leadership, future of work, decision-making and analytics, digital innovation and entrepreneurship, and strategy and organisational change to create something that meets their learning needs and plugs skills gaps. In addition, there is flexibility in the way that you can study the programmes. Typically, most of our executive offerings are either short full-time programmes or much longer part-time programmes, but the Warwick Leadership Pathways give the flexibility to our executives to decide how fast or how slow they can study. So, for example, they can study one postgraduate award today or this year, or they can come back next year to build on their qualifications with a stackable approach. They completely define the pace for their personal and professional development learning pathway. So, the Warwick Leadership Pathways offer a fully flexible framework that allows executives to design their own leadership development journey at a pace that works for them and their organisations.

Could you elaborate on the structure and flexibility offered within the Warwick Leadership Pathways for executives seeking to upskill while balancing their professional commitments?

The Warwick Leadership Pathways enable executives to pick and choose what areas of expertise they would like to study to support them with their personal career ambitions and business goals. They can tailor their qualification by completing any four postgraduate awards from our selection of specialised subject areas to gain an Executive Diploma in Advanced Management. They also have the option to pick four postgraduate awards from one subject area to achieve a subject-specific Executive Diploma.

We really want to give executives the ultimate flexibility to balance their personal life and work commitments alongside their study, so they also have the option to stack their qualification by applying for a single postgraduate award at a time.

Your research also often intersects with healthcare systems and organisations. How does this knowledge translate into leadership development within the business context? 

Healthcare organisations are increasingly characterised as knowledge-based, professionalised organisations whereby knowledge workers, like doctors, nurses and allied health professionals, increasingly exercise leadership without being in formal leadership roles. In other words, leadership in healthcare organisations and systems can come from knowledge workers anywhere in the organisation or the system and it doesn’t always matter whether they hold a leadership position. As a result, leadership development must empower these knowledgeable experts and abandon more conventional leadership development approaches that tend to concentrate power at the top of the company. Our own research shows that healthcare organisations and systems create radically different and diverse contexts, where professional status and managerial authority are both evident and critical for leadership development interventions to work. This contextual detail necessitates a different approach to leadership development that considers the particular needs of their organisations, as well as their professionalised nature. This, in my opinion, is also transferable to the business environment, which is likewise drastically changing and diversifying and is dependent more and more on knowledge workers to produce goods and services.

As the course director for several programmes, what do you have in mind for Warwick Executive Education in 2024?

One of our core values is restlessness and we always look at ways to push the boundaries of executive education. Following the creation of the Warwick Leadership Pathways, we are launching our new Accelerator MBA this year. The Accelerator MBA is a part of a new suite of MBA and executive courses that gives early to mid-career managers, business executives, and professionals greater autonomy over their professional and educational growth, without taking a significant amount of time away from work. Learning is taking place both online and face to face at The Shard in London, which is home to our Executive MBA and Executive Education. We’re excited to welcome our first cohort of the programme in March 2024.

More broadly, and in alignment with our core values, we challenge, we embrace different perspectives, and we think creatively to expand on our executive education programmes and delivery approaches to better serve our communities and clients by developing better leaders who will advance society. Watch this space.

To find out more about the Warwick Leadership Pathways visit: https://www.wbs.ac.uk/courses/executive-education/pathways/

Executive Profile

Dimitrios Spyridonidis is an Associate Professor of Leadership and Innovation and studies healthcare systems and organisations. He has taught leadership and leadership development around the globe including UK, Ireland, Finland, Denmark, South Africa, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

At WBS, Dimitrios is the Programme Director of the Executive MBA, Accelerator MBA and the Executive Diploma in Strategic Leadership & Change. 

Dimitrios’ core research interests are Leadership and Innovation. His research has been published in leading academic journals including Organization Studies, Public Administration and Human Relations and is the lead editor of a 2016 Special Issue on Translational Research on the International Journal of Management Review.

The post Executive Education à la Carte: Interview with Dr Dimitrios Spyridonidis, Associate Professor of Leadership, WBS appeared first on The European Business Review.

Can you please provide an overview of Sheffield Business School’s integrated employability strategy? What are its main components and goals? 

Sheffield Business School at Sheffield Hallam University has a long history of applied education and commitment to employability. We do really well in terms of getting our graduates into highly skilled employment. However, this can depend on the course some students are on, their background, and the experiences they have while they’re with us. 

So, what we’re looking to do in our employability strategy is be much more deliberate. We’re looking to embed work experience and industry exposure in every level of the curriculum, so that, regardless of whether you’re on a business management, accountancy, or marketing course at Sheffield Business School, there’s an element of consistency and integration in the curriculum. 

What inspired the development of this integrated employability strategy? Were there specific challenges or trends in the job market that prompted its creation? 

We have excellent graduate outcomes for our students, even though we often take more disadvantaged students who may find it harder to find these work opportunities. We’re really proud of that. 

However, we know that students have busy lives. There are some students that engage with extracurricular activities really well, but for some it’s simply not a priority.

We therefore wanted to offer every individual the opportunity to develop their professional self as well as their academic self. To engage students in this, we wanted to embed employability into the curriculum. 

Of course, there are challenges associated with this. it takes a lot of investment to get the structures right to support this kind of activity. 

To ensure that every student has completed a work placement, we needed more work placement opportunities. To secure these, we needed to work more with businesses, and invest more in our central team to support business engagement. 

There are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in all regions across the UK, and these present really interesting opportunities and projects that can cut across marketing, HR, and sales, so the student gets really varied experience on their work placements. In Sheffield, our labour market is predominantly public sector and SMEs, and we embrace that when looking for work placements. 

We’ve also got particularly strong employee advisory boards. We’ve got one for management, another that is much more related to the service sector, and one linked to finance accounting and banking. 

The employee advisory boards support us in a number of ways: 

• Connect us with other businesses 
• Help us when we go through portfolio and curriculum changes 
• Bring opportunities around projects and consultancy for students, as well as long-term and short-term placements.

Lastly, we have an ‘entrepreneurs in residence’ programme, where we work with entrepreneurs who offer mentoring to students and graduates, sharing their knowledge and expertise on the skills needed to start a new business. 

How does Sheffield Business School define ‘employability’, and how does your strategy aim to enhance it among your students? 

I don’t think there’s a single definition of employability. For me, it’s about preparing students for the next stage of their life, whether that’s further study, taking a taking a gap year, or going into the world of work.  

It’s about preparing students for the next stage of their life, whether that’s further study, taking a taking a gap year, or going into the world of work.[

It’s really about giving our students the skills that mean that they’ll be prepared for varied careers. As part of this, we’ve increased the number of careers and recruitment events we hold. 

Interestingly, around 85 per cent of employers don’t recruit for a specific degree. People will start with a business degree, and then go into finance or sales, for example, and then three years later they’ll be doing something completely different. 

Our approach to employability is preparing our students to be very creative, adaptable, resilient individuals who can move and solve problems regardless of the kind of organisation they’re in.  

In what ways do you collaborate with local employers to strengthen your students’ employability? Can you give examples of successful partnerships that have led to tangible benefits for your graduates?  

At Hallam we have invested in a team that focuses on business engagement, skills, and employability. Their role is to talk to employers but not be product-focused. Instead of asking for an apprenticeship, consultancy, work placements, etc., they’ll ask organisations what they need, and then secure a range of opportunities.  

Our academics work very closely with the team, and its members sit on our employer advisory board to get these opportunities out. In general, it’s about trying to match the demand from employers with the supply of our brilliant graduates. 

Sheffield Business School worked directly with the city council on the RISE Enhancement Project, a partnership between Sheffield City Council, the University of Sheffield, and Sheffield Hallam University, which helps to place talented graduates into SMEs across Sheffield. 

When students graduate, they often think of the large companies, such as Google, PwC, EY, etc. We worked directly with SMEs across the city to develop graduate jobs and fix a competitive salary to encourage graduates to apply. 

When our graduates started working in these companies, they thrived. Often these graduates would start out in a six-month internship, during which they worked across finance, sales, marketing, and HR, earning a much broader experience than if they’d worked for a larger company. Some 90 per cent of these internships then turned into full-time roles, and the salaries jumped from around £18,000 to £30,000 within the first 18 months.

What role do internships, co-op programmes, and industry projects play in your strategy? How do these experiential learning opportunities contribute to students’ readiness for the job market? 

Throughout each degree at Sheffield Business School, we try to scaffold the range and complexity of work-experience activities. Generally, this work experience is used as a stepping stone into a larger opportunity, depending on the course. 

In the first year of your degree programme, you’ll gain exposure to industry through guest speakers, events, and integration with business. Then we’ll have a live project where students are asked to work on a real-world project at a small business. 

In the second year, students will complete a short work placement. Some use the placement that they’re already on. Others we connect with different opportunities, so they can get that real-world experience. This placement is embedded in the module and it’s 120 hours of work that they must find, do, write up, and reflect on. A lot of people use this time to do their sandwich year. 

Some students instead decide to start their own business. They get set up with the Hallam i-lab – a dynamic co-working business incubation space – and work with the central team there in coming up with an idea and working this into a business plan. 

In the students’ final year, instead of a dissertation, they complete a capstone major project which will be themed around their subject. We have an extended consultancy project, where we work with a range of businesses – SMEs, volunteer organisations, major organisations – which set an applied project and a brief. These businesses then work with the students on the project over a 12-week period. Afterwards, the students present their solutions and recommendations back to the organisations. 

Throughout all of this, we have a core element of professional development and reflection. Students are developing their broader employability skills. They’ll learn practical skills, gain work experience and exposure to problem solving, networking and data analytics. 

Strong networks with local employers are often emphasised as a key factor in producing highly employable graduates. How has Sheffield Business School built and maintained these networks, and what benefits have you observed as a result?

At Sheffield Business School, we develop partnerships that are going to run for a number of years, so we really invest in this. We’ve seen organisations whose growth is built on the back of our graduates, and that’s great to see, but we have to invest that time to see the mutual benefits. 

Our work with the RISE Enhancement project was received very well by SMEs. The businesses felt that RISE helped them to become more capable and confident in graduate recruitment. 

We have also worked closely with a family business called Pricecheck, an award-winning international wholesaler and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) distributor based in Sheffield. Every year, we have between 20 and 30 of our graduates join them, and Sheffield Business School students complete placement years with them as well. Pricecheck knows that we have students studying international business and business marketing. They love our students, as they are talented, highly skilled and really add something to their business. 

The job market is constantly evolving, with new industries and roles emerging. How does your approach prepare students to be adaptable and resilient in the face of these changes?

Students aren’t always able to articulate the  skills they’ve developed during their degree programme. 

At Sheffield Business School, we help students focus on the attributes that they’ve developed through their various work experiences, real-life projects, and the broader degree programme. We purposely develop their emotional intelligence, helping them understand the different ways of that people operate within a team, and working with people who are different from them. 

At Sheffield Business School, we help students focus on the attributes that they’ve developed through their various work experiences, real-life projects, and the broader degree programme.

To do this, we actively develop their reflective practice skills through assessment, so that they consciously go out into the labour market knowing their strengths and areas for development. It’s important that they have a good level of self-awareness and emotional intelligence; for example, how they use data to make informed decisions, how confident they are at networking and building relationships. We give them the language they can use with employers, helping them make that link between what they’ve done throughout their degree and what employers will be looking for. 

There’s often a cyclical nature of relationships. 

Sheffield Business School has a lot of academics who come from industry, but doing these projects with businesses keeps their industry knowledge relevant as well.  

Similarly, we’ve had individuals from an SME who might then become entrepreneurs who then join our Advisory Board, or we might do some academic peer consultancy or a knowledge-transfer partnership. 

Can you speak of any challenges or obstacles you’ve encountered while implementing this strategy? How have you overcome these challenges, and what lessons have you learned in the process? 

Essentially, we’re trying to take something that was predominately extracurricular and embed it into the curriculum. There are numerous challenges that come with this. So, one is getting the institutional staff to buy into the idea that applied learning has pedagogical value. This wasn’t too bad at the business school, but we need to do it consistently at each level. 

Additionally, creating an active employer advisory board takes time, so we’ve offered lots of administrative support for this. For example, we have provided advice on how to run an advisory board and the toolkits you might need to run an advisory board. 

Another challenge we face with going from a select number of students doing work placements to everyone doing them is scalability. We worked directly with both the academic teams and the professional services teams to secure a greater number of work placements for students. It takes both commitment and investment of time to make that happen. 

Executive Profile 

Professor Conor Moss is Dean of the College of Business, Technology and Engineering at Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University (SHU). He was appointed Professor of Work-Based Learning in recognition of his contribution to employability and work-based learning. As Academic Dean for a large college of 12,000 students and  500+ academic staff Conor continues to drive the College’s strategic growth through innovative portfolio and partnership development and a multi-disciplinary research strategy spanning technology, engineering and business.

The post Where Students are Prepared to Work: Interview with Conor Moss, Dean of Sheffield Business School at Sheffield Hallam University appeared first on The European Business Review.

In business, understanding your clients, partners, and, perhaps most importantly, your employees can go a long way towards empowering your leadership abilities. As Warwick Business School is just launching an Executive Diploma in Behavioural Science, we talk to Tim Mullett from WBS, who explains different ways in which behavioural science can help businesses and leaders. Not just as a tool to enhance decision-making, but also to improve the well-being and productivity of a workforce.

Good day, Dr. Mullett! Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to speak with us today. Are you enjoying the year so far?

“Yes, thank you, it’s been an exciting time. With COVID restrictions lifting, we have been able to get back to fully in-person teaching across all of our courses and resume work in our behavioural research labs at full capacity”.

When did your interest in behavioural science start and how natural was your integration into the field?

Mullett explains how he’s been interested in predicting and understanding behaviour for a long time as he was doing his undergraduate in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. However, the courses he took focused much more on what he calls ‘normal behaviour’ than ‘abnormal behaviour’.

A module in economic psychology changed his perspective: “It stood out to me, as it explored how everyone acts in irrational but predictable ways. Economic psychology contains endless examples and ideas of people making decisions that make no economic or financial sense when considered objectively, yet feel so intuitively right. Being forced to confront the fact that I myself had exactly the same biases and had made those exact same decisions – mistakes if you will – meant that I was immediately hooked”.

As an academic and associate professor, Dr. Mullet has primarily worked with scientific research but mentions how one of the most rewarding parts of his work has been to work with partners outside academia, among them UK financial regulators and police forces where he has helped implementing improvements using his insight in behavioural science.

Understanding how humans think and what makes them tick can be enormously helpful when running a company. How far can behavioural science improve decision-making in business?

“A good understanding of people and behavioural science is incredibly valuable. It can herald improvements across virtually every aspect of a business’s activities.”

Most businesses have consumer-facing activities, where knowledge from behavioural science can help design the best possible product, service or marketing, Mullett says. Behavioural insights can be used for negotiations and evaluations leading to more efficient agreements and less acrimony amongst the individuals or organisations involved.

But it’s not only a tool for optimising a business or making sales rates spike. Dr. Mullett says that behavioural insights can also be used to significantly improve employee happiness and well-being – which then again can be seen on the bottom line: employee happiness and well-being have productivity, innovation, and better collaboration as nice side effects, Mullett explains.

Interestingly leaders or entrepreneurs can’t choose if they want to apply behavioural insights or not: “Virtually everything a business does is some kind of behaviour and has people at the heart of it.

Therefore, there’s no route to “opt-out” of using behavioural science in your company. You are already using it, but if you don’t realise you are, then you likely aren’t using it well,” Mullett says.

The Executive Diploma in Behavioural Science is a first from Warwick Business School. What are the main components of this new programme and how will it be carried out?

“The course examines how we can apply up-to-date knowledge from behavioural science across a wide range of business and management activities. This includes understanding how consumers and individuals make investment or purchasing decisions, informing the design of marketing, user interfaces, product specifications, and more. We look at how behavioural science can inform effective leadership to foster well-being and high productivity within a workforce that has increasingly diverse skills and needs. The course also explores the ways in which potential for change can be identified amongst the noise and complexity of the real world, and monitored to ensure that it has the desired impact”.

Dr. Mullett adds that the course is held in the middle of London at The Shard and that the course gives a chance to be in close contact with senior academics and experts within behavioural science.

Warwick Business School has also invited several academics to share their expertise, most notably Nick Chater, the award-winning author of The Mind Is Flat and co-host of BBC Radio 4’s The Human Zoo. What collaborative feedback sessions do you have in store?

“We have a fantastic team of academics here at WBS. The school is unusual in having such a large number of experts and researchers in behavioural science” says before talking about one of the main draws of the course. “Professor Chater is well known for his excellent work communicating behavioural science to the public, and his fantastic writing. He also has an amazing track record of working outside of academia to apply behavioural science to real-world problems in industry and policy making”.

Actually, Mullett explains, working with real-world problems outside academia is a common theme for the academics in the course, who work with different industries, police forces, government regulators, and others. Therefore, they are able to help students apply insights from behavioural science into their everyday life in their company or organisation. After identifying areas where students can implement strategies and advice from behavioural science into their organisation, they get the chance to actually apply their new knowledge and then receive feedback from academics as a way of fine-tuning the new insights to their specific needs.

Research in 2020 by the American Psychological Association revealed that lack of job security had adverse effects on emotional stability, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. How does your programme hope to target these specific concerns?

“This is a salient example of the importance of employee well-being. It shows both the impact that an organisation can have on employee well-being and the impact that well-being can have on the overall organisation”. Mullett explains that a negative work environment and anxiety about work lead to a lack of employee efficiency. Therefore, it’s a central focus of the course to teach participants how leaders can ensure a positive environment, which supports the overall goals of an organisation or company.

What do you hope that participants take away from this programme with reference to the resilience of the human mind in the face of change?

“The main takeaway in this regard is that the human mind is incredibly resilient and adaptable when given the right environment and opportunities. When the environment, culture, or leadership is negative, then individuals tend to become risk-averse and shy away from innovation or potentially disruptive approaches. When supported, change instead becomes exciting and appealing” Mullett says adding another focal point of the course: “Innovation can now be fostered. Potential disruption becomes an opportunity. However, this requires effective leadership, incentivisation, support, and understanding”.

What kind of learning experience can students expect from this immersive programme?

Mullett explains that the programme is highly interactive where students are encouraged to engage with academics as well as their cohort. Designed with expert knowledge on how to create a productive learning environment, Mullett says the programme is structured with intensive in-person sessions where students meet world-leading academics and professionals for four challenging and highly rewarding days.

As a behavioural science professor, what three things would you say people should always consider when making important decisions?

“To understand what is and is not an “important” decision” Mullett immediately says. He advises people to remember the adage “Don’t sweat the small stuff”, an advice Mullett says can help you to dramatically reduce your stress and to focus resources on the truly important choices. “People often struggle with decisions when there is no clear better option and the two are very similar. But if they are very similar, there’s very little cost to choosing the “wrong” one. Conversely, it can be easy to underestimate the impact of some decisions, particularly if they are recurring ones, such as renewing a contract. We have a strong default bias to go with what has been done before and not pay enough attention to what might have changed”.

The second piece of advice Mullett gives is for people to ask themselves “How could I be wrong?”. He says: “Ask yourself to imagine you are sitting here in six months’ time, and things have gone wrong. Why did they go wrong?”

And the final piece of advice, is to allow space for both ‘heart’ and ‘mind’ in decision-making: “Allow yourself to consider both the rational and the emotional. If one option seems like the better one on paper and by the numbers, but you don’t feel happy with it, interrogate yourself as to why you don’t feel happy. This is important for things like choosing whether to accept a job; if you won’t feel happy, you won’t be as productive anyway”. 

The article was originally published on August 4, 2022

Executive Profile

Tim Mullett acquired his PhD at the University of Nottingham where he was researching psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He’s currently an associate professor at Warwick Business School where he is a part of the behavioural science group. Besides his academic duties at WBS and publishing in top-tier journals, he’s working with policymakers and organisations to help them implement practical insights from behavioural science. In this interview, Mullett explains how the new Executive Diploma in Behavioural Science is structured before sharing three pieces of advice to keep in mind during decision-making.

The post Understanding People: Applying Behavioural Science to Business appeared first on The European Business Review.

Today’s business world is a complex, difficult-to-understand space for executives. It’s reasonable to suppose that good preparation for functioning effectively in such an environment might involve first understanding oneself. Here, Professors Goran Milenković and Steffi Weil of Antwerp Management School explain how the school’s PhD and EMBA programmes place an emphasis on personal development.

Good day, Professor Milenković and Professor Weil! Thank you for lending us your time and it’s a pleasure to speak with you both. How has the new year been treating you so far?

PROF. DR. GORAN MILENKOVIĆ: Like all international business schools, we have entered the new year with challenges due to COVID. Nevertheless, our intake numbers look good, and our operations teams, faculty, and international partners are ensuring continued delivery of onshore and offshore modules. As we speak, our EMBA team is making final preparations for participants to visit MIT in the USA in January, and the American University in Cairo in February. Our intake in Moscow is also doing well and we have just recently launched our programme in Paris. For the latter two, we are very grateful to our local partners IBS/Ranepa in Russia and ESSCA School of Management in France. 

PROF. DR. STEFFI WEIL: Thank you very much for this question. The year has started off very well. We have a lot of interesting projects in the pipeline and we have two PhD defences in January. This energises me a lot.

For 60 years and counting, Antwerp Management School has looked beyond the mere transfer of technical knowledge and imparted generations’ worth of leadership wisdom. What would you say are the cornerstones of the university’s teaching philosophy?

GM: Our motto, “Opening Minds to Impact the World”, has influenced our approach to knowledge transfer since the very beginning. As a management school, we try to nurture future leaders in both industry and the social enterprise sector. We don’t subscribe to any one individual economic or social theory. We pass on the multitude of conceptual options and views about management challenges and allow participants to make their own choices.

The AMS approach prides itself on simplicity: the better you feel as a person, the more confident you are when dealing with complicated business situations. How important is a healthy self-image when it comes to being a leader?

SW: This is an interesting question and certainly made me reflect. I am not an expert in healthy self-image but I luckily work for an organisation that puts a lot of emphasis on a healthy working environment. Healthy in the sense that we can identify with our work, that we enjoy what we are doing and that we can address issues that might become challenging. I think this kind of open working environment also has a positive impact on self-image and on leadership. To be able to discuss, reflect and brainstorm helps me to develop a positive self-image. To be able to “be who you are” makes for a good leader. A good leader is certainly not a perfect leader, but an environment which allows for mistakes and critical reflection creates good leaders.    

Antwerp Management School is the only Belgian business school to be included in the FT’s Top 100 list of Executive MBAs, consequently earning you the top spot in all of Benelux. How does it feel to gain all this recognition?

GM: Of course, it’s a great honour. We are a medium-sized business school, and the Benelux is a small geographic space. To be recognised on a par with, or even better than other global institutions is flattering. Overall, we are ranked number 45 in the group of global EMBAs, but on our specialities, such as international diversity or ESG/CSR, we score in the top quintile.

Executives who have successfully completed the EMBA programme describe it as “transformative” and “career-changing”. Do you recall a particular student’s success story or the career paths of some of your participants?

GM: Our participants are typically 35-45 years old. They are mature individuals with 15-plus years of practical experience. All are professionally successful. Deciding to do a degree programme at that stage of one’s life means that it is not just about acquiring additional knowledge. There is also an inner need to better understand oneself in order to correctly shape the next stages of one’s career. That is why our programme includes an extensive personal development portfolio. In addition to the usual array of psychometric tests and individual coaching that are quite common nowadays, we are fortunate to have our own NeuroTraining Lab. For example, our participants don’t just discuss the links between personality types and leadership styles. In our lab, they observe their own brain activity and recognise the influence of their own subconscious reactions in different situations, such as stress, conflict, and so on. This combination of soft and hard insights really improves personal effectiveness and communication. For many, it is a real eye-opener and helps clarify personal ambitions and understanding of themselves. In our last survey, 78 per cent of participants said that they had achieved their goals for doing an EMBA within three years of graduation.

With AMS now holding the highest ranking ever achieved by a Belgian business school with its EMBA, what would you say are the programme’s unique features and highlights? The Positive Impact Project, for example, is a unique way of stimulating global challenges.

GM: Besides the core subjects present in all EMBA programmes, such as strategy, leadership, finance, and so on, we pay special attention to the transitional challenges of global business, including environmental, societal, and governance issues. The latter is not positioned as a corporate responsibility, but rather as a deeply personal one. Future-oriented managers understand that responsible leadership is as much about ESG-related actions as it is about consistent behaviour. Our programme has ESG elements incorporated in every course and, on top of that, we ask our participants to do a hands-on Positive Impact Project. We are inspired by the notion that business and sustainability are not conflicting viewpoints. Rather, the world is still discovering how to combine the two. In total, we devote about 150 teaching hours to ESG-related topics and about 80 hours on fieldwork. Some participants focus on their local communities or their workplace. Others have crossed borders and even continents. We had participants working on initiatives reducing poverty, supporting the development of alternative energy sources, working in prisons, building schools, changing agroforestry, tutoring children, or assisting single parents. This is not charity work. It pushes every student to seriously go outside their comfort zone, but use their talents, management experience, and knowledge to find opportunities to bring business and ESG closer together. Every project proposal is carefully reviewed and finally evaluated by a mixed panel. And the emphasis is always on ensuring both short-term and long-term impact. 

Aside from its Executive MBA programmes, AMS also offers a PhD programme for executives? Professor Weil, in your role as academic director of the PhD programme, can you explain the programme to us?

SW: Yes, of course, with pleasure. I love talking about the PhD programme, because it gives me so much joy to witness how our PhD candidates engage in this life-changing project with us. But first things first – what is the PhD programme for executives? It is a four-year programme that supports and guides executives/managers to obtain a PhD degree. A PhD degree is a doctoral degree, the highest academic title one can receive. Our programme runs in close collaboration with the University of Antwerp. This means that our PhD candidates enjoy the full service of Antwerp Management School while being able to receive a fully fledged PhD degree from the University of Antwerp. To obtain a PhD is a life-changing experience and we are very proud to offer a programme to senior executives who aim to fulfil their dream with us. Our program is tailor-made around their needs. To hold an executive position in industry is challenging and to write a PhD alongside it is even more challenging. We aimed to turn this challenge into a opportunity. We see a senior leading position as an enabler to conduct research, to publish and to successfully graduate with a PhD degree. We have witnessed that a structured curriculum that educates our candidates in research and writing skills leads to success. The programme is now running in its fifth year and we can honestly say that our bespoke programme really works. We are immensely proud to call our graduates from all over the world “Doctor”! The degree itself, of course, opens new doors, not only intellectually but also career-wise and on a personal level. To be able to celebrate these successes with our candidates and to have the honour to get to know them personally during the four-year journey gives me a lot of positive energy. I am also lucky to be surrounded by a strong team that supports the candidates during this exciting PhD journey. 

Professor Milenković, you’ve mentioned that in order to fully step into a leadership position, you may need to lose attachment with certain functions of the model to welcome a broader sense of understanding the bigger picture. For people intimidated by the volume of knowledge needed to start a business, how would you encourage them to take that leap of faith? 

GM: An EMBA is a “generalist” programme and designed for professionals wanting to move beyond the confines of a single function or specialised occupation. Moving out of the “cosiness” of being an expert in a particular domain to becoming a general manager can be daunting. But that does not mean that everyone needs to be an expert in everything. The EMBA gives one the tools to analyse and rationalise, to understand the jargon of multiple functions, and to know what to ask if you don’t understand something. All general managers go through this “functional detachment” process. And an EMBA is the quickest way to learn how to do it.

What are the principal benefits that executive education has to offer in the post-COVID environment?

GM: COVID has brought a massive change to the way business is done, the way customers behave, and the way managers need to lead. I like to compare it to league football. We had sunshine for a while and now, due to the pandemic, it is raining continuously. The fact that it is raining does not mean we stop training or playing football. We must adapt how we train and what skills we train for. We already see that what is considered “good leadership practice” is different when you cannot meet your colleagues face-to-face. For example, our experience confirms that informal leaders in virtual teams are elevated to that position not by demonstrating traits of “a good leader prototype”, such as charisma, but rather by helping the dispersed team to be efficient and being a worker bee themselves. We also see that company cultures are changing. I live in Germany and, two years ago, you needed written permission to work from home. Now you must get permission to come to the office. In that situation, how does one pass on a company culture or work ethic, which is often instilled by replications, to new recruits who have never seen a colleague at work? There are answers. But they are different from what we have been teaching during the BC (“before COVID”) era. 

Professor Weil, as an expert in Global Political Economy it must be difficult to witness how the global arena has changed. As Academic Director of the China-Europe Business Master, would you be able to share your perspective on the current global political economy?

SW: Yes indeed it is difficult to witness how political and economic protectionist behaviour is rising. It is especially sad to watch how China has closed its borders to the outside world. This has implications not only for global supply chains but also for global politics. China remains a strong global player, an important stakeholder for international investments and global politics. The international community aims to have a two-tier approach: to remain open to China as a global economic actor, while addressing sensitive political issues in a relatively open manner. Yet, if I am very honest from an academic perspective, the current situation allows me to address very interesting research topics. We have learned that we cannot take liberalism or even democratic rights for granted. We should remain critical and learn how to ask different questions. We also address the new challenges and questions in our programmes. We have integrated new exciting topics on supply chain, global trade and the role of multiple international stakeholders into our lectures. It is exciting to discuss new questions that arise with our students and executive candidates.  

What are the biggest challenges you have encountered in handling multicultural groups and addressing the varying needs of business leaders across different industries? How do you overcome them?

GM: Our typical cohort is very mixed. We have on average 15-20 nationalities, with people coming from 20-30 industries. Around 40 per cent are women. This is a wonderful opportunity to listen to each other and discover each other’s views and experiences. I really believe that about half of the knowledge gained during our programme comes from participant interaction and learning from each other. Of course, we also have interesting discussions outside the classroom, especially during or after joint dinners. Views are many and widely varied. In addition, we spend about 20-25 days abroad during study visits to top academic institutions in Asia, Europe, the USA, and Africa. While there, our students have joint sessions with EMBA counterparts and experience teaching styles different from ours. This creates a wonderful and, I would even say, sparkling learning environment. But overall, I’m always pleasantly surprised how relationships grow over time and how people from different backgrounds and cultures are brought together through learning and, by graduation time, start treating each other not as colleagues but as members of an extended family.

SW: That is a very good question. In the executive PhD programme, there are lesser challenges, because the research of our candidates benefits from different perspectives and cultures. A number of our PhD candidates even conduct research on multicultural aspects. Yet, of course, there are challenges when working in a very international environment such as ours. We have students from all over the world. We are very much aware of this and we educate our students and staff on multicultural differences. In our Global Leadership Skills track, we work with our students on self-awareness, on how to become global leaders and global citizens, and societal consciousness. In COVID times, skills like this are particularly helpful and crucial. The biggest challenge was when the students enjoyed their semester in China when the Chinese government decided to lock down the country. Thanks to our international network and our strong coaching and Global Leadership Skills team, we were able to bridge cultural differences even during this constraining period. The students grew stronger as a team. There was great mutual understanding in a situation where students from multiple backgrounds were locked up together in student housing. 

It takes a certain level of commitment to pursue a postgraduate degree. How do you make sure that the participants and their organisations gain the highest return on their investment in terms of knowledge acquisition, career advancement, long-term profitability for the business, and other measures of ROI for executive education?

GM: There is no way around it – doing an EMBA is a serious investment, in both time and money. The ROI should exceed the total opportunity cost. We strongly encourage all students to make every effort and to use assignments and projects to solve their own company-related challenges. At the same time, we take a holistic view to ROI; that is, we value equally monetary and non-monetary returns. Of course, it is not easy to measure non-financial impact. We find that the best indicator of a positive ROI is word-of-mouth recommendations by employers. We are very happy with the fact that over 80 per cent of our participants have partial or full employer backing, when it comes to fees and study time. So, obviously, employers do see a positive ROI.

As the Academic Director of Antwerp Management School’s EMBA, what do you find the most exciting when it comes to nurturing the mind of an eager student? 

GM: For me personally, the biggest reward is the “twinkle in the eye” of a student that I see when a discussion or comment has made them think about a topic in a way other than what they are used to.

What will future participants in the EMBA programme be most interested in learning from it, in order to prepare them for this new world?

GM: The world is ever-changing. The role of leaders is ever-changing. I’m a great believer in William Gibson’s adage that the future is already here, but that it’s unevenly distributed. We hope that our EMBA programme will continue to bring  some of that future to our participants in more ways than one.

What can we expect to see from Antwerp Management School in 2022?

GM: For our EMBA programme, the biggest addition will be the start of a fully fledged cohort in Paris. For our school, however, a big step will be finalising preparations for Triple Crown accreditation and joining the 1 per cent of business schools that have achieved this distinction.

SW: A lot of exciting things! In the last two years, we have managed the COVID crisis quite well. This very unique situation also led to more innovation. We are excited to further develop and implement our projects on sustainable transformation and internationalisation. You will see exciting new teaching and learning aspects, more PhD candidates who will graduate, and new hybrid international short programmes where we aim to combine our domestic and international ecosystem and expertise.  

The article was first published on January 30, 2022.

Executive Profile

Prof. Dr. Goran Milenković, Goran Milenković is Professor of International Business and Academic Director of the AMS EMBA Portfolio. Prior to joining AMS, he spent 30 years collaborating with blue-chip companies such as DHL, Deutsche Post, Henkel, Stihl, and the American Management Association. He holds a DBA from the Henley Management College, a master’s degree from the American University in Beirut, and a BS from Belgrade University.

Prof. Dr. Steffi Weil, Stefanie Weil is Associate Dean for International Outreach & Academic Director (and Professor) of Antwerp Management School. Before she started her academic career in 2007, she worked as managing director in various consulting companies in Germany, France and the UK. Prior to her current posts, she held positions of research fellow at the Brussels Institute for Contemporary China Studies (BICCS) and was Head of Business Department and Associate Dean at the Vesalius College/Free University Brussels. Moreover, she has worked as a research follow at Tong Ji University in Shanghai. She is specialised in international political economy and China’s foreign policies. She has published on comparative politics across China, the European Union and the United States, on lobbying in China, and on comparative Western-Chinese political concepts.

The post Top Executive Education featuring Antwerp Management School: Opening Minds to Impact the World appeared first on The European Business Review.

The “bottom line” is a long-standing measure of a business’s success (or otherwise) in financial terms. But is it now time to revise that concept to take into account companies’ responsibilities to society? Should we be thinking about not one “bottom line”, but three? Mickael Naulleau of the Audencia business school explains the philosophy that underlies their Chief Value Officer Executive MBA programme.

Good day to you, Mr Naulleau. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us. First, can you tell us a bit about yourself? You have a PhD in organisational behaviour studies. How does your specialisation and expertise in this field help you in leading Audencia’s MBA & DBA community?

Thanks for the invitation. In a few words, I’ve been working for Audencia for 10 years now, after a professional career in an HR Consulting firm. I’m also currently the Director of our MBA & DBA Community, which consists of 15 programmes located on three continents (Europe, Asia and Africa), with over 400 participants and more than 800 alumni. I think that my professional and academic background in management and organisational behaviour (OB) helps me in understanding what every manager experiences: facing the complexity of our contemporary world of work in a global context. The MBA & DBA Community is like a privileged field of practical implementation for OB studies.

For instance, beyond the international community of students and participants, alumni and professors we manage, I can experience what we mean by cross-cultural and remote management with different nationalities in the management team (Chinese, French, Algerian, Senegalese, Moroccan, etc.). I can feel how important it is to define a common vision to mobilise people with different views, opinions and ways of working. By being able to keep an open mind, not only do you learn about yourself, but you also learn about the power of collective intelligence! Day after day, I’m really amazed by the human richness of our team, which is at the heart of our motivation at work and the main driver for our common sense of belonging to one community. It’s what we try to nurture with our MBA & DBA Community as a multicultural and multi-generational learning experience.

Audencia’s full-time MBA programme has recently been recognised as one of the best worldwide, and ranks sixth among the best French MBA programmes. As Audencia embarks on revolutionising the higher-education landscape through its ECOS 2025, can you share with us how this will set Audencia and its programmes apart from other business schools? What is the inspiration behind ECOS 2025?

Yes, indeed, we are very proud of the recognition of our full-time MBA programme as one of the best in the world. In fact, this programme was redesigned a few years ago as a “Responsible Management” programme, particularly in line with the school’s expertise in corporate social responsibility (CSR), which was established very early on, over 10 years ago. However, at that time, the market was not entirely ready. We therefore had to rename it in a more generic way under the name “full-time MBA”. However, we did not give up on the substance by keeping the “in responsible management” DNA in the whole curriculum (which, by the way, is always mentioned by applicants wishing to join us). For example, for more than five years, in partnership with WWF, our participants have had an induction week on “Responsible and sustainable business: understanding the challenges”. The objective was to look at responsible management and the broader context of CSR from different angles, in order to understand what it involves, why it matters to companies and their business leaders, and how it can be implemented. A central aspect is to understand why businesses are increasingly held accountable for their impacts beyond the immediate economic sphere and creating shareholder value and, in addition, are expected by a range of various stakeholders to take responsibility for their wider societal and environmental influences. This issue of sustainability is not only an element that runs through all of the programme’s courses (for example, the green supply chain) but also forms the core of dedicated specialisation modules. We have even gone further by recently introducing a certificate entitled “Maximizing Global Performance” into the programme, in partnership with Boston University (United States) and Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico) to give our participants a global vision of these issues.

Thus, the MBA & DBA Community, in its programme philosophy and its circular mode of management involving every stakeholder (students, alumni, faculty, companies, etc.) in the entire learning process, represents only one incarnation of what Audencia is in comparison to other business schools. The ECOS 2025 strategic plan expresses the school’s ambition to go even further in its DNA, which is to contribute to accelerating the virtuous transformation of individuals, organisations and society in the face of current and future challenges. This is embodied in the deep conviction that this requires the collective intelligence of women and men united to act for the common good in the awareness of belonging to the same community of destiny on a global scale. More specifically, this leads the school to a commitment in terms of the impact on three major challenges through its activities (teaching, research, innovation, etc.): the creation and use of responsible technologies and information; the definition and adoption of managerial approaches that promote inclusive organisations and societies; and the design and implementation of sustainable business and development models. This involves, for example, reinventing performance measurement for organisations (as the Chief Value Officer MBA programme is preparing to do), but also developing an enhanced hybrid of skills for our participants (and deployed around societal, behavioural and professional skills) to enable them and their organisations to face current challenges.

Audencia is also known for offering the first worldwide Chief Value Officer Executive MBA programme. Where did the motivation to create the CVO programme come from, and what are its unique features and highlights?

The programme Director, Delphine Gibassier, has been in the field for 12 years and, very early on, she noticed that people were building standards and tools, but forgetting about the need to participate in the transformation of the human capital, the ones using those new tools. She interviewed “sustainability CFOs” in 2016 and wrote the first-ever report (published by the Institute of Management Accountants in 2018) that portrayed the change-makers of the accounting profession. CFOs and their teams have been increasingly challenged to dedicate time to sustainability, notably through the integrated reporting movement (2013) and now the TCFD standard (2017). More recently, the move by the IFRS Foundation and by EFRAG in the European Union to write sustainability reporting standards is demonstrating that sustainability is clearly now at the centre of attention of the accounting profession.

Once the province of research and development or corporate sustainability departments, sustainable management has gradually become part of the concerns of financial professionals. The increasing non-financial risks, such as climate change, and urgent pressure from not only investors but also green and ethical services and products markets, enhance financial managers’ interest in social and environmental matters. These leaders need to have new competencies, including developing natural capital profit and loss accounts, identifying the cost of key externalities, and understanding the value that their organisation creates and destroys.

Thanks to this programme, future chief value officers will be equipped with a transformative accounting model that is future-oriented and underlines the changes in business model that are necessary for the long term. Furthermore, this accounting model will be context-based and will put CVOs in the driver’s seat with a new compass: Kate Raworth’s ‘doughnut’, a visual framework for sustainable development combining the concept of planetary boundaries with the complementary concept of social boundaries. Using this compass, CVOs will understand when their business model results in negative impacts on society and/or the environment. It will equip them to make the necessary shifts towards long-term strategic value creation.

CVOs will have a more dynamic and expansive mandate than CFOs. They will connect the business model to all relevant capitals and identify key value drivers within the organisation. They will incorporate the capitals into control (planning, forecasting), risk management and wider decision-making processes. CVOs will drive the culture of business sustainability by articulating and embodying the organisation’s purpose and values. They will encourage integrated thinking by measuring and tracking performance around multi-capital value creation, and enable the corporate mindset to evolve to long-term thinking.

In your opinion, what do you think are the particular facets of the Chief Value Officer Executive MBA programme curriculum that constitute the most valuable tools for your participants? What are the challenges and gaps to be filled, given the current pandemic situation?

COVID has shown us that focusing on financial information will not be sustainable over the long term; companies cannot continue to focus only on financial capital in a world where resources are running out. Thinking around this longer term and creating value for multiple beneficiaries is challenging leaders’ thinking. In this context, finance professionals are game-changers; hence the need to redefine the role of CFOs as chief value officers. The objective of the programme is to shift how management thinks, as well as the way the finance function works – from measuring a single capital to multiple capitals.

The executive MBA programme’s unique tools are the combination of sustainability, measurement and leadership skills. We are not just integrating sustainability into accounting, we are strategising accounting for sustainability to make the numbers key to decision-making processes, to boards, and to the transitioning from today’s business models to tomorrow’s business models.

The global consultancy McKinsey & Company predicts that “2021 will be the year of transition”. What do you think good leadership should look like in the post-pandemic world? What role does a chief value officer play in leading industries through this big transition to the new reality?

Whatever the new normal looks like once nations have battled their way through the coronavirus, the recent rhetoric around green finance suggests that, both internally and externally, the value of sustainability to a business is set to grow. Financial information and financial returns as the primary measure of success are markers of the old paradigm, where short-termism plagued the mindset of the capital markets. The world is shifting to multi-capital value creation accounting, where an organisation has to take into consideration capitals such as people and the environment. In this new context, the mindset of boards will need to change, and CFOs will play a critical role in bringing the necessary shift inside organisations. Becoming a chief value officer is a real choice for the future. It will be the missing link between companies and ecological and social transition.

Future CVOs need to have new competencies, including developing natural-capital profit and loss accounts, identifying the cost of key externalities, and understanding the value created through intangibles. They will need to use a mixture of measures and indicators that are financial, non-financial and pre-financial. Consequently, tools that are currently being designed – such as new scorecards, capital expenditure tools, and internal carbon markets – are rapidly becoming multi-dimensional and include various types of metrics, which themselves need to be put into the context of external trends, business models, sectoral shifts and stakeholders’ demands. This multiplicity of formats is a challenge. All those values need to be tracked and connected, which requires a multidisciplinary mindset.

The Chief Value Officer Executive MBA programme is geared towards learning and developing the skills needed for a “multi-capital” world. Can you elaborate on what exactly a multi-capital world is? How does someone prepare for it?

Multi-capital accounting does not have a clear and precise definition today. It is multi-performance accounting; in other words, it takes into account environmental performance and social performance, which are then as important as financial performance. Generally, multi-capital accounting models aim to determine the impact on society and the environment of the financial value created or destroyed by a company.

Financial capital is no longer the only capital that companies seek to maintain and develop. The origin of so-called “multi-capital” accounting is associated with the introduction of the term “triple bottom line” by the author and entrepreneur John Elkington in 1997. In line with the three pillars of sustainable development of the 1987 Bruntland Report, he proposes to indicate the global performance of the company around three themes: the human or social (“people”), the environment (“planet”) and the economic (“profit”).

It is then a question of evaluating the value created or destroyed by the company via its activities around these three themes. It should be noted that the economic part is not limited to financial performance, but is evaluated in terms of economic contribution to society.

Finance and accounting experts hence need specific hybridised competencies between finance and sustainability in order to answer today’s challenges. Modifications to the training of financial professionals are necessary in order to prepare accountants and auditors for tomorrow’s world, so they will be able to support and lead their company in this world, too.

The coronavirus crisis poses extraordinary challenges for leaders in today’s institutions, so that achieving a resilient and sustainable business model has never been more important. In what ways does the CVO help break down silos and contribute to an organisation’s long-term value creation?

The shift towards multi-capital CFOs or CVOs is a good thing for responsible business; it gives them the data to do the right things and take good management decisions. It also builds the conversation internally and helps to inform the board concerning the risks and opportunities. The real need is for transformative accounting that does not look to the past, but tries to predict the future, and outlines changes to the business model and new types of products.   

This new accounting requires communication and deep knowledge of their own organisations for CFOs, but also of stakeholders’ expectations, whether internal or external. These insights will inform analysis of business models, dependencies and impacts, risks and opportunities. The CFO’s mindset will need to shift to one of comprehensive value creation and protection. Looking at performance through a multi-capital lens will provide a 360-degree view of the organisation.

In a nutshell, the CVO positions him- or herself as a key player in the organisation, and acquires the capacity to measure and communicate the value creation process of the organisation, to understand and anticipate the financial, environmental and social implications of its decisions. In this way, the CVO becomes a change navigator by supporting the evolution of their company’s business model, thanks to an integrated and multi-capital vision.

How do you see the role of CVO fitting in and evolving in the modern business world? In what ways does the role resemble, or differ from, that of chief financial officer?

As a business partner and an expert in sustainable accounting, the chief value officer  integrates all the value creation of the company with a multi-capital vision. He plays a key role in the strategic success of all organisations thinking with a long-term perspective. CVOs have a traditional accountant’s background but much more of their focus is on sustainability and the implications for finance. They no longer just have financial capital in mind; they have a 360-degree view and look through the lens of a multi-capital approach.

What will future participants in the Chief Value Officer Executive MBA programme be most interested in learning from it, in order to prepare them for this new world?

The programme aims to enhance financial specialists’ ability in measurement and communication with regard to the value creation of their company. They will develop technical as well as management skills, making them visionary experts in sustainability and change-makers. They will acquire a strategic way of thinking to become actors in multi-capital accounting, practising responsible leadership through four learning perspectives. 

The first of these is being a sustainable development expert and a business partner, in order to understand and integrate planetary boundaries and sustainable development goals. Next comes acquiring a capacity for strategic thinking and looking towards the future, in order to understand and master the effects of technology on multi-capital accountancy and have an international, strategic and political vision of multi-capital accountancy methods. The third learning perspective is that of being a key contributor to business strategy, in order to value, control, report and audit strategic capital. The last is being an architect of, and a force for, change, to accompany the ecological and social transition of business models.

If there are any institutions whose business model should take into account the possibility of a pandemic, they are universities. How did Audencia adapt to the changes and prepare for the future? What opportunities do you foresee for business schools in the post-COVID world?

Audencia has always been a school on the move and attentive to changes in its environment. For example, we have been working for several years on the digitalisation of our teaching in light of the new forms of training consumption that appeared well before the COVID crisis. Because our teams were already acculturated to these new practices, but also because Audencia remains an international school on a human scale, we were able to react and adapt in real time to what the situation dictated at the time: organising all of our courses online. In my opinion, this is one of the school’s strengths; thanks to the human richness that makes up the school and a growing culture of learning organisation, we are able to respond to the agility that the new environmental conditions now require. This also allowed us to see how fundamental the human proximity of the students to the school was, even at a distance! For example, in the midst of the pandemic crisis, the increase in the number of individual meetings that the FT MBA Programme Management organised with applicants before they started their studies helped to strengthen the human link and their attachment to their future programme and to the school. This also allowed us to confirm the need to reinforce our support beyond the academic aspects of our future participants, particularly international ones, and led, for example, to the creation of the “Bee Well” support to give our students the opportunity to discuss their daily lives, well-being and health.

In short, the new post-COVID conditions offer a real opportunity for business schools like Audencia to reinvent themselves in their own management practices, in their teaching and pedagogy, and in the way they rethink the “student experience” on and off campus. This is exactly what Audencia wants to do within the framework of the ECOS 2025 strategic plan, with, for example, the creation of Gaïa, a new school for ecological and social transition, which will be entirely dedicated to training in positive-impact management strategies and practices for all of our initial and executive education participants. This crisis opens up a future of opportunities that represents a formidable “playground” for research to study and identify the changes in the economic and social environment. Audencia will pursue this in the future, around the three challenges it has set itself in its strategic plan.

When you consider businesses and leaders who survived the pandemic, and those who didn’t, can you see any particular differences in education between the two categories? In other words, what does a “crisis-proof” education look like?

The only certainty is uncertainty, as the COVID-19 situation reminds us. Still, I do not believe in a “crisis-proof” education but rather in an education that integrates this new norm, which is “uncertainty”. In other words, it is not really a question of adapting to crises but rather a question of adapting to the uncertainty that times of crisis remind us of. The question is, therefore, to propose a model of education that prepares individuals to face this uncertainty, that is to say, to understand it in all its complexities, to face the emotional and psychological experience that it can induce, and to know how to act with agility and discernment in an interdependent world in motion. 

For a successful person like yourself, what do you think are the top qualities that leaders should have? What tips can you share for managers to lead their organisations successfully through crises and unprecedented changes?

I do believe that the managers and leaders of contemporary organisations who will succeed will be those able to open and develop a new mindset that enables them to understand the complexity of the new unstable and unpredictable environment we live in, and to interact respectfully with their ecosystem (people, planet, etc.). Again, the new reality is complex, with new and interdependent trends impacting people and organisations deeply. Misunderstanding this will lead leaders to face huge difficulties and to be unable to make appropriate decisions for themselves and organisations. And this also requires them to be themselves in a genuine and sensitive way, in order to provide meaning at work for people who consider that “work” has a new status in their lives. The managerial equation is not so easy to find in that changing environment. 

This article was originally published on 11 July 2021.

Executive profile

After working for 10 years as HR manager in a consulting company, Mickaël Naulleau joined Audencia as Professor in Management and HRM. Today, he is also the director of the MBA & DBA Community at Audencia which consists of 15 programmes located on 3 continents (Europe, Asia and Africa).

The post Chief Value Officer: Training to navigate the future with the MBA & DBA Community of Audencia appeared first on The European Business Review.

With the onset of the global pandemic, academic institutions have quickly responded to the hugely increased demand for both training in and research into supply chain management. One institution determined to provide real value to the industry in this regard is the University of Tennessee. Ted Stank of the Global Supply Chain Institute tells us more.  

Good day, Mr Stank. Thank you for lending us some of your time. You’ve had a long career, starting with your time in the United States Navy through nearly three decades in marketing, logistics, and supply chain roles at American universities. What was the path like to your current position at the University of Tennessee?  

I started out as an operations officer in the United States Navy, serving on a guided missile frigate (a kind of small destroyer), first as an engineering officer responsible for all the auxiliary equipment on the ship: electrical system, fresh water, high- and low-pressure air – basically everything mechanical and electrical, except for the main propulsion system. Later, I was a fire control and ordnance officer, responsible for all the weapons systems on the ship.

In one deployment to the Persian Gulf in 1985, when Iran and Iraq were at war, my ship was responsible for the safe transit of US-flagged oil tankers in and out of the Gulf. Both combatants were blowing up tankers to try to prevent the cash flow to the other. Then our missile launcher went down. My team found the part that was broken and where it was in the Navy supply system, only to discover that it had a hold on it, and we could not get it for weeks (or months). Ultimately, unable to fulfil our mission without it, we had to appeal to a higher authority to get it released. It was then that I realised that unless you had the “stuff” you needed from the supply chain, you would not be successful in fulfilling your mission. 

After I left the Navy, I went to work for Abbott Laboratories Diagnostic Division (or ADD), selling hospital diagnostic equipment and chemical reagents used for blood testing. Abbott revolutionised the diagnostic testing industry in the early 1980s by introducing an analyser that automated testing for several therapeutic drugs. Previously, that had been executed through labour-intensive processes. As a result, ADD had a considerable market share ownership. However, when I went to work for the company, others like Dupont, Kodak, and Baxter Travenol had entered the business and cut into market share. While I was with ADD, the company developed a new business strategy called ADD-ed Value, which focused on both the product and the delivery service we could offer, including 24-hour delivery of reagents (chemicals). This way, lab managers would not have to keep tabs as closely on their inventory and could reduce inventory levels, knowing that they could be replenished in a day or less if supplies ran low. This notion of service as a competitive advantage stuck with me when I left Abbott and enrolled in the doctoral programme at the University of Georgia.  

At UGA, I met a young faculty member named Dr Patricia Daugherty, whose expertise was in logistics strategy. She helped me formalise my focus on using logistics service as a competitive tool. The rest is history. I spent my early career working with companies to explore how to utilise logistics capabilities to improve delivery service and engender a competitive advantage. 

When I got to Michigan State University and later to the University of Tennessee, the industry was moving toward integrated systems thinking among planning, sourcing, making, and delivering operations to form an integrated end-to-end supply chain. Tom Mentzer recruited me to UT to help evolve the logistics programme and convert it into an integrated supply chain programme. Over the last 20 years, I’ve worked with the excellent faculty we’ve recruited to UT and top companies that partner with us to explore best practices in the broader supply chain, and how, if managed correctly, it can impact revenue increases through improved service, profit through reduced costs, and asset turnover through improved inventory management.  

We’ve seen an increased interest in supply chain and logistics courses in the US with the increased exposure the industry received throughout the pandemic. Have you observed a shift in interest or knowledge about supply chain management in your classrooms at UT?  

There has been a tremendous increase in recognition of the importance of supply chains among the public over the last three years. Mainly, they’ve been a source of pain for consumers when they break down. The number of interviews I do with media outlets has increased tenfold. And when I tell people what I do, they at least recognise the phrase. I do think that has created greater interest among students. 

But frankly, our growth as a programme at UT started more than a decade ago. When I first came to UT, logistics was the fourth-largest major in the business college. Today, supply chain management – what our logistics major evolved into – is the largest major at the university and across all higher education institutions in Tennessee. That is due to the number of partners who recruit our students into great careers.  

Not too long ago, we ran a survey with first-year undergrads. Their impression of supply chain management was that it prepared them to be truck drivers (not to denigrate truck drivers – they are essential to our economy and quality of life). But now I think students and their parents have a broader understanding of supply chain management and why it is increasingly important to private and public enterprises and society in general.   

While the university can trace its expertise in supply chain back to the 1930s, it was in 2011 that UT officially created its Executive MBA in Global Supply Chain (EMBA-GSC), with a curriculum adapted to the changing needs of the industry. How has the programme continued to evolve to cater to modern-day demands as the pandemic wanes? 

While the bedrock concepts of best practices in supply chain management have not changed considerably since the EMBA programme launched, there have been several emerging trends that we have had to work into the curriculum to keep up with changing times.   

These include: 

• Increasing applications of digitalisation and automation across supply chain activities; 
• Growing geopolitical and natural disruptions that cause supply chains to become more regional, as opposed to pan-global; 
• New skill sets that make talent development critical to success in the digital and cross-cultural world; 
• A critical shortage of talent, making recruitment a more strategic undertaking;  
• Considerations around when and where to automate; 
• A heightened focus on social and environmental issues, such as diversity, inclusion, and sustainability

Universities emphasise producing academic research. But, through the Global Supply Chain Institute, you and other faculty members have developed close relationships with the industry. Do you see academic research translating into industry practice? And how do participants utilise research methodologies and tools from their graduate studies in their professional lives?  

This is a hot button for me. If structured correctly by business faculty who understand the needs and are comfortable working with industry partners, research should be theoretically and methodologically rigorous. It should also be relevant to industry to help overcome challenges and improve performance. It is a cop-out for business academia to adhere to norms that suggest this is not the case. On the whole, a business school should produce knowledge generated from research that furthers both theory and practice. I completely refute those who believe the two are mutually exclusive.   

Our Advanced Supply Chain Collaborative is an exemplar of the potential of this belief. Each year, up to 20 faculty and PhD students engage 10-12 of our partners in collaborative research projects that yield results adapted and applied by those partners and published in various outlets by our faculty. These research projects inform cutting-edge curricula in our classrooms, including the EMBA in Global Supply Chain.  

There’s also been a spotlight on the importance of developing soft skills in executive education. Several US universities, influenced by the pandemic, have pivoted their curriculums to concentrate more on things like risk management, data management, and production reshoring. Has the university taken a similar approach? 

Well, yes. But I don’t consider those soft skills. They’re core supply chain knowledge and practice areas taught in our supply chain programmes for years.    

Our focus in the EMBA is to hone those skills and provide our students with the strategic and financial skills to communicate the benefits of world-class supply chain management to the C-suite and, further, to take their seats in the C-suite to direct the business into a future dependent upon best-in-class supply chain management for its success.  

Supply chain management is at an inflection point. It’s becoming harder for organisations to find people with the right skills to match. What kind of insights into logistics and distribution does the programme give students, and how can graduates use these in the workforce?  

First, a word of caution: supply chain management is not logistics and distribution. Logistics and distribution are vital parts of the supply chain, but there is much more to the discipline. 

Supply chain management spans boundaries. It facilitates an organisation’s ability to plan for and secure the resources needed to create and deliver everything from jellybeans to skyscrapers. This stretches from growing food, digging minerals out of the ground, or creating molecules in a lab, to delivering finished goods to consumers anywhere in the world. And it’s equally important to get packaging material and used products back into the value stream.   

Supply chains represent three of the four ways that organisations create economic value. These four value-adds include:   

• Determining customer wants or needs and what they are willing to exchange to get them filled (this is the responsibility of marketing and sales); 
• Creating the right product or service to fill the want or need;  
• Getting the product or service to the customer at the right time;  
• Bringing it to the place where they want to consume it.  

The last three are all the responsibility of supply chain management to plan, source, make, and deliver on the promise of the exchange. 

Our programme provides students with broad knowledge of how to manage, plan, source, make, and deliver operations as an integrated system and gives them the senior leadership skills in strategy and financial management to use their knowledge to guide the firm toward a successful future. 

How do you think that supply chain professionals are uniquely poised to see the future? And what do they see that other disciplines may not? 

First, most of the cost, human resources, and working capital in any operating firm lie within the purview of supply chain managers. 

Second, no other functional area in the firm is educated or structured to view firm operations as an integrated whole, seeking to optimise system performance rather than isolated functional performance. 

Third, no other functional area works both downstream, with customers and customer networks, and upstream, with service and goods suppliers, extending the system perspective to include the entire value chain.  

Finally, supply chain management, if done well, has a greater opportunity to significantly impact economic value added (EVA) than any other function, due to its impact on revenue, cost and margin, and assets. 

What is your high-level view of the supply chain field today – particularly from the perspective of executive education – and how do you see it evolving over the next five years? 

Executives with supply chain management expertise are increasingly finding their way into the C-suite. Firms recognise that, in the emerging world order, managing regional supply chains, dealing with massive instability in demand and supply, addressing talent shortages – and the skills possessed by supply chain managers equipped with best-in-class knowledge – are the key to their success. 

Much as finance and marketing expertise were the keys to senior-level leadership over several decades, supply chain management will be the key to C-suite leadership in the next 10-30 years.  

What advice would you give someone considering applying to the University of Tennessee’s EMBA-GSC programme?  

Our programme is designed for managers with 10-15 years of experience who want to broaden their knowledge base of end-to-end supply chain management and hone their skills in senior leadership traits like strategy, leadership, and finance.  

We have other educational offerings at UT that provide greater depth in supply chain areas; the EMBA is for people looking to move into positions of greater overall business responsibility. 

Now, if this description fits you, I’ll say this. Get ready for a year of tremendous growth and a new network of friends and partners. It won’t be easy, but join us if you want a transformational experience. After graduating 10 classes and over 150 executives who can attest to that statement, I can guarantee it. 

And finally, as someone who’s achieved notable distinctions in university education and supply chain leadership, what would you describe as success? 

Everyone must assign success for themselves. My mission is to positively impact other scholars, students, and organisations through my scholarship while maintaining a healthy work/life balance. I seek to implement this by creating effective teams and empowering others to achieve their full potential. 

Throughout my career, I have focused on doing work that makes a difference. As a result, I have never been overly influenced by goals like publishing another article or winning a teaching award (although that recognition is both satisfying and validating). My greatest satisfaction has come from seeing the knowledge I’ve generated and conveyed to others put to work to deliver results. This ultimate measure of impact has come in four forms:   

• Conducting scholarly research regarding the use of supply chain management to create organisational value;  
• Using the knowledge generated from my scholarship to work directly with organisations to make changes that yield value creation;  
• Disseminating knowledge generated through scholarship to students (at all levels), thus helping them create value for their organisations as well as themselves; 
• Facilitating the success of my academic colleagues and PhD students. 

Executive Profile

Theodore P. (Ted) Stank is a professor of supply chain management and co-faculty director of the Global Supply Chain Institute at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He leads the Advanced Supply Chain Collaborative, a joint initiative between UT and leading Fortune 500 partner firms focused on better understanding innovative applications in SCM. 

The post Supply Chain Management – Greater EVA Potential than Any Other Function appeared first on The European Business Review.

Chengwei Liu is the faculty lead of the Global Online MBA and is an associate professor of strategy and behavioural science at ESMT. Rebecca Loades is the director of ESMT’s MBA programmes. Both believe in the transformational power of education and, in this article, they share what makes the Global Online MBA unique.

Prof Liu says the motivation behind the program was to enable more students to benefit from the knowledge and expertise of ESMT’s world-class faculty so that they can have greater impact in their professional lives.

An innovative program for the innovators of the future

A part-time MBA is often taken by people who would already be busy enough without additional study demands — ambitious people ready to invest in themselves and accelerate their professional development. That’s why ESMT has structured its online MBA in a highly flexible way, where students can access the majority of the material online at a time that suits them. To add extra flexibility, the MBA can be taken over a period of up to five years.

While there are other flexible MBAs online, what makes the ESMT Berlin Global Online MBA stand out is the design of the programme.

Loades says: “We have structured the programme very differently from our competitors. Each module has been developed to address business challenges in an integrated approach.”

For example, core modules will enable students to make better decisions, to understand more about their organisation or market, and to create strategic advantage.

Since students are doing their MBA part-time while working, they can immediately apply what they’ve learned,  Loades says.

Or, as Prof Liu puts it, they “can apply whatever they learn to actual business challenges in real time.”

And students can expect more from the online programme than just watching videos. Loades says: “We’ve created an impactful learning environment. Every moment has been developed with intention, and to maximise learning.” Faculty at ESMT work closely with learning designers to optimise the learning journey and create a blend of independent study, interactive exercises, and group work.

Working in teams is an important and essential feature of the online MBA, With students coming from more than 45 different countries, teamwork takes place virtually and offers a rich and psychologically-safe environment to develop virtual communication and leadership skills.  The combination of learning about effective virtual communication and digital leadership, and applying that knowlege is powerful and very relevant to how we work today.

A unique curriculum

Aside from a unique structure, the content and curricula of the course also stand out, Prof Liu says. The professors teaching in the Global Online MBA are the same world-class faculty as teach in our other MBA programmes.  Students are therefore learning from thought leaders.

And to ensure that our courses include the latest research, they are reviewed and updated after each iteration.

To help understand the integrated approach taken by ESMT Berlin, consider the module Making Wiser Decisions Under Uncertainty. Upon completion, students will be able to apply quantitative techniques to decision making, address organisational issues that can prevent effective decision making, and holistically evaluate the implications of managerial decision making.

As Loades frames it, students are investing personally and psychologically in the program and they deserve a world-class experience.  After all, by choosing to study while working, students are choosing to reallocate time away from other things in their lives. One way ESMT ensures the investment is worthwhile is through ongoing programme development. Feedback is requested throughout the programme and used to inform improvements and updates for the following class.

An online MBA for online leadership

The pandemic accelerated the adoption of online learning. We were all forced to become comfortable with technology-mediated interactions and barriers to adoption were lowered.

“This almost overnight shift to hybrid work demonstrated that managing people and teams remotely requires a different skillset.  Students in the Global Online MBA program develop that muscle from day one.  Virtual collaboration is at the heart of the program and one of the first courses studied, Global Virtual Teams, has been designed to help students improve communication and leadership skills when interacting in mainly, or exclusively, virtual environments” – Rebecca Loades

While the MBA can be taken fully online, students can join us for Experience Weeks. This July, two-thirds of the first cohort came to Berlin, and Loades says it was as if “they had known each other for years”. To Loades and Prof Liu, it’s evidence that meaningful connections are being forged throughout the programme.

That shows in the way the students work together. While ESMT makes sure to arrange both professional and social gatherings, the students spontaneously and voluntarily do the same. For example, students support each other through voluntary tutoring sessions to help their classmates understand principles and concepts.

Diversity and accessibility as a key to a successful MBA

Diversity and accessibility are at the core of Loades’ and Liu’s approach to designing a successful online MBA in a number of ways.

Loades shares that they price the programme in an accessible way to ensure the broadest-possible inclusion. To make sure every student can join live sessions, every session is offered twice, so they cater to every time zone and no one feels left out. Besides that, ESMT Berlin has invested in online education technology, so that the insights and programmes from ESMT can be shared as widely as possible.

These efforts have resulted in a highly diverse and international learning environment with ambitious students from all around the world, stretching from Vancouver to Sydney.

And, according to Prof Liu and Loades, the diverse environment is helping students massively. As Prof Liu says: “It really excites me how diverse our students are. And it definitely benefits the programme as well as the students that people from all over the world join.” Loades adds that being exposed to the perspectives and values of different cultures is helping their students prepare for international careers as they work together and navigate the challenges global teams can expect to experience.

Corporate partnerships also allow for a diversity of nationalities and purposes. Prof Liu and Loades tell of their partnership with the BMW Foundation, which helps ESMT offer ten scholarships to displaced women from Ukraine to study for the global online MBA – upskilling that they can eventually take back to Ukraine to help rebuild the country.

Another partnership that ESMT has made to diversify its programme is with Allianz Insurance, which sponsors 10 students each year, of which seven are social entrepreneurs that get their global online MBA sponsored.

On success

Most people, if not all, starting an MBA or even thinking about starting one are people who have a high drive toward success in their professional life. So we conclude by sharing how Loades and Liu define success.

Loades says that, for her, success is “when I see our students transform through their learning and development. Because I think education is unique in its ability to genuinely transform lives. And seeing our students do that, that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.”

Prof Liu says: “I have a very short answer. Helping others to succeed. That’s it.”

The post How to Create a Successful Global, Online MBA: The Case of ESMT Berlin’s Online MBA appeared first on The European Business Review.

Good day, Mr Shamdasani! Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to speak with us. Perhaps we can start with you sharing a few words to give us a sense of NUS Business School as an institution, as the banner behind you describes it as “APAC’s most established Executive MBA”.

For over 50 years, I’m proud to say that NUS Business School has a proven track record of successfully developing leaders and has consistently offered rigorous, relevant, and rewarding business education to outstanding participants across the globe.

Our NUS Executive MBA is distinctive for offering the best global business knowledge with deep Asian insights, preparing participants to lead Asian businesses to international success and helping global businesses succeed in Asia. We happen to be celebrating our 25th anniversary this year, a milestone event we’re incredibly proud of.

The NUS Business School and NUS EMBA experience is ranked among the best in Asia and Asia Pacific. What makes the programme truly special?

This is the Asian century, and about 60 percent of global GDP will come from the Asia-Pacific. I genuinely believe that, as a programme, we have consistently delivered on our brand promise of a rigorous global EMBA programme, and our Asian focus within a global framework is how we can differentiate our programme from other MBA programmes. With a strong focus on providing thought leadership, frameworks and tools, business insights, and experiential and immersive learning experiences in Asia-Pacific, participants can expect a rich array of content, including case studies, guest speakers, and company visits to key destinations around the region.

Having spent more than 50 per cent of their time outside of Singapore, participants will leave with the proper knowledge, competencies, and networks to lead both global and Asian organisations to compete effectively in Asia and globally. So, whether you see your future as a professional or an entrepreneur, if it’s in Asia, this is an excellent programme for you.

Participants of the NUS EMBA programme come from a diverse range of backgrounds, from across the region. Can you tell us more about the diversity you see in the classroom, and how this enriches the learning experience?

With each cohort, we would like to see diversity in all aspects. We look at cultural, professional, and geographical diversity. We also look at the experience profile of the executives and how they will be able to contribute to the class. Because we often encourage peer learning and peer sharing, I find that leveraging almost 800 years of experience per cohort and having a diverse, experienced class adds richness to the conversations and overall learning experience for the participants. This approach allows them to enhance their ability to successfully lead people, teams, and organisations with the myriad perspectives of business and culture they have gained from fellow participants.

The NUS Executive MBA is the only programme that comprises immersive learning experiences across seven APAC countries. What do you mean by “immersive”?

When we designed this programme, we thought to ourselves that one cannot learn about doing business, for example, in Vietnam, from books and a remote classroom in Singapore. We wanted to create an immersive learning environment. The NUS Executive MBA takes our participants on this immersive learning experience, through what we call residential segments, to eight cities in seven countries, and in doing so we’re able to provide participants with deep exposure across Asia-Pacific.

These residential segments help equip participants with first-hand perspectives into the varied cultural, business, and political landscapes across Asia-Pacific. They typically attend lectures and presentations, participate in lively discussions and debates, visit local and international companies, and meet with business and thought leaders. Spending time in these destinations complements and provides local context, relevance, and a feel for the nuances of doing business in these respective countries, giving participants a deeper understanding of the business operations and best practices within that market. We find that this enhances the overall learning experience, allowing them to deepen their appreciation of the specificities and complexities of doing business in each country.

And I’ve personally noticed that networking and bonding happen much more extensively. When students are out in different destinations, learning, networking together and even partying together, it helps to create that sense of camaraderie and to build close bonds and friendships that last for a long time.

You talk about discovery and opening the students’ eyes, whether it’s to different cultures or ways of doing business. Alongside those “hard skills”, the technical skills embedded in that core curriculum, how does the NUS Executive MBA journey teach the soft skills of leadership that will then serve them well in the next steps of their career?

There are various ways that participants can develop their leadership skills on the EMBA: project work, group discussions, and peer-to-peer learning, for example, can provide opportunities for participants to learn how to work with individuals from different cultures, backgrounds, expertise, and experiences. Company visits and dialogue sessions with industry leaders can also provide participants with a deeper understanding on the types of leadership skills required of business leaders today across a variety of functions and industries.

You have also taught for many years, with your present role as Executive MBA Academic Director. Since you have encountered many students, what is your opinion of today’s EMBA students? How has the educational process and motivation changed over the years?

Global business perspectives and processes have changed drastically over the last few years. Thanks to the significant disruptions the world has experienced, the senior executives who take our programme are more resilient than ever. With every passing cohort, I see more and more individuals with the hunger for knowledge that falls far beyond their industries. They seem to be more open to alternative concepts, perspectives, and ideas that will help their companies and organisations be future-ready. Paired with the skills acquired through our programme, their open-mindedness and that willingness to pivot will help them become even better, influential leaders. Seeing our graduates soar in their professional careers and other new businesses is hugely gratifying.

What leadership attributes and skills do you see as being the most needed in a post-pandemic world? How does the NUS EMBA equip them?

The future is going to be a lot tougher. Navigating the VUCAH world and managing increasing risks of disruption brought about by technology, climate, supply chains, geopolitics, cyber, and talent requires today’s leaders to lead with purpose, strategic vision, agility, and speed. Joining the NUS EMBA enables leaders to transform and reinvent themselves and their organisations for long-term growth and sustainability.

Aside from moving on in their careers and growing and pivoting their businesses for success, I am always very gratified and proud to see our alumni give back to the programme and the school in terms of sharing experiences, guest speaking, and providing internships and scholarships.

How do you think the programme will continue to evolve in the next five years to adapt and respond to what both students and the market are looking for?

Since welcoming our first participants in 1997, this programme has grown from strength to strength, providing unrivalled exposure and immersion in the emerging and powerhouse economies across the Asia Pacific region. The world is constantly changing. Therefore, we must keep our finger on the pulse and move with significant shifts and trends happening in APAC. The University does a great job of keeping up with new business trends and knowledge. It shows how business needs are constantly evolving and how important it is to keep oneself up to date continually.

We will make tweaks to the programme when the situation calls for it. Throughout the years, for instance, we’ve expanded our geographical footprint. We used to visit one city in China only. But, given China’s importance to the region and the global economy, participants will now spend two weeks in both Shenzhen and Shanghai.

However, our commitment to providing that Asian context and focus through networking and immersive learning has remained consistent and true to our proposition. Even if you were a graduate 25 years ago, you would remember your experiences travelling, learning, and networking in key destinations in Asia where we take our students.

Executive Profile

Dr Prem Shamdasani is Associate Professor of Marketing; Academic Director, NUS Executive MBA Program; Co-Director, Stanford-NUS International Management Program; Director, and the NUS Marketing Strategy In A Digital World Program at the NUS Business School, National University of Singapore.

He holds a BBA degree with first class honours from the National University of Singapore (1984) and received his PhD in Marketing from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles (1990). His research and teaching interests include marketing strategy, brand management, customer-centricity and relationship management.

Aside from teaching graduate and executive MBA courses, Dr Shamdasani is active in consulting, executive development, and training and has worked with over 120 companies globally, such as Abbot, Gucci, McDonalds, Samsung, Microsoft, 3M, Philips, Bayer Healthcare, GSK, Barclays, Ernst & Young, Deloitte, Nestle, Volvo and Ikea.

He has co-authored two books, including one of the leading books on focus group research, Focus Groups: Theory and Practice, for Sage Publications (USA). His research publications have appeared in the leading regional and international journals and include the Journal of Consumer Research, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Business Research, Asian Journal of Marketing, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Asian Case Research Journal, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, and the Journal of Leadership Studies.

The post Thought Leadership, Frameworks, Tools and Immersion: Interview with Dr Prem Shamdasani of NUS Business School appeared first on The European Business Review.

Time will tell whether history will record the Zeitgeist of our times as one of isolationism or internationalism. But one thing is certain: in today’s world, business leaders need to be comfortable collaborating across borders and cultures. Here, Professor Hervé Remaud, director of KEDGE Global Executive MBA of the KEDGE Business School outlines how the truly global ambiance of the school and its international partnerships makes an ideal training ground for executives.

Good day, Professor Hervé Remaud! We are delighted to speak with you today.  First, we would like to congratulate KEDGE Business School and the KEDGE Global Executive MBA on being globally recognised as one of the best business schools and top executive MBA programmes. How do you feel about these recognitions?

I would be lying if I said that it is not a good feeling. But this is a 2019 feeling that will be challenged in 2020, and then again in 2021, although I believe we definitely are on track …

First, such recognition is that of the value of our Exec MBA alumni in their respective jobs and in the market. In the FT EMBA survey, 55 percent of the ranking is due to the alumni, who are interviewed three years after graduation.

These results are also the fruit of collaborative teamwork towards the same ambition: making the KEDGE Executive MBA programme amongst the best in the world, in terms of the personal and professional achievement for our participants. This fully illustrates the values that our school advocates and that we wish our participants to foster: values of innovation and open-mindedness to new technologies and ways of achievement; caring values to others and themselves; and sharing values, be they knowledge, best practices or skills-sharing.

The KEDGE Global EMBA ranked thirty- ninth in the world (fifteenth in Europe, fourth in France) in the 2019 Financial Times survey, and we are collectively proud of this result, though it does not yet totally reflect the quality and value of the EMBA to our participants. There remains room for further improvement.

With ten campuses spread across three continents, KEDGE Business School is a truly international school. What do you think are the advantages of KEDGE Business School that set it apart from other business schools in Europe and globally, and what are the inimitable attributes and highlights of the KEDGE Global Executive MBA programme?

Actually, KEDGE Business School has seven permanent Campuses (four in France, two in China and one in Africa) and three associate campuses in France.

KEDGE’s campuses abroad definitely give the school an international reach in terms of faculty, students, global network and image. It also paved the way for some of the international programme partnerships, such as: the Global Executive MBA in partnership with JiaoTong University in Shanghai – China; and the recent partnership developed with Athena School of Management in Bombay, India. This international exposure and implantation overseas is related to our capacity to train executives with an international ambition and with an international background. It also enables our EMBA participants to interact both professionally and socially with participants from different cultures. Starting with the next intake, we will organise one of our core courses – Negotiation – with European- and Chinese-based cohorts all together. My objective is to motivate KEDGE cohorts to mix and network, right from the beginning of the EMBA programme. Likewise, French-based EMBA participants will visit their Chinese colleagues in 2021 for another core course in Shanghai, which is Leadership across Culture.

In the same perspective, we initiated a collaboration with two excellent universities and executive MBAs in Europe: Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Germany, and Bocconi SDA.

Apart from this international openness for our participants and faculty members, we are enthusiastic about the attribute of flexibility that we bring to the delivery of the programme. The KEDGE Global EMBA can be taken over a period of from 20 to 48 months. The participants set their own pace and can either accelerate or slow down, according to their professional agenda. The whole team is dedicated to facilitating the participants’ journey through the EMBA.

Another attribute of the programme that we put a lot of focus on is personal development, with guidance through individual and group coaching, as well as a mentoring programme.

We work to promote participants’ self-confidence and open-mindedness through practical business cases and multi-cultural teamwork.

The KEDGE Global Executive MBA programme has a unique flexibility option that offers not only a fully transformational learning experience for the executives, but helps them to have a good work-life balance. What do you think are the particular facets of the executive education curriculum that are the most valuable tools for your participants?

We are in a business world that requires more and more adaptability from high-level professionals. At KEDGE, due to the geographical split between our campuses in France and abroad, we practise agility on a daily basis, and are in a good position to share this experience with our EMBA participants. Physical agility favours intellectual agility. As we offer schedule and geographical flexibility, there is a constant movement of participants attending the courses. Even if you are part of a specific intake, you can easily find yourself mixing with participants from earlier intakes who have delayed or anticipated courses, and happen to share yours at a point in time. This is a good way to enlarge networks and learning experience. International business seminars and international majors are also outstanding opportunities to grow both networks and the sharing of best practices. We fully understand the value of creating a cohort spirit, with some participants knowing each other very well after a few courses. But extending their networks through participation in courses delivered for previous cohorts is a real chance to get to know other EMBA participants at KEDGE.

For 14 years, KEDGE has been a key player in higher-management education in China, where high quality of education is given the utmost importance. The KEDGE Global Executive MBA is also the only French MBA recognised by the Chinese government. Can you tell us more about your experience and plans for engaging with the Chinese market?

For many people, saying that you “build a relationship over the years with your partners” is somewhat of a cliché. What our Chinese friends call “guanxi” is actually important. We may be doing fantastic things, and sometimes things that are less fantastic but, in any case, we trust each other. Trust is the key to foreseeing what the future could hold. We have been building our collaboration with Shanghai Jiao Tong University on one side, and with Renmin University on the other, with a long-term perspective in mind. Today, that positioning is rewarded with the recognition of our Global MBA by the Ministry of Education of China, and we operate (with two other French institutions) a French Chinese Institute in collaboration with Renmin University. A couple of other initiatives will be announced before the end of the year,  so stay tuned … 

Most of the executives who have successfully completed the programme describe the KEDGE Global Executive MBA as “transformative” and “entrepreneurial”, adding that it has opened more opportunities for career growth and personal improvement. Can you share a particular student’s success story or the career paths of some of your participants?

We have quite a number of examples to share. There are some entrepreneurship successes, such as Nino Sapina, who founded Realcast in 2017 after a successful career with UbiSoft. His start-up creates innovative solutions using augmented reality, and was a finalist at the Aurea awards 2020. Our graduates also either achieved positions of higher responsibility in their companies or entered new ones. I can mention Hermann Chenal, who became Head Supply Chain Director at LIM (Leather In Motion) Group, a mid-sized company with strong expertise and “savoir-faire” in leather, saddlery and tannery. He is based today in Florida, where he reorganised the entire LIM business in the US. Nadine Gouba became Purchasing and Project Director at Amaury Group, a family press group specialising in sports, and well known in France for its newspaper (and app) L’Equipe; or Dr Maximilian Hemgesberg, who became Global Head of Business Development Coatings-Adhesives-Specialties at Covestro (Germany). On a different perspective, Pierre-Jean Laine became Head of Procurement, Vehicles & Tactical Systems BL at Thales; or Max-Ariste Metadier, who took up the position of General Manager EMEA for Mercury Marine. There are many more examples, of course, of people who developed their competencies and displayed their leadership skills, reaching the next step.

KEDGE Business School houses a diverse and unique learning community and global network. What are the biggest challenges you have encountered in handling a multicultural group and addressing the varying needs of business leaders across the different industries, and how do you overcome them?

A big challenge is probably encouraging participants to be patient and open-minded with each other, especially when dealing with cultural gaps: differences in approaching business cases, or communication misunderstandings. Some participants are very sharp in the financial aspects, others in management, others have marketing and communications reflexes or international experience … but the fact is that everyone is bringing something different to the group, and there is always a period of adaption going on. A second challenge is to have them sharing these experiences and for everyone to assimilate and build on this knowledge. In the KEDGE Global EMBA programme, our aim is to refresh and update hard skills, but are very keen, too, on developing soft skills. This will ensure that participants are agile and adaptable, and able to cross-fertilise. We mix groups culturally, and forbid any use of languages other than English. The Negotiation course with Chinese and European participants is a big success in this regard.

How do you make sure that the participants and their organisations will gain the highest return on their investment in terms of knowledge acquisition, career advancement, long-term profitability for the business, and other measures of ROI for executive education?

This is a good point and let us be clear on this. KEDGE assures its EMBA participants of high-quality content and cutting-edge faculty members (all with doctoral degrees and work experience, or close to the business), offers optimal learning conditions, maximises exchanges, listens to participants’ proposals, provides opportunities to meet in France and abroad, and offers individual and group coaching. But in the end, an Executive MBA is what you make it through your personal involvement, work, posture development, open-mindedness, and your will to network.

ROI is measured not only in terms of salary increase (as demonstrated in the FT ranking), but also in terms of soft-skills development. Our last graduate survey (June 2019) shows that 84 percent of graduates developed their self-confidence, 88 percent felt an impact on their professional evolution within two years after completion of the EMBA (66 percent within a year), 80 percent developed their personal performance, and 75 percent their leadership. We’re rather proud of the fact that 97 percent of our graduates would recommend the KEDGE Global MBA to people looking for an EMBA.

Kedge Business School Paris campus

Today’s leaders need to adapt and respond quickly against the digital disruptors to generate new value for customers and to manage their workforce better. How does the Global Executive MBA programme help companies and leaders achieve their goals of creating a high-performing workforce in these fast-changing times?

To put it briefly, the KEDGE EMBA is not about making sure they become experts in blockchain, IoT, big data or Industry 4.0, etc. My job is to make sure that they understand what it’s all about, and how this can disrupt the business model of the company they work with or manage. I want to make sure that, with all the seminars and experience they gain from the EMBA, they can connect the dots between all pieces of information and assemble them as a result of their EMBA journey. Then, they can make sure to recruit, bring aboard and work with the real “technical” experts in these domains, to help them implement the strategy they come up with. It would be fantastic for many of them to be expert in everything, but somewhat impossible. However, we can help them to understand the big picture, and give them the knowledge and tools to catch the opportunities that our fast-changing environment generates.

You are also known for your research expertise on the interface between consumer behaviour, marketing research and integrated marketing. How does this help you in developing the KEDGE Global Executive MBA programme into a stronger international brand?

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to discuss the research expertise I have developed during these last 15 years. I spent five years at the University of South Australia, working at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, where empirical generalisation is the way of producing knowledge. As part of that, I analysed the real purchase behaviour of people buying wine and spirits. Although you may think this industry is far from an EMBA type of business, in fact it’s not. Part of my job is to make sure that the KEDGE EMBA brand is easy for candidates to “buy” and easy to think of when they look for an EMBA. In brief, along with various marketing and academic contents, I try to maximise the physical and mental availability of the KEDGE EMBA brand in the international EMBA market. Being well ranked by the FT is one such content, but just one of many.

As the director of KEDGE Global Executive MBA, what excites you most or what do you eagerly anticipate in terms of the programme’s present and future endeavours and partnerships with elite schools?

We look forward to welcoming more high-level foreign candidates to our programme and, to this end, I anticipate quite a few international exchanges in the context of our partnerships, which is very exciting. International partnerships are on the corner and the next few months will see the first intake of our Indian participants in Bombay, in partnership with Athena School of Management.

An exciting partnership is currently building in the form of an alliance with Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, and Bocconi SDA. I do believe in a coopetition world. But to develop efficiently, I believe that we need to partner with institutions that share similar values and similar challenges. In that perspective, alliances are a chance to have three brains and wills building the future development of our respective programmes, instead of just one. 

Based on your experience working with senior leaders and executives from different industries, what advice would you give to aspiring leaders and seasoned managers in terms of building a successful career? What do you think are the essential qualities a 21^st-century leader must have? Can you give any examples of leaders whom you consider to be inspiring?

You may be disappointed, but I don’t have in mind any leaders who are really inspiring, not because they don’t exist, but mostly because I don’t try to imitate or get into the shoes of someone who might be perceived as a successful leader. On top of that, a successful career is very personal. Long story short, I enjoy my job today because it gives me an equal opportunity to learn and a deliver knowledge… If I really have to give you a leader persona, it would be someone who accepts risk when building and developing a business.

The essential qualities of a leader today, to answer your question, would include understanding the big picture of the business environment you evolve in, anticipating and implementing the changes in your organisation that are required to survive tomorrow, demonstrate empathy for others and for society at large. 

Managing people is a different story… somewhat of a daily learning process and experience! You can be a good leader and a poor manager, and vice versa. We tend to focus a lot on managers, but having good people to work with is also important in that relationship and exercise.

Lastly, can you share with us what success means to you?

As the director of the Executive MBA, success means having the chance to congratulate EMBA participants onstage during their graduation ceremony – not because of the piece of paper with “MBA” written on it, but because of the transformational journey that they achieved. In that perspective, I would make mine this quote from Albert Einstein: “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” The KEDGE EMBA promotes values of innovation, sharing, diversity; it encourages participants to take risks. These values bring them out of their comfort zone, enable them to fail, and try again. This is what will make participants successful.

Thank you very much Professor Hervé. It’s a pleasure speaking with you.  

Executive Profile

Professor Hervé Remaud is the director of KEDGE Global Executive MBA and a Senior Professor of Marketing at KEDGE Business School. Following 5 years spent at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute of the University of South Australia, he took over the direction of KEDGE Wine and Spirits MBA in 2010. Herve obtained his Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in Agricultural Economics and Management from Ecole Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Montpellier. He is the author of some 50 articles that are published in academic, professional journals and conferences. His area of research focuses more specifically on agrifood and wine marketing, brand perception and brand performance measure.

The post Cross-border and Cross-cultural: the KEDGE Global Executive MBA Programme has a Worldwide Reach appeared first on The European Business Review.

We live in turbulent times, and business leaders need to draw on a range of different skills as they plan their strategies, look for innovation, strive for sustainability and cope with digitalisation. Against this background, business educators are working hard to arm executives with the training they need in order to deal robustly with the issues. Warwick Business School (WBS) has an impressive suite of executive diplomas that aim to do just that. Director of Executive Education Tim Wray fills us in.

Hello, Tim! Thank you for taking the time from your busy schedule to talk to us. Could we begin with a few words about your work day? What does a normal day look like for you?

It may be somewhat clichéd to say it, but no two days are the same! The variety in my role as Director of Executive Education at Warwick Business School is one of the great attractions for me. The job can take you anywhere. To start with, we have a base at Warwick University and also at The Shard in London. But I could just as easily wake up anywhere around the globe, as we have an international client base. One day might be spent with a client in a highly creative process as we put together a learning intervention; the next may be taken up navigating the procedures and committees that necessarily underpin life in a university setting. There will always be regular interaction with my team, either in person or virtually, as we are constantly managing multiple projects. It’s often fast-paced and pressurised and you need to thrive in that environment. Having said that, wherever I am, I like to get up early and have a couple of hours at my desk before the demands of the day really kick in. That’s an important time to ensure that I keep focused on the highest priorities.   

Warwick Business School’s suite of executive diplomas are a key part of its executive education programme. Could you give us some background on what led the school to set up the programme in this format?

We recently conducted an extensive survey among our alumni, who are located all around the globe and are typically operating in senior executive roles. We asked them to identify the most pressing challenges they are facing today, both organisationally and individually as business leaders. We wanted to know how we could best add value as they seek to take on these challenges.

The key areas that surfaced in the survey were leadership, strategy execution and building digital capability. We have designed the suite of executive diplomas around these critical themes. The diplomas represent a deep dive into each subject area, in contrast to a more general management programme. They are delivered in a more concentrated format over one calendar year, and the modular format suits people working in high-pressured jobs who are time-poor.

The executive diplomas are aimed at a senior executive audience who are interested in addressing a specific organisational challenge, like digital transformation, or plugging a capability gap, such as their own leadership skills and understanding. Another key characteristic of the diplomas is the strong focus on application and impact, not just theory.

Warwick Business School at The Shard, London

The WBS Diploma in Strategic Leadership not only aims to highlight the link between leadership and strategy in today’s fast-changing business environment, but is also predicated on the notion that strategy is no longer a top-down activity in a business organisation. Could you enlarge on that idea?

We know in the world we’re operating in that leadership has changed dramatically, and the idea of hero leaders at the top of an organisation who know everything has long gone. We need distributed leadership right across the organisation, and very often the executives we work with are seeking to build that leadership strength at all levels of the organisation. If we look at companies who do that extremely well, such as the likes of GE, they will have a premium on their share prices as a result. So, there is a real, genuine recognition of not just the strength of the senior management team, which of course is critical, but also the strength of your leadership right down through the organisation.

In a rapidly changing business environment, it is people located at the boundaries of the organisation, close to the market and competitors, and directly interacting with customers, who see opportunities first. How you enable these people to respond and mobilise support across the business is a critical question for those at the top of an organisation and a key theme of the strategic leadership diploma.

The Diploma in Strategy and Innovation is another member of the WBS executive diploma suite. What led to the establishment of a diploma course that links these two concepts?

We all know that every sector of the global economy is facing exponential change. Technological innovation is disrupting whole industries and shortening product life cycles. Where there is high uncertainty about the future, the strategy paradigm shifts away from analysis and planning, towards experimentation and discovery. Essentially, we need to learn our way to the future, building a portfolio of projects from which we hope the business of the future emerges. All of this requires a fundamentally new mindset and is why the diploma also focuses on leadership and creating an organisational culture supportive of innovation. Increasingly, strategy is emergent rather than planned, and the diploma helps senior leaders think about the individual and organisational capabilities required to make this happen.

If there is one feature that characterises the world in which we are now living, it is change. Warwick Business School’s Diploma in Organisational Change would seem to be highly relevant to today’s business scene, but how can the course help executives who probably come from a range of different business sectors to cope with this challenge?

Our research among our alumni community, which is made up of senior executives from a wide range of global organisations, told us that strategy execution, that “knowing-doing” gap and how to bridge it, is of critical importance to them. We know that up to 80% of strategies sit on the shelf and the real challenge is about strategy implementation. I recall speaking to a very successful chief executive who remarked that he’d rather have a good strategy well implemented, than a brilliant strategy that didn’t go anywhere. So that “knowing-doing” gap and that execution is of critical importance, and that’s what the diploma in organisational change is focused on.

Of course, a “one size fits all” approach will not work when it comes to implementing change. Different contexts require different change strategies. In fact, you could argue that every change setting is different and requires a nuanced approach. This contextual awareness and intelligence is a key characteristic of successful change leadership and a major theme running through the programme. We challenge participants not to implement formulaic approaches to change slavishly, and that includes methods that are currently much in vogue, such as agile, but rather to look at the subtleties of the context – the stakeholder landscape, the dynamic of power in the organisation, the legacy of previous change initiatives, what needs to stay the same as well as what needs to change – and to think carefully about what all this means for the approach to change that’s adopted.

I think a critical feature of a programme like this is also how participants evolve their own thinking and craft their own solutions from the many inputs. The expertise of faculty is one obvious source, but the diversity of experience and backgrounds in the room adds further richness to the discussion and encourages a participant to see their own situation through a different lens. A typical day on the executive diploma will involve a lot of break-out work, working in small groups, working on case-study material, making it a very interactive and dynamic learning setting that spans sectors and industries. That co-creation of learning is a critical aspect.

We’ve been talking about leadership, strategy, innovation and change. How can businesses cope with the extra dimension implied by digitalisation in connection with these concepts?

Digital disruption is washing across most sectors and industries. Our research has surfaced a real desire among executives at all levels to have a better understanding of the implications of digital transformation – both the opportunities this presents and the potential for a business to be disrupted if it does not keep pace. There is clearly a significant knowledge gap. The senior executives we work with have a lot of experience, but the pace of technological change is such that this experience can rapidly become redundant. Our digital leadership diploma provides a deep dive into topics like artificial intelligence, data analytics and platform strategy. It helps leaders identify the full potential of new technologies to add value to their own business, transforming the customer experience and growing value for shareholders. As with the other diplomas, Digital Leadership is all about application and the course work that participants engage in is intended to move forward the digital agenda tangibly within their own organisation.

These days, the notions of sustainability and defence of the environment are very much in people’s minds, in both the social and the business context. What do you think are the implications of these factors for today’s business leaders? How can business educators help?

A key research theme for WBS is understanding how companies respond to and integrate global sustainability challenges into their business strategies, management practices and corporate governance systems. In fact, our MBA programme has been declared the best in the world for sustainability and advancing environmental and social goals in business. Corporate Knights’ 2019 Better World MBA ranking focuses on the programmes that educate students on sustainability and responsible business, with WBS coming top out of nearly 150 of the best business schools in the world.

Research by colleagues in WBS has identified that a firm’s green credentials can insulate against the worst effects of an economic downturn. A business built on an ethical approach based on clear values can build a loyal customer base, making profits more stable and less correlated with economic cycles, reducing risk and increasing firm value. So not only is the approach better for the environment, it’s better for business.

As examples of the rapid changes taking place in the business environment, we may cast our thoughts to fintech and technologies such as AI, blockchain, mobile payments, cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding platforms. Can the school help executives to understand these kinds of developments and, if so, how?

Trends like these are a core part of our research and teaching agenda. It’s a key benefit of coming to somewhere like WBS, where our teaching is informed by groundbreaking research. In fact, the University recently received one of its largest donations from an individual to establish a new fintech research centre. The Gilmore Centre for Financial Technology will be housed at Warwick Business School and will bring together the school’s existing research in the area along with a host of new appointments. Developments in AI, blockchain, mobile payments, cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding platforms will be a key area of focus for the new centre and the insights generated will be immediately integrated into programmes such as the digital leadership diploma.

We’ve mentioned business involvement in wider issues, such as sustainability and the environment. Do you think that today’s business leaders have a role in terms of their responsibility to society as a whole? The concept of the inclusive society is one aspect that springs to mind.

Yes, I do. I remember looking at a survey that asked people who would they trust to tell them the truth. Business leaders came one place off the bottom, with only politicians ranked lower! So, we have a lot of work to do to restore trust and confidence. The first step is to understand that the public good is a key consideration, right alongside, if not ahead of, profitability and shareholder value. However, as I mentioned earlier, the mood of society around issues such as climate change and ethics means that responsible business practice and profitable business practices are no longer at odds. The biggest constraint on growth for most businesses is attracting and retaining the best talent. Increasingly, these people only want to work for organisations that share their values. So, the way to succeed is to fundamentally understand how your business fulfils a wider purpose in society.

On a more personal note, most people seem to accept the idea that we all need to find a suitable equilibrium between our professional and private lives – in other words, a work-life balance. What, for you, is an ideal work-life balance?

A former colleague of mine used to rail against that phrase, arguing that what we need is life balance rather than work-life balance, and I think he had a point. Work is a big part of most people’s lives and we should not think that it competes in some way with everything else that then gets labelled “life”. It’s along the same lines as someone asking, “Do you work to live, or do you live to work?”! If you enjoy your work, if it is engaging, fulfilling and purposeful, it is an incredibly important part of life! Of course, that also requires the space for physical, mental and spiritual renewal, and that’s were the balance issue kicks in, alongside a perspective on what is most important in life, particularly time for family and friends.

Finally, the word “success” means many things to many people. How would you, personally, define success?

Without wanting to sound overly high-minded, I find that as I progress further into my career, the answer to that question becomes much more about impact and legacy than anything else. What difference have you made, what impact have you had on those around you, what have you built that will outlast your tenure in the job?

Thank you very much Mr. Tim Wray. It’s a pleasure speaking with you.  

Executive Profile

Tim Wray is Professor of Practice and the Director of Executive Education at Warwick Business School. He has more than 20 years’ experience as a practitioner, consultant and executive educator specialising in strategic change, leadership, organisational communication and employee engagement. He has successfully delivered executive development programmes at senior levels for leading international companies in a range of sectors.

The post Get Ready for Disruption: WBS Prepares Executives for a Volatile Future appeared first on The European Business Review.

With seven campuses across five continents, Business School has already lived up to its goal to be THE global business school distinctively positioning itself as a centre for excellence, humanism, diversity, and innovation. One of its signature programmes, the Global Executive MBA, was established in 2014, and it has already made the top of French and international rankings through its quality and unique blended-learning framework and enhanced multicultural training.

In this enlightening interview, Director Anke Middelmann gives us a glimpse into just what makes the school’s business-educational programme so attractive to aspiring business leaders from all four corners of the globe.

Good day to you, Ms Middelmann. Thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity to speak with you. We would like to congratulate SKEMA for its 10^th anniversary this year and on the fact that the Global Executive MBA has been ranked among the 12 best Executive MBAs by Forbes. How do you feel about this achievement? What do you think are the unique features that set this programme apart from the others?

Thank you very much for the congratulations. We’re delighted with the ranking in Forbes because it’s another milestone for this relatively young programme. I think this is all due to SKEMA’s vision, and the dedication of all of the people involved in making the programme what it is today, including students, faculty and all other stakeholders that have brought us to this point so soon. I think it is also important to note that this comes in addition to the fact that we have the triple-accreditation from AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA, and we’ve just obtained a new EFMD programme accreditation for the Global Executive MBA.

What makes us so unique? I think it’s the fact that we’re truly global in our outlook. Our student body is about 91% international and our faculty has either lived and worked abroad or comes from other countries. This makes for a very vibrant atmosphere. Another unique aspect is that it’s a blended-learning programme, which means that our students, wherever they are located in the world can follow courses online, through webinars and other means. Then they meet face-to-face during the six residential weeks. Last but not least, the strength of the programme content not only enables us to give leaders tools to capitalise on but to manoeuvre and re-invent themselves in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.

All these elements are important in today’s and tomorrow’s global business environments. So we have managed to recreate today’s typical professional environment and atmosphere in the programme. Our students find that this is a real strength and a major reason why they choose SKEMA.

As SKEMA’s Global Executive MBA Director, can you give us a glimpse of what your day looks like, and also can you share with us some of your favourite routines to ensure a productive day ahead?

My routine is that there is no routine! Given the international nature of the programme, with residential weeks on all of our campuses, in France, China, Brazil, the United States, and soon in South Africa, I constantly need to juggle with time zones. I can start my day with a conference call with the China campus, because they’re six to seven hours ahead, and might end it by exchanging with the Raleigh or Belo Horizonte campuses, because it’s the beginning of their day. My routine revolves very much around my ability to be adaptable and flexible. In short, it means that no day is like another, and that makes it a very exciting job. One key aspect of my job is to ensure that we, as a team, communicate as clearly and directly as possible with all our stakeholders, whether it’s about organisational matters, exchanging with faculty on course content, communicating with our campuses abroad to organise residential weeks, or our students and our business development team. 

You have an impressive and extensive professional track as a multicultural consultant of some major international organisations. Can you tell us something about your professional journey and what the transition was like when you shifted into academia?

My personal life journey is very much reflected in my professional journey. I’ve lived and studied in different countries from a fairly young age, and I’ve been in multicultural environments for most of my life. This has really heightened my curiosity about, and interest in, other cultures quite fundamentally. That set me on my multicultural career path. I’ve worked with quite a few global organisations, always with the goal of enabling people to understand the cultural differences and to overcome them to work together more effectively. Some of the organisations that I’ve worked with include, AXA, Rockwell, Siemens, DSK, business units within Airbus and Saint-Gobain.

At the same time, I taught at business schools and I found that really enriching, because I was able to take the experience from my multicultural work in companies into the classroom. It is something the students find valuable, because of course they are leaving the classroom to work for those international companies afterwards. 

The transition into academia was therefore quite smooth. In teaching multicultural management, I see the links between theory and practice at all levels, and it’s one of the things that I feel very passionate about conveying to my students. My desire is to enable individuals to become consciously competent in their international professional lives, so the opportunity to apply the practical side in an academic context is especially enriching for me. 

What do you think are the crucial aspects that need to be addressed in order to bridge the gap between academic learning and the practical needs of business leaders and industries across the globe?

They often feel like two worlds apart. Academic studies are tucked away in one corner and business is at the other end of the scale. But you can link the two quite successfully. What’s important – and this is what we achieve with the Global Executive MBA at SKEMA – is to create very vivid links between the theory and the practice. Academic learning is necessary because you need that crucial foundation; without a theory, how can you put things into practice effectively? But, at the same time, theory on its own is not complete without some form of practical context. We do this across the board, through case studies, student observations and feedback into the classroom, or hands-on business simulations.

We also achieve this through the way we teach. For example, Dr Philippe Chereau, Professor in Management Science on the Global Executive MBA and former consultant in the strategic management of innovation and business modelling, uses his experience, expertise and latest academic research to draw that bridge when he teaches on the Global Executive MBA. Students are encouraged to analyse and rethink their company’s business model through the theory of disruptive innovation to help create a rupture in their environment by developing a new innovative business model for their organisation. Students can apply the theoretical foundations in ways that enhance their critical thinking and their analytical and communication skills. We think of entrepreneurs as innovator-transformers.

SKEMA Business School impressively delivers its blended format, specialisations and flexible options for the Global Executive MBA programme across the four continents. How will this global experience enhance the executives’ or your students’ cultural competence and management skills?

Studying at SKEMA is a global experience at all levels. The student body and faculty are international, and the programme takes the students to five continents. The sheer force of this – different perspectives, different experiences – makes the programme a real multicultural laboratory, and students learn to deal with each other’s differences first-hand, both face-to-face and in the virtual classroom.

To enhance these cultural and management skills, students take a course called “Developing Global Mindset”, throughout the programme where we combine learning about culture & cultural differences as well as geopolitical and international economic issues. In this way students really get the whole spectrum of what it means to be in an international and intercultural environment.

Practically, students do a lot of their coursework in teams, both virtually and face to face during the six residential weeks. I always pay great attention to ensure that teams are made up of diverse groups of students to ensure a real balance between cultural, professional and gender diversity.

What are some of the common challenges that you observed amongst your participants or students in a multicultural environment, and how does SKEMA address the shifting market trends and the varying demands of executives from different countries and industries?

The challenges among our participants are very much the same as those faced by organisations working internationally and multiculturally. These can be language issues, as well as differences in attitudes and expectations, to name just a few. It is our responsibility to work on these issues; and we do this through our courses, team-building activities and by taking the time to listen to our participants, to understand what issues they may encounter, and to explore underlying assumptions and preferences.

In terms of shifting markets and market trends, our programme is very much aligned with SKEMA’s overall strategy, which focuses on globalisation, innovation and the knowledge economy.

For example, we have recently developed two hugely successful specialisations: entrepreneurship and innovation and project management. Both of these were developed in response to participants’ requirements to work on innovation and project management in a global context.

What are the types of organisations that would benefit mostly from the unique set-up of the Global Executive MBA, and so far what is the best feedback you have received?

While our participants come from many different professional, educational, and organisational backgrounds, they do have a few of things in common: they all want to move beyond their current professional levels. We offer them a rich learning environment that provides them with a helicopter vision of business from a strategic perspective; linked to this is are the strong leadership skills that they all need to break the ceiling they have hit in their career. In addition to formal courses and teamwork, we offer all our Global Executive MBA students access to professional coaching. They leave the programme equipped with a skill set that large and small companies need, and particularly those that operate at international level. Past participants have come, as examples, from large and medium size insurance, telecom or engineering companies. Others are start-up founders who come on the programme to develop, consolidate and validate their business model. We have seen graduates being promoted to executive level during the programme or soon after they graduate. Others have moved up to new and demanding positions in other companies or have successfully created their own businesses. Satisfaction amongst students is high and former students or alumni send us new students every year.

What do you think are the most challenging issues when addressing the different needs of your participants, and what are the different career paths of your students? Can you give us some examples?

Given the diverse nature of our cohorts, meeting needs and requirements could be very challenging. It is also very invigorating! One of the key elements for us is to provide a good learning and growth experience for all as well as to give them support, advice and individual attention, whether this is academic or personal.

To help them enhance their professional performance and impact, they work on a substantial final project called the Capstone Project, in which students develop their professional paths by linking their project to their current future professional situation. Therefore, students who want to stay within their current company are often supported by their employers, and will tend to develop practical recommendations for intractable business challenges. Students seeking a career change will focus on a final project that will give them the opportunity to really discover themselves, improve skills and define their preferences. One of our students took a leap to move from France to Australia to start a new business venture Down Under, utilising all the skills that she gained on the programme. Another has just set up his own business in his home country as a result of doing this degree. We are able to meet the individual needs and requirements of our students and we accompany them and give them support throughout their time at SKEMA. We encourage them to use this unique opportunity to develop and strengthen their academic and professional skills and knowledge.

The uncertainty and the hypercompetitive roles of today’s industries call for a leader who can create these strong and positive changes, not only for themselves but for the whole organisation as well. How does SKEMA’s Global Executive MBA help and shape the new generation of leaders, and what do you think are the important qualities of a leader of the future?

Leadership skills are something that all students feel they need. In response to that need, we’ve recently created a major new course within the programme, which we’ve called “The Leadership Lab”, a course that covers every aspects of leadership development and gives students the space to experiment with and develop their leadership qualities. This is complemented by the teaching of practical skills such as negotiation, public speaking, resilience and mindfulness. Additionally, students get access to an executive coaching package tailored to their needs and requirements. But leadership development also happens intuitively and tacitly within the programme, and students develop new insights about themselves by interacting with, and being challenged by, classmates. Passion, self-awareness, confidence and self-belief are also very important, as well as the ability to lead inclusively, collaboratively and with integrity.

By the end of the programme, students have a clearer vision of where they want to go, both as individuals and professionals.

On a lighter note, we are interested to know how you maintain a healthy work-life balance. People in the upper echelons naturally have a lot on their plate. How do you manage?

An important learning curve for me was to recognise that, while you can multitask, you can’t do everything equally well. Setting priorities is very important and I try not to spread myself too thinly.

To maintain a balanced professional and personal life, it’s extremely important to make a point of ending the work day and not being tempted to check emails at night. It is vital for any leader, and I try to practise this as much as I can myself, to spend some time on myself every day, whether that is self-reflecting, reading a good book, going for walks, or spending time with family and friends. These type of activities help me recharge my batteries.

One of the global advocacies that we have nowadays is to empower women for leadership roles across all industries. So as a female leader yourself, how do you think we can progress in such an endeavour?

This is a very pertinent issue and it has been for a while. I feel very grateful to be where I am today, because it hasn’t always been (and still is not) like this for women everywhere in the world. When I see the number of women in high positions today, in business or in government, compared with even 10-15 years ago, I feel that we’ve come quite some way towards the empowerment of women in the professional context. It is mirrored in our Global Executive MBA, where we have a very impressive and very gratifying rate of 40% female participants. Of course, having said that, much still needs to be done. I think we need to recognise that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Actions need to fit cultural circumstances; to give one example, we operate a female scholarship and we’ve noticed that it is proving highly attractive.

Lastly, what message of motivation would you like to get across to future and aspiring leaders, and what does success mean to you?

Success means something different to every one of us, and I can’t speak for everybody. For me, it means doing what I’m passionate about. And I have to say that running this international and multicultural programme with talented, highly motivated and passionate participants, and a wonderful team is exactly that, so I feel very blessed in that regard. If I were to advise or motivate any future aspiring leader (or, indeed, anyone really who’s not sure about what they want to do next), my message would be: start with yourself! Reflect on who you really are, listen to yourself and your intuition and you will identify that dream. And then, you should go for that dream, because if you’ve got the confidence and the determination, you will get there.

Thank you very much Ms Middelmann. It was a pleasure speaking with you.

Executive Profile

Anke Middelmann, Director of the highly esteemed Global Executive MBA of the SKEMA Business School, holds a Masters degree in Intercultural Communication from the University of Bedfordshire in the UK, and a Bachelors degree in European History from the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. She also holds a coaching qualification from Coach U in the United States, and from the World Class Coaching Academy in the UK.

She is a permanent assistant professor in Multicultural Management.  Prior to working for SKEMA Business School, Anke Middelmann worked for the European Commission in both Brussels and Washington, DC, and as an independent intercultural trainer, facilitator and coach.

The post Developing Future Business Leadership with a Truly Global Mindset appeared first on The European Business Review.

Since its establishment in 1990, Cambridge Judge Business School has always been a leader in innovation and new knowledge creation. Executive Education at Cambridge Judge Business School continues to hone executives and organisations to be instruments of change and contribute to society through its rigorous curriculum and world class learning environment. 

We had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Kishore Sengupta, Cambridge Judge Business School’s Director of Executive Education, and he shared with us his views on the state of Executive Education and how Cambridge Judge combines research excellence and practice expertise to meet the demands of business in the face of the rapidly changing world.

Good day, Dr. Sengupta! Thank you for sharing your valuable time by doing this interview with us. To start, for a top academic leader like you, what are the best morning routines to jumpstart a busy day and your quick tips to improve productivity for a day’s work?

One of the key elements to starting the day properly is to eat a healthy breakfast, which helps to create and channel positive energy. A quick scan of emails first thing can help prevent distractions and avoid firefighting later in the day. It’s also a good idea to tackle writing chores early in the day – before phones ring, emails arrive and people request meetings.  A diary scan in the morning helps to prepare the day – but it’s also important to scan a day ahead in order to prepare for upcoming issues.

Nowadays, business practices are being transformed dramatically by globalisation and digitisation. Are there also significant changes or new trends in the executive education field? What are the major challenges?

One major challenge for executive education in today’s era is to align online delivery with rapidly changing business models around the world.  There is a lot of noise associated with these changes, but there’s also evidence of the landscape settling into more predictable models with more stable partnerships and alliances.  It’s also important to remember that while digital delivery is transformational, it will never replace the quality of a face-to-face learning relationship in such an intellectually vibrant hub like we have here in Cambridge.

Cambridge Judge Business School is a highly reputable institution for management education and a forerunner in delivering top quality Executive Education programmes. Can you tell us what are the outstanding features that set you apart from other business schools and what make your programmes unique and with best quality?

Cambridge Judge’s excellence is based on two features which are common across the wider University.  First is our research capability.  We have 16 research centres and are looking to add more all the time.  Second is our small class sizes.  We have significantly higher ratios of Faculty to participants on our programmes than most other schools.  This gives an intensive and focused environment where original thought leadership and subject expertise come together with real world experience.  It is why the UK government rated us as number 1 for the impact of our research.  We use the term “deep engagement” to describe how research and practice play off each other, enhancing both aspects to the benefit of our Executive Education participants.

King’s College, University of Cambridge

Despite the growing competition and changing nature of the market, how does Cambridge Judge Business School Executive Education respond to market shifts and new opportunities, as well as address the different learning and development needs of top executives?

We scan the horizon: using our research outreach, we’re able to spot trends and anticipate changes in the market and in the demands facing senior leaders around the world.  We recognise that it’s difficult for many business leaders to take time away from the day to day to reflect and learn.  Therefore, it is important to make the most of senior leaders’ time.  Because of our research strength and emphasis on high Faculty to participant ratios, our programmes are often more intensive and focused than elsewhere.  We feel that is important in how we add value.

To operate in a turbulent world, business leaders need radical innovation and network competencies. What do you think are the particular facets of the executive education curriculum that are immensely valuable tools for your participants? 

The global nature of our clientele lends itself to the creation of powerful networks.  Journeying to Cambridge from around the globe, our participants and clients form enduring and deep connections that last long beyond their brief time in Cambridge. We have groups of senior leaders still sharing experience, memories and advice years after completing their programmes. Clients bring disparate and multinational groups to programmes in Cambridge from around the world, creating internal networks and leveraging the power of organisational learning.

Can you tell us more about one of the interesting and strong features of your programmes – the peer learning exchange process. How does this help in enhancing the success of your programmes?

Our flagship Open programmes include the opportunity for personal transformation through peer coaching.  Led by experienced and highly qualified practitioners, this coaching complements classroom theory with real-world examples through in-person sessions and online post-programme forums. 

What are the important metrics that you use to gauge the inclusive and long-term effectiveness and impact of your programmes? How do you make sure that the participants and their organisations will gain the highest return on their investment in Executive Education programmes?

We carefully monitor all teaching sessions and measure their success in achieving the objectives for organisations and participants. Measurements taken post programme, which gauge differences in approach and attitude, can indicate the effectiveness of the learning experience at three and six months. Doing things differently – or identifying the barriers to change – are important measures of success.  Feedback is shared with our teaching faculty to ensure they can act on areas that need improvement and enhancement.

With your vast professional experience prior being an academic leader of a prestigious university, what do you think are the kind of business leaders we need for a rapidly changing world and what kind of leadership the modern industries require?

From my experience, having worked across continents, I think that leaders need a global perspective in order to navigate today’s increasingly global topography. Resilience and tenacity, coupled with emotional intelligence and humility, are the personal attributes that I have seen in successful leaders. 

On a lighter note, we are interested in knowing what are the top things or activities does a high-calibre academician like you do to recharge during your day-off from work? 

Fast cars, sailing, new technological toys, and music.

Lastly, what does success mean to you? Any message you wish to share with our readers?

In my current role, I look at professional success through the prism of our Executive Education clients’ individual and organisational success.  It’s a bit like a parent beaming contentedly on the sidelines if their child scores a goal on the football pitch – satisfaction through others’ achievements.

Thank you very much Dr. Sengupta! A pleasure speaking with you. 

About the Interviewee

Dr. Kishore Sengupta is Director of Executive Education and Reader in Operations Management at Cambridge Judge Business School. He has served as advisor on several projects with the US Government Department of Defense and NASA, and has consulted with organisations in Silicon Valley and Hong Kong. He has also worked at the AT&T Network Software Center (now LucentTechnologies) and Ernst & Young.Dr Sengupta’s published research appears in journals in information technology and management, such as Management Science, MIS Quarterly, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. He is currently working on a book on online electronic environments.

The post Deep Engagement: Where Thought Leadership and Subject Expertise Meet appeared first on The European Business Review.

Founded in 1953 in one of Europe’s premier education spots, Vlerick Business School in Belgium focuses on knowledge creation through research-based learning structure to produce business leaders that approach business problems in a broader and more scholarly mindset.  To further advance the research excellence in the business management field, Vlerick Business School, Ghent University and KU Leuven have launched its DBA programme in Europe last year. In this interview, Professor Brecht Cardoen, PhD, Academic Director of the DBA programme, shared with us the unique features and benefits of pursuing this highest academic degree in business administration. 

Good day, Professor Cardoen! Thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. Let’s start this interview by giving us a glimpse of what a day looks like for an academic and business leader like you?

Being part of our career faculty, a typical day mirrors activities at different levels. I could be enjoying an interactive teaching session with our executives or making advancements in one of our research projects on process optimisation and value-based healthcare. In both cases, I have noticed an increasing interest in decision-making supported by quantitative methods, which has created opportunities to innovate and learn. Therefore, a day in my academic life definitely turns into a good day when conversations spark an idea for further research. Listening is a crucial capability here, as there are many challenges, ideas, opportunities that cross paths in the business school. This is also evidenced in our Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) programme, where candidates show research interests in various functional domains, sectors, or geographical areas. As the Academic Director of the DBA programme, helping our candidates in assessing their fit with the programme and matching them with supervisors are also part of my daily activities.

As the Academic Director of the DBA programme, can you tell us what sets this programme apart from other advanced management degrees? 

It is important to understand that the DBA is a programme in which research is the key cornerstone and thus emphasis is put on research methods and their application. This is very different from MBA programmes, which have the ultimate goal to make you a better manager, which is not necessarily the same as becoming a great scholar. Scholarship is about the disciplined search for knowledge that remains reliable independent of the passion, desire or material interest of the discoverer. It requires developing a wide variety of skills, including creativity, critical thinking, writing skills, community building skills, persistence and resilience. The difference in mindset makes a researcher’s approach to a challenging question very different from a manager’s approach, probably leading to many more questions. So when thinking about the DBA, the main focus is on in-depth knowledge creation instead of knowledge dissemination. At Vlerick Business School, we talk about ‘bringing action to knowledge’, leveraging the experience of our candidates. And, when talking about degrees, a successful completion of our DBA programme is awarded by a joint PhD degree from the university partners KU Leuven and Ghent University.

You also hold teaching assignments at the Executive MBA, Full-time MBA, and graduate level at Vlerick and KU Leuven. How do you think the DBA programme could advance and leverage its participants’ business knowledge and expertise should they pursue a Doctorate in Business Administration? What are the significant edges one could obtain?

DBA participants excel in finding relevance in the research questions they want to tackle. Building upon so many years of experiences, there is a solid base that helps them to point to a relationship or hypothesis that is worth investigating. Next, a DBA participant also typically has a unique access to data, which is often seen as a challenge by scholars. By making use of their network or company resources, they create a head start and open up a range of opportunities. However, not all that glitters is gold, and I believe a DBA participant could also often be uncertain about some aspects of doing research. In this case, our programme helps them to install rigour next to relevance, i.e. educating them how to adequately design and execute research, building that analytical mindset as mentioned. We enable our participants to conceptualise compared to the daily firefighting their jobs often bring. In a way, they learn to slow down again and step away from the daily hassle their executive function often entails.

Vlerick Business School has joined forces with other Belgium’s top ranked universities namely Ghent University and KU Leuven in creating the DBA programme. Can you tell us how this partnership benefits the participants  and how the three institutions collaborate?

Indeed, our DBA is a partnership of three strong institutions, which allows playing on the strengths of each partner. Whereas the business school enjoys a triple accreditation, is pragmatic and familiar in working with executives, the universities bring in an exceptionally strong research culture and performance. Every DBA candidate gets at least two supervisors whose expertise is tailored to the real need of the participant. Also, it means we make complementary teams of supervisors, as hardly ever all necessary expertise to support a participant is bundled in a single person. The partnership provides a large faculty base to make such supervisory teams. The collaboration between the three is however not restricted to the supervision of the participants, but stretches also to the course teaching, access to libraries, and so forth. Finally, joining forces enables the award of a joint PhD degree, giving stronger branding and value for the participant.

Your research is centred on healthcare process management and optimisation with a particular interest in hospitals. You also head the healthcare provider initiatives of Vlerick’s Healthcare Management Centre such as MINOZ, a research network of Belgian hospitals searching for solutions to operational challenges. How does your background help you manage and cultivate a unique design for the DBA programme? 

My research in healthcare is multidisciplinary and combines many strands. Let’s think for instance, about value-based healthcare. Porter defines value in healthcare as achieving the best outcomes at the lowest cost¹. One way of looking at this equation implies that more value is obtained when the same outcome is delivered at lower cost. Having thus a detailed understanding about costing mechanisms is essential to think further on process improvements, and therefore it makes sense to team up with an expert in the field of cost and management accounting. Value-based healthcare is furthermore not only a topic that triggers the interests of academics, but also the interest of industry and healthcare providers. In other words, with my research I connect and combine different angles. Making these bridges also enables the creation of spillovers in research: why would a good research design not lead to both an academic paper and insights that fit the interests of our business community and society? Furthermore, being an active researcher also makes me aware of the potential pitfalls and difficulties, which I try to translate together with my colleagues into the DBA programme.

How do you make sure the results of participating in your programme will be worthwhile for participants and their organisations in terms of knowledge acquisition, career advancement, long-term profitability for business, and other measures of ROI for a business education degree?

Now we’re talking about impact, which has different dimensions. The DBA creates impact towards the individual, the company, but also society. We embed an elective part and also specific skills sessions that together ensure the personal growth of our participants. The electives can be directed towards academic, business or teaching oriented activities. Skills sessions are organised around topics such as but not limited to presentations for different audiences (how to adapt your message according to the recipient), or career management (thinking about opportunities the PhD degree might create). We actively stimulate our participants to think about impact, and also require them to write an impact plan. For companies, the major impact follows from developing an in-house expert, leading to innovation and discovery. We often see that research questions can be pinned into the business context of a company, which creates a clear win for both company and candidate. Also, the DBA can be seen as a validation method for ideas or insights one might have, and thus finding evidence to confirm or reject current thoughts. Listening to our participants and their motivations, I’m not sure that ROI of a DBA should be defined in terms of profitability or financial gain, which is often the case when talking about management degrees and measuring their impact. Well, I guess we can have an entire talk discussing about impact and doing research that matters. It is no coincidence that we chose the latter topic as central theme of this year’s DBA conference, given the importance of this debate for research institutes in general but certainly also for doctoral education. 

As you have just launched the programme last year, what should the present and future participants look forward to in terms of the academic and extracurricular experience they may obtain? What are your significant plans and/or initiatives to strengthen the programme in the coming years?

It is important to keep in mind that pursuing a DBA is in essence a very individual trajectory. In a way, the success and progress of your research is determined by your efforts and capabilities, which by no means imply that you are alone in your journey. Besides the obvious support of your supervisors, building a community of peers is of crucial importance. We especially would like to strengthen this community of peers who all face a similar endeavour and are in need of sharing and caring when it comes to their doctoral journey. This is fostered by different activities during the course weeks. In the future, we want to build on our strengths. Naturally, growing our international DBA community is a top priority in the upcoming years, including leveraging our doctoral school and extending some key activities such as our DBA conference.

What’s the most challenging when addressing the needs of your participants? How do you meet their expectations and have them better prepared upon returning to their respective workplaces?

First, I already pointed out that seeing relevance of research is a strong capability of our DBA participants, leading to a clear management question. However, a management question is not yet an academic research question, and this translation appears to be hard at the start since the academic world often is yet to be discovered. During our application process, we first screen for eligibility, and in a second stage we actively help our participants in drafting a first research idea. Here, a crucial role is attributed to potential supervisors who will discuss and guide the candidate even before admission. This implies that, when admitted to our programme, the participants already have been assigned supervisors, have been in touch with those supervisors, and have a research idea that connects to an ongoing academic debate, all starting from their initial idea. Second, next to the research question, we see challenges at the level of rigour, as often methodological skills and knowledge still need to be developed, which is in the programme addressed by the coursework. Third, finding the work-research balance is not straightforward as executives have busy calendars. Therefore, providing a smoothened process – allowing for some flexibility – is important not to lose any valuable time. We also invite our candidates to communicate well and in advance about their engagement in the DBA, both professionally and with relatives. Finally, as for any degrees, there are deliverables and deadlines, turning the professional somehow into a student again. This might need some adaptation, but our DBA team is ready to provide the necessary guidance here and regular progress reporting helps in the communication.

As the world and businesses rapidly evolve, leadership becomes more challenging. What do you think are the important qualities a business leader must have in order to drive business functions successfully into the future? 

This is a question we’ve been thinking about as a business school, especially since the pace of change is high, and I’m confident our point of view also holds for the DBA. First important quality is that you have to live your dream. You need to understand the context today, but have a goal for tomorrow and dare to take the first step. Second, be a student, always. A leader should be open to lifelong learning and challenge the status quo when it comes to current models and methods. Third, leaders leap and succeed in making a transformation and creating impact. I think this fits the entrepreneurial spirit of Vlerick Business School, and thus also translates into the DBA programme. Live, Learn, Leap.

And subsequently, how do you make sure your programme has a lasting impact on the professional development of your participants? 

 We create that lasting impact mainly by changing and broadening their mindset to become a scholar for life. It’s a different way of looking at problems, a habit or mindset you never forget. Furthermore, impact is created where the (unmet) needs are the highest and the offer is up to expectations. Therefore, explicitly screening for relevance is important, just like tailoring the programme with electives and the right amount of flexibility. Don’t forget that participants can build upon vast experience, a fundament that offers the right framing to internalise and connect new learnings.

Pursuing a doctorate is a demanding journey. Can you share with our readers and prospective participants of the DBA programme how you make sure that you maintain a healthy lifestyle, both in your professional and personal life? What are your favourite routines?

Not sure whether I’m providing a best practice here…I tend to think about healthy lifestyle in two dimensions: mentally and physically. It is important to clear the mind from time to time: being physically present not necessarily means you are also mentally present. I still remember from my own PhD studies that leaving problems at work is not so easy. At that time I was programming quite intensely, and nothing worse than knowing there’s a bug in the code just when the packed weekend was about to start. Physically, I make sure to give sufficient attention to sleeping as it also helps balance professional and personal life. Area for improvement? I would like to drink less coffee, find a more healthy way of commuting, provide sufficient time and attention to having a diversified lunch; a bit more of sports would be welcome too. I guess too many wishes for a single year, no?

Lastly, what does success mean to you? Any other message you wish to share with our readers?

Success points to reaching the goals you have defined within a defined set of constraints. One typically defines multiple goals on sometimes very different levels that simultaneously need to be aimed for. So in this sense, I find it difficult to give a straightforward answer to this question, as there are so many things I actually want. Supporting people in reaching their successes also feels like a success for me personally, regardless of whether it is in pursuing a DBA or the broader educational field. I truly hope that whatever activity you do, you do it with joy, since I’m a strong believer that joy and success ideally go hand in hand.

Thank you very much, Professor Cardoen! It’s a pleasure speaking with you. 

Brecht Cardoen is the Academic Director of the DBA Programme. He is Associate Professor in Technology and Operations Management at Vlerick Business School and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Business and Economics of KU Leuven (Belgium). His research is centred around healthcare process management and optimisation with a particular interest in hospitals.

The post Live, Learn, Leap: Doctorate in Business Administration at Vlerick Business School appeared first on The European Business Review.

Interview with Professor Paul Ingram, Faculty Director of Advanced Management Programme from Columbia Business School Executive Education

Located in one of the world’s most dynamic business hubs – New York City, Columbia Business School Executive Education has an unparalleled environment for advanced business education. To find out how it allows executives to immerse themselves in NYC’s rich culture and vigorous business scenes, we sat down with Professor Paul Ingram, Faculty Director of Columbia Business School Executive Education’s Advanced Management Programme, who sheds light on their uniquely designed curriculum and the proven learning methodology that help executives respond to evolving leadership challenges and create a vision to lead their companies to success.

Good day, Professor Ingram! Thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. Let’s start this interview by giving us a glimpse of what a day looks like for an academic leader like you?

I spend a large portion of my time teaching, so most days, I’m in the classroom – or teaching in other locations. Yesterday, I taught a group of associates at a global law firm; today, I’ll be in meetings about a new way to bring leadership tools online. This evening, I’ll be travelling to Morocco where I’m teaching Executive MBA students as part of a great partnership programme that Columbia Business School runs with the African Business School. And I’m a scholar, so ideally there’s also time for some research, maybe some analysis of data and some writing, which is how I like to spend the extra hours that I can eek out.

Having held visiting professorships in various parts of the world, can you tell us the most significant development in the business world you’ve witnessed thus far? How about the next big thing in business / leadership education?

In a sense, we’re seeing a form of globalisation. I’ll start by pointing to China, where I’ve taught for close to 20 years. In the past, Chinese organisations were managed differently from what we would see in other regions of the world. Now the leaders that we teach from China are tapping into a lot of the universals about effectiveness of managing yourself, managing teams, and structuring organisations while dealing with their own culture and their own strategies. We’re also seeing some of the same leadership strategies in some countries in Africa. In a sense, human performance – individually and in teams – is becoming a kind of universal ideal. This means that we get to interact more and more with leaders in different kinds of organisations in different places.

As the Faculty Director of the Columbia Advanced Management Programme, what excites you most or what do you eagerly anticipate in terms of the programme’s present and future endeavours?

In every programme, there will be some incredible people. The participant pool is incredibly diverse, and I can rely on the fact that it is going to have a massive impact on me, just as it does on everybody else in the programme.

Another aspect that excites me about the Advanced Management Programme is that we’re always innovating in the programme. While we have a core pedagogy, we’re always looking to incorporate new content and ways to take the content to the next level and deliver it in more unique, differentiating and impactful ways. It’s exciting to be part of something that is continuously evolving.

Columbia Business School is known for being strategically positioned at the very center of business in various aspects, and the Advanced Management Programme is Columbia’s flagship residential programme for senior executives. Can you tell us more about what sets this particular programme apart from other executive education courses?

I don’t think there’s another executive education programme in the world like ours. Our programme is different from the other Advanced Management Programmes at other universities.

We’re dedicated to experiential learning where the participants are actually doing things as a way of learning. We may have a presentation of important new research, a case study, or a framework, but every day the participants are going to be putting ideas into action, trying them out in unique ways.

For doing that, we have New York City as our laboratory. We will learn about presence on the stage of a Broadway theatre. We’ll learn about new organisational designs with a startup company. We will learn about shaping culture in one of the world’s great museums. We’ll learn about teamwork in a jazz club interacting with a jazz band. These are ways to delver a lesson that you can’t get any other way – and the learnings stick. That’s the pedagogy and the methodology.

Then we aim the content of the programme at what’s most important to the senior executives who have joined us, which is strategy and leadership. We may have a session that touches on the latest ideas from branding or consumer behaviour, but it’s different – and designed differently – from what an MBA student might learn in a marketing class. It’s designed for a leader of an organisation, a potential Executive Director or CEO, through the lense of what they need to know about using these ideas strategically.

Your programme curriculum has been regarded as “eye-opening,” “empowering,” and “transformational” by your participants. Can you tell us more about the unique design of the Advanced Management Programme?

We have a programme that ran around 60 years ago, and it’s changed constantly over time. The changes are intentional improvements, thinking about the programme design in a very conscious way. It’s not just pieced together. Instead, we have a real arc of learning.

There are three phases. First, we excite participants about the potential of the programme – it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and a chance to do something great. We introduce them to new learning habits and processes and we set the foundation for what will best allow them to seize this opportunity.

Next, we stretch and challenge them. They’re doing exercises in teams that they never thought that they could do before. They’re building a network which is helping them in the programme, but will also support them for the rest of their careers.

Finally, we prepare them to take this great experience forward to their organisations and their careers. This is where they’re actually applying ideas to challenges in their organisations and where they’re thinking about how they’re going to tap into resources in their class at Columbia to continue their improvements that seem most important for them.

How do you make sure that the participants and their organisations will gain the highest return on their investment in terms of knowledge acquisition, career advancement, long-term profitability for business, and other measures of ROI for an executive education?

Based on research and decades of experience, our programme has a system for helping participants extract learnings and think about how they’re going to apply them. Research has confirmed how important 20 or 30 minutes for reflection at the end of a programme day are to the long-term impact of ideas. It’s now a proven practice for learning, but we were ahead of the curve with how carefully we attend to helping the participants with this reflection.

We also think about every element of the programme in terms of its return on investment. We are a unique programme that has actually measured that systemically. We’ve done pre- and post-programme tests on the leaders’ capability, and we’ve demonstrated that they have improved in the course of the programme.

What approach do you take to equip executives with the knowledge they need to immediately and effectively respond to their respective challenges?

We actually build their challenges from work into the programme. Participants bring a “Living Case,” a current business challenge they are facing, and apply ideas from the programme with the help of coaching from their peers and faculty to their challenge in real time. They receive feedback on themselves as leaders from the people they’re working with on the job, and – with a lot of support – develop a plan of improvement and constant learning in the ways that are most important for them individually as leaders. During or immediately after every session, we give participants the space to think about taking these ideas back to their workplace.

What’s the most challenging when addressing the needs of your participants? And how do you meet their expectations?

The biggest challenge is the biggest opportunity: diversity. The participants in the programme are all highly experienced and capable leaders, but they’re diverse in terms of the countries they’re coming from, their backgrounds, the industries which they work in, the organisations they lead or serve, and the paths their careers have taken.

This creates challenges of understanding and communication. They have to find ways to relate their organisations to each others’ so they can share learnings that cross between an insurance company in Nigeria, for example, and a financial services firm in the UK.

During the first few days of the programme, a lot of time is spent bumping into each other as they’re encountering these differences. But then there’s a shift. It usually happens by the end of the first week after we’ve given people with different perspectives the opportunity to shine and add value. People start to say, “The first day of the programme, I couldn’t have anticipated how I would have learned from this person sitting next to me. And now I can’t believe the lessons I’m taking back to my business from them.”

This is almost guaranteed to happen, by design, because if you really want to be an effective senior leader, you must look outside your company, your country, your industry, your area of functional expertise and by seeking out learnings and lessons from unexpected places. The diversity in our class is an incredible resource for this.

Over the years, the Advanced Management Programme has created positive impact on leadership development and bottom lines results. What have been the remarkable achievements and best feedback that you have received?

We see careers go in incredible directions. People go on to be CEOs of global organisations and affect the world in ways that they were only dreaming of when they were in the programme. That’s of course very satisfying. But that’s what the programme is designed to do.

What is most satisfying for me is when we get personal recommendations, often across generations of leaders. When people in the class say, “Look, I’m here because I know so-and-so who was in your programme five years ago, 10 years ago, sometimes even 20 years ago. They said it changed their life, and they said I have to do the same.”

One of your current research projects focuses on the structure and efficacy of managers’ professional networks. Can you share with us your research findings so far? And what is your advice for participants of the Advanced Management Programme in terms of network development?

That’s a research topic I’ve studied for a career. We have evidence that your set of professional relationships impacts the bottom line, your capacity to get things done, your access to ideas, your advancement in your career, and the efficacy in the performance of your organisation.

What I’ve been working on uniquely is the navigation between the idea that we get economic benefits from our relationships and at the same time have a drive that if there’s something that we call a personal relationship or friendship, it should be authentic. That it really should be personal, and it can’t simply be somebody who fits the box in terms of the kind of knowledge or help you need and therefore they become part of your network.

How do you navigate between the fact that these are social relationships, but they have economic interests? I have been looking at how leaders navigate this, and the conclusion I have reached is that economically useful network relationships are also authentic – socially and personally. Leaders can’t look around the world and say, “This person would be useful, so I’m going to add them to my network.” Instead, you have to go around the world, build authentic connections to the places you’re going to make investments to reach your professional goals.

But your sincerity, your authenticity, the personal connection actually is the foundation for an effective network. In the Advanced Management Programme, we examine and teach practical ways based on research of helping leaders do this. We help them understand their values, what they really stand for as a leader, and how to express that to others.

What do you think are the important qualities a business leader must have in order to drive organisations successfully into the future?

I think the two qualities that are defining successful leaders at this moment are a capacity for ongoing learning and the ability to lead cultures.

Learning, because business is evolving and organisations are only going to be more dynamic in the future. From the Advanced Management Programme, the executives who have been the most successful over time have been great learners. Of course, we try to cultivate learning, but there’s also the intrinsic capacity like their curiosity or their openness that they bring with them.

Then there’s the capacity to lead cultures. Culture and strategy are the defining inputs, the differentiators, that determine whether organisations succeed or fail. They’re both critically important, however strategy is easier to learn. And while leading the culture is learnable, it’s also an art that takes practice. It takes looking at examples, understanding yourself, and probably some painful failures. It’s the rarer skill, and I think the best leaders of the next generation are going to be great learners who will be artful leaders of the culture.

How do you make sure your programme has a lasting impact for the professional development of your participants?

It’s in the ways we address those two necessary capabilities of great leaders, learning and culture. Our programme invests a lot of time in the leader as a learner. Our opening session in the programme is about the why and how of learning, and then we continue to introduce tools of great learners throughout the programme.

And we spend a lot of time focussing on this art of leading the culture, particularly in the second half of our programme. We spend a lot of time – especially during the two weeks of the programme that take place in Manhattan – looking at original organisations, looking at organisational change and transformation where culture is always critical, where CEOs and the participants who have great leadership experience share their learnings on careers engaging with culture. We’ve seen that it’s a differentiator for what the people who go through the programme need to be successful after that. We focus on what the leaders need, the process and capacity to be a great learner throughout their career, and being effective with the difficult demand of organisational culture.

Source: Columbia Business School/ Eileen Barroso

On a lighter note, people in the upper echelons naturally have a lot on their plate. How do you make sure that you maintain a healthy lifestyle, both in your professional and personal life? What are your favourite routines?

I’ve actually learned a lot about the balance between health and well-being and professional success at the Advanced Management Programme. We have a component of the programme that gives executives the chance to practice well-being every day, to think about their own health, and what they need to refine it, and to get expert advice and coaching on that. There are eye-opening experiences, where everybody begins to understand how important an hour of exercise is for their productivity in the other hours of the day.

The well-being sessions that we have at the programme are also really important for my own health. I’ve tried to incorporate it into my day-to-day life. I’m with the programme two months a year, but that leaves another 10 months. One of the things I do is I walk to work. I find that to be really important and maybe not the quickest, most efficient way to get to work, but it’s a good investment in my mindset, my well-being, and my capacity to be successful while I’m sitting at my desk or teaching in the classroom.

What does success mean to you?

I think about this a lot – because I have a professional investment in a programme that is aimed at helping people reach their success. I pay attention to how participants view success. I look at the people who seem successful and satisfied, and I think about the inputs there. I’ve learned a lot about that through the Advanced Management Programme.

One of the great eye-openers for me has been revising my own ideas about success over the last 10+ years. The conclusion I have reached is that success is a function of constant learning. The people who have opened my eyes and excited me from the early days of the programme were great learners. I’ve seen over time as people finish the programme and go on, the difference their trajectory for learning makes, which has some personal characteristics – openness, humility, curiosity – but what it means is that success is not a moment in time. It’s not about where you stand in terms of your achievements or your relative status in your field or in your organisation at any one moment. It’s about your trajectory over time. The people who have affected me most are the ones who are focused on the trajectory. Over time with my engagement in the programme, I’ve come to adopt more of that perspective myself.

I don’t know if I could have said it 12 years ago, but now my own definition of success is about my constant learning. I have a failure that I learn from, I’m usually happy, satisfied, and excited for the future.

Thank you very much, Professor Ingram. It was a great pleasure speaking with you

About the Interviewee

Paul Ingram is the Kravis Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and faculty director of the Advanced Management Programme. His PhD is from Cornell University, and he was on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University before coming to Columbia. He has held visiting professorships at Tel Aviv University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Toronto. The courses he teaches on management and strategy benefit from his research on organisations in the United States, Canada, Israel, Scotland, China, Korea and Australia, and his research has been published in more than 60 articles, book chapters, and books.

Ingram’s current research project examines the intersection between culture and social networks. Recent papers investigate questions such as the role of value similarity to foster business networks, determinants and outcomes of individuals’ fit in organizational cultures, and influences on ethical decision making.

The post Empowering Your Leadership at the Pulse of Business in New York City appeared first on The European Business Review.

Interview with Mr. Renaud Champion, Executive Director AIM Institute EMLYON Business School

As artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly plays a big role in today’s business and society,  it is important to know how different sectors can properly utilise such innovation in order to maximise its full potential. At emlyon business school, a multifaceted initiative was created with the aim to understand the opportunities and implications of artificial intelligence for the management of organisations, industries, and business ecosystems – The Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Management (AIM). To tell us more about the research centre, we sat down with Mr. Renaud Champion, the Director of Emerging Intelligences at the AIM Institute.

Good day, Mr. Champion! Thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. Let’s start this interview by giving us a glimpse of your day as a Director and industry leader in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics?

I usually wake up around 6am and start the day with a kiss to my kids, a great source of energy for me. Before work I exercise and go running, cycling or swimming, to be ready for the competitions I take part in at least twice a year. During this practice I take the time to go over all kinds of digital media to get a feeling of the general atmosphere. Robotics and AI have such tremendous impacts on so many domains that I want to be aware of what’s happening everywhere: I am addicted to the news and don’t want to miss a thing. Then, when I am not travelling to meet young entrepreneurs or great researchers in the field of AI, I have a tight schedule of meetings, either face to face or via video conferencing. Those daily interactions with others are a real source of inspiration for me. I love to exchange views in order to better understand the world, challenge people and be challenged by them. I usually work according to three principles: affect – I like to work with people I appreciate both as humans and professionals, fun and the need to feel socially impactful.

Prior to assuming your Executive Director role at AIM Institute, you worked in capital markets involving companies like BNP Paribas and founded your own venture capital firm. How was the transition like?

I was trained as an AI engineer in France and the U.S. My ten years of experience as a quantitative researcher and practitioner of international capital markets has taught me to invest and take risks, while applying AI algorithms in trading rooms. Then the following decade as a venture capital professional in advanced robotics & AI, I was at the crossroads of my engineering background and my entrepreneurial interests. Along that road I pragmatically experienced the impacts of those technologies from an ethical, socio-economic and business point of view. So, I would say that the transition to my new role as Executive Director of the AIM Institute was quite natural and in continuity with what I’ve done over the past 20 years.

The AIM Institute is a multifaceted multifaceted initiative focused on understanding the opportunities and implications of artificial intelligence. What do you think makes your research institute excellent, unique, and successful in its expertise?

The ambition of AIM Institute is to understand the opportunities and the implications of artificial intelligence for the management of organisations, industries and business ecosystems. There are many predictions about how AI will change business and the way we work but relatively few empirical studies. So, our first goal is to support grounded, empirical studies of the way AI can create value on a broad range of business and also how this technology is changing what it means to work and the way work is organised, done and being rewarded. Our positioning as social science researchers studying real-world issues facing organisations in an interdisciplinary way is very unique. Only a few months since the launch of the institute, we already have 20 researchers from different backgrounds and we are expanding very quickly. We can also count on the involvement of our Scientific Committee made up of leading academics from Stanford, EPFL, UT Austin, VU Amsterdam, Florida State University and University of Southern California to help us drive excellence.

You are in charge of developing the strategy on Artificial Intelligence as well as the digital transformation of the school and its practice. What are your plans for attaining more innovations and transformation in and through AI for the school in the next few years?

It is our mission at emlyon business school to prepare the managers and the leaders of tomorrow to work in a technology driven world. For this reason, we are including in all our programme courses on data, robotics or machine learning, etc. and on the impacts these technologies can generate for companies. I think it is highly strategic for us as a business school to take a leading role in such a positioning, and make sure our programmes are increasingly hybrid. On the other hand, AI is also transforming pedagogy itself. We are building new AI-augmented tools to support our students in their lifelong learning journey. Digital technologies can strongly help us personalise that experience. But all those new functionalities are also challenging the role of the professor. What could be optimised by the algorithms, what should stay in the hands of the teacher? This question on collaboration and complementarity of the technology with humans needs to be tackled also in our domain: education.

In terms of the developments you’ve produced at the Institute, what innovation initiatives or enhancements are you focussing on at the moment and what should your present and future audience and partners look forward to?

On the research side we have several projects under review for high-ranked academic journals and we are working on many new projects studying human-machine interaction, impact of smart devices for the supply chain and operations, new business models from AI-augmented digital platforms or how to design and create better user experiences interacting with new intelligences. We have also launched several series of seminars and workshops with leading scholars from all over the world to address the questions of the impacts of AI on work and value creation. But at the same time we organise monthly outreach lectures open to the general public about the technologies behind AI. On the pedagogy side we are also very active with the creation of an online certificate on AI and Business for managers, new courses on our fields of expertise to be integrated in all emlyon’s programmess (bachelor, MBA, MSc or Executive Education), and regular keynotes posted on the YouTube channel of the school.

Last but not least we are working on the creation of our Technology Transfer department. For every research project, we consider whether the work has the potential to contribute to our understanding of how organisations and institutions can take meaningful and responsible advantage of AI. When we encounter projects that have concrete business applications, we might develop patentable models that could be coded and used to develop an application that a partner business might find useful. Or, we may explore the possibility of launching and supporting a start-up to exploit this innovation.

How significant is AI in the workplace and management today and how could organisations and companies handle its impacts effectively and make the most out of it?

AI, robotics, blockchain… all these technologies have already transformed the workplace. At work we use AI-powered smartphones every day, thanks to the web and smart cameras we interact with colleagues on the other side of the planet just as if they were in the same room, robotics has been transforming factories for more than 30 years and chatbots are changing how we interact with customers… Companies have no choice today and need to adapt, understand how they can use these technologies for their benefit from an economic but also from a human resources point of view. So, it is the responsibility of each manager, not only the COO or CTO, to ask oneself this question at one’s level: how can AI help me do my job more efficiently or differently? But to do so they need to be trained on these technologies, on design thinking methodologies, on agility, etc. Companies need to invest in AI but also in their own people to make the most out of these technologies.

What do you think are some of the real-world challenges facing organisations and policymakers in terms of understanding the implications of artificial intelligence for work, human resource management and labour markets, and governance? How do you at AIM Institute help address these challenges?

It is true that some jobs will disappear on one side and that new ones will be created on the other.  But rather than focussing on the numbers for each side, I think we need to understand how the whole structure of employment is being transformed by AI – most jobs won’t disappear, they will evolve. At AIM Institute we address these challenges by deploying researchers to study the impacts on the ground, within companies, with technology providers but also at end-users’ locations to gather data, understand the impacts and build knowledge out of it. From this knowledge we could then identify trends in the labour markets’ transformation: what are the new skills required to retrain the workforce impacted by AI? What are the new jobs about to emerge and how companies should adapt their recruitment process?

Margherita Pagani (left), Digital Marketing Professor of Emlyon Business School with other AI experts at the Women’s Forum Singapore. September 2018

We have learned that you are particularly interested in the ethical, legal, and socio-economic issues linked to Robotics and AI. How do you think achieving sustainability and maintaining ethical practices are possible while making technological innovations through AI?

Over the past 20 years working and investing in AI and robotics, I was lucky to be involved in many projects impacting various market domains, from finance and industry to agriculture, transport, or healthcare for instance. From this experience I really got the conviction that AI is not only an economic but also a societal opportunity because it can bring the human back at the centre of the game. This is true in the industry, thanks to intelligent robotics systems that work in collaboration with humans who are back in the production line (see the automotive industry). It is also the case in the healthcare domain where assistive robotics can help elderly people for their mobility and their toilet, while the nurse is focussing on the social interaction. Researchers, engineers or product managers need to be trained to become even more ethically responsible when they design new AI technologies. The respect of dignity and human well-being are key values underlying the “ethical by design” approach that most companies or big tech associations like IEEE are now promoting.

Evidently, there are changes in leadership style as our world advances. How do you think the AI will transform the future of leadership? 

Leadership will remain a human attribute for a very long time and I don’t believe we will be challenged by machines on that point. AI is definitely changing how we interact with our clients, colleagues and peers. But as exponential automation will undoubtedly boost productivity or open new territories of business, the human factor will stay the key driver of this interaction. Our empathy, our ability to question the world, to unconsciously desire or simply to make mistakes and use this as a source of creativity, are unique features difficult for machines to replicate. So, I think the future of leadership is all about emotional intelligence. I am not a strong believer of Artificial General Intelligence or technological singularity for basic ethical questions. As a humanist I believe that AI should foster human skills and, in the end, human well-being.

On a lighter note, leaders atop a company or organisation naturally have a lot on their plate. What habits keep you focused and healthy at and off work?

Actually, I have many different plates because I have several hats. Since everything I do is connected to AI it is quite easy not to lose focus though. This mix of activities is a real source of diversity and energy for me – I never get bored with what I am doing! But I have to admit that I also have a double-life: when I am not an actor of the higher education and AI, I turn into a farmer during the weekends, driving big agricultural machinery like 350 horse power tractors or 18 tons combined harvesters. Going back to my farm and working on my land is a kind of balance for me. It allows me to keep serenity in my life and to maintain a connection with the real world and my roots. But AI is never too far. I am currently working on an amazing project with other farmers to test and deploy robotics solutions in order to make agriculture less difficult and more sustainable from an ecological, economic and human point of view.

What advice would you offer for those who want to catapult their career forward in the technology sector?

First of all, I think it’s a very good idea because the technology sector will be massively hiring in the coming decades! First thing I would suggest is to get a strong cultural understanding of what these technologies are about, what are their histories, how have they changed the world so far. In a nutshell, get an objective understanding of what it is, what it can do – far away from all the fantasy, and make your own opinion. Then be curious and open yourself to many application domains. Even if you are interested in industry, look at what is happening in the healthcare sector with robotics. Even if you are interested in finance, look at what is being developed in the cybersecurity world with the blockchain. AI is a very transversal technology that impacts all market domains and its potential of transferability is huge. Another advice would be to team up with people you get along well with and who have a complementary expertise – build a team. This is especially true for technology because inventing a great new tech is one thing, but making a product out of it that some clients would buy in the long term is a different question. So the more relevant points of view around the table, the quicker you’ll find the way!

Lastly, what are the three things you will not leave home without?

My smartphone to connect to the world. My enthusiasm to be open to others…and my keys to come back to my family and kiss them goodnight.

Thank you very much, Mr. Champion. It was a great pleasure speaking with you.

About the Interviewee

Renaud Champion is Director of Emerging Intelligences at Emlyon business school, member of the Executive Board in charge of developing the strategy on Artificial Intelligence as well as the digital transformation of the school and its practice. He is also Director of euRobotics AISBL, the European Association of Robotics acting as the private side of SPARC, the Public-Private-Partnership for Robotics in Europe, and an independent expert for the European Commission on innovation and investment in advanced technologies. He has published articles and white papers on the ethical, legal and socio-economic issues linked to AI and Robotics.

The post Understanding the Potential of AI in a Technology Driven World appeared first on The European Business Review.

Good day, Professor Davidson! Thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. Let’s start this interview by giving us a glimpse of what a day looks like for an academic and business leader like yourself?

My role as EMLYON MBA Programme Director falls at a focal point between many different activities – formulating and promoting great programmes, working with faculty to deliver impactful courses, ensuring participant satisfaction, guaranteeing accreditation, and pursuing gains in the rankings. The perimeter of my responsibility covers both MBA and EMBA programmes, delivered in both English and French, in Lyon and Paris, as well as overseeing programmes delivered in China and Morocco.

The biggest endeavour that we have underway are projects related to our commitment to executive participant success. We are moving rapidly away from merely conveying knowledge to focus on capability building and measurement, which better serves our participants.

My top priority is making sure that our participants are well-served. At the same time, I fundamentally believe that management is a service job and that motivated staff will create satisfied customers. So, my days are typically packed with meetings to ensure that my team and our support services are engaged and possess the resources they need to get their jobs done to a high standard.

That said, within the broader context, executive education is an industry in transition facing rapidly changing technology and increasingly tough competition. In my opinion, business schools need to be transforming their business model to be more focused on the professional and personal success of our participants. This needs to come in addition to the high quality of our research. Leading this shift within the business school is a difficult and challenging change management opportunity which takes up much of my time.

As the Director of MBA Programmes at EMLYON Business School, what excites you most or what do you eagerly anticipate in terms of the school’s present and future endeavours? What are some of the strongest executive programmes that EMLYON offers in the coming year? 

The biggest endeavour that we have underway are projects related to our commitment to executive participant success. We are moving rapidly away from merely conveying knowledge to focus on capability building and measurement, which better serves our participants. Capability building consists of three things; gaining knowledge, demonstrating the ability to use this knowledge, and generating confidence to reuse it in the workplace. Managers are looking for more than gaining an understanding of finance, strategy, marketing, and operations. They want to know how to “get stuff done”. Moving beyond knowledge to building capabilities demands a focus on experiential learning or “learning by doing”. This is a huge change. The transition at EMLYON is by no means completed but is already well underway. Through our partnerships with companies such as IBM we are also harnessing digital approaches that allow our participants to set their own learning agendas according to their professional goals and to measure their own progress.  With all of this transformation, it’s an exciting time at the school.

EMLYON Business School has triple accreditation from EQUIS by the EFMD, AMBA, and AACSB. Can you tell us more about EMLYON’s distinct characteristics and how it lives up to its motto i.e. “Early makers”?

“Early Makers” is a natural extension of our belief that executives come to us to build competencies that are critical for their future success. As I just mentioned, this demands experiential learning. Researchers tell us that learning that “sticks” needs to be tightly connected to our emotions.  The Early Maker approach puts knowledge immediately to work using experimentation and high-impact learning experiences. This might include working in teams on projects with clients, playing serious games (real-world simulations), creating and testing prototypes, experiencing foreign business environments, or researching and writing case studies. All these types of experiences are designed to trigger the neural circuits of emotional memory. By creating salient learning events that leave a trace in our memories and by taking the time to reflect with each other on experiences, our managers can use learning to guide future thoughts and actions. This in turn provides our executives with the confidence to reapply knowledge and build long-lasting and relevant skills and competencies. This is the great strength of Early Makers.

Before working in executive education, you were a business consultant and established a boutique consulting company focused on strategic innovation partnering with large multinational companies. Can you tell us the most significant development you’ve witnessed in your expertise thus far?

Researchers tell us that learning that “sticks” needs to be tightly connected to our emotions.  The Early Maker approach puts knowledge immediately to work using experimentation and high-impact learning experiences.

Over the last twenty years, I was lucky enough to experience at first-hand how the power of search and the transition to a world of ubiquitous knowledge has fundamentally changed the way in which we conduct business. As business consultants we coined the term “knowledge brokering” to describe using search to find answers to business problems rather than inventing solutions. We developed processes to decompose problems into manageable pieces and to search for answers that already exist in other industries and professions. This development was enormously powerful for strategic innovation and up to ten times more effective than conventional problem-solving approaches.

It’s these processes that are now taught in our MBA programmes to assist student teams working on business challenges for external clients. For instance, these skills are practiced in our Entrepreneurial Leadership Project, where student teams work on a company’s business challenge for six months.

Your work over the last ten years has focused on creating and testing action learning techniques based on open innovation and design thinking. Can you tell us more about this? How do you cultivate a unique design for your executive programmes?

Open innovation is another way of describing knowledge brokering because it involves looking outside the company, bringing in ideas, and overcoming the not-invented-here syndrome. Design thinking also plays a key role in allowing teams to recombine answers found through knowledge brokering with internal ideas in new ways that uniquely serves the company with the business challenge.

Another key finding from many years of action learning is that when working with real projects, both the individuals and the company need directly benefit from the experience. This may sound obvious, but it can be easily forgotten in the rush to “fix the problem”. This is why at EMLYON we are totally focused on developing leadership and teaming skills in parallel to problem solving and also why we pay as much attention to building client relationship skills as we do to making smart recommendations.

How do you make sure that the results will be worthwhile for participants and their organisations in terms of knowledge acquisition, career advancement, long-term profitability for business, and other measures of ROI for an executive education?

It’s exactly that. We have to be ruthlessly focused on the value created for both the participants and, if they are taking a part-time EMBA, on the value for the companies where they are working.

At EMLYON we work one-on-one with our participants to boost their careers, whether this is being promoted, or moving industry, or relocating to another part of the World.

Business schools in the past have mostly focused on research, which was driving the reputation of the school, and in which participants would share  as a kind of “halo effect”. Measures of educational success focused on input measures such as number of hours in the classroom, or the number of published papers of professors, or the number of faculty nationalities. Now we need to move to output measures, such as what our participants can actually do when they leave us, the success they can expect, and the value that they are creating for their companies and for society. This is a big change and challenges the assumptions on which most business schools operate. At EMLYON we are seeking to align all of our activities with these ROI goals. And we must not forget that some elements of the ROI, such as the amazing network that you get from an MBA or EMBA, can be rather hard to measure!

What’s the most challenging when addressing the needs of your participants? How do you meet their expectations and have them better prepared upon returning to their respective workplaces?

We spend a lot of time in our MBA programmes focusing on the skills and capabilities that are the most highly requested in the workplace. Employers require hard skills such as strategic thinking, finance, and the ability to solve complex problems. But it’s the soft skills that are the ones which typically differentiate managers; drive and resilience, ability to influence others, ability to work in teams with a wide variety of people.  These skills are harder to develop but are also a natural by-product of experiential learning and the “Early Maker” approach. Developing these more generic capabilities is challenging but manageable.

It’s harder for us to tailor our MBA programmes to everybody’s personal learning agenda. For instance, in our International MBA, we offer around thirty different electives and participants can choose ten to fourteen of these. Some of these electives offer further technical skills such as advanced financial management, supply chain, or digital marketing. Other electives address the business impact of new technologies such as IoT, blockchain, AI. We also provide more in-depth soft skills electives such as people management or negotiations. But with the ever-widening waterfront of business topics, its not possible to offer everything.

At EMLYON we work one-on-one with our participants to boost their careers, whether this is being promoted, or moving industry, or relocating to another part of the World. For instance, on our EMBA programme, participants complete an individual dissertation supported by project skill-building and faculty tutoring. These projects are typically focused on a company business challenge within the organisation where the participant is employed. As a result of this project, we expect each of our executives to be promoted.

Over the years, your executive education has created positive impact on leadership development and bottom lines results. What have been the remarkable achievements and best feedback that you have received?

Maybe it’s truer to say that we need more leaders than ever because of the ever-expanding population of our planet and the more systemic nature of our business challenges in an increasingly interconnected world.

Over the years many remarkable executives have passed through the MBA programmes. There were those who were leading hugely ambitious transformational projects in their multinational companies or in smaller private enterprises, and for whom the EMBA was a vital toolset for their success; Or graduates that have built their own businesses from ideas that originated during our programmes. We receive, of course, news from many graduates sharing their personal successes, promotions, and achievements.

The feedback which perhaps gives me the most pleasure is when participants say that taking an MBA at EMLYON allowed them to better understand themselves as a leader and to take better career decisions that have led to a much higher level of personal fulfilment. To quote one of our Lebanese participants, Elie Maaloui, who now works for Nissan in Paris, “What you gain from the program is not only monetary; it is a network, a new way of thinking, tools to better yourself, and the confidence to take risks in life and your career.”

As the world and businesses rapidly evolve, leadership becomes more challenging. What do you think are the important qualities a business leader must have in order to drive business functions successfully into the future?

I’m not sure that I agree with the question. In my mind leadership has been largely the same for the last 10,000 years. Leadership is about coordinating a group to deal with the challenges that the group faces, while at the same time serving the needs and aspirations of the individuals within the group. Leadership is a human thing and our DNA has not changed that much.

While it’s true that the World’s knowledge is growing, but at the same time the world is a less threatening place. We don’t worry about the Mongol hoards or about being eaten by a dinosaur. And do you think that things were changing rapidly during previous industrial revolutions? Of course. Maybe it’s truer to say that we need more leaders than ever because of the ever-expanding population of our planet and the more systemic nature of our business challenges in an increasingly interconnected world.

One of the global advocacies we have nowadays is to empower women for leadership roles across all industries. As a female leader yourself, how could we progress in such an endeavour?

Our future highly interconnected business world is one where knowledge brokering, collective intelligence, and collaboration are all critical skills. This future is well suited to female leadership styles; rugged self-reliance is much less of an asset. We are at the beginning of the transition to these new ways of working, but we are already seeing the change and evolution as more women put themselves forward for political office and gain a voice though vehicles such as the #MeToo Movement.

In terms of pushing this forward, I’m a big fan of mentorship, where mentors can be women or men. I was mentored by an amazing business leader who made a significant difference to my leadership style and my view of the role of management. In turn, I am more than happy to mentor others. Perhaps the largest contribution of business schools is to help our female managers to find the right mentor and identify the best role models. As more women are mentored and subsequently become mentors then this will be a great viral accelerator of female empowerment in leadership roles.

With your long-established career working on strategic innovation and change management, can you tell us in three words how we can ensure the success of a strategic initiative?

Service to stakeholders – Teamwork – Innovation. You will notice that it’s mostly about the people.

People in the upper echelons naturally have a lot on their plate. How do you make sure that you maintain a healthy lifestyle, both in your professional and personal life? What are your favourite routines?

Perhaps the largest contribution of business schools is to help our female managers to find the right mentor and identify the best role models. As more women are mentored and subsequently become mentors then this will be a great viral accelerator of female empowerment in leadership roles.

I have not done as good a job as I would have liked. I believe you have to put in place structure and process to make sure you take care of the three key elements of health; self, family and friends, professional. The saying goes, “work flows to the competent until they drown”. It’s important to put boundaries around the amount of professional opportunity you are given, matched against the resources that you can access. In situations where the three factors are out of balance, the first element to suffer is paying attention to “self”. And of course, with too little time for physical exercise or inner reflection then the other two elements of your life suffer. The only solution is to find more resources, or to place strict boundaries around professional work. Patrolling those boundaries must be an on-going activity because organisations will take everything you can give. It’s tough to find the right balance!

What does success mean to you? Any message you wish to share with our readers?

For me, during this phase of my life, its about giving back and about the service I can perform in creating tomorrow’s leaders. Our World has lots of challenges and opportunities ahead. It’s a time of enormous change in business and we also need to work together to keep our planet healthy. Forming our best and brightest leaders from every country, is an essential job that adds meaning and purpose to my life. I can only encourage others to step-up to these leadership challenges, find a voice, and join in.

Thank you very much, Professor Davidson. It was a real pleasure speaking with you. 

About the Interviewee

Rhoda Davidson is an experienced educator, business consultant and entrepreneur. She has worked in executive education for over twenty years at top global institutions such as IMD, Duke CE, and EMLYON. She leads strategic innovation and corporate entrepreneurship programmes with large multinational companies. As a pioneer in business-driven action learning, her focus with MBA participants is on skill development through hands-on experience. Her research has appeared in practitioner journals including MIT Sloan Management Review and the McKinsey Quarterly.

The post Building Competencies that are critical for Future Success: Interview with Professor Rhoda Davidson appeared first on The European Business Review.

Located in the heart of the world’s innovation center, UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business aims to address the need for lifelong learning by creating a “new thinking for a new economy.” The institution’s culture of excellence, faculty’s breadth of expertise and knowledge, and an impressive understanding of their client’s business objectives, allow programmes at UC Berkeley Executive Education (a Haas affiliated company), whether custom designed or open enrollment, to help shape careers and put companies ahead of the curve. To understand more about what makes UC Berkeley Haas the west coast business school which best meets client’s needs, we sat down with their Interim Dean, Professor Laura Tyson.

Good day, Dean Tyson! Thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. Let’s start this interview by giving us a glimpse of what a day looks like for an academic leader like yourself ?

The two primary responsibilities of a dean are direction setting and fundraising. That said, I’m afraid there is no typical day in the life of a dean or academic leader. Business schools have a wide variety of stakeholders. Students come here to learn and transition into successful careers. The faculty teaches our students and conduct research; sometimes they consult with corporate partners. Alumni engage with their alma mater throughout their lives as they seek continued learning, career support, and networking opportunities. Recruiters look for talent to lead their organisations. Business professionals seek continued education and leadership development through executive education. Each group places different demands on a business school and its leaders. As a consequence, the work and responsibilities of the dean are quite varied.

As the Dean of Haas School of Business, what excites you most or what do you eagerly anticipate in terms of the school’s present and future endeavours?

I am excited about the significant progress of Berkeley Haas in executive education. When I was Dean 20 years ago, the school had a small executive education programme with limited participation by the academic faculty. Today, the programme is growing strongly, with exciting new offerings in areas such as blockchain and artificial intelligence and with much greater faculty participation. I am also thrilled to see that several of the programmes I helped launch when I was Dean are now top ranked programmes – the #1 MFE program, the #1 Evening-Weekend MBA programme and the #4 Executive MBA programme. I am delighted that Berkeley Haas now offers students a variety of options and formats to obtain an MBA degree. I am also delighted about the growing links between Berkeley Haas and other units on the Berkeley campus, including the Engineering School, the School of Public Health, the Law School, and the biological sciences. Students at Berkeley Haas can draw on the comprehensive excellence of UC Berkeley to tailor their education and career paths to meet their unique interests.

Finally, I am inspired by the fact that a growing number of our students seek to make a positive social impact early in their careers, regardless of the field they plan to enter. Some students start social ventures, some go into impact and sustainable investing, some go into existing companies to innovate and change how business is done. As the faculty director of the Institute for Business & Social Impact at Berkeley Haas, I am responsible for overseeing the courses, activities and research that help students develop such career paths. Berkeley Haas offers a “values-based” business education, one that encourages students to question the status quo and to think beyond themselves. These defining characteristics of Berkeley Haas reflect the commitment to the public good and the progressive culture that have defined UC Berkeley from the beginning of its 150-year history.

Having held various positions at Haas and in other areas of academia, can you tell us the most significant development you’ve witnessed thus far? How about the next big thing in business / leadership education?

Diversity and inclusion are among the most important topics in both business education at all levels including executive education and in the business community today. There are many areas where society is far from providing equal opportunities, and higher education is one. As a result, Berkeley Haas is embarking on a new and comprehensive strategy to increase the diversity of its student body, faculty, and staff. This is not easy to achieve, but it is the right thing to do. It is also the necessary thing to do. In order to teach our students how to lead diverse teams and be comfortable with sometimes uncomfortable conversations about race, and gender – conversations they will likely encounter throughout their careers – we need to make sure their learning environment is diverse and inclusive and reflects the society in which they live and the institutions they will lead.

In today’s fluid and quickly shifting market, it is essential to stay ahead of global trends and to anticipate what’s next for business. In response, our leadership education, through Berkeley Executive Education, is continually creating and offering programmes to empower our custom clients and individual participants to thrive in a world of change and disruption. Some of the latest topics in our executive education portfolio highlight technology disruption, open innovation, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and data science analytics for entrepreneurship.

UC Berkeley Haas is known for its culture of excellence and being client focussed. Can you tell us more about Berkeley Haas’ difference?

At a high-level the school’s larger public mission is to train business leaders for successful careers with positive social impact. Eight years ago, Berkeley Haas put a stake in the ground to compete in excellent business education based on a distinctive culture with four Defining Leadership Principles: Question the Status Quo, Confidence without Attitude, Beyond Yourself, Students Always.

These principles have always been an essential part of the culture at Berkeley Haas and they guide ethical and responsible behaviours and decision-making in everything we do and across all our programmes. So, these principles are also very much reflected in how we approach our executive education programmes.

Beyond Yourself means that we make decisions that take into account their long-term impact and the impact on those around us. Question the Status Quo asks whether there is a better way of doing things – innovation. Confidence without Attitude refers to working with and through others, in a respectful manner, knowing that we don’t have all the answers. And Students Always is about continuing to learn and keeping an open mind – and that, of course, is the basic purpose of executive education.

This sharp focus on principled business leadership is reflected in the courses and programmes we offer, and benefits our clients and their approach to business. So, on the whole our Executive Education programmes are about how we can drive innovation and create business success in a responsible and ethical manner, one that will have positive long-term impact for our clients, for their clients, and for the societies in which they live and operate.

Competition is stronger than ever. What attributes/features of your executive education do you feel set Haas apart from other business schools?

UC Berkeley is located in today’s most dynamic business ecosystem. Our faculty bring content, research, and insights from Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area to our executive education clients. We are at the center of innovation and have relationships with and proximity to many of the world’s cutting-edge companies that are defining the future.

We also bring our distinctive focus on culture and values, and their implications for business organisations, leadership and success to our executive education clients. Organisations with strong cultures and values often have an edge in increasingly competitive markets.

How do you cultivate a unique design for your executive programmes? What are some of the strongest programmes offered by Berkeley Executive Education?

We are recognised for co-creating our custom executive education programmes. These programmes are not “off the shelf ” – they are designed with our clients. We collaborate with our corporate, government, and university clients when building their custom programmes so that they can directly apply skills to address a new problem or opportunity of strategic significance. The design process starts with understanding the client’s goals and the programme design reflects the client’s perspective.

The executive education programmes for individuals in our open enrollment portfolio include a breadth and depth of courses across our four academic pillars: leadership and communication; strategy and management; entrepreneurship and innovation; and finance and business acumen.

Berkeley is always pioneering new offerings within these academic pillars, with programmes such as our Financial Analysis for Leaders which must adapt as the world of finance changes, as well as programmes surrounding cutting-edge topics such as our new Data Science and Blockchain programmes.

We are also continuing to offer some of our most enduring and popular programmes, such as High-Impact Leadership, Product Management, Venture Capital for Executives and the Berkeley Executive Leadership programme.

In part because our executive education programmes are focussed on lifelong learning, Berkeley offers a Certificate of Business Excellence for individuals who take at least one programme from each of our four academic pillars over a period of three years. This certificate is designed to develop leaders who are already at the top of their field, and to encourage participants to join our commitment to lifelong learning. Students always!

How do you make sure that the results will be worthwhile for participants and their organisations in terms of knowledge acquisition, career advancement, long-term profitability for business, and other measures of ROI for an executive education?

We understand that the learning journey goes beyond the days that are spent in the classroom, so our faculty work with clients to create an action plan at the end of our programmes to prompt implementation and successful execution.

We assess participant learning outcomes purposefully after programmes to review the impact of their action plan, understand what is working, and review if there are any areas for additional development. Short and longer-term assessments and outreach enable us to ascertain career movement, business impact of projects/ plans, and other client-specific measures of ROI.

What’s the most challenging when addressing the needs of your participants? How do you meet their expectations and have them better prepared upon returning to their respective workplaces?

One of the most challenging aspects of creating executive education programmes is to help clients develop a clear idea of what they want or need. We work closely with our participants at the beginning of a programme’s design process to uncover clarity of expectations and discover what success means to them.

A challenge during our programmes for individuals is that people come from a wide range of organisations, industries and geographies. We turn this diversity into a benefit for our participants by engaging them in activities in which they will learn from one another – broadening their perspectives on a particular challenge or opportunity. These activities are often in the form of a culminating project or capstone experience intentionally designed so that participants can take their learnings back to their organisation to implement – particularly as they assume roles of increasing leadership responsibility and need to work more in cross-functional roles.

Over the years, Berkeley Executive Education has created positive impact on leadership development and bottom line results. What have been the remarkable achievements and best feedback that you have received?

Upon completing a Berkeley Executive Education programme, leadership teams have solved problems together and gained a common language and toolset that they use daily in their organisation to create strategy and make decisions. Felix Zimmermann, Chairman of the Management Board, TAKKT AG, told us his organisation partnered with Berkeley Executive Education for a custom programme “to understand our current leadership style, to see our employees’ view, and to develop a new leadership approach.” He found: “Our customised programme ‘TAKKT Leadership in the Digital Age’ was outstanding in terms of content, methodology, energy, learning success and practical relevance. Thank you, for your extremely valuable contribution to our digitisation journey.”

As the world and businesses advance, leadership becomes more challenging. What do you think are the important qualities a business leader must have in order to drive business functions successfully into the future?

More than business acumen, leaders must have a vision and the ability to engage the talent of their organisations to realise the vision. Great leaders are often exceptional storytellers, as they inspire others to work together toward achieving their shared vision. Business leaders are also great listeners. They listen to their employees, peers, and other thought leaders to inform their vision.

In a very concrete sense, Professor Jennifer Chatman discusses the strategic deployment of six leadership styles in our Leading High-Performance Culture programme. These styles include coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and coaching. Effective leaders must be able to employ different leadership styles in different scenarios. I think these styles capture much of what a business leader must balance and employ to drive their organisations successfully into the future.

One of the global advocacies we have nowadays is to empower women for leadership roles across all industries. As a female leader yourself and a co-chair at the World Economic Forum’s Council on Women’s Empowerment, how could we progress in such an endeavor?

There are many opportunities to help others to fulfill their dreams and to live up to their potential. I have focussed much of my career on research and teaching to create change and have also played an advisory role in the public sector. As we progress in our careers, women can make sure that we create opportunities for other women around us and that we draw on the many resources available to advance gender parity. Berkeley Executive Education, for example, offers both custom and open enrollment programmes that focus on how to achieve gender parity in business. Professor Laura Kray, who has done path-breaking research on gender differences in negotiations and leadership styles, and Kellie McElhaney, who leads our new Center for Gender Equity & Leadership, teach in our highly regarded Women’s Executive Leadership programme. Executive Education also delivers leadership training to women executives in numerous blue-chip companies and government entities.

With your long-established career working for positive social change, how could we achieve a sustainable future and society for all?

Social impact starts with the little decisions we make every day. As I mentioned before, Berkeley Haas has put a stake in the ground to compete on culture. If we can inspire this principled values-driven approach to conducting business with our students and executive education clients, we will redefine how business is done.

People in the upper echelons naturally have a lot on their plate. How do you make sure that you maintain a healthy lifestyle, both in your professional and personal life? What are your favourite routines?

I am fortunate that I am passionate about my work. I am surrounded by very smart, creative, and capable people, and we work together to create a better future for our students. I love helping Berkeley Haas develop values-driven future leaders based on the school’s defining leadership principles. That energizes me and gives me purpose both on a personal and a professional level.

Thank you very much, Dean Tyson. It was a real pleasure speaking with you.

About the Interviewee

Laura D. Tyson is the Interim Dean at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley (July 2018 – December 2018). She chairs the Blum Center for Developing Economies Board of Trustees at UC Berkeley and is a Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School and Faculty Director of the Institute for Business & Social Impact at Berkeley Haas. Tyson was the Dean of London Business School from 2002 – 2006 and the Dean of the Berkeley Haas from 1998 – 2001. Tyson was a member of the US Department of State Foreign Affairs Policy Board. She was also a member of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. She served in the Clinton Administration as the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (1993 – 1995) and as Director of the National Economic Council (1995 – 1996). She is a member of the Board of Directors of AT&T, CBRE Group Inc., Lexmark International Inc., and Apex Swiss Holdings SARL. She is the co-author of Leave No One Behind, a report for the United Nation’s High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment.

The post Berkeley Executive Education: Creating A “New Thinking For The New Economy” appeared first on The European Business Review.

Good day, Dr. Beers and Dr. Hiller! Thank you for taking the time to talk to us. To start this interview, would you share with us what do successful directors and leadership mentors like you have in mind every single day? What do you eagerly anticipate?

Mayra: What do leaders need to be more effective and build a stronger society? Every day I look forward to thinking about how we as a Center can have an even greater impact by moving the conversation around leadership and leadership development forward. We answer that question through continuous research and testing that research against its practical application.

Nathan: Getting our hands dirty in helping individuals, teams, and organisations build their leadership capacity – it is what energises and drives our research, our leadership development programmes, and our interactions with client organisations.

As Directors of the Center for Leadership, what do you focus on individually and together toward the Center’s development and success?

While we bring dynamic and different perspectives to our work, there is also a high degree of alignment in driving forward a single strategy for the Center: to provide leaders and organisations with insights, reflection, and enhanced skills that will maximise their effectiveness and impact. This single focus has allowed us to succeed in providing hundreds of senior executives with practical strategies they have utilised on the job to improve their leadership. And it resonates on a global, cross-cultural scale; over the past 10 years we have hosted programmes with participants from 16 countries across 4 continents and from more than 200 organisations.

The Center for Leadership at Florida International University’s mission is to provide leadership development that transforms and emboldens individuals and organisations to positively impact our world.

Leadership plays a vital role in driving transformational change within organisations. At FIU’s Center for Leadership, it is your work and passion to develop leadership that is effective in today’s complex business landscape. How do you fulfill such an endeavour?

Our clear emphasis on research ensures that we stay grounded, and our careful integration of research with practical insights and application ensures that it is relevant.

Leadership is personal. We design state-of-the-art research-based leadership development programmes that tap into what each leader uniquely brings to their leadership roles and harnesses this in a way that can deliver the very best results for their teams and their organisations. Our clear emphasis on research ensures that we stay grounded, and our careful integration of research with practical insights and application ensures that it is relevant.

Over the years, you have helped lots of executives and managers develop their leadership skills. Could you give us a background of your highly acknowledged executive programmes on leadership development which even made you top-ranked in the open-enrollment category?

Our programmes are designed around two pivotal themes that underpin effective leadership: self-insight and developable skills. These two themes very intentionally form the core of every programme we design. We also design session content around the five meta-competencies identified by our own research, which fit well with almost every organisation’s leadership competency model. They are: leading self, leading others, providing strategic focus, connecting with others and delivering results. Each of our programmes are slightly different, but they all focus on these themes as the most salient and practical for our participants.

Industry leaders invest in management training to become more effective and efficient in their functions. How do you make sure that your approach to leadership development helps them address the challenges facing their organisation?

Before each programme we ask leaders about their most pressing challenges. We address some of these areas during the programme and focus the action planning work that is part of every programme around how best to address those issues. These ideas are further fleshed out through the dynamic conversations with peers in the cohort, with executive coaches available to participants, and through faculty expertise.

Above all, the learning must be applicable and of value to each participant. We ensure this outcome in two ways. First, the Center uses a comprehensive system of evaluations that ask for feedback on every session and on the overall programme. These evaluations allow us to make any relevant adjustments or enhance sessions that participants find most salient. Second, every participant in every programme creates an action plan that they expect to implement immediately upon returning to their workplace.

Seeing leaders succeed in their endeavours is indeed fulfilling. What’s the most significant impact your programmes have brought to leaders from different industries? What have been the remarkable achievements and best feedback that you have received?

“This programme changed the way I view my role as a leader.” Or “my colleagues have noticed that I am more strategic and effective in leading.” Testimonials like those speak to the power of a leadership development programme that focuses on the individual and on small but powerful leadership adjustments that can have a massive impact.

We recently held an alumni event to which we invited program alumni going back over the past decade. The feedback we received and the significant attendance to that weekday morning event validated that the impact of the programmes is indeed long-lasting and enduring. Even ten years later, people showed up early in the morning to be part of a leadership community that impacted them as individuals.

Evidently, there are changes in leadership style as the world advances. What do you think are the features of a remarkable leader today?

A remarkable leader is able to create a space in which those around him/her can succeed. Whether it is across cultures or across industries, working remotely or in close-knit teams, these principles can lay the groundwork for career-long success for leaders.

Yes, how leadership is expressed changes over time, but some principles remain constant. A remarkable leader understands who she/he is and the impact of their leadership on those he/she leads. A remarkable leader is able to create a space in which those around him/her can succeed. Whether it is across cultures or across industries, working remotely or in close-knit teams, these principles can lay the groundwork for career-long success for leaders.

In your years of experience in this field, what’s the most interesting transformation you’ve witnessed? What are the biggest or common challenges that you have observed facing leaders today?

From a systems perspective – there are indeed some changes in the issues leaders face today. More is being asked of leaders (at all levels and in all organisations) than ever before. The burdens and expectations of leadership are high, and seem to be getting higher, from the pace of work to the challenge of being always on (and knowing how and when to purposefully turn off).

In terms of individual transformation – sometimes the transformation is subtle and occurs after our programme when the ideas and behaviours start marinating and the individual starts making gains by taking small steps and experimenting. Often these small changes have a huge impact. In other cases we literally see a significant transformation right before our eyes during a programme, when a lightbulb turns on. All of these transformations, big and small, are exciting – and we see it as a gift that our programmes can many times play a part in true and meaningful change and growth. We should expect it by now, but it never ceases to amaze us.

For those aspiring to become successful leaders, what are the fundamentals that are associated with leadership roles? What advice would you offer them?

Leading without a “rule book” means being able to handle the ever-changing world of our global business environment. The best advice is probably among the oldest advice; Aristotle probably expressed it best, “knowing self is the beginning of wisdom.”  Understanding ourselves – our biases and preferences, our triggers and talents – will allow us to leverage situations not because it makes us feel good or fulfilled, but because it is the right thing to do for ourselves and our organisations in a particular situation.

What’s the biggest mistake you see leaders make and how can they avoid it or recover from it?

Mayra: Leaders often rely on heuristics that have worked in the past; but the rules sometimes change. Leaders have to be agile and strategic in the face of “new” challenges and recognise their opportunities that look vastly dissimilar from their business-as-usual work. Being aware that many times leadership does not come with a static rule book, and thinking about the impact of new technologies, new markets, and new business models requires alertness and the willingness to seek divergent points of view. This is one of the reasons we do not rely on case studies in our programmes – what got you here will probably not get you there.

Leaders spend less than one percent of their time on what clearly should be the most compelling part of leadership: creating and conveying a vision that captures purpose and commitment from their followers.

Nathan: A second area we often see is that leaders do not prioritise spending real time developing a clear and compelling vision for their teams and organisations. Leaders spend less than one percent of their time on what clearly should be the most compelling part of leadership: creating and conveying a vision that captures purpose and commitment from their followers. We have thought long and hard about this aspect of leadership and have developed a session on how to build and communicate a compelling set of talking points that sets out long-term goals and a way forward – and the need to revisit that vision at regular intervals. This practice is critical for maintaining effectiveness and programme participants are guided through a protocol for crafting a vision during the programme.

Like other professions, being the directors of the Center for Leadership can be exhausting sometimes. How do you make sure that you maintain a healthy lifestyle, both in your professional and personal lives? What’s your daily grind?

It is undeniable we think about the work of The Center most of the time; but we have also carefully tried to practice what we preach: healthy leaders make for a healthy and more productive workplace. We try to instill that concept as one of our workplace values and encourage staff to do the same. While our days are taken up with administrative duties and teaching, expanding our work as a research center at a research university, and ensuring that we continue to impact individuals, organisations, and the community at large, it is important to us that we not lose sight of personal goals and aspirations. Like most leaders with whom we work, all the demands on our time can be rather daunting, but at least in our case, it is also extremely rewarding.

What does success mean to you? Any message you wish to share with your readers?

Interesting that you pose this question. When we do custom work that is one of the first questions we ask our clients. “If we are successful in delivering this programme, what would the organisation (or team) look like as a result? What would be different?” Often, leaders are not able to answer that question well. As leaders we get so caught up in the “doing” that we don’t often stop to consider the big picture. If we could offer any message to your readers it would be to pause and think about what success looks like for them, whether at the professional or personal level – and then consider what it would take to get there.

Thank you very much, Dr. Beers and Dr. Hiller! A pleasure speaking with you. 

About the Interviewees

Dr. Mayra Beers is Director of Strategy and John S. and James L. Knight Research Fellow for the Center of Leadership at Florida International University. She holds MA and Ph.D degrees from FIU and holds Certificates in African New World Studies and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. She is an active lifelong volunteer for numerous causes and especially for education-related activities.

Dr. Nathan Hiller is an Academic Director of the Center for Leadershipand an Associate Professor of Management and International Business at Florida International University. He has held visiting faculty appointments at Cornell University of Washington, and has taught a graduate leadership course at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in Rio de Janiero. He received his Ph.D from The Pennsylvania University.

The post When Work Meets Passion: FIU Center for Leadership on Co-creating a Better Future with Today’s Leaders appeared first on The European Business Review.

In today’s fast-changing global environment, business leaders need new tools to face new challenges like never before. Innovation is one such tool. Here, we pick Professor Saul Estrin’s brain about how LSE’s Department of Management is preparing the business executives of today for the challenges they may face tomorrow.

LSE’s Executive Global Masters in Management (EGMiM) seeks to turn students into “innovative industry leaders”; why do you think innovation is so key in today’s business environment?

Innovation is increasingly important for businesses to embrace in order to survive and succeed in today’s global business environment, not least to keep up with competitors. The context in which businesses of all sizes operate is changing ever more rapidly, with technological advances meaning both opportunities and threats are emerging more quickly than ever, and social, political and economic trends in one region have a more fast-moving ripple effect on markets across the globe. Businesses therefore need to adapt quickly and effectively to change, and continuous innovation is key to this evolutionary process. Managers and leaders within businesses need to drive this change, and we therefore place great importance on teaching our students on the EGMiM programme the critical thinking and theoretical grounding they will need to understand and critically analyse new challenges throughout their lifelong careers, and to lead in establishing innovative solutions to these challenges.

Tell us a little more about your take on innovation – why is it so crucial in your executive education programmes?

A key priority for today’s managers and leaders must be to drive innovation within their organisation, in order for their business to remain viable and competitive. Therefore we see this as a crucial priority in our portfolio of executive programmes, and both the EGMiM and TRIUM Global EMBA are designed to sharpen students’ intellectual ability and practical experience to create innovative solutions to future business challenges. The TRIUM programme gives executives the intellectual space, resources, and mandate to strike out in a new direction – the opportunity to take their vision, expertise and experience and develop an innovative idea from inception to launch in the TRIUM Capstone Project. The EGMiM also offers a Capstone Project as part of the core curriculum, enabling students to focus on establishing an innovative solution to a real business problem, either in their current job role, or to launch a new entrepreneurial venture.

Leadership is a key component throughout both the EGMiM and TRIUM Global Executive MBA (EMBA); how do these programmes develop strong leaders?

The Executive Global Masters in Management and TRIUM Global EMBA programmes complement each other in our executive education portfolio, as they are each designed to target business professionals at different stages of their careers – EGMiM is ideal for outstanding working professionals with a minimum of 3 years’ experience, while TRIUM, ranked #1 EMBA in the world by the Financial Times, is designed for the globe’s top level senior executives with 10-15 years’ experience. But both programmes share the common aim of developing skilled and innovative business leaders through both the core cutting-edge curriculum, and also first-hand experience of a rich range of global business cultures with a diverse group of international classmates and teaching modules in carefully chosen international locations.

The EGMiM programme focuses particularly on academically rigorous “LSE-style” learning to develop our students’ foundations of leadership practice, and understanding of the real socio-economic and geo-political context of global business, as a grounding to boost them to a high-level leadership career. The TRIUM programme attracts a diverse group of people who have already excelled in their careers as senior leaders, but want to be challenged further. The focus lies in bringing them into the exclusive network of 3 leading business schools, and enabling them to develop their strategic vision and collaborate with like-minded peers from a wide range of industries and international backgrounds, to develop their success as global leaders.

As you say, your executive education programmes combine the theoretical with the practical; why is this synthesis so important for cultivating effective leadership?

The LSE’s founding mission is the pursuit of knowledge for the purpose of practical benefit to society, focusing not only on world-leading academic study, but also its application in the real world. Our executive programmes are designed closely around this ethos, and in both the EGMiM and TRIUM programmes we provide a carefully designed balance between academic classroom learning and practical learning with exposure to real-world global business. The TRIUM faculty are not only superb teachers, but they are also actively engaged in the business life of their home cities, advising local companies and, through their research, generating the knowledge that shapes international business theory and practice, and the impact is immediate for our students. On the EGMiM programme, learning from the classroom is designed to be directly applied to real-world issues faced by each individual student in the workplace, as they continue to work full-time throughout the programme. This adds instant tangible career benefits from day one.

What makes LSE’s executive programmes in this field unique?

In addition to our location in the heart of London and our exceptionally internationally diverse students and faculty, the LSE is unique in offering executive management programmes from the perspective of a world-leading university specialising in social sciences, rather than a traditional business school. Our programmes draw learning from a broader range of social science disciplines, including economics, politics and sociology, as well as the more traditional core business disciplines (management, accounting and finance). In addition to an outstanding training in the core areas of management and leadership which is common to all leading executive business programmes, the LSE learning environment also gives our students a unique understanding of the real geo-political and socio-economic contexts which fundamentally underpin the success or failure of businesses across the world, which is a huge advantage when it comes to being able to deal with the inter-connected nature of the real business world, where problems do not occur in neatly divided subject areas, but instead can be most effectively approached with a cross-disciplinary understanding of the full range of contextual factors.

As you say, diversity is a key facet of LSE’s executive programmes in management; what role do you think diversity plays in driving innovation?

What other benefits do students gain from the global nature of LSE’s executive management programmes?

In addition to exposure to diversity in global business practice from their connections in the classroom and on location at international modules, our students on both the EGMiM and TRIUM programmes also benefit from a strong foundation in global business from the academic curriculum. Both programmes take a rigorous approach to learning, not just focused on long-established Western business and developed economies, but also on emerging markets and globalisation which are increasingly the world’s areas of opportunity for growth and thriving business. Core courses on both the EGMiM and TRIUM are taught by international faculty who bring a diverse mix of global experience and expertise to the classroom, and this global approach across all aspects of learning equips students with the experience and understanding they will need to manage and lead their businesses in an international working environment.

Recent years have seen dramatic power shifts in the global marketplace; what opportunities and challenges does this open up for executives?

Not only are the largest markets changing, as indicated by the rise of China and the other BRICs, and more recently by the MINTs, but the world economy is rebalancing. Rather than a small number of major markets and a periphery of numerous smaller ones, we increasingly see a global market place with a large number of approximately equal sized markets. The opportunities this opens up are clear. Firms are able to exploit ever increasing scale economies by operating in more and more countries and locations. A given firm’s specific advantage – a resource, patent, innovation, technology or brand – can be exploited across larger and larger markets. But also this brings some real problems. First, the firm has to be able to manage the vastly increased complexity of operating across so many jurisdictions, business environments and cultures. Managerial systems have to be supple, open to change and learning and effective in the face of enhanced complexity. The second major issue is that firms may face competition from sources they have not previously considered. Not only from the innovative activities of rival firms that may change the underlying business model of their industry, but also from the fact that new competitors may emerge from countries that do not at the moment appear to offer competitive threats.

Different global markets inevitably pose different management and leadership challenges; how do you prepare students to navigate these challenges?

We try to give our students an analytical framework which allows them to understand the way that the global economy and local business environment operates, as well as the ways in which it is changing. Thus we try to understand what factors drive underlying long-term growth in a country; not only the economic factors – innovation, savings, capital markets, education, skills, health – but also the institutional factors, such as the quality and effectiveness of the legal system, the efficiency of the state, and of course the determinants and cures for corruption. We don’t just teach students facts – what is going on now – because that is rapidly going to change. We try to get them to understand what factors drive the changing business context. But we also do explain to them where to obtain the facts and data that indicate how these changes are occurring. In our teaching, we rely on senior business speakers, widespread use of international case studies, and international classroom modules located in emerging market economies where we visit government agencies, universities and think tanks and of course numerous companies, to give students a real understanding of how the analytical frameworks, the data and the situation on the ground combine to explain the business context in particular countries.

Finally, what are your top tips for successful leadership today?

Saul Estrin is Professor of Managerial Economics and Strategy in the Department of Management at the London School of Economics, where he was the founding Head of Department for seven years. He established the department’s flagship Master’s in Management, and is now EGMiM Programme Director and TRIUM Vice Dean. He was also formerly Deputy Dean and Acting Dean at London Business School. His areas of research include international business, economic development and entrepreneurship. He is best known for his work on privatisation and foreign direct investment.

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Innovation is a surefire way to achieve growth and success for your company. Below Jeff Rosenthal, CEO of the UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education, tells us what his experience has taught him about teaching companies to successfully innovate.

As the Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Executive Education at UC Berkeley, what does innovation mean to you? A lot of people mean the process of launching new products and services when they say innovation but do you have a broader model at Berkeley?
We see innovation as the practice of constant ingenuity to be able to anticipate the needs and wants of the market – in many cases before the market even knows what it needs. It’s then a process of rapid development to meet those needs before any competitors realise the same opportunity. We can all think of examples of companies – particularly in Silicon Valley – that are exceptional at the practice of innovation. At Berkeley-Haas and our Center for Executive Education, a lot of our development work is about bottling up the magic of Silicon Valley and sharing it with clients who want to accelerate innovation.

Successful innovation goes beyond idea generation. A huge component of applied innovation comes down to the company culture. We see enormous variation in the types of cultures between cutting-edge companies, and those who struggle to innovate. At Haas, we train executives in the fundamental leadership skills that nurture an innovative culture. The methods encompass communications skills, leveraging team structure, rapid prototyping, tools for assessing opportunity, talent management, even planning the optimum office designs.

Companies approach innovation culture in many ways. Two examples of common innovation methods are closed innovation models, where the R&D (Research and Development) department is treated as a carefully guarded secret, and talent and ideas are contained within the confines of the organisation; and open innovation, which is an externalised approach that includes looking outside the firm for the partnership or acquisition of existing IP or ideas. At the UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education we examine and build capability in both of these approaches for companies of all industries and sizes, So that our clients can make conscious decisions on which way will serve them best.

Would you say that is more difficult for established companies to innovate? They certainly tend to lose out when in competition with younger companies.

We will often see that the more established companies can experience difficulty with launching new ventures. For innovation to thrive, leaders must be able to mobilise ideas quickly into prototyping and launch. While larger or more mature companies may enjoy the benefits of strong brand reputation and infrastructure, they sometimes operate within the confines of longstanding organisational paradigms, financial expectations and talent shortages. Established organisations also have more obligations to manage their existing businesses models while also seeking to build their future success. This can often create tension between potential bureaucratic stagnancy and the need for swift innovation. As one of my consulting colleagues used to tell me early in my career, “size can breed mediocrity if you’re not careful.”

One of the challenges we often see in larger, more established companies is dealing with a culture of fear. Whether intentionally created or not, we’ve seen long tenured organisations that, as they’ve grown, have put in place more and more “rules” and policies about how to conduct business. While motivations are often well meaning, a frequent effect of this is a workforce who is afraid to experiment, to push new ideas, to risk – because of perceived consequences of failing. The presence of fear can act as a heavy blanket on an organisation trying to thrive by pushing innovation.

Because we often hear this from our clients of larger organisations, we’ve created a corporate entrepreneurship program for senior leaders of large, established firms to help leaders understand and manage the inherent tension between effectively leading and growing their current businesses while also developing an innovation portfolio and thinking entrepreneurially to create growth and value drivers for tomorrow.

Your website says that some of your innovation courses incorporate principles from Lean Startup methodology, can you explain a bit about that methodology and why you teach it?
Our Corporate Business Model Innovation programme is co-led by Professor Steve Blank, a pioneer in the concept of the Lean Startup method. This is a methodology commonly employed by Silicon Valley giants, a process of iterative and rapid design and launch. The most essential component of the methodology is to constantly stay apprised of and ahead of your customers’ wants. From there it is a streamlined process of rapid R&D, testing and relaunching – all while using as few resources as possible.

This methodology is largely a mindset shift for most business leaders. It moves them from spending too much time on the initial product or service launch, into a testing-retesting framework. To be innovative, business leaders typically need to be comfortable with launching a concept at the 80% comfort level, and that’s an operational mindset often challenging to adopt in a high-stakes competitive landscape.

Would you say it’s key for a company to have a long-term focus if they want to have any success through innovation?
Companies must have a long-term vision and a strong sense of identity they are constantly reaching toward. But to stay innovative, and, essentially, competitive, they must also build the capacity to operationalise shorter-term plans and constantly assess and reassess the changing landscape of the market. Technology and globalisation happen so quickly, a 5-10 year strategy will no longer stand. It took 40 years for the radio to reach 50 million users; the iPhone reached that number in under 3 years. One of our more innovative clients talks often of “failing fast” – meaning if experiments are tried and don’t yield results, you must learn from them quickly, and move on. So the combination of a long-term view with quick, short-term orientated execution appears to be the best combination. At Berkeley Executive Education, we teach our executive paticipants to think about developing their innovation portfolio across different timeframes, probabilities, and financial bets.

Do you have any tips for people trying to foster an innovative mindset in their employees? How can leaders promote a culture of inspiration?
The first place to begin is an honest assessment of the company’s leadership. Is the upper management ambitious or conservative in its goals? Do they encourage a healthy amount of risk and experimentation? Does the pace of the organisation feel fast or slow? Analysing the spirit of the company starts with the leadership, and its approach is a great indicator of the company’s potential for innovation. Sometimes it takes more than organisational experiments to encourage an atmosphere of inspiration. Your employees need to know that you encourage them to be imaginative in their ideas; that’s the only way a company can grow. What distinguishes companies that are successful through innovation is their willingness to hear new ideas. By making this clear to their employees they are promoting a level of inspiration that is needed if you want a space where new ideas are continuously pitched. If employees see the true desire for innovation from their leadership, then good things will happen. There are many examples of serendipitous innovations – the PostIt note and PlayDoh are two that come to mind. From a cultural standpoint there is a lot to be gained by identifying “experiments” or failed projects that didn’t work, but led to insights that resulted in a major innovation. Highlighting these stories, and reinforcing the positive roles and outcomes for key individuals in the company helps create a more vibrant and durable innovation culture.

When I think about the most innovative companies we’ve worked with, I see one clear differentiator – it’s the CEO and the senior leadership. If that senior leadership sees innovation as the lifeblood of the company’s success, then everything else follows.

How much does innovation have to do with the physical space around employees?
The physical space of an organisation can help or hinder an innovative organisation. It sets an important tone for the culture and establishes a desired communication flow. Google is often looked at as the pinnacle of creative office design and there is a lot of literature (and debate) about open-plan versus closed offices. As recently covered in the Harvard Business Review ‘Why We Hate Our Offices’, and ‘How to Build a Workspace We Can Love’, you want a workspace that encourages frequent in-person collaboration combined with enough privacy to do quiet, focused work.

When companies are too focused on an idea being a certainty before being implemented do you think a fast-paced approach is possible?
A good idea is only certain if someone has already tried and tested it before you. Certainty means being late to the game. Again, this is a mindset shift that we teach executive leaders at Berkeley-Haas to pull people out of analysis paralysis and into the rapid assessment-development-launch-test-relaunch method of the lean startup. This is a case where truly the “80% is good enough” saying needs to be put into practice.

How important is it that a company’s strategy is clear and communicated directly and with candour to employees?
It’s critical. If the workforce is clear and excited about the direction of the organisation, you’ve created the right kind of environment for innovation to thrive. I see this is the case for two reasons. The first is employee engagement. A clear and well-communicated strategy makes your people feel connected, motivated and clear on how they can help. The second reason is that clarity creates the space for employees to understand where innovation can help the most. So, when employees feel clear about their opportunity to create, and enthusiastic about the potential impact, you have a winning combination.

To some it can seem like a baffling concept to learn innovation when it has so much to do with inspiration, how does executive education manage to instil innovative concepts into a company’s strategy?
Unfortunately the word innovation is used with such frequency that the meaning has become diluted. Innovation often gets confused with words like inventiveness or creativity – which are more personal traits, difficult to teach. But innovation goes beyond the “lightbulb moment” – it is a discipline, a skillset and a set of methodologies that can be learned and applied to any organisation. The first step is understanding the concepts of innovation to be able to apply those concepts to your own industry and organisational culture. And in addition to teaching innovative practices, we work to help ensure that executives and organisations who work with us not only innovate more effectively, but also do a better job of capturing the value of their innovations.

Like most other management practices, innovation is an extremely powerful tool for competitiveness if practiced well.

Jeff Rosenthal is the CEO of the Center for Executive Education at UC Berkeley. His career spans more than 20 years in leadership consulting and he has written on a range of topics including executive development and effective leadership. Learn more at www.executive.berkeley.edu

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In our quest to keep you up to date with the latest research in business education, we talk to John Thornton, head of Bangor Business School, about keeping innovation on the curriculum.

How does Bangor Business School keep up to date with the latest innovations in business and management?

The School monitors closely developments in business and management through constant review of relevant media, membership of professional associations, and direct contacts with the business sector.

How is this innovation integrated into your postgraduate and executive education?

The School has a procedure for regularly reviewing the suite of programmes it offers to ensure that they reflect these latest innovations. 

How does Bangor Business School seek to best prepare the future business leaders of today?

We constantly monitor new developments in business and management and ensure that these are incorporated into our programmes. Our programmes also reflect the latest academic thinking, much of which stems from the research of our own staff. What’s more, our programmes include significant interaction with private business to give students exposure to real world business problems.

What do you think are the keys to being a successful leader?

To have vision, passion, to have the courage to take decisions, and to be a team builder. 

Entrepreneurship is also increasingly important in today’s economic climate; how has this shaped your approach to postgraduate education?

Our programmes reflect the latest academic thinking, they are informed by our own work over many years with local entrepreneurs, they include inputs from leader business thinkers and practitioners, and seek to provide students with opportunities for work experience in an entrepreneurial environment – especially in the SME sector.

How does Bangor support and encourage entrepreneurship?

For many years we have run a very successful suite of programmes for local businesses – especially SMEs – that support and encourage entrepreneurship.

As a School you have a particularly strong reputation for innovative study in banking and finance; what makes your offerings in this field different?

We have researchers in this field that are second to none; our programmes are constantly reviewed to ensure they are relevant and timely; and we have close contacts with official financial institutions, policymakers and private sector institutions that inform our research and the programmes we offer. 

Any final words as to what makes Bangor Business School stand out?

We recruit high calibre academics motivated to produce high quality research while delivering a student experience that (according to the latest National Student Survey) matches that of any institution in the UK.

The post How We Teach: Innovation appeared first on The European Business Review.