Dan LeClair reflects on transformation in the cities of Addis Ababa and Bucharest, and related questions about how business schools can support inclusive, sustainable, and resilient development.
Dan LeClair
Building Business Schools for Context, Not Convention
Dan LeClair describes the tensions business schools face between local impact and global recognition, and how a collaborative network like GBSN helps members learn from each other while remaining grounded in their local context.
Amplifying the Convening Power of Business Schools
In a world where the most pressing problems are too big to be solved in isolation, Dan LeClair describes the unique opportunity that business schools have to engage diverse, cross-sector participants in purposeful shared work.
What Does Research Impact Look Like?
Five lessons from four years as a judge for the FT Responsible Business Education awards If asked to rate academic research on a scale of 1 to 5 for “positive societal impact,” what would you look for? That’s essentially what those us on the research judging panel had to decide leading up to the first… Read more >
A Three-Pound Mindset
I cringed the first time my son fell off the climbing wall. He landed hard and laid there just long enough to make me nervous. Then he stood up, brushed the chalk from his hands, and studied the wall again, thinking about what to do differently this time. It was my first exposure to his… Read more >
What Courage Asks
In The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Lale Sokolov has the morally excruciating job of tattooing numbers on the arms of fellow prisoners entering Auschwitz-Birkenau. The work grants him marginal privileges and protections. At the same time, it makes him part of a system designed to dehumanize and destroy. Why begin a holiday message with a reference… Read more >
Competitor or Catalyst? The Role of AI in Shaping the Future of Management Education
“The role of the economist is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple.” Milton Friedman said that and, yes, he may have oversimplified when framing the purpose of business. But Friedman’s point about clarity is worth holding onto even if his views about role of business in society are not…. Read more >
Building Better Supply Chains for Development
At the Qatar Economic Forum last May, Owusu Akoto told the audience about a West African farmer who “loses 60 percent of everything he grows because he doesn’t have the right storage” and “sells the remaining 40 percent at a discount because of its quality.” The son and grandson of farmers in Ghana, Akoto knows… Read more >
Striving for Global Understanding in a Changing World
I’ve been thinking a lot about Ghana, mostly because we will soon welcome the GBSN community to Accra for GBSN Beyond 2025. Thinking back, my first “real” encounter with the country was not through an airport terminal. It was through the pages of Taiye Selasi’s debut novel called Ghana Must Go. My dad wouldn’t be… Read more >
The Case for Critical Thinking: Training the Managerial Mind in the Age of AI
Imagine the hurried life of a typical business student today, grabbing the last table at the coffee shop, busting out the laptop to tackle a complex case about an underperforming multinational company. The question is simple and open-ended: “What’s wrong with the company and what should leadership do next?” Our student promptly copies and pastes… Read more >