GBSN CEO

“Nāu te rourou, nāku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi” is a Māori proverb, or whakatauki. It translates into “with your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive” and carries my humble holiday message to the GBSN community. 

To be sure, I’m not an expert on Māori, People of the Land of Aotearoa New Zealand. I was, however, fortunate to have an opportunity to learn about their history and culture during a family trip to New Zealand in 2018. In my opinion, there is no substitute for being there when it comes to learning about a place and its people. Too often, we think we understand a country based on what we read or watch, only to discover important differences or nuances through direct experience.

At that time of my family visit, the world was getting to know Māori through the haka, as performed prior to rugby matches by New Zealand’s national team, the All Blacks. It’s easy to interpret the dance narrowly, as preparation for battle—unifying the team, getting them mentally and physically ready, and intimidating opponents. However, we learned that the haka is also used to lay a foundation for peace between tribes. And, although many think haka may be performed only by men, there are many versions that can be performed by anyone and some that are performed only by women.

It might be easy to think of Māori as warlike, but so much of their culture is built on collaboration, across tribes as well as within them. “Mā pango mā whero ka oti te mahi,” which translates into “with red and black the world will be complete,” emphasizes the importance of the community (“pango”) and chiefs (“whero”) working together. Kotahitanga, the Māori word for unity or oneness, describes movements to unify Māori on a non-tribal basis. More broadly, it applies to collective action for greater impact.

Cooperation and collective action are important to the GBSN community. To me, however, our whakatauki, “nāu te rourou, nāku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi,” goes beyond, because it is not necessarily grounded in “oneness” and does not require that we are similar or share the same objective. Instead, it is based on the reality that each person or party brings different strengths to the table, and that is essential for GBSN to make a positive impact. We are not built on the idea that business schools are or should be the same—business education is not a monolith. Each school operates in a different context and brings distinctive strengths to our efforts to foster inclusive and sustainable development.

So, there is more to my holiday offering than might initially be apparent. Of course, it is about the importance of collaboration, one of our core values, but it also expresses our commitment to context and commerce—to empowerment and trade. If you agree, please join me in sharing this important Māori message during the holiday season.

“Motivated to address the most pressing needs of society and enabled by digital innovation, business schools have been redefining the boundaries of their work.” I wrote that in a 2020 blog to introduce our first GBSN Beyond, a new version of our flagship annual conference reimagined for a virtual format. In addition to pushing us to think more boldly about the content, the word Beyond reflected our vision to be more inclusive and to do more than talk and network with each other. The event was a huge success—the name stuck, and our fourth GBSN Beyond starts on October 30, in-person and online. This blog describes what to expect.

Before getting into the details, I want to say that we are absolutely thrilled that GBSN Beyond 2023 is hosted by The American University in Cairo School of Business and to have generous sponsorships from MIT Sloan School of Management, Leeds University Business School, BI Norwegian Business School, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Hanken School of Economics, Monash Business School, CarringtonCrisp, ETS GRE, and others with commitments pending. Our hosts and sponsors are true impact leaders in our industry.

Contributions from sponsors not only make the event possible, but also enable it to be accessible to education leaders from low-income and developing countries. Please reach out to me directly if you are interested in adding your school or organization to the list of prestigious sponsors or want to contribute to need-based scholarships for schools.

The Theme – The Transformative Power of Talent and Technology

At GBSN we always put people first. After all, management education is about enabling and empowering people to create, build, and sustain organizations to solve problems of people and planet. Yet, we cannot ignore the power of technology to help people to create a better world, through business and education, and specifically to transform important sectors, such as health, agriculture, energy, and more. 

At the same time, we cannot discount the challenges that new technologies bring and the risks they create. There are new and important questions about trust, human rights, privacy, equity, and the future of our planet. And there are tensions between the Global North and the Global South, as well as the East and West, that have important implications for how we think about the future of business and business education.

That’s why this year’s GBSN Beyond theme is about opportunities and challenges at the intersection of talent and technology. As with everything GBSN does, this theme cuts across borders, sectors, and disciplines. We believe business schools should collaborate internationally, bring together multiple perspectives, and operate at the nexus of business, government, and civil society. We must transcend boundaries to do our part in building a better world.

The Program

There are multiple parts to GBSN Beyond. We’ll start in person on Monday, October 30, with the Members Only Meeting followed by a Welcome Reception on the Nile. The main program on Tuesday and Wednesday features an internationally diverse set of speakers, including Egypt’s Minister of International Cooperation and leaders from companies, such as Visa, DHL, Microsoft, and Amazon, and other institutions such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UK-based CFTE. And of course, we’ll have business educators from leading schools around the world sharing their experiences and aspirations. We are especially excited about a session featuring African entrepreneurs led by MIT’s Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship. Finally, all participants of GBSN Beyond are also invited to attend the Business Schools for Climate Leadership Africa Meeting, which is scheduled for Monday morning, just prior to the Members Only meeting. 

Since this is our 20^th Anniversary, we have planned several opportunities to celebrate the impact of network members, especially at our social events. You can count on the Gala Dinner (on the second night of the conference) being extra special this year, because we are celebrating our 20^th Anniversary and because of the venue—the fabulous Dahab Palace.

The Vibe

Every event has its own distinctive character, but there are three things that we are committed to carrying from event to event. First, we strive for diversity because we think innovation happens at the intersection of different perspectives. More importantly, we want to create inclusive events by focusing on the purpose of GBSN—and our shared vision for the developing world to have the talent it needs to generate prosperity. It’s why schools join and engage in the network, as well as what takes them to Beyond.

Second, we believe context matters for business and always will. But have you ever noticed that it is difficult at some conferences to know where you are in the world? Everything looks and feels the same. Well, we want participants in GBSN Beyond to know where they are and they create memorable experiences while there.

Finally, our aim is to facilitate meaningful connections for projects and initiatives. We want to make things happen—to “move the needle on the mission”—by bringing people together. The program is designed to highlight initiatives and provide opportunities to learn about other schools and people, and to connect with them. GBSN’s 20-year history includes hundreds of threads connecting schools and organizations across borders and over time. Our annual conference has played an essential role.

On behalf of host AUC School of Business, our sponsors, and Board of Directors, we invite you to come to Cairo for GBSN Beyond. To learn more and to register, go to https://gbsn.org/conference/beyond/

“What is the place of economics in the curriculum of business?” That was the opening sentence and principal question of an article by Roswell C. McCrea in the Journal of Political Economy nearly 100 years ago. Keep in mind, it was early in the development of collegiate schools of business in the US, and schools at the time were largely “proliferations of departments of economics.”

I reckon McCrea was influential in business education. When the article appeared in 1926, he had already been Dean at the Wharton School (of Commerce and Finance, at the time) and would go on to become Dean at Columbia Business School and President of AACSB, which was then the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business. His article was published along with “discussion” by four prominent professors, a mix of men (an indicator of the times) who were either economists, Deans, or both like McCrea.

The article and discussion are interesting and offer more to learn and enjoy than is covered here. Of immediate bearing is McCrea’s belief that the answer to our question depends on what we think about the purpose of business schools and the nature of economics. Here is an excerpt:

“I have encountered two extremes of attitude toward relations between schools of business and departments of economics. One is based on the view which stresses the profit-making objective of business and the resulting desirability of concentrating educational effort toward this end. The other disparages this emphasis and urges the importance of saving economics from the insidious encroachment of private-pecuniary upon social-welfare ideals. (pp. 21-22)”

Oddly, the opposing views lead to the same answer, which is to separate economics from the curriculum of business.

“The proponent of the first view would confine economics to its own little compartment in the university structure, in order to hold the school of business to the primary task of training for business vocations. The advocate of the opposing view would keep economics largely in its own particular bailiwick, not to save business from economics, but to save economics from business. (p. 221-222)”

Reflecting on my own teaching experience, I can testify directly about the difficulties of combining economics and business education. While teaching managerial economics in a part-time MBA program, I was careful, almost apologetic, about explaining that economics is an academic subject, not a vocational one. We don’t do economics in the same way we do accounting, I explained to students, so my job was to curate concepts from economics that can enable them to manage organizations more effectively (i.e., profitably) and build their careers in business (i.e., get promoted and make more money).

While this might sound harmless, it made me uneasy. Economics is about what’s best for society, not just for business. I was providing only part of the picture and encouraging students to use it for their own benefit. 

Of course, anyone who believes the Friedman doctrine would say there is nothing inconsistent in my approach—teaching students how to maximize profits and pursue their own self-interest is exactly in the public interest. Alternatively, some critics of business education believe that the inclusion of economics, especially its assumptions about rational, self-interested behaviors, and competitive markets, is part of the problem with business. 

McCrea had this to say.

“In my own view, economics, wherever else it may or may not belong, does belong in the school of business. Both business and economics need to be saved from themselves. Without the presence of economics in some vital form, the work of a school of business is likely to degenerate into detailed description of business organization and procedure, with no organizing principle other than the possible one of search for effective competitive devices, and with no clear vision of the social goal of business activity. (p. 222)”

The discussants avoided disagreeing with the conclusion but offered some things to think about. A. B. Wolfe (an Ohio State professor who later served as president of the American Economic Association) suggested that the “acquisitive” approach was inevitable in business schools and that economics offered “too many things that are unreal and untrue” (p. 229) to be useful. To Chester Phillips (founding Dean at the University of Iowa) “the study of economics may be conducive to social motivation but is not essential to it.” (p. 231) He believed political science, philosophy, and ethics could be at least as useful to business education. 

Although J. C. Bonbright (a professor at Columbia University) suggested economics has a “wider angle of vision” (p. 239) and could be most helpful to examining the environment of business, he questioned how much business executives need to understand. Perhaps they are “in the position of a small boy who needs no knowledge of mechanics in order to learn how to throw a baseball.” (p. 240) Finally, Edmund Day (founding Dean at the University of Michigan) highlighted the challenge in instilling a real professional attitude in business schools when the “relation of business administration to public policy remains unlike that of economics.” (p. 243)

That was nearly 100 years ago. What has happened since then and where do we go from here? 

My impression is that business schools have become less inclusive of economics. That’s partly because separate bodies of knowledge have been developed in business subjects, such as management, marketing, finance, and accounting. Business schools are no longer compelled to recruit professors from economics departments. Surely the mathematical progression of economics has also played a role, driving the perception that it has become more academic and even less relevant to management practice.

Economics can, according to the Economist in April this year, “plausibly claim to be moving toward a unified science of business.” However, while it has come a long way (e.g., advances in asymmetric information, behavior economics, institutional economics, and more), it still falls short of a “realistic theory of the firm” and can’t ever be enough. According to the magazine, “most of what makes for a flourishing business cannot be captured in a tight theory with a few equations” and “many of the influences on any topical issue—which tech firm will win the AI race, say—lie outside its purview.”

But the Economist addresses only one side of McCrea’s equation: the evolution of economics as a discipline. It doesn’t address the shifting purpose of business schools towards societal impact (CSR, ESG, and SDGs). The social orientation, relevance to policy, and wider angle of vision of economics make it particularly useful to schools that view business education as a mechanism for positive change in business and society. 

To be sure, I’m referring to mainstream economics, not radical departures from it. It’s about material and social incentives, for example, which when combined with personal preferences, define behavior. “This behavior may or may not be in the general interest,” according to Jean Tirole in Economics for the Common Good, and economics “involves constructing institutions to reconcile, as far as possible, the interests of the individual with the general interest.” (p. 3) This highlights the opportunity to combine the experience of business schools in serving individuals and organizations with the emphasis in economics on serving society and policy.

I also believe economics can play another role in business education. In Good Economics for Hard Times, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo write that “the world is a sufficiently complicated and uncertain place that the most valuable thing economists have to share is often not their conclusion, but the path they took to reach it—the facts they knew, the way they interpreted those facts, and deductive steps they took, the remaining sources of their uncertainty.”

And it works both ways, economics as a discipline can be strengthened by the orientation towards practice at many business schools, especially the ones that are most interested in aligning business and individual actions to improve society. As McCrea duly noted, “The joining of socially motivated thinking with a knowledge of concrete, shifting reality, such as can be affected in a school of business, may well escape the puttering of the strict vocationalist on the one hand, and the futility of the closet philosophy on the other.”

In the late 1950’s, MIT professor Robert Solow published a series of influential articles describing a new framework for understanding economic growth. He showed that increasing labor and capital investment explained very little of the growth in the US between 1909 and 1949. Nearly all the growth was, instead, attributed to a broad set of “technological” factors (called total factor productivity). For this work, he was awarded the 1987 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. 

Solow’s work helped us to understand and appreciate the economic importance of technological change. But it also drew attention to how little we knew about the relationship between technology and growth. To this day, economists have not been able to unpack the components of total factor productivity and isolate the economic consequences of specific innovations. Solow himself called total factor productivity, “a measure of our ignorance” about innovation. Another frustrating aspect of the Solow model was that, like labor and capital, technological change was “exogenous,” meaning that it existed outside of the model, independently determined by external factors. As a consequence, the Solow framework offered little guidance about how economic policy can foster long-term economic growth.

Not surprisingly, growth theory languished as economists struggled to address these and other challenges. It was “dead” according to Paul Romer, when he picked up the topic as a doctoral student in the 1980’s. Yet, Romer ended up pioneering what’s called endogenous growth theory, by introducing a model with technological change driven by the choices of economic actors, such as entrepreneurs, inventors, and scientists, responding to market incentives. Suddenly, anything that affects their choices (such as taxes, funding, education, etc.) can shape long-run productivity and growth.

The implications of Romer’s work were exciting of course, but I was especially interested in the underlying assumptions. At the time, I was trying at the time to rethink the MBA microeconomics course considering the digital revolution which was starting to happen. A lot would stay the same, but there were some critical differences.

There were three premises central to Romer’s work. The most fundamental had to do with the nature of ideas. When most of us think of goods and services, they are what economists call rivalrous, meaning that if one person is using it, others are precluded from also using it. Like my toothbrush. But Romer pointed out that ideas or “technology” (he refers to “instructions”) are different. They are non-rival goods. The Pythagorean Theorem is often used as an example. Its use by one person does not prevent others from also using it. Indeed, it is possible that the more people who use it, the more valuable it is to everyone. From there, it is not difficult to imagine a community in which ideas cross-pollinate each other and generate increasing returns.

But Romer’s model also had to address a second attribute of goods, excludability, which has to do with whether the owner of a good can prevent others from using it. That depends in part on the legal system. What is interesting (and to some, problematic), is that ideas/instructions must be at least partially excludable to motivate individuals to invest in developing them. This point explains why patents and copyrights are useful and their owners have at least some degree of market power in the short term.

The fundamental starting point, that “technology” is a non-rival good, is central to understanding the digital revolution, as well as productivity and economic growth. When combined with advances in technology infrastructure (for storing, retrieving, manipulating, and transmitting data), it is easy to see how powerful the digital revolution can be in improving lives. Romer admits that the conclusion of his research was not really all that surprising, since people intuitively understood that technological change is the key driver of growth. For him, it was the surprise connection—this “non-rivalry or shareability of discoveries that is… why is there so much benefit from connecting with so many people.”

Why is all this important? It serves as a launch point for understanding what we need to do moving forward in business schools. For example, we can debate whether economic growth (with GDP) is the most appropriate yardstick for comparing economies. Economists continue to be perplexed by the fact that enormous advances in technology have not translated into faster growth as measured by GDP, a paradox aptly described by Solow, “you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Could it be that we are better off but that’s just not captured by the standard metrics?

We can also begin to understand our role in creating and disseminating “technology”, which is not as frictionless in the real world as in Romer’s world. What pedagogies are most appropriate when management ideas are not easily applied across contexts? Part of our job is to improve ideas, as well as accelerate their distribution. As Romer says, “Growth springs from better recipes, not just from more cooking.”

Understanding technology and growth also challenges us to think critically about the role of business in society. The Romer model helps us to appreciate the role of universities in shaping policies that contribute to innovation and growth, as well as in creating and disseminating business ideas and insights. I also hope it inspires us to address some of the larger issues related to human rights (e.g., privacy), climate, and health. For example, vaccines are useful to illustrate the difference between a rival good (the actual dosage) and non-rival good (the formula), as well as the potential tradeoffs between innovation and access.

At GBSN we are about educating and empowering people—the ones who create and manage organizations. And if we get it right, that translates into more responsible economic and social development. Our vision is for the developing world to have the management talent it needs for prosperity. Yet, as we have seen, we cannot ignore technology as a fundamental driver of growth and prosperity—and as a threat to both. That’s why this year the theme for GBSN Beyond is the “Transformative Power of Talent and Technology.”