GBSN CEO

What Does Research Impact Look Like?

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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 Financial Times Responsible Business Education Awards in January 2022. There was no predefined rubric. We had to decide what impact meant by doing the work.

For four years, I quietly rooted for my favorites while anxiously awaiting the January results. Unfortunately, FT’s funding for the special section ended, so there was no fifth edition this January.

The pause gave me an opportunity to reflect. Serving as a judge shaped how I think about the impact of business school research, especially through the lens of our work at the Global Business School Network (GBSN) to address the development needs of society.

This article offers five lessons about research impact, building on patterns I saw repeated across some of the most compelling submissions.

Let’s begin in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, testing solutions to chronic underreporting of gender-based violence.

Lesson 1: Lean into context

In a randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving 180 police stations serving 23.4 million people, scholars from Oxford Säid Business School and University of Virginia studied the introduction and efficacy of Women Help Desks (WHDs), dedicated spaces mandated to respond to women’s cases. They found that police stations with WHDs were significantly more likely to register cases of gender-based violence, particularly when the desks were run by female officers.

The results, published in Science, “Policing in patriarchy: An experimental evaluation of reforms to improve police responsiveness to women in India” were striking. Treatment stations (with WHDs) registered 1,905 more Domestic Incident Reports (DIRs) and 3,360 more First Information Reports (FIRs) than control stations (without WHDs), where the totals remained near zero. The increases were driven almost entirely by desks actually run by women, not just for women. The quality of implementation and officer training also mattered significantly. By the end of 2023, the WHD model had expanded to 950 police stations in Madhya Pradesh, reaching 84 million people.

What struck me most about this research was its commitment to context. India has deeply entrenched patriarchal norms and chronically weak state capacity. That makes it both an especially important, and especially challenging, setting to study gender-based violence.

This work reinforced a shift in my thinking. Good research isn’t only about seeking generalizable results. It is about asking better questions in specific places. That is one reason why GBSN believes it is important to build research capacity in and for Africa, South America, and East Asia—and build systems that are more inclusive of their research voices. It’s also why I’m encouraged by initiatives such as the Academy of Management Community Acceleration Program (CAP), designed to support management scholars from historically underrepresented regions.

Leaning into context is not easy, especially in experimental research. It means not shying away from judgments that affect real people. As the authors acknowledge, their “roles as researchers are not and never can be fully neutral and there is potential, through research, to introduce risk, activate trauma, and create harm.” Local partnerships, in this case with the Madhya Police Department, and institutional review processes, are essential.

But how do locally relevant solutions scale? That leads to the second lesson.

Lesson 2: Real change is built from the bottom up

Although we would like to believe the intervention in Madhya Pradesh will also work in other places, the impact evaluation literature reminds us to be skeptical. Top-down approaches often fail because of limited knowledge of on-the-ground realities. Yet local initiatives struggle to scale absent relationships at the regional, national, or global levels. Bridging those gaps is one of the hardest challenges in development and organizational change.

Motivated by this problem, ESSEC Business School Professor Arijit Chatterjee and co-authors connected with the India-based Child in Need Institute (CINI), which grew from modest beginnings in the early 1970’s to eventually reach more than seven million children. After four years of participatory fieldwork and archival analysis covering 40 years, the scholars modeled CINI’s experience as “double weaving,” a recursive, bottom-up process through which local initiatives connect upward and outward over time.

This approach requires deep and sustained engagement, the opposite of what Chatterjee described in the FT as “jet set ethnography, parachuting into settings for a short time.” The paper, published in the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ), demonstrated that rigorous, useful scholarship can emerge from an in-depth longitudinal case study. At this point it’s worth recognizing AMJ’s specific efforts to motivate and assist scholars to address some of the most challenging societal issues, as well as the broader work of the Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM).

Double weaving highlights the importance of stitching together different perspectives across scales, leading to our next lesson.

Lesson 3: Useful research illuminates tensions

Much supply chain research focuses on efficiency. More recently, scholars have been addressing environmental sustainability. Social sustainability, however, has received less attention. More importantly, there hasn’t been much research into the interactions between these dimensions.

That’s one reason why I paid close attention to the work of scholars in the Centre for Business and Sustainability at University College Dublin. It draws attention to the tensions not only between business goals and sustainability, but also between environmental and social sustainability practices.

What stuck with me about this research is that it doesn’t smooth over contradictions. It illuminates them. It helps leaders face complexity more directly and navigate trade-offs with greater confidence. This initiative is also interesting to GBSN because of our efforts to improve human rights education in business schools, assist SMEs to sell the products across borders, and augment supply chain capacity in Africa.

By the time it was featured in the FT, Fashion’s Responsible Supply Chain Hub (or FReSCH) had worked with “some 50 fashion companies, NGOs, and media platforms to create strategies for fairer supply chains” and “influenced major policy initiatives, including the Welsh government’s Just Transition Framework, the European Commission’s sustainable textiles strategy, and the UN’s push for greater transparency.”

FReSCH approaches change by inviting leaders into a learning and co-creating process, bringing us to the next lesson.

Lesson 4: Impact multiplies when research intersects learning

The MIT Climate Pathways Project (CPP) leverages interactive simulations (C-ROADS and EN-ROADS) and research insights “to advance the adoption of evidence-based climate policy through leaders in the public and private sectors.” The initiative, a partnership between the MIT Climate Policy Center, MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, and Climate Interactive, is designed to help leaders make sense of the overwhelming number of possibilities. By the end of 2025, more than 24,690 leaders had participated in their simulations.

The simulations can enhance research impact in at least two ways. First, they allow leaders to test ideas in a safe environment before implementing them in the real world. Second, they build buy-in. Reading an article may change minds but experiencing a system can change behaviors and strategies. When research intersects learning, its impact multiplies.

Interestingly, in the exposure draft of the Global Research Impact Framework recently issued by AACSB, teaching is listed first among the three primary channels through which research creates change. Teaching is not a side channel. It is often the main pathway through research enters the world and influences behavior.

But this approach to impact is part of a larger lesson focused on the value of co-creating solutions, especially across sectors.

Lesson 5: Engagement enables and accelerates impact

Credibility matters to me. So, it was reassuring to see work published in quality peer-reviewed journals, such as AMJ, Management Science, and Journal of Marketing, and others that are less typical for business scholars, such as Science. Even the C-ROADS simulator maintains a Scientific Review Committee, underscoring the importance of rigor for teaching materials.

But publication alone does not create change. Academic insights take a long time to migrate from academic circles to practitioners and policy makers. And by then it becomes extremely difficult to attribute change to a specific insight, article, or scholar.

My scoring rubric was simple. Research published in a good journal and read/cited by other scholars receive a 1. If read beyond academia, it gets a 2. To earn a 3, there needed to be signs that change will occur. Scores of 4 or 5 were reserved for entries presenting evidence of change because of the research.

Of course, this approach naturally favors scholars who engage with people and organizations positioned to act and directly affect change, and who are willing to experiment and co-create solutions. Research impact is enabled and accelerated by connecting with organizations like the Madhya Police Department, Child in Need Institute, forward-looking fashion companies, and more.

That doesn’t mean that every scholar must engage beyond academia. We need pure foundational research and theory. As I was told as a PhD student in economics, the real world only “gums up” the science.

But it does mean that we should broaden our understanding of impact beyond citations; and broaden our understanding of who contributes to it. The people driving research impact are not just academic experts with PhDs, publishing in journals. They are doers, translators, connectors, and conveners working together across business, government, and civil society, as well as academia. We often say at GBSN that part of our job is to build the connective tissue between these actors.

The FT RBE research awards helped me to see there is no single pathway to research impact. The Climate Pathways Project influences practice and policy at the intersection of research and teaching. FReSCH facilitates just transitions by co-creating solutions with companies and NGOs. “Policing in Patriarchy” leverages large-scale experimental methods. “Double Weaving” is rooted in community action and emerged from decades of community engagement.

Different methods. Different connections. Different theories of change. And we are just scratching the surface.

So perhaps the most important question is not how I scored the research, but:

What is your pathway to impact?

I want to thank the Andrew Jack and the team at FT, and supporter InTent, for initiating and sustaining this work over multiple years. In a world where research impact is too often reduced to citation counts and impact factors, the FT consistently told stories about research that informs business and policy, reshapes industries, supports economic justice, and sometimes even saves lives.

A Three-Pound Mindset

Posted on by gbsn

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 “three-pound project,” a requirement at his school and others. The name comes from the approximate weight of the human brain, about 1.4 kilograms.

Students are asked to learn to do something new, unfamiliar and perhaps uncomfortable. The goal isn’t mastery. It’s growth. It’s not 10,000 hours. It’s three pounds. I loved hearing about the projects in my son’s class, from learning to DJ to baking French pastries, from Japanese calligraphy to Redstone systems in Minecraft. My favorite, lock “bypassing.”

My son chose bouldering, a form of rock climbing that depends on balance, strength, and problem-solving rather than ropes. Watching him fall was hard. Watching him learn from falling was inspiring. That’s when I realized that the point of a three-pound project isn’t what you learn. It’s building the capacity to learn.

How do you start something you know little or nothing about? How do fail at it without quitting? How do you reflect on an experience rather than just post videos of it on Instagram. Over time, as three-pound projects accumulate, you can build muscle memory for learning itself.

In management education, we talk a lot about lifelong learning and how important is for careers. But doing it ourselves is harder than it sounds. In business and in higher education today, new ideas, tools, and expectations arrive faster than we can absorb them. It is tempting to rely on what we already know and what we always do, rather than risk feeling like a beginner, again and again.

Thanks to my son, I now call it the “three-pound mindset.” It encourages us to stay curious and try new things, ask better questions about what works (and doesn’t), and remain open even when answers and pathways are unclear. It builds creativity and resilience, as well the capacity to learn. These things matter more today than ever, especially in the age of AI.

So, this year, I’m going to do nine pounds (three, three-pound projects). What would a three-pound project look like for you? Not something safe. Not something practical and efficient. Do something hard, that stretches your patience and reminds you what it feels like to grow.

Because the real project isn’t the climbing wall, the pastry or the DJ set. It’s your capacity to learn.

What Courage Asks

Posted on by gbsn

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 to horrors of the Holocaust? Partly because the book is, at its core, about love and hope. But more than that, it is about courage, which is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

Lale lives with constant doubt. Am I doing the right thing? What do I owe others? Will I be able to live with my choices? He is not alone. Nearly every significant character in the story is forced to confront decisions that blur boundaries: between survival and sacrifice, selflessness and self-preservation, and caution and bravery. Like Lale, prison kapos were granted special privileges to “supervise” other inmates yet often accepted bribes to help them. And what are we to make of SS guards like Baretski, the one assigned to Lale, who broke ranks to spare some prisoners while coldly murdering others? Or of Cilka, forced to “comfort” the camp commandant and later charged as a Nazi conspirator?

Most of us (though, unforgivably, not all) live far removed from the brutal extremes of Auschwitz. But that doesn’t mean we are free from moral complexities. Our dilemmas may be less visible, but they are no less real. It is always more convenient to look away than to speak up, but at what cost? What risks are we willing to take when confronting injustice, especially when those risks extend beyond ourselves to our families, our colleagues, or the organizations we lead or depend on?

I’m especially interested in situations in which the benefits of taking action are more diffuse and don’t arrive until well into the future, while the risks are more personal and immediate. How much courage does it take for each of us to take bigger steps to fight climate change when the beneficiaries are future generations? Or to protect the rights of people in far-away countries making the products we buy? What steps do we need to take today (how courageous does each one of us need to be) to prevent the atrocities of the Holocaust from ever recurring, anywhere? “Niemals vergessen!” as Germans say.

These shouldn’t be just abstract questions, they should show up in our daily work with business and higher education, in our civic engagement with communities, and in the small decisions we make every day. It’s not easy. One of the difficulties with big challenges, such as protecting our rights and planet for future generations, is understanding how our beliefs translate into specific and meaningful actions and decisions we (ordinary people like me) have the capacity to make.

The holidays are often a time to pause and take stock, not only of what we’ve accomplished, but also of the choices we’ve made and the values behind them. It is also a time to think about what we need to do differently moving forward. For me, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a reminder that courage is a daily consideration and is rarely simple and straightforward. And it is a reminder about what can happen if we are not courageous enough to step up sooner.

Courage may not be about having all the answers, but it is about not looking away. It is about paying attention when something feels wrong. It is about acting, even imperfectly, in ways we can live with, that consider the future as much as the present and that appreciate and preserve dignity for all.

As this new year approaches, my hope is that each of us takes a moment to reflect on what courage means in our own lives, given our circumstances and our values, and with consideration of our shared future. Let’s each find ways, large or small, to be more courageous in the year ahead—and for the decades that follow.

Competitor or Catalyst? The Role of AI in Shaping the Future of Management Education

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“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. I’ve always believed the best professors are those who can take complex concepts and make them accessible.

The bad news for even the most talented professors is that today I’m able to get this clarity from AI. Lately I’ve been asking ChatGPT about things I struggled with in graduate school, like Myerson’s proof of the Revelation Principle and the differences between Brouwer’s Fixed Point Theorem and Kakutani’s. The truth is I don’t recall enough math for the conversations to be helpful. But I can easily see AI as an indispensable tool for PhD students today.

My little experiment points to a larger question on the minds of business school leaders, “What are the implications of AI for the future of management education?” It is the question I’m most often asked these days. So here is a summary version of my usual response.

Business schools have built a large part of their value around content (the ideas, concepts, models, and frameworks). They have highly trained faculty teaching rigorous analytical frameworks in well-structured curricula. Expertise and explanations are a big part of the product. But technology—AI in particular—now delivers insights and clarity about concepts on demand, instantly and at scale. The question for business schools is what to do about it. The answer, I believe is clear. It lies in moving higher up the value chain. And leveraging technology to move fast.

When AI takes more of the content, it frees up time and energy for experiences. When students can access explanations instantly, business education becomes less about what happens at the front of the room and more about what students do with the ideas. Learning shifts from absorbing information to applying it to make decisions, reflecting on outcomes, understanding power dynamics, and navigating uncertainty. AI becomes the scaffold that allows instructors to design richer, more immersive learning environments where students practice leadership, not just study it.

Technology also enables something educators have struggled to provide, personalization. Every group (class) contains students who learn differently and have varying interests, strengths, and aspirations. But the traditional structure of the education forces everyone into the same pace and rhythm. AI changes that. It gives each learner the opportunity for a more responsive path, one that adapts to their pace and priorities. Instead of being pressed by the need to “cover the material,” students can pull themselves ahead through curiosity.

One of the biggest opportunities to leverage AI is to make management education more continuous. By this I’m talking not only about moving from discrete interventions to continuous engagement, but also about extending learning over the career lifecycle. Business is changing too quickly for a one or two-year degree to sustain someone for three to five years, much less a career. With the help of AI, a business school’s contribution to learning doesn’t have to end with graduation. Students can carry intelligent learning companions with them, receiving ongoing coaching, updates, and practice tailored to their careers. Business schools can become lifelong partners rather than one-time providers, supporting alumni as industries, roles, and technologies change.

Finally, the rise of AI provides the opportunity for management education to become more social, not less. When content delivery takes less time, the classroom (physical or virtual) becomes a place for conversation, debate, teamwork, and reflection, enabling the messy, relational experiences where leadership actually develops. Students must learn to collaborate not only with peers, but also with intelligent systems. Prompting, evaluating AI output, questioning its assumptions, and deciding when not to trust it (and how to build trust with it) become essential managerial skills. Future leaders will manage hybrid teams of humans and machines, and business schools have a central role to play in preparing them.

I’ve been particularly interested in this last point because of my own experience. Today, I still value the clarity economics brings to my understanding of the world. The models help me to bring order to complexity and offer a shared language for thinking about choices. But they are simplifications. The real work of organizations happens in the messy space between people, in the way they communicate, build (or lose) trust, perceive others, and handle their emotions. I save this topic for another blog.

When you bring all this together, the future becomes clear. AI isn’t undermining business schools, it is pushing them toward their true value, building on the human, relational, and developmental aspects of education that have been overshadowed by content delivery. In short, the future of management education is more experiential, personalized, continuous, and social. Fundamentally, it’s about transforming how we teach more than what we teach.

The business schools that thrive will be the ones that lean into this shift. They will treat AI not as a competitor but as a catalyst, one that frees them and enables them to focus on the things that matter most. That includes designing powerful experiences, cultivating judgment, developing human capabilities, and supporting learners across their entire careers.

Building Better Supply Chains for Development

Posted on by Jennifer Deschain

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 all too well what these losses mean, not only for one family, but for the wider economy. As a boy, he remembers stepping on the “floor” of rotting produce and feeling his country’s fortune sink with every spoiled harvest.

Today, Akoto is doing something about it. As CEO of FreezeLink, he leads a company using cold-chain technology to build “the most comprehensive distribution network for food and medicine for The Next Billion—in Africa and beyond.” Its vision is to “be the best third-party cold chain logistics company in Africa, thereby catalyzing food security, food diversity, and broadening the availability of medicine on the Continent.”

Akoto’s story captures the transformative power of supply chains in low- and middle-income countries. Better, more effective, and efficient logistics reduce costs, expand trade, and increase access to essential goods and services. We can expand jobs in small and medium enterprises by smoothing customs processes and stabilizing inputs. We can improve health when medicines reach rural clinics before they spoil. We can slow climate change when post-harvest losses decline, since decomposing food emits methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Fixing supply chains isn’t only about moving goods and increasing or stabilizing incomes; it is also about improving lives and protecting the planet.

Supply chains can easily be taken for granted. Many of us suddenly became more aware of their importance during the pandemic. The COVID-19 disruption, semiconductor shortages, and trade tensions revealed just how fragile these systems can be. Since then, diversification, digitalization, and regional integration have become strategic priorities. Frameworks like the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will only succeed if local logistics systems work effectively.

While I’m not convinced it is enough (or ideally focused), investments to improve supply chains are happening across sectors. Governments are upgrading transportation and digital infrastructure to connect producers with markets. Private sector companies, like FreezeLink, are expanding logistics networks and local sourcing. Development agencies and NGOs are promoting transparency, inclusion, and resilience in food and health supply chains.

But how are business schools contributing to this effort? And how can they amplify their impact through collaboration?

Developing Talent

Nations need more than roads and warehouses for development. They need people who can manage complexity, design sustainable solutions, and lead across sectors. Business schools are developing that talent.

Many GBSN member schools have been pioneers in combining technical knowledge, teamwork skills, and ethical reasoning to prepare supply chain leaders. Location often shapes their strengths. Vienna, long a vital trading hub, is home to WU, whose supply chain programs are globally ranked. In Suzhou, China, Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University draws from its position within one of the world’s most advanced logistics ecosystems. In Kenya, Strathmore Business School partners with local firms to train managers in digital operations and sustainable procurement. And in the Philippines, the Asian Institute of Management focuses on AI and its strength in analytics to offer a supply chain program to executives.

These examples show how education, when rooted in context, can address local challenges while preparing graduates for global leadership.

Generating Insights

Business schools also strengthen supply chains through research. Specialized institutions like Kühne Logistics University contribute valuable insights about logistics and sustainability. Research powerhouses with strong supply chain departments, like the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University contribute to our knowledge base. 

Yet focusing only on global models can overlook realities such as informal markets, fragmented data, and rural infrastructure. Contextually-focused research fills these gaps. Through its African Initiative, INSEAD has produced influential studies on regional health supply chains and social logistics, helping shape public–private partnerships in Africa. Such research not only informs policy but also identifies scalable innovations that can drive development.

Convening Stakeholders

Business schools are well positioned as trusted conveners. They bring together governments, NGOs, companies, and communities to align goals and share learning.

At Universidad de los Andes School of Management in Colombia, for instance, collaboration with local farmers and logistics providers has improved coffee supply chains while balancing export competitiveness with social impact. By anchoring initiatives in local partnerships, schools build trust and continuity that extend beyond short-term projects or political cycles.

As Akoto has emphasized, solving food insecurity “requires a coalition of stakeholders.” His perspective on adaptive leadership, shaped during his MIT Legatum Center (now the Kuo Sharper Center for Prosperity and Entrepreneurship) Foundry Fellowship, underscores the vital role of collective problem-solving, which business schools can nurture through their teaching and convening power.

Collaborating Across Borders

While individual schools can make a difference, their impact multiplies when they work together. Just as the challenges of modern supply chains transcend borders, so do the opportunities to improve them.

GBSN is helping to unlock this potential. Programs such as the GoTrade Fellowship with DHL and the Social Logistics Challenge allow students from multiple countries to design business solutions for real supply chain problems. They learn by doing, benefit from experienced mentors, and test new ideas in different contexts.

We want to do more. Edinburgh Business School has stepped up to steward and support GBSN efforts, building on its experience creating logistics courses for Africa and long-established excellence in online education. Our aim is to form a global group within GBSN to strengthen supply chains for development, starting with Sub-Saharan Africa.

We want first to leverage the global network to empower business schools in Sub-Saharan Africa to build and expand contextually relevant education programs and courses, including experiential components. Next, we want to facilitate data sharing and comparative research to reveal what works across regions globally—from rural Ghana to coastal Peru to urban Vietnam. Finally, we aspire to expand efforts to convene borders as well as sectors, helping to align businesses, governments, and development agencies in critical areas. 

The intent is also to connect this with efforts to improve human rights education in business schools, led by NYU Stern School of Business and the Geneva School of Economics and Management, as well as with other centers of excellence, such as Hanken School of Economics in Humanitarian Logistics and  Tongji University in managing large-scale infrastructure projects. 

With GBSN’s help, we believe that business schools can act not only as educators but as ecosystem leaders, helping coordinate the flow of knowledge, talent, and innovation that makes supply chains both stronger and more inclusive.

Looking Ahead

This November, both Akoto and a representative from Edinburgh Business School will join us at GBSN Beyond in Accra to continue this conversation. Akoto’s journey, from roaming family farms as a child in Ghana, to leading one of Africa’s most ambitious logistics ventures, illustrates why collaboration among business schools matters. When we connect ideas and institutions across borders, we empower the next generation of leaders to solve problems that no single organization or country can solve alone.

The Case for Critical Thinking: Training the Managerial Mind in the Age of AI

Posted on by Jennifer Deschain

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 the case and question into ChatGPT and downloads a structured answer. It looks clear and compelling—and right. She inserts a few “human” touches (i.e., grammatical errors) before pressing the send button to her teammates. By then her latte is ready and she has just enough time to make it to her job interview.

What’s missing from this scenario? Everything that matters, as far as I’m concerned. Analyzing a case means exploring assumptions, considering the context, doing additional research, and applying multiple frameworks and perspectives. The stuff that takes lots of time and intellectual energy.

Learning is like food and finance. You can’t stay healthy without managing your diet now. You can’t increase wealth without saving now. And you can’t acquire the knowledge and skills you need without learning now. Yet, many people have difficulty giving up short-term benefits for bigger long-term gains. Psychologists refer to it as present bias (or hyperbolic discounting).

We are only just beginning to understand the implications of AI use when it comes to learning. I’m especially excited about the possibilities for personalizing education and increasing access. But I’m also concerned about the potential impact on students and their development in important areas such as critical thinking.

Researchers at MIT have been comparing the brain scans of humans engaged in essay writing over time. In one experiment, they divided participants into three different groups: those using their “brain only,” those using search engines, and those using Large Language Models (LLMs). Among their initial findings, “cognitive activity scaled down in relation to external tool use.” That is, users of generative AI showed less brain development than the others. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as AI-induced cognitive offloading.

Notice that the experiments are not about the quality of the essays, but the capacity to write better ones in the future. That’s the thing about education.

In management education, specifically, I worry that AI will become a substitute for learning the very skills that define good management. Management is difficult. Management problems are messy and require critical thinking. They are political, contextual, and they don’t often have clear right answers. In business schools, students need to practice diagnosing problems, weighing tradeoffs, understanding human motivations, and making difficult choices under uncertainty. Managers develop these skills by doing the work and exercising the brain—thinking, rethinking, failing, adjusting, and developing a feel for complexity.

Unbeknownst to them, students consistently using AI to generate answers without engaging in the real work are robbing their future selves of the skills they will need most. Just as a person who skips exercise for years may find themselves unfit when they most need strength and endurance, a student who skips over the challenging thinking work may find themselves unprepared when they must navigate a boardroom, lead a team, or face a crisis where there is no pre-written answer. Sure, AI may eventually do all these things for us. But for now, we need critical thinkers.

What can business professors do to help students learn the things that matter most? Cognitive offloading is not unavoidable in management education. I’m sure there are other approaches that work, but here are a few suggestions for encouraging AI use in ways that support critical thinking.

First, emphasize peer-to-peer interactive discussions and debates in class. It turns out that in the MIT experiments, the LLM users “also struggled to accurately quote their own work.” So, emphasizing real-time discussion can reduce the incentive to outsource thinking, since students must defend their reasoning in real time. That’s one reason why I believe cases should remain a fixture in management education. As case conversations enter unexpected territory, students must think on their feet to analyze data, uncover underlying assumptions, debate trade-offs, and connect theory to the specifics of the case.

Second, instructors can design assignments that require structured reflection before accessing AI or other digital aids. Students must articulate assumptions and frameworks in their own words. As in the case of real-time discussions, students are free to use AI, but not as a cognitive crutch. I’m interested in learning more about the approach described by Weinstein, Brotspies, and Gironda. They suggest more back-and-forth interactions between students and AI, first requiring students to diagnose issues without external help, then to compare their analysis with AI-generated insights to refine their understanding, and finally to critique AI’s responses.

Finally, educators can do more to inform students about the tradeoffs, emphasizing the long-term payoffs of exercising the mind. To me, it is simply about reinforcing the importance of continuing development to being an effective manager—to have and exercise good judgment, think creatively, and sort through complexities at the systems level. The idea is to instill in students a growth mindset and help them balance efficiency objectives with the time it takes for genuine skill development. A good manager is constantly learning and developing. In closing, I want to emphasize this last point more generally. Ultimately, I believe we must address the underlying mindsets about management education (and higher education more broadly) to reduce the risks of AI. We need to reinforce that it is more about the process of learning than degrees and entry-level jobs. Frankly, I have always believed that learning is not only a means to an end, but also an end to itself. Now, I think such a mindset will be especially important in an AI world.

Broadening Our View of Faculty in Business Schools

Posted on by Jennifer Deschain

We’re going around the Zoom room, doing introductions, and I find myself smiling, feeling happy and proud. Part of the reason is where everyone is from: 12 faculty members from 11 different countries (and schools) across five continents. But that kind of international mix is the norm for GBSN. What stands out this time is something else. The group includes professors of practice and adjunct professors, as well as traditional academics, and one is a former executive finishing her doctorate. Most represent the usual business school disciplines, such as finance, marketing, operations, but a few have backgrounds you wouldn’t expect, like ecology and the arts. And what really struck me was how naturally everyone seemed to click. Titles didn’t matter. Each person brought something different, and each was treated with the same level of respect. I couldn’t help but wonder why something so beneficial somehow felt extraordinary.

I have always prioritized academics in my work with business schools globally. University-level degree-based management education should be grounded in credible research, with instructors who earned doctorates and engage continuously in scholarly activities. In academia, these scholarly activities can and should lead to peer-reviewed journal articles, and, for that to happen, scholars must often specialize and delve deep into their subjects. All that sounds good—and is good. But what surprises me is how often this view seems to be all that matters when it comes to faculty.

Institutions are rightfully quite intentional about hiring and deploying qualified academic scholars across the degree programs. However, the mix of other faculty tends to be determined more by existing connections and emerging opportunities. No matter how talented and integral, the people are often viewed as peripheral in terms of their role within the institution, contributions to overall objectives, and, especially, the culture shaping how various stakeholders work together.

Yet it is increasingly clear that the traditional business school faculty model, centered on tenure-track professors with deep expertise in increasingly narrowly defined fields, was built for a different era. Three trends are motivating schools to broaden their view of faculty.

First, technology is reshaping what business schools teach and how they teach it—and, thus, who teaches it. Advances in artificial intelligence, for example, are making content expertise less important relative to teaching and facilitation skills. New technologies also mean that instructors need to understand and use data analytics, digital platforms, and virtual collaboration tools. Today, many courses are co-designed with technologists, instructional designers, and industry experts. For example, to build its leadership position as a pioneer in tech-driven pedagogic innovation, GBSN member NEOMA Business School had to build a more collaborative model where professors work alongside educational designers, combining pedagogical expertise with technological advancements to enhance the student experience.

Second, the scope of business education has been expanding. Business schools are no longer just educating MBAs and undergraduates, they are delivering executive education, online certifications, entrepreneurship programs (including running incubators and accelerators), community clinics, public sector partnerships, and more. Each activity has different stakeholders, needs, and expectations. This larger, more diverse portfolio of programs requires a broader range of faculty—some strong in theory, others in application, some in research, others in delivery.

GBSN member University of Pretoria Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) is well known for its dynamic use of faculty from industry. Since its inception 25 years ago as a “business school for business,” GIBS has blended traditional scholars with senior executives who contribute to teaching, program design, and outreach, enabling the school to stay closely attuned to business realities in South Africa and beyond. Similarly, at Fundação Dom Cabral (FDC) in Brazil, another GBSN member, the faculty model is deliberately flexible. Their team includes research-active faculty, former CEOs, and sector-specific experts. This diversity enhances the school’s executive education programs and helps shape public-private partnerships aimed at economic inclusion.

Growth in entrepreneurship education and enterprise development has especially contributed to increasing faculty diversity. GBSN member Mediterranean School of Business (MSB) in Tunisia draws on regional practitioners to complement its core academic team. This strategy not only enriches classroom experiences with local context but strengthens the school’s ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship, crucial for developing economies. Entrepreneurs in residence are becoming as important on business school campuses as executives in residence once were.

Third, diversity in the faculty mix is being driven by increasing demand for societal impact. Climate change, inequality, political polarization, and geopolitical instability—today’s most urgent challenges don’t fit neatly into disciplinary boxes. Addressing them requires interdisciplinary thinking and faculty teams that blend theory with practice. A course on sustainable finance might now require a finance scholar, an environmental economist, and a policymaker—and, quite possibly nowadays, someone who knows tech. Few faculty members can credibly span all these domains. To focus research on environmental sustainability, the University of Exeter Business School, for example, had to connect across the institution to broaden their faculty portfolio.

In some areas, increasing societal impact means going beyond bringing together different disciplines. For example, the highly relevant research being conducted by the Centers for Business & Human Rights at New York University’s Stern School of Business and the University of Geneva often requires access to internal company practices, as well as affected workers and communities, necessitating transparent collaboration with business while maintaining academic independence. Human rights projects can require field work (including appropriate safety protections) and public policy involvement, so faculty with community engagement and public sector experience are invaluable, whether or not they hold doctorates or publish in academic journals.

At GBSN, our work to improve human rights education in business schools has benefited significantly from Charles Autheman, who works extensively with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and teaches at HEC Paris, another GBSN member, applying the school’s pioneering clinic format “Impact Company Lab” to human rights in business. His efforts to connect across business, academia, and civil society have created numerous opportunities for teaching and research across the GBSN community. We’ve also introduced an Ambassador Program to engage experienced professionals from the private sector for their insights and connections. Our first two Ambassadors are Matthew Kilgariff, Leader of the Governance & Sustainability Center at the Conference Board, and Ron Popper, Chief Executive Officer of the Global Business Initiative on Human Rights.

It’s not easy to make new faculty models work. Business schools need more than goodwill—they need strategies and systems to support more diverse faculty mixes. I’ll write more about these strategies in a future blog. For now, I’ll mention that these schools tend to be intentional about building teams, more inclusive in governance (e.g., giving professors of practice a say in curriculum development), and support professional development opportunities beyond traditional academic scholars and their discipline associations. Finally, and I am hearing this with greater frequency, business schools with more diverse faculties must be more purposeful about building cultures in which the contributions of different types of academic staff are appreciated. I want to conclude this blog with the words of Andrew Hoffman in The Engaged Scholar, which is about expanding the impact of academic research. “The goal of this book’s pages is not to change the role of academic scholars such that all must engage. Instead, the goal is to widen the range of definitions of what it means to be an academic scholar, allowing more diversity within the scholarly ranks.”

The Startups We Never See 

Posted on by Jennifer Deschain

When Lina Ayenew left Ethiopia to pursue an MBA in China, she carried more than ambition—she had a vision. She selected Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB) to immerse herself in a place where education technology was revolutionizing how people learn, as well as to take advantage of the school’s in-class incubation program. Her experience at CKGSB crystallized the vision: mobile learning apps, built with local languages and curriculum in mind, could be a game-changer back home. Education for Ethiopia was born—a nonprofit that brings digital educational resources to young learners who need them most. 

Thousands of kilometers away, Rahul Jain, a budding entrepreneur, left Delhi to enroll at IESE Business School in Spain. He met Andreas Demleitner while doing an internship in South Africa, then moved to the Boston area for an exchange program with MIT Sloan School of Management and to work as a consultant in e-commerce and marketing. All of this laid the groundwork for Rahul and Andreas to co-found Peach Payments, which quickly became one of South Africa’s leading digital payment platforms and has been expanding across other African countries, such as Kenya and Mauritius. What began as a cross-cultural internship turned into a long-term commitment to unlocking financial inclusion across Africa.  

Similar stories can be found at almost every great business school around the world, especially those that are part of the Global Business School Network like CKGSB, IESE, and MIT Sloan. The stories are evidence of a societal force too often misunderstood or overlooked: international student mobility. 

For both Lina and Rahul, crossing borders wasn’t just about earning degrees—it was about gathering ideas, building global networks, and translating insights from one context to another. They are internationally mobile entrepreneurs who, by blending international exposure with local action, are creating scalable, inclusive solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges. 

While I love hearing stories about founders like Lina and Rahul, they make me wonder about the startups we never see because of missed connections and experiences. The opportunity cost is undoubtedly large, but also largely invisible. For every student prevented from studying abroad due to visa restrictions, financial hurdles, or political rhetoric, there may be an app not launched, a social enterprise not formed, or a climate solution not scaled. These are the “unmade” innovations. They won’t be featured in glossy alumni magazines. Their absence quietly weakens our collective capacity to solve complex societal problems. 

My attention was drawn to this type of cost during the COVID-19 pandemic, when employees stayed home to work. My business friends, especially those working in the tech sector, worried less about productivity issues and more about erosion in the capacity to innovate in their companies. The types of relationships needed for the former model of work were already established and easy to maintain and support, while the types of relationships needed for the new situation (which cut across functions, organizations, industries, and borders) were less established and quicker to weaken.  

Meanwhile, my education friends were saying the same, as students deferred or canceled international study plans during the lockdowns. They worried about their collective capacity to foster innovation and serve business with less international diversity. 

Despite the benefits, persistent fear looms in public discourse about international mobility: that, for example, immigrants, including international students, are more likely to take jobs than to create them. This belief, while politically potent, doesn’t align with the facts. In the United States, for instance, immigrants have founded over 50% of the country’s unicorns—privately held start-ups valued at $1 billion or more. In the UK, 39% of the fastest-growing companies have at least one immigrant co-founder. 

Rahul Jain’s Peach Payments is a useful example. Rather than taking jobs from South Africans, he and Andreas have created many more. The impact extends far beyond payroll. His company helps thousands of small and medium-sized businesses across Africa to participate in the digital economy, opening doors to trade, capital, and growth. Similarly, Lina Ayenew’s nonprofit not only improves literacy in Ethiopia but also serves as a model for culturally responsive edtech innovation. 

Some governments have embraced foreign founders. Japan, though historically closed, opened its doors to international students who want to start businesses in the country. Their Startup Visa allows foreign students to reside in Japan while preparing to launch their business, offering a transitional period before converting to a permanent Business Manager visa. Supported by the French government’s #ChooseFrance campaign, French schools have been fast-tracking visas for students who had places in U.S. schools but are now uncertain about whether they’ll be let in. 

There are many challenges to address to realize our full potential globally. For many talented aspiring entrepreneurs, the financial cost of gaining international experience remains out of reach. Visa regimes in some countries discourage students from staying and applying their skills post-graduation. Even when they do stay, accessing funding as a foreign founder can be fraught with bias and legal complexity. And for those who return home, re-entry can mean facing relatively underdeveloped startup ecosystems, rigid bureaucracies, or outdated policies.  

In business education, we should be proactive in trying to remove these obstacles and prevent countries from backsliding on mobility. Given the potential benefits, business schools, governments, and civil society organizations should work together to encourage and support international mobility to build businesses and create jobs. They can protect the institutions that facilitate exchange, create special landing zones for students returning home, expand access to incubators and mentorship programs, build regional investment funds, and promote regulatory reforms that smooth the path from idea to market entry.  

When you trace the story of most great innovations, you’ll often find a border crossed—geographic, intellectual, or both. The most creative solutions emerge at the intersection of different perspectives. And if we want to empower the next generation of innovators, we need to protect and expand the mobility that allows them to learn and connect across boundaries. 

ChatGPT was used as a tool by the author to brainstorm and shape key points. Any errors that remain are the sole responsibility of the author. 

The Tragedy of the Commonsense Morality

Posted on by Jennifer Deschain

And What We Can Do About It

Writing about the climate challenge, French economist Jean Tirole frames the problem brilliantly: “The benefits of reducing climate change remain global and distant in time, while the costs of that reduction are local and immediate.” (Economics for the Common Good, p. 199) Why would any country take costly steps to attenuate global warming, when almost all the benefits go to other countries? Many of us see it the same way, as an example of the “Tragedy of Commons” or, more generally, a free rider problem.

If we know what the problem is, we ought to be able to solve it, right? Political scientist, Elinor Ostrom, has demonstrated how different combinations of incentives and sanctions have been used to effectively address the commons problem in small, stable communities. (Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action) Unfortunately, these strategies don’t apply to a planet of 8.2 billion people across nearly 200 countries.

To understand the problem differently, I often turn from economics and go back more than a decade to book written by philosopher turned psychologist, Joshua Greene, who takes a different approach and introduces the “Tragedy of Commonsense Morality.” (See Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them)

Greene starts with the tragedy of the commons and argues, not unlike Ostrom does for institutions, that our moral instincts evolved to help us cooperate within small, close-knit groups (tribes). Morality, he wrote, “is a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation.” It helps us to address the “Me” vs “Us” problem and helped early humans to survive. Along with a host of other factors (such as our tendency to maintain local ties even within a larger society), our moral instincts made it possible for societies to expand.

The point, according to Greene, is that (like biological traits) our moral beliefs adapt over time—shaped by the environment or context. What works/evolves to promote cooperation in one community does not necessarily work/evolve in another. The tragedy of the commonsense morality occurs here, in the larger setting within which different solutions intersect. “Me” vs “Us” problems become “Us” vs “Them” problems. Once we have locked into tightly reasoned moralities, they become more “automatic,” acquire real moral weight, and begin to resemble “rights.” That is one reason why we are often surprised by the intensity with which individuals know others are wrong.

Why does any of this matter? Going back to where we started, humanity faces a growing number of global challenges that cannot be solved by individual nations (or groups within them) acting alone. Climate change, global health, and economic inequality are just a few examples of problems that require cooperation across borders, cultures, and ideologies. Yet, as Greene argues, our moral instincts often prioritize the needs of our immediate group over those of others, especially more distant others. (Frankly, even basic economic opportunities, such as trade based on comparative advantage, also depend on cooperative solutions that elude us at the moment.) Solutions will require us to switch from “automatic” mode to “manual” mode (System 1 and System 2 in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow) and consider a “metamorality,” which I won’t expand on here.

Of course, there are many factors at work which make finding solutions challenging. Take social media platforms, for example. Because we tend to interact longer with content aligned with our beliefs (think confirmation bias) and because advertising income depends on attention, algorithms are built to serve us more information consistent with our pre-existing beliefs—causing the platforms to act as digital echo chambers, where people primarily interact with others who share their views and values.

What can we do about the tragedy of the commonsense morality? Honestly, I don’t know how the solve the problem. Nobody seems to know (there is considerable debate about the philosophical way out outlined by Greene), and that is a source of great stress for many people. For now, however, I want to share a few thoughts about what we can do as individuals, managers, and educators.

Each of us are citizens of a country and world, as well as various communities. Individuals and organizations have responsibilities that go beyond their local or national communities, beyond political parties and other segments, and must begin to think about themselves as part of a broader interconnected world. Of course, doing that is more difficult than it might initially seem, especially since some of the biggest differences and most passionate stances are about questions related to immigration and inclusion. How do we widen the circle of “Us” when the whole point of some people is to limit the size and diversity of their groups?

One straightforward strategy I always recommend is to collect information not only from multiple sources, but also from diverse ones. It is time consuming, but it helps us to gain a fuller picture, reduce bias, and improve objectivity and decision-making. And it enhances empathy and social awareness. In the old days, I made a habit of reading about the same topics in both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Nowadays, I often use AI to compare across many different outlets leaning left and right, identify biases and gaps, and summarize divergent content into more holistic narratives.

About climate, for example, I can see a common core emerging, that the scientific consensus is that global warming is occurring and is largely driven by human activity, while contrasting narratives are about interpreting the policy implications, rather than the underlying data. Sure, I have a stance—the urgency to act is critical—but I also understand the economic and practical challenges of transition cannot be ignored, especially considering differences across economies at different stages of development. Indeed, I like to utilize regional and language filters to retrieve more local views on global issues.

Besides working on ourselves, as managers and educators, we can multiply our efforts by also helping others to think more broadly and across groups. We can encourage them to use diverse sources like we do. We can work harder to develop cross-cultural appreciation and agility in our colleagues and students, and not shy away from the complexities of global challenges. We can take on moral disagreements, as well as business and economic ones, in the workplace and classroom. We can encourage colleagues to think beyond individuals, organizations, and markets to consider how the political, economic, and environmental parts of the systems interact.

It is not only about the content but also about the pedagogy. I believe the best way to truly be exposed to and embrace different perspectives is through experience. Put your students into simulations, role-plays, and real-world project teams that force them to confront the most difficult issues and work together across borders, disciplines, and sectors to solve problems. Because diversity matters to innovation and learning, we’re excited at GBSN about our new Global Business Student Changemaker program in partnership with How to Change the World.

The tragedy of commonsense morality is a fundamental challenge in today’s interconnected world in which our (tribal) instincts clash with the need for broader cooperation. The tensions will only get stronger, but we can each do our part as global citizens, managers, and educators. Together our challenge is to bridge the gap between “us” and “them,” as well as “me” and “us.” Management education has a crucial role to play in developing the next generation of leaders who can navigate moral complexities and work toward a more cooperative, sustainable future.

What Does Winning Look Like Today?

Posted on by Jennifer Deschain

When I was an economics professor (which was a long time ago), I often invited students in introductory classes to play a simple game. They were instructed to choose “Heads” or “Tails” and secretly write their choice on a sticky note, while I randomly sorted the class into pairs. If the choices made by any pair of students turn out to be the same (i.e., Heads/Heads or Tails/Tails), according to the rules, I would give them both chocolate bars. Otherwise, they would receive nothing.

What would you choose?

After playing things out and recording the results, I worked with the class to model the game using a simple 2×2 payoff matrix (see below). Then we talked about what happened.

I recall getting a lot of mileage out of this simple exercise. We frequently talked about the inadequacies of our model. For example, it fails to predict the outcome or recommend a particular strategy to players. Both Heads/Heads and Tails/Tails are (pure strategy) equilibria and neither is superior (the payoffs are the same). The point is that Tails/Tails is just as good as Heads/Heads.

Yet, over time, nearly all my students chose Heads. And I gave away a lot of candy! It’s reasonable to ask why economists have a difficult time explaining such a simple and obvious outcome. In advanced classes, we turned to repeated games and refinements to our definition of equilibrium.

For our class, however, the observation most often led to a discussion about the importance of norms, conventions, standards, and rules (e.g., driving on the right side of the road in the U.S.) in generating better results (e.g., not crashing into each other). We talked about the importance of information and communication, and how uninteresting the game would be if choices were made sequentially, with perfect information about the choices already made.

Besides being an easy and fun discussion starter, I was anxious to include the exercise for another reason, which was to show students that in business and life, one person’s gain does not have to mean another’s loss, as so many of our models seem to suggest. I noted that by then, we considered zero-sum games, as well as prisoner’s dilemma type games and more standard models of oligopoly. Look, I would explain, it’s still about winning the game and maximizing your payoff, but the winning strategy and behavior can be very different depending on the rules of the game. Coordination games, like the one we played, gave students a fresh way to think about business.

I have been thinking about the differences a lot lately, especially in a world that seems to be getting more complex and unpredictable. Where it is getting harder to distinguish friends from enemies and to stress long-term needs as well as short-term interests. In recent months it seems politics and economics are colliding to make underlying assumptions less universal. It’s getting harder to tell what winning looks like.

But it is also a world in which “coordination” and generating mutual benefit by aligning strategies is more relevant than ever. The digitalization of the economy, globalization of value chains, and expansion of platform-based business models have created environments where the payoffs for businesses are more interdependent. Success in these markets often depends on aligning actions with others, including competitors and consumers, as well as collaborators. Take technology standards, for example. The adoption of a common protocol benefits all firms that follow it, as it enhances interoperability and customer satisfaction.

The world economy is more interconnected than ever. Businesses, even small ones, no longer operate in isolated markets but as part of vast networks that span across geographies and sectors. Coordination across these networks can lead to collective gains. For instance, multinational corporations need to cooperate with local partners, governments, and other stakeholders to enter new markets and create value—and to increase visibility into their value chains.

A big motivator for me, and the work we do at GBSN, is that coordination, as well as competition, paves the way to more inclusive and sustainable growth. Transformation requires systems-level thinking and platforms that facilitate collaboration across sectors, as well as within industries. My favorite chapter in a book titled Net Positive is called “It Takes Three to Tango.” In it, Paul Polman (former Unilever CEO) describes the need for governments, the private sector, and civil society to “dance a complicated tango.” Businesses, consumers, and society can all benefit over the long term from pre-competitive standards and coordinated action to reduce environmental impact.

Yes, it’s getting more complicated and difficult. As I explained to my students, it’s not only about winning but also the implications of winning for society—the planet and its people. It’s not only about the present, but also about the future. And, as I tried to demonstrate using the simple game, enabling mutually beneficial solutions is not only about strategy and competition, but also about shared mindsets.

Business schools can play an important role. We can transform people and mindsets, convene leaders across sectors and borders, and create new insights that illuminate the path forward. We can continue to build platforms that bring together different people from different places to create shared experiences that enhance future cooperation—and provide learners across generations with the knowledge skills to build industry-wide frameworks and public-private partnerships to establish common goals and frameworks, as well as transform their companies. Most fundamentally, we can each take steps to reduce zero-sum, short-term thinking in favor of win-win-win, long-term thinking in our classrooms.

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