GBSN CEO

In an HBS Podcast, Carter Roberts, President & CEO of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) encouraged corporate leaders “to not just think about their own company, to not just think about their own footprint, but to embrace both the promise and expectation that they be a force for good in the world that goes way beyond their company.” 

What does this mean? Should our jobs as leaders really extend beyond our own organizations? And, if so, why, and how far? Is it only about being a force for good? Or is this elevation in thinking also about performance. Isn’t managing a company hard enough, especially in a corporation where my responsibility is largely to shareholders? How do we handle competing (and conflicting) interests across organizations and sectors? 

Addressing these questions from a business perspective would take a lot more experience than I’ll ever have. Luckily, we have leaders like former Unilever CEO, Paul Polman. He dedicates two chapters in his book, Net Positive, to exploring the role of business executives beyond their own companies. Chapter 6, “1+1=11,” is about collaborating within an industry or value chain to address challenges. Chapter 7 “It Takes Three to Tango” presses on the need for leadership across sectors to address the most challenging issues facing society, such as climate change and inequality. 

For now, I would like to explore the opportunities for business schools—how this simple change in thinking about business leadership can have profound implications for the work of business schools.

The views of Roberts, Polman, and many others about business leadership open new avenues for thinking differently about our curricula and what we teach. Topics like systems thinking and geopolitics can become central, rather than peripheral to business education. Thinking about our broader leadership role provides a new lens through which we can view and discuss old cases. When it comes to what we teach, Polman emphasizes the importance of “pre-competitive” strategies and long-term thinking. The key is to draw out new and meaningful insights that shape the development of new leaders.

When Indra Nooyi, former Chairman and CEO at PepsiCo, was a student at IIM Calcutta, she interned at the India’s Department of Atomic Energy. She was teamed up with a student from IIM Ahmedabad to “look at construction models of six nuclear power plants and determine which would be completed on time.” She notes in My Life in Full that she and her teammate learned “that some developed countries held back their state-of-the-art technologies from emerging markets to extract a little more return from outdated designs that were flawed and expensive.”

She wrote that the experience left her with a “sharper focus on the interdependence of business and society” and convinced her that “MBA students could play a constructive role in helping governments.” She also wrote that the experience “did not leave her encouraged about the motivations of wealthy countries toward emerging markets”—a statement particularly relevant to our work at GBSN. Nooyi went on to enter a new program at Yale linking private business with the public sector. Most will agree that her experiences with business schools were not typical at the time, or now. Part of our role at GBSN is to change the way we think about emerging economies.

In addition to redesigning business curricula, at GBSN we believe business schools (like business) play a leadership role at the nexus of business, government, and civil society. We love to see business schools engaging governments and NGOs, as well as business. More importantly, we make a difference by initiating efforts to bring those groups together. 

In thinking about the role of business and business schools, I have found the UN SDG Partnership Guidebook (2022) particularly helpful. It is a “practical guide to building high-impact multi-stakeholder partnerships for the Sustainable Development Goals.” As an example, to illustrate the changing landscape, the following chart (from page 11) contrasts the underlying purposes and approaches of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 

On page 33, the guide offers the following list describing the types of resources that academia can bring to multi-stakeholder partnerships:

• Research and analysis
• Trusted neutral convener
• Monitoring and evaluation capacity
• Partnership learning and knowledge development
• Evidence-based policy advice
• Open Data Collection
• Teaching / capacity building
• Innovation development

What does this mean for how leaders of business schools think about their competitors? I wrote about this topic in last month’s blog “Are Business Schools Working Together.” I’ve been known to say to business school Deans that their job is not only to lead their organization, but also to lead an industry. My view was about their personal involvement in organizations like GBSN, which benefit from school leaders stepping up to shape the industry’s future. It was also about how they bring together competitors and other organizations in the ecosystem to benefit society.

Indeed, creating the platform for schools to work together as a force for good is GBSN’s primary role. While other organizations help each school to improve quality and be more competitive, we help schools to think beyond their individual schools, connect with each other to generate collective impact, and develop meaningful relationships across business, government, and civil society. 

These opportunities – to redefine what and how we teach, engage in our communities, and lead our business schools for inclusive and sustainable development – are at the heart of GBSN Beyond 2022, which will be our 19^th annual conference. In addition to the in-person conference scheduled for November 7-9 in Amsterdam, GBSN Beyond includes separate virtual tracks for students, faculty, and leaders in business schools in the weeks prior. A single registration for the in-person event entitles your whole school to participate in the virtual activities. 

I want to draw special attention to the second annual Going Beyond Awards, a GBSN partnership with EFMD, which calls for examples of business school programs that go beyond the norm and make a big impact on the communities they serve.

“The scientists are coming together to think about moonshots. But we, in business schools, are still working separately.” said Peter Tufano when Soumitra Dutta and I interviewed him for our book, “The World After Covid”, April 2020, during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Do you agree with him?

Of course, business schools do work together. Many have long lists of partner schools for student exchanges, support connections to scholars at other schools, collaborations to create and offer joint or dual-degree programs, share resources, and more.

Still, I agree with Professor Tufano. His point was less about whether business schools are collaborating and more about why. In my experience, most business school collaborations are driven primarily, if not exclusively, by the strategic or financial benefits to participating schools. By working together, schools believe they can strengthen degree programs, penetrate new markets, build their reputations, increase revenues, decrease costs, and publish more journal articles.

There is nothing wrong with collaborating for mutual benefit. Why else would organizations work together? Leaders should know “what’s in it for my school” before agreeing to join forces with others. 

However, the reference to “moonshots” suggests that there is something more than self-interest that brings scientists together. The term came out of the US Apollo 11 spaceflight project, which had the objective of putting the first person on the moon. Although the term originally indicated “long shot,” it is often used more generally today to describe a lofty goal. 

When I hear the word, I think of bold initiatives to solve society’s “grand challenges” and save and improve lives— unlocking our full potential to achieve the SDGs. Moonshots, I believe go beyond a single organization. They require collaboration, especially internationally. Think International Space Station and the Human Genome Project. I’ve been paying more attention to the International Cancer Genome Consortium, which aims to map the genetic impact of 50 common cancers by sequencing the DNA of cells at distinct stages in the lifecycle of a tumor. 

Though the objectives may be less tangible, we have some examples in business. When Professor Tufano was Dean of Oxford University Saïd Business School, he “walked the talk” by helping to start Business Schools for Climate Leadership in which eight European schools are currently working together to accelerate business activities towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Addressing the climate emergency is as important as putting a person on the moon, don’t you think?

And consider the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). It has become the world’s most comprehensive source of information about entrepreneurship and their ecosystems, which are as vital to building more inclusive and sustainable communities as accelerating economic growth. Perhaps it wasn’t envisioned as a moonshot when launched in 1999 by Babson College and London Business School, with a focus on 10 countries. But today with more than 300 institutions covering more than 115 countries, its potential for positive impact is huge.

The Global Business School Network was started with societal impact in mind—a vision to accelerate international development by improving access to quality, locally relevant management education. For most of our history, we pursued this vision through grant projects. Today, we also achieve it with our own programs that engage network members—their students, faculty, and leaders—in important and impactful work that drives inclusive and sustainable development. 

We have been bringing together business schools for important societal initiatives, such as building more resilient communities (Social Logistics Challenge and previous Humanitarian Logistics Challenges), steering consumer preferences to more nutritious and sustainable foods (Demand Generation Alliance), improving human rights education (Business and Human Rights Impact Community), helping SMEs in emerging economies to trade across borders (DHL GBSN GoTrade Fellowship), developing leadership skills of female entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ellevate Leadership Training Programme), and more. 

Unfortunately, collaborations that focus as much on society as well as strategy are still uncommon across business schools. Perhaps that is because the culture of business education reflects the culture of business, and we’ll see more only when the “business case” is clearer. It could be because of the extraordinary influence of rankings and entrenched systems for evaluating and rewarding research. I also worry about the changing geopolitical landscape (between the US and China, for example) and its impact on academic collaboration. It is important for the management education industry to understand and address these and other potential obstacles.

This year at our signature event,  GBSN Beyond, we will explore the opportunities and difficulties of business schools working together for societal impact. We will challenge business school leaders to think not only about the difference their business school can make alone, but also about the bigger difference it can make by working together with other schools and at the nexus of business, government, and civil society. 

We invite you to join us, in-person and online, as we convene in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, November 7-9, 2022. Remember, as it has always been for GBSN Beyond, one registration to attend in person means all your colleagues and students can join us online for the Social Logistics Challenge and Micro-Simulation Development Lab, as well as the conference. 

There is a scene late in the movie Her where the main character Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is nervously questioning Samantha, his AI-based operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson. By then, Theodore had fallen in love with Samantha, who was designed to learn about and serve him, claimed to love him too. 

In the scene, Theodore was anxious and concerned, doubtful about their relationship. Was Samantha also having intimate conversations with other people? Was she also in love with them? Theodore had to ask. 

Being sensitive to Theodore’s feelings, Samantha was hesitant to answer. Finally, she admits to having similar conversations with other people. How many? 8,316, at that moment. Worse, breaking Theodore’s heart, she admits to being in love with 641 of them. You can watch the minute-and-a-half scene here.

I know, it’s science fiction. But still, it was a meaningful moment for me, and shaped my view of the future of management education. I thought to myself, “If technology can scale empathy and love, then surely education would have no limits.” I could envision management education that’s not only accessible to everyone, but is also individualized, inspirational, and immersive. 

Nearly a decade has passed since I first watched Her. Since then, I moved from AACSB to lead the Global Business School Network (GBSN). Conversations about education technology at AACSB often revolved around whether it will disrupt the industry. It was easy to believe that we wouldn’t need as many business schools, or teachers for that matter, in the future.

However, as I moved to GBSN, I was more excited about how advances in education technology can support our mission “to improve access to quality, locally relevant management education for the developing world.” We were built on the belief that access to management education is essential to international development. Technology, I thought, will be the key. I quickly learned about some of the challenges. 

Of course, my enthusiasm has been partially curbed by the realities of the digital divide. Access to the Internet, especially broadband, is hardly universal. According to the Internet Communications Union (ITU), “an estimated 37 per cent of the world’s population – or 2.9 billion people – have still never used the Internet” and “of the 2.9 billion still offline, an estimated 96 per cent live in developing countries.” 

I also began to realize that my basic ideas about education technology were less relevant to the mission of GBSN. When considering the potential for education technology, it was easy for me to think of education as a product. It is about curating the best content, packaging it, and delivering it to customers. The key is that once a digital product is created, the marginal cost of adding another user is very small or zero. I also understood the basics of network models in which subscriber benefits grew as the number of users increased. Economics was the dominant driver in my edtech thinking.

Our international development work at GBSN caused me to think differently. Sure, our mission is about access to education; educating, empowering, and enabling individuals in emerging economies, but our mission is also about helping their communities grow and thrive. I sometimes say that at GBSN our programs need to prioritize the development of places as much as the people.

The reality is that business and the practice of management and entrepreneurship remain largely contextual. Conditions (e.g., economic, regulatory, cultural, technological) vary enormously across geographies. Of course, a substantial part of the content (i.e., theories, models, techniques, etc.) in business education can be universally or globally beneficial without much adaptation. But the application of that content is fundamentally shaped by the context. As an example, imagine a course on starting a business. Although general concepts, such as the sources of value, might be useful anywhere, the way those concepts play out depend on economic and regulatory factors, access to talent, financing, and security, and numerous other local factors. 

I have come to believe that unless we start locally, with the conviction that management education ought to positively impact community development. It will be difficult to realize the full potential of education technology. Education for development is not only about providing access to global content, but also about building the capacity to generate locally relevant ideas, experiences, and developing the tools and skills of local scholars to produce them. That is why we offer faculty development programs, run the Micro-Simulation Development Lab with Capsim, partner with Gnowbe to provide faculty scholarships for their micro-Learning Instructional design certification program, and build collaborative models that enable local institutions to create additional value around globally distributed digital content.

When the overarching objective is to build communities, the focus of education technology also shifts, connecting learners to share ideas and co-create knowledge—and building the social capital that drives innovation and development. That’s why we run the Africa Business Concept Challenge and Humanitarian Logistics Challenge—to bring together a global community to help learners generate local solutions. Another example is the GoTrade Fellowship Program which we created with Deutsche Post DHL to connect selected, post-graduate business students to SME leaders in developing countries. 
Don’t misunderstand, I’m still excited about the potential for education technology to increase access, improve quality, and reduce costs. After all, the greatest challenge in education is to do things that work and are accessible. But as we move forward, I believe that the real gains and positive impacts for economic and social development will come from investments in local management education capacity, capabilities, and connections. In the end, EdTech shouldn’t put local schools out of business, it should strengthen them and enable them to make a bigger difference in the communities they serve.

A very long time ago, I welcomed students to my MBA course with a Peter Senge story. The influential author of The Fifth Discipline, I told the students, would ask participants in his workshops to, “imagine your organization is an ocean liner and that you are the leader.” Then he would ask, “what is your role?”

As Senge explained in the MIT Sloan Management Review, the most common answer was of course “the captain.” But some people would point to the helmsman, who controls the direction; the engineer, who provides the energy; the social director, who is responsible for making sure everyone is engaged; and others.

Rarely, according to Senge, did anyone mention the role of the ship’s designer. Drawing attention to the oversight, he would suggest “what good does it do for the captain to say, ‘turn starboard 30 degrees,’ when the designer has built a rudder that will only turn to port, or which takes six hours to turn to starboard?”

I used the story to introduce my course on managerial economics, which addressed the architecture of organizations as well as structure of markets. Instead of treating the firm as a black box—an efficient profit-maximizing machine—we tried to get inside the organization and understand the systems and processes from an economics point of view. We talked about incentive compensation and decentralizing decision rights, of course, but we also spent time with job design, recruitment, ethics, and leadership. We applied game theory models and insights from behavioral economics, which were already finding their way into other disciplines.

Of course, organizations are not exactly designed by architects and engineers like buildings and ships. Organizations are social structures and shaped over time through the policies and actions of managers. Managers are designers of their future organizations, as in the scary expression, “we are building the airplane while flying it.” Senge’s point (at least one of his points) was that leaders should be more conscious and purposeful about this role.

Corporate leaders have come to appreciate the importance of organizational architecture, especially of aligning it with strategy. One reason is that the shelf life of a strategic plan has diminished considerably as the environment has become more dynamic and volatile. Many experts now say that the role of the strategic leader boils down to identifying and building the organization’s most important capabilities.

Now, what if we were to ask business school leaders the Senge question. What would they say? My hope is that more will offer “the ship’s designer” as a result of reading this blog.

More than ever, we need to be purposeful about building the architecture of business schools. During my time at AACSB, I was the staff point person for the Blue Ribbon Committee (BRC) on Accreditation Quality charged with developing the 2013 Standards. For the first time in AACSB’s long history, the standards were released with a tagline. It consisted of three words: engagement, innovation, and impact. These three words later became the foundation for AACSB’s current mission, which is “to foster engagement, accelerate innovation, and amplify impact in business education.”

Yes, it was duly noted—the word “quality” wasn’t part of the tagline. For an accrediting body, that was a big step. The best business schools were built on well-established conceptions of quality and now aspire to go beyond. How do they transform for engagement, innovation, and impact? Here are a few basic questions to get started.

What jobs does my business school need? Going beyond requires new leadership roles. I have been excited to find more GBSN schools with Chief Innovation Officers and Associate Deans for Research Impact. The Gies College of Business has an Associate Dean for Innovation, who also is the Chief Disruption Officer. Sasin School of Management in Thailand has a Chief Impact Officer who is also Head of Accreditation. Directors of external relations are becoming chief engagement officers and instructional designers are becoming experience makers.

Does my business school have the right systems? Are faculty, for example, evaluated and rewarded for impact? What about for the type of engagement that leads to innovation? How important is fit for culture in faculty recruitment processes? In GBSN’s Impact Communities, I have been impressed by the number of scholars who are more interested in the difference they can make than the article they can publish. Their schools are leading the way in building powerful cultures of impact.

Is my business school measuring the things that matter? The financial models of business schools, especially university-based ones, have never been all that clear and sometimes create outcomes inconsistent with the school’s mission. For example, some schools might over-emphasize foreign students because they generate more income than local ones, even if the mission is largely focused on local jobs and communities. In higher education, we also tend to conflate “quality” with “selectivity” and “salaries.” How does that play out for schools that are Going Beyond.

Of course, this list of questions is not comprehensive or new to many of us in business education. I suggest, however, that we need to be bolder and faster in addressing them. Doing so won’t be easy. It is not difficult to feel powerless to change a system when it has been built over centuries or if it puts my school at a disadvantage relative to others. Change in higher education can also feel extremely complicated. After all, few other organizations have the breadth of stakeholders (students, alumni, donors, faculty, community leaders, recruiters, etc.) with conflicting perspectives. Regardless, it is time to elevate our role as designers in leading business schools, and the business education industry, for the future.