FUTURE OF BUSINESS EDUCATION: SPOTLIGHT ON EXECUTIVE MBA EDHEC AND THE FINANCIAL TIMES EXPLORE THE LATEST TRENDS IN EXECUTIVE MBAs
On October 19th, following the publication of its latest EMBA ranking, the Financial Times and EDHEC Business School gathered several hundred managers and leaders from across the world for an exclusive day of virtual panels, workshops and discussions as part of its series “Future of Business Education. During this “spotlight on the executive MBA,” representatives of many top-ranking business schools, including EDHEC, as well as corporate leaders and MBA alumni discussed the latest trends in curriculum, responsible business education, programme formats, and course themes such as disruption and adaptation, digital transformation, and diversity and inclusion.
Professional success is very personal business
The day kicked-off with an inspirational workshop led by EDHEC’s Associate Professor Inge de Clippeleer, appropriately named “Mapping out your route to professional success.”Over the course of the 30-min session, Inge De Clippeleer worked with a very engaged audience to uncover the underlying questions one should ponder to define success. Between personal goals and company objectives, the map to success is a personal journey: figuring out one’s “wants” and skills, developing self-reflection and self-direction, and understanding the company’s culture and its people, are all driving factors to draw a chart and put one’s best foot forward, according to Inge De Clippeleer. Questions from the attendees helped move the collaborative exercise forward with one particular question on everyone’s mind: how to know the right thing to do? For this, the EDHEC expert gave the audience a lot to think about: “try finding your own path, don’t copy what others do, think about who you are, make your own way, and be focused on being successful in your own terms,” she concluded.
Disruption is here to stay
Back in the main virtual auditorium, the day’s first panel was focused on the subject of “Managing disruption and the impact of the pandemic.” For this panel, EDHEC Professor of Strategy Karin Kollenz-Quetard was joined by CEIBS’ Bala Ramasamy, speaking from the Chinese campus, and Bernadette Birt, from the American Kellogg School of Management. The trio discussed the impacts of the Covid crisis on the learning experience and curriculum content. For Karin Kollenz-Quetard, even if things are almost back to a new normal, at least in France, the pandemic had profound impacts in the classroom: “Those two years forced us to be more open to experimentation,” she says. “We had to go through trial and error in real time, but the beauty of it was that it was done in collaboration with our students. Showing insecurity and doubt is not very common in teachers. But, to manage uncertainty, our faculty had to be transparent and show they didn’t have all the answers: they were learning themselves. What we observed was a level of learning way more intense, our students more engaged, more willing to get onboard the experimentation train. And that’s what learning is about: trying, failing, trying again. It was a lesson within the lesson itself, and that’s something we’re actively trying to keep.”
As for curriculum, the panelists agree there is a strong demand for strategy and leadership skills, even stronger than before. Inflation, the war in Ukraine, climate change, supply-chain disruptions…students everywhere are anxious. How can MBAs help them navigate such uncertainty? By giving them an even better big picture view and even more tools to understand what’s going on. MBA degrees cannot give students the gift of foresight, but curriculums should focus on providing them with enough strategic skills to be confident in their abilities, through real-time casework and the most up-to-date thinking on these issues. A point of view echoed by EDHEC’s Professor Karin Kollenz-Quetard: “We need to help them develop resilience and adaptability: thinking about different scenarios and deciding the future they want to build, how can they create sustainable value for this future, how can they have a positive impact on the world around them. Those are the skills we need to help them master,” she sums up.
