155 What are the main things Deans have to focus on to educate better a young generation of highly skilled business leaders in serving the ever increasing needs of knowledge intensive industries? E.g., such industries include nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, telecommunications technology, quantum computing technology and space technology, in well educated and experienced human capital in the era of globalisation. Viktor O. Ledenyov, Ukraine Della Bradshaw: That’s the $64m question, isn’t it? Clearly business schools can never teach within a generalist MBA programme the kind of technical know-how to which I infer you are referring - though there are many specialist MBA and MSc programmes that will deal with these topics. But I suspect most business schools would say that they teach the general skills needed to run such businesses. James Danko: This is an outstanding question, and one that the Villanova faculty and I have contemplated extensively during the past three years while we revamped our graduate and undergraduate curricula. Recognizing that our future leaders need to manage issues unprecedented in the history of management, we understand the importance of assuring that a technological, innovative, and analytical perspective permeates our curricula. Even as we are making changes to our curricula, we realize curricular change and innovation must be an ongoing process, driven by the ever-increasing needs of knowledge-intensive industries. As business school deans, we must encourage innovation and an openness to the evolving realities of the global business world. We may also want to rethink the pervasiveness of the traditional b-school concept of graduating “general managers” who are prepared to manage various functional departments. Today’s business environment calls for a mix of leadership talent and insight coupled with more specialized knowledge, whether such talent is represented by medical doctors, scientific researchers, engineers, or quantum physicists. We are also seeing growth in dual degree programs in fields which can be helpful in serving certain knowledge intensive industries. Such programs - the MBA/MD and MBA/MIS programs, for example - combine business and specific scientific and technological fields. Their goal is to produce organizational leaders who understand the intricacies of their fields and who play a dual management/practitioner role within them. Although on the surface this concept is appealing in many ways, the risk I see is the possible dichotomy in the training and talents required to excel in leadership versus those required to excel in such high-level scientific and technological fields. Louis Lataif: If a business school graduate does not have a good understanding of digital technologies, he/she is under educated and at a serious disadvantage in today’s world. Such an understanding is as fundamental as knowing accounting. So all sophisticated MBA programs need to include a significant dose of technology exposure. That’s why we introduced, in 2000, the MS-MBA program, undertaken in the same 21 months as a full-time MBA degree, but requiring 84 academic credits (instead of 64), and allowing the ambitious students to earn an MBA (with whatever business concentration they wish) along with a Master of Science degree in information systems. ..................................................................................................................... Would the new to be elected President of the European Union be able to consolidate all the efforts by Deans from leading European business schools towards the creation of a framework of new common policies with the goal to reform the business education programmes at European universities? Also, to introduce the innovative approaches to business education in Europe, and share the best educational practices with North American business schools with the aim to speed up the education of a new generation of business leaders, who will be capable of dealing with the
Villanova School of Business 2009 Media Report