Hybrid MBAs To Cause Major Disruption

Innovation guru and Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, during the Cultivating Innovation & Entrepreneurship forum, replied to a post by BU School of Management associate professor and Information Systems chair Paul Carlile, concerning how best to mix innovation and entrepreneurship with theory “to draw a more purposeful connection between experimentation and theory.”

“The way to build better and better theory,” Christensen wrote, “is to find things the theory can’t explain. We all tend to believe the dichotomy of emergent (what we learn from our experience) and deliberate approaches.

“But in the absence of a theory, there is no way to hold or make sense of what we have just learned. If and when we find anomonlies [sic] to a theory, we can then collectively learn from it!”

In the Engaging New-Generation Students & Employees forum, IBM managing director Jeanette Horan addressed a question from a young marketing manager who wanted to know what three skills millennials should focus on as they advanced their careers.

“The most important skill in business is communication,” Horan wrote. “Or should I say ‘effective communication’! While there is always a place for 140 character quick updates, you also need to be able to make an effective presentation and express an idea in terms that the audience can understand. The best way to hone this skill is practice, practice, practice!

“The second is to learn how to think strategically. Sometimes the quick fix to a problem or issue is not always the best long term option. Of course, some situations require the emergency fix and that is ok. But when you have the time, always think 2 or 3 steps ahead.

“And the third in this era of Big Data is to develop your analytical skills. Not everyone has to be a PhD statistician (but I applaud all who are!!), but learn what insights you can gain from data. Look for trends and anomalies that help you to identify the new opportunities that weren’t out there before.”

While the Jam was underway, BU School of Management dean Kenneth Freeman told National Public Radio that business education needed to be overhauled, and that many employers were complaining that MBA programs weren’t properly preparing people for work in business.

“I think there’s an argument to be made that perhaps the MBA is not nearly as important today as it was 20, 25, 30 years ago,” Freeman told NPR.

After the Jam, Freeman told Poets&Quants that the conference in a single day had built a huge network that will help business education adapt to business world realities.

“This inaugural global brainstorm united thousands from around the world in concurrent virtual discussion forums to inspire change and create a more innovative future for business education,” Freeman said.

“A new community has been established comprised of faculty, deans, administrators, corporate leaders, and students. The core idea of the Business Education Jam was to provide a platform to identify new ways to discuss business education and we have a large group who are excited and already engaged in that transformation.”

IBM, an event partner, is now “deploying their data analytics capabilities to provide us with key ideas and themes that resulted from the conversation that yield actions that can be taken by business schools to close the gap between what we provide and what industry expects from us,” Freeman said.

Next year will see another Jam, Freeman promised. “The fires of inquiry and solution have been ignited among all involved in business and business education,” Freeman said.

The inaugural Jam’s content remains open till Nov. 30.

DON’T MISS: CAN HALF THE BUSINESS SCHOOLS REALLY GO OUT OF BUSINESS? or THE FUTURE OF THE MBA: AN UNBUNDLED, BLENDED DEGREE