Meet Yale SOM’s MBA Class Of 2021

FOUR QUESTIONS WITH YALE SOM ADMINISTRATORS

What is the biggest news coming out of Yale SOM? How does the MBA experience shape a more global mindset? Just how does the ‘raw’ case method compare to standard case studies? This is how top school administrators responded to questions submitted by Poets&Quants.

A) What are the most exciting new developments at your program?

“The introduction of specialized master degrees – especially in systemic risk and now in asset management – is enabling the school to enlarge the portfolio of its course offerings substantially, while also widening the network of employers and career opportunities for students in the MBA program.

The school has also attracted great scholars in all disciplines of management. Though we are not traditionally known for finance, for instance, our faculty strength in this area compares favorably with every other school, including those traditionally seen as finance powerhouses. The creation of the specialized master programs is a reflection of the depth and breadth of the faculty’s expertise.”

Anjani Jain

Deputy Dean for Academic Programs and Professor in the Practice of Management

B) What is the most underrated part of your program that you wish prospective students knew more about?  

“Yale SOM has long enjoyed a strong reputation for developing leaders beyond the private sector, who lead non-profit and public sector organizations. I would never trade that heritage or downplay our strength in that area. However, it feels limiting and anachronistic to think of Yale SOM as “the non-profit school,” when our key strengths position our students to lead across sectors and industries, and in fact, our employment outcomes demonstrate this. Regardless of sector, our integrated core curriculum prepares students to take on complex challenges the way they’ll encounter them in the real world – not as a neatly packaged “marketing problem” or “finance problem,” but as an interconnected set of issues that need to be analyzed and assessed with multiple stakeholders and points of view in mind. Whether our students join Amazon, McKinsey, Patagonia, or the United Nations, the ability to see an issue through different lenses and to draw from multiple disciplines to find solutions positions them to thrive not just in narrow business verticals, but in the multi-faceted leadership roles that drive organizational (and societal) change today.”

Laurel Grodman

Managing Director, Admissions

C) Yale SOM is described as one of the most globally-minded MBA programs? How do your curriculum and activities foster this type of mindset?

“The most influential businesses of coming decades will emerge from all corners of the globe, requiring leaders to work across cultures and across political boundaries. Most of our students already come to our programs with international training and work experience, so it is imperative that we deliver programs with a global focus. We heavily rely on the Global Network for Advanced Management to provide students with a broader range of international opportunities, offering our students global courses and other international activities to choose from.

Our globally-minded curriculum includes a global study requirement, where students are required to gain meaningful exposure to complex issues facing business and society in different regions of the world. They have the option to choose from the following menu of options: International Experience course; Global Network Week; Global Network Courses; Global Social Entrepreneurship Courses; and a semester or quarter-long international exchange program.

We also offer Global Virtual Teams, a core curriculum course that introduces students to research what makes global teams succeed or fail and helps them develop the skills to work on projects with teams from more than seven schools that are spread across regions and countries.

Beyond the curricular activities, our students participate every year in the Global Network Survey, read Global Network Perspectives (an ideas-based magazine of the Global Network for Advanced Management); are eligible to participate in the Global Network Investment competition; and benefit from studying Global Network cases.”

Camino de Paz

Managing Director of Global Initiatives

D) The MBA program is a pioneer in the raw case study method. What exactly is this methodology? How does it reinforce Yale SOM’s more holistic method of looking at business issues?

“Making use of the web, raw cases combine a written narrative with links to additional raw materials such as articles, spreadsheets, videos, and corporate documents to provide an immersive view of a management dilemma. Students assigned a raw case open a special web site that gives them access to these materials organized by an overall narrative. A raw case is, in essence, an extensive electronic briefing book.

Raw cases more closely resemble the way that management issues present themselves in the real world. The raw materials presented with a case can be contradictory or beside the point. Most importantly, there is more information than can be analyzed in a short prep period, forcing students to prioritize their work or delegate assignments within their study teams. In addition, raw cases challenge students to use multiple channels to gather information – listening to managers explain their situations in videos or assessing visual cues in images. For example, a recent case on the Canary Wharf project in London employed 360 videos taken from various spots in the development, allowing students to get a feel for how people actually used the space.

We developed raw cases to complement the integrated curriculum. In general, business school cases have become more compact and focused on specific issues. Raw cases open up the narrative and allow students to discuss multiple dilemmas that span disciplines. For example, a recent case on Mastercard was taught by both a marketing professor who led a discussion on changes in digital marketing and an organizational behavior professor who discussed the challenges of integrating people with digital marketing skills with more traditional marketers.

One of the great byproducts of these more open cases is that they have allowed students to be more creative in their proposed solutions. The raw case gives them enough information to question the status quo and float more innovative proposals inspired by their analysis.”

Jaan Elias

Director of Case Research, Yale School of Management

To access 15 in-depth profiles of Yale SOM MBAs, go to next page.