London Business School Dean Sergei Guriev:
It has been a busy few months for Sergei Guriev. Since taking over as dean of London Business School in fall 2024, the renowned Russian economist has spent much of his time on the road, meeting alumni, recruiters and corporate partners in Hong Kong, Dubai, New York City. Soon he’ll be in Saudi Arabia, India, continental Europe, and China, then back to New York.
Why so much travel so early in the dean’s first term? Partly he has been fundraising for the school’s ongoing £200 million Forever Forward campaign. But the school is also marking its 60th anniversary this year, preparing for official celebrations in June and July, and that is cause for celebration among the school’s global alumni community.
“We are celebrating achievements and we also have now a big alumni community, and so when I travel, I generally travel to meet alumni,” Guriev tells Poets&Quants in a recent interview. “There are plenty of places where our alums are. We are a very international school. And we are very proud of this.
“I’m very excited. I meet a lot of outstanding people. My first mandate is five years. And so this half a year I was talking to alumni in all those exciting places and also in London. I talked to students, faculty and staff trying to see what is so special about LBS, why LBS makes the world a better place, and where we need to invest in years to come. And eventually for the LBS community, the story comes together in a few key components.”
WHAT LBS GRADS BRING TO THE TABLE: ‘WE ARE INVESTED IN IMPACT’
The first component is being global, Guriev says. As at most European B-schools, the vast majority of London Business School’s graduate students are international, in sharp contrast to B-schools in the United States.
“So it’s a very global community,” the dean says. “And we now have for almost 20 years, since 2007, a campus in Dubai, another place where our people come together to talk to each other. I was there last week talking to alumni both in small meetings but also in big events with presentations of the faculty, conferences where alumni come together to talk about their own business and networking.”
Another component is being excellent and rigorous in education and teaching. The rankings — LBS landed No. 7 in the recent Financial Times Global MBA list, up one spot from 2024, and is third in P&Q‘s international MBA ranking, also up one place — bear this out.
“We’re very proud to be pretty well ranked in all rankings throughout all programs, degree programs, and executive education programs. We are invested in impact,” Guriev says. “It’s not an ivory tower school. It is research intensive, but faculty are very close to business and we bring a lot of practitioners to classrooms. This is very important for us. We are based in two business capitals, global business capitals, London and Dubai, and this is part of the business model.
“So if you want an outstanding speaker in private equity, in think tank, in energy, in social impact investment — you know where to find those people. Many of them are alumni, but in any event, you are not far away from business districts. So impact matters.”
INNOVATION: 1-YEAR MBA & EXEC ED
Sergei Guriev:
Perhaps the most important component in LBS’s story: innovation. Though committed to its full-time, two-year residential MBA, one of the highest-ranked in Europe, LBS last fall opened applications to a new one-year MBA that Guriev expects to shake up the market. Applicants must have already earned a master in management degree before being considered for the program.
“We are in Europe, but we are very committed to the two-year MBA model and our flagship program will continue to be the two-year MBA, but we also have now a growing population of students who’ve taken a one-year pre-experience master in management, a graduate master’s,” he says. “So this is a new trend. If you look 20 years ago, that would be almost nowhere. Now you have a reasonably large group of potential students who’ve already done a one-year master in management. So for them, we created this program, which is a one-year MBA program with the prerequisite being a one-year master in management.
“This is again an innovation. We are right now meeting students. We don’t know how many students will get in eventually. It is still going to be a small program relative to our main two-year MBA, but that’s basically yet another innovation.”
LBS will also streamline its Executive MBA program, offering it in flexible learning formats and a choice of blended learning options from London or Dubai. The school is calling the program its “Smart EMBA,” giving participants the opportunity to finish in as little as 17 months.
Because it is a “relatively small, standalone school,” LBS is “much more agile and innovative than others,” Guriev says. “We are redesigning and relaunching our executive MBA program, which will take less time away from office with 20% content studied at self-paced, and in one format the rest will be in-person, in the other format, 40% is in-person and 40% is digital online synchronous. So we allow students to choose which format is better suited for them, and in either case they will be able to take less time from office.
“We talk about the challenges of the full-time MBA, but the EMBA market is also in a difficult stage where companies are less likely to pay for students. These programs are expensive. People don’t want to travel as much. So if we look at our enrollments, all of our EMBA programs, be it London or Dubai or the joint program with Columbia, which is super highly ranked, but still, all of those programs need investment. So we’ll invest in various aspects of the student experience.” In addition to offering more flexible formats, LBS also redesigned the curriculum to offer cross-functional courses.
“Overall, this market needs innovation. And it just simply with the fact that companies are less likely to pay and require students to spend more time in office, that creates a tension in the market.”
CREATING A COMMUNITY OF COMPANIES THAT CARE
LBS is also rolling out a new executive education program called Corporate 100, an exclusive, invitation-only community of thought leaders and peers across the globe. It is designed to deliver transformative learning, collaboration, and growth opportunities to top organizations, Guriev says.
“The program will be a community of corporates, global organizations that come together and have a special program designed for a community of corporations, not company by company,” he says. “In addition to being global, excellent, caring about impact, and being innovative, we are also a human connection and community school. So we really care about students coming to campus, talking to each other, learning together, networking. So we are not closing down our campus in Regent’s Park anytime soon. So with all the investment in digital blended, we still believe in in-person business education.”
The idea is that LBS will bring a community of organizations together by invitation only, creating a “safe space” where companies come together for conferences. They will be companies that LBS has partnered with and worked with in corporate executive education and custom executive education programs, brought together to learn from each other in a cooperative way. “It’s almost like a subscription-based club where this product allows us to establish a long-term relationship, not just with one company, but with a community of invited companies,” Guriev says.
The first summit will take place in the fall. “We are now recruiting the members, and there are programs for different levels of executives in those organizations. And basically we don’t bring companies which compete with each other. So there is less of a fear that somebody will steal your commercial secrets. So this is a very interesting step forward, which is not your standard executive education offer, but we are very excited about this.”
THE STORY OF LBS
Though it is young by U.S. standards — Stanford Graduate School of Business is 100 this year, and both Wharton and Harvard were founded in the 19th century — LBS is the oldest business school in the UK, and its highest-ranked, and that’s cause for celebration with the school’s vast alumni community.
As he travels the world to meet them, Sergei Guriev grows more excited to hear — and tell — the growing story of the country’s premier B-school.
“This is the story of LBS in a few foundational pieces, and this is what LBS is, and will be in the years to come,” he says. “We’ll invest more in innovation, of course, we’ll invest more in driving impact on the most pressing challenges of our times, including environment, AI, digital transformation, including issues related to global poverty and developing countries, including issues related to healthcare. There are many global problems where the business can actually drive change and deliver solutions. And our faculty do exciting research on those issues and we embed the respective content into the curriculum.”
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