The P&Q Interview: Cambridge Judge’s Gishan Dissanaike On Embracing Turbulence

“Turbulence” isn’t generally a reassuring word for investors, boards or company heads. But for Gishan Dissanaike, it’s like water to a fish.

“This turbulent world frames everything we do,” says the dean of Cambridge Judge Business School. “That’s not because we’re despondent but because the history of humankind shows that the greatest innovations come in turbulent times.”

It’s a maxim he’s referenced many times before, citing inventions such as the car radio and instant coffee, born of the Great Depression.

FINDING OPPORTUNITY IN DISRUPTION

Turbulence was also a thread when Dissanaike accepted his post in December 2024, a month before Donald Trump’s return to office and more recent shifts to the global power balance. “Cambridge Judge Business School will focus on responsible business, innovation, and leadership in a turbulent world, and continue to solve real-world problems,” Dissanaike said.

The Sri Lankan-born economist, who has long researched how businesses can navigate upheaval in the global markets, appears confident – buoyant even – that global disruption can give his institution an edge.

And yet, for a man at ease with turbulence, Dissanaike reveals little about his own brushes with it. Asked about his toughest decisions, he offers a slight hint that navigating an 800-year-old institution isn’t easy, noting “only by engaging with various parties can you make progress.”

But he does provide insight into his ethos: “I don’t believe in breaking more eggs than necessary to make an omelet.”

PICKING HIS BATTLES

One suspects it’s this knowledge of when to pick a battle – along with a good dose of likability and diplomat-style dodging – that has gotten him so far at Cambridge. After all, Dissanaike has spent three decades navigating the university’s multilayered hierarchies and internal politics.

Below is our interview, part of the Poets&Quants series profiling UK business school deans.

In your two years as dean at Judge, what have been your priorities?

The first year and a bit I was an interim, so I was carrying out existing strategy. The aim was to steady the ship but make progress and do whatever any successor would have wished me to do. The key difference in the second part is, it’s also about direction. As part of our recruitment strategy I made a presentation to all faculty and staff. This was before the [most recent] US election. I said that in the next five to 10 years we’ll see disturbance – not only in geopolitics but in technology. We must train people to operate under turbulence.

I meet many CEOs as part of my role and I’m hearing that standard business subjects are still relevant but not sufficient. The business school in the mid-21^st century must offer business plus education. We’ve got work in frontier technologies, on our strengths in humanities and social sciences. At Judge, we’re also an innovation ecosystem, having grown out of engineering. The UK government had pledged to make sure Cambridge remains the number one innovation ecosystem in the EU. Then there’s the connections we have with different parts of world; our convening power is second to none. Last, people remark that the UK in general and Cambridge in particular is seen as relatively neutral from a geopolitical standpoint – so it’s the perfect place for difficult conversations.

What are some tough decisions you’ve had to make?

I don’t believe in breaking more eggs than necessary to make an omelet. You choose the path of least resistance. And it’s not just the business school – at Cambridge you have to navigate an 800-year-old university. It’s not about getting approval from one person. You need to do the rounds, get support for ideas. Only by engaging with various parties can you make progress. Being an insider at Judge, I had ideas of things to fix. There was no pushback from faculty. They were quite open minded. We agreed on a vision for responsible business.

What’s changing at Judge that wouldn’t have been true three years ago?

Technology in general – I don’t want to minimise impact of AI – affects the aspirations of students and what faculty teach. The best you can do is experiment so you can pivot when more uncertainty comes. At Judge we do a full range of exams, including traditional exams with no laptop and at the other extreme we have some courses where faculty ask students to use AI. For those who think AI will one day replace business schools, I think they’re ignoring whole role of validation and certification.

What are your biggest challenges today?

We just formally approved a fundraising strategy, so hopefully that campaign will now begin. Internal alignment has been achieved. The hard part is now translating the plan into action…making sure our programmes are up to date and responsive to current circumstances as well as those that will emerge. Today, students want more and more AI and less sustainability perhaps. After the financial crisis, students want more on financial history courses too. We’re blessed to have a group of faculty who are not averse to change.

For obvious reasons, there’s less of a sustainability emphasis in US b-schools these days. Are your students less interested in sustainability?

It’s not that the interest is not there, but maybe the interest has become more sophisticated. The average MBA student today doesn’t need to be told sustainability matters. It’s not vanilla sustainability anymore. But now it’s about, how can [sustainability] lead to decision-making in finance, accounting, etc.

What about DEI? Has what’s going on in the US affected you?

We’ll carry on doing what we think is right. We don’t need to be unduly affected by anything going on anywhere. DEI is for excellence, not for it’s own sake. For me, it’s always been about getting a diversity of views around to get the best decision.

What are you doing that your peer schools might disagree with?

We have some constraints given the university setup we operate in. We cannot have satellite campuses, so the education piece is delivered in Cambridge, and the environment is part of the DNA. That limits to ow much we can innovate, so we try to build connections with other parts of the university and the world. Our MBA has not one project, but two. We believe experiential learning is extremely important.

How AI is changing teaching and learning at Judge?

It’s part of a broader strategy which I thought of when I was interim – it’s about having partnerships with those who have complementary interests. Sharing the stage with others is not a bad thing, it sometimes expands the audience. There are times when we didn’t do that and I think that’s a mistake. We’re much more connected with the external world today. The FT relationship is an example. We’re not competitors – by appearing on stage together we help each other.

Tell us about your recent partnership with Bain?

What they’re doing linked very well with what we are as a school – we wanted to focus on great uncertainties caused by tech and geopolitics. This is when we’ve just reached our own vision. So it was a meeting of minds. We did an event for leading women CEOs – we’ve had a women’s center for many years. The feedback was, they got something different to what they expected – not just corporate speak, but there was great honesty. No one was posturing.

I hear some students have a laptop sticker saying “billionaires are moral failures.” Possibly not a stance you might expect at a business school. What do you make of that?

The school has always been interested in responsible business from its very beginnings. Our founder said, “I’d like school to engage with business but not be subservient to it.” So I’m not surprised. But I wouldn’t want to give the impression this school is only about responsible business and innovation and entrepreneurship. We’d like to produce outstanding consultants, investors, bankers – but who understand they operate in social context. These days, corporations have to be conscious of who their consumers will be. Companies can’t ignore social context. Finally, academic freedom is very important in a school like this. We have to allow a diversity of ideas; it’s not about teaching students how to think and giving them recipes. The Cambridge approach is to introduce frameworks.

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