Falling Down The Rabbit Hole: Why The Leaders Of Tomorrow Need More Than A Business School

Having spent much of my career working in stand-alone business schools, coming to a business school embedded within a university has felt a little like falling down a rabbit hole. And what a wonderful rabbit hole it is.

Let me start by saying, I loved my years in stand-alone business schools. They are filled with brilliant academics, ambitious students and dedicated professionals. They are innovative, entrepreneurial and often remarkably agile. I learned an enormous amount, and I remain incredibly proud of what we accomplished.

But this latest chapter has made me think differently about what we should expect from business education – and what considerable added value students can access within an integrated school.

In business schools, we spend a great deal of time talking about preparing the leaders of tomorrow. We teach strategy, finance, leadership, entrepreneurship and increasingly Artificial Intelligence (don’t worry, Quantum Computing is on the way and will take over from AI). We bring together diverse cohorts from around the world, knowing that much of the learning happens through the different perspectives sitting around the classroom table.

But is that enough?

The challenges facing tomorrow’s leaders do not arrive neatly packaged as business problems. Climate change is not simply a question of strategy. Artificial intelligence is not just a technological or commercial opportunity. Geopolitical instability, inequality and public trust cannot be understood and acted upon through a balance sheet.

These are global challenges for the corporate world, and they demand leaders who can think beyond business, with knowledge and understanding outside of traditional business education.

In an integrated school, students can have the opportunity to discuss ethics with a philosopher, explore the lessons of history with a historian, understand scientific discovery directly with researchers or discover human ambition, conflict and leadership through the Classics. And this can come from incidental interaction.

These are not distractions from business education. They make it richer. Sometimes, the most valuable learning happens outside the classroom. Over dinner, or at a university lecture, through a student society or in a conversation with someone studying something different.

One of the things that has struck me most in my own experience is the extraordinary potential of these encounters.

Of course, simply being located within a university does not automatically make this happen. Integrated business schools must create the opportunities, open the doors and encourage our students to walk through them.

But when we do, something special happens. We develop graduates who are not only better equipped to lead organisations, but who are more curious, more thoughtful and more comfortable navigating a world that rarely offers straightforward answers.

These informal encounters may sound a bit random, but they provide extremely valuable additional education for business students. They are not in a silo – they are an integral part of a university body that thinks and debates, discusses and learns. And this does not even take account of the inter-disciplinary research and teaching with which integrated business schools are involved. As a part of a university eco-system, business schools work with colleagues from across the university, in respect of every subject from sustainability, AI (again), economic policy, medicine, engineering to the humanities.  This makes all the talk of delivering real world impact real.

Working within an integrated business school, you cannot unsee the amazing impact it has on research and teaching – and the much wider opportunities students have.

It is obvious, but it needs saying. I want our students to leave business school knowing how to read a financial statement, build a strategy and lead a team. But I also want them to take advantage of every opportunity that is on offer: question established thinking, understand the influence of science and technology, and recognise the importance of the humanities in understanding the world around them.

Because the best leaders are not necessarily those who have all the answers. They are the ones who have learned to ask better questions.

And that brings me to Oxford.

Working at Saïd Business School, at the University of Oxford, has opened my eyes to just how much opportunity exists beyond the walls of a business school. We are surrounded by extraordinary academic departments, museums, colleges, libraries and people who have spent their lives asking some of the world’s most fascinating questions. And we get to be alongside them and work with them.

In the city that gave us Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I find myself encouraging our students to do exactly what Alice did: follow their curiosity, venture into unfamiliar territory and discover a world much bigger than the one they thought they knew.

After all, the rabbit hole is where the adventure begins. And for me, that’s what a truly great business education should be.

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Patti Brown is Associate Dean for Accredited Programs at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. 

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