B-School Bulletin: Vanderbilt Dean Gets 2nd Term, Top Tuck Courses, & More

How Wharton Dance Studio Helped This MBA Grow As A Manager

News from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania

“As co-president of Wharton Dance Studio, Karan Dhruve is learning to lead on stage and off. He’s planning to take the skills he gained choreographing and producing one of Wharton’s biggest performances and incorporate them into his career at Bain & Company.

“Karan runs a board of his peers, choreographs dances, and puts on a large-scale production of about 400 dancers featuring 14 dance forms. The dancers vary in level of experience, and all styles of dance are welcome, including jazz, modern, salsa, cha-cha, bhangra, tap, hip-hop, swing, tango, bellydance, and more. To Karan, there is no better feeling than when the whole show comes together.

“’I love the feeling when everyone is happy onstage, dancing together and performing,’ he said.”

Michigan Ross MBAs Are Helping Companies Harness The Power Of Driverless Cars, AI, & More

News from University of Michigan Ross School of Business

“From autonomous vehicles to artificial intelligence, it’s clear that self-guiding tech is taking over, and companies across the world are working hard to keep up. Some especially savvy companies have tapped into a powerful resource: the innovative problem-solving skills of Michigan Ross MBAs.

“During this year’s MAP, students are working across the globe to help businesses figure out the best ways to develop and utilize the technology that is increasingly driving the world’s economy.

“With that sort of impact, it’s no surprise that 24 percent of the Ross MBA Class of 2017 landed jobs in tech – a percentage that probably isn’t decreasing any time soon. Just take a look at some of the projects students are working on right now: it’s clear that Ross MBAs have an edge on the tech jobs of the future.”

Through interviews with leaders such as Deval Patrick, students compiled a list of five leadership traits to predict success

Tuck Students Complete Independent Study On Public-, Private-Sector Leadership

News from Dartmouth Tuck

“In his popular Tuck elective course The CEO Experience, former New Hampshire Governor John Lynch asks students to think deeply about the similarities and differences between executives in business and government.

“They study the turnaround of American Express and Gillette, and also President Kennedy’s handling of the Bay of Pigs, and New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s leadership in the aftermath of 9/11. And they study how Lynch himself, as a CEO, righted the furniture company Knoll before moving into the public sector. ‘It’s interesting,’ Lynch says, ‘because contrary to conventional wisdom, we learn that leadership qualities in the public and private sectors are pretty much the same.’”

Data Security For The Internet Of Things

News from INSEAD

“Distributed ledger technologies (DLT), commonly referred to as blockchain technology, are likely to disrupt many industries. Although blockchain’s potential for transforming financial services is well known, this technology’s impact on other areas is less understood. To learn how DLT can facilitate the Internet-of-Things (IoT) revolution, I interviewed Wilfried Pimenta de Miranda (INSEAD GEMBA ‘13), Head of Business Development at the IOTA Foundation. This is what I learnt:

“IOTA is a nonprofit foundation registered in Germany. IOTA’s founders have developed the Tangle, an open-source communication and transaction protocol for the IoT. Blockchain remains an early-stage technology which is yet to reach production readiness and large-scale deployment across industries.”

How Organic Wine Finally Caught On

News from Harvard Business School

“If you cannot remember the last time you had a glass of organic wine, you are hardly alone. Overall, less than 5% of the world’s vineyards are organic. In the United States, the world’s largest consumer of wine, only 1% of wine sold by volume was organic. The paltry market for organic wine around the world belies the fact that over the past half century, countless organic winegrowers and vintners have dedicated great effort to creating a larger market for the category, without much success. Meanwhile, plenty of other organic products, including vegetables, milk, and tea, have become widely consumed, at least by affluent, health-conscious city dwellers. Why the difference?

“We set out to understand how and why the category of organic wine failed to emerge, even as demand for other organic goods soared. Through historical research and many interviews, we found several ways in which early stumbles in the organic wine market created marketing problems that the industry still struggles to overcome. However, we also found that the recent success of a related category — biodynamic wines — shows a possible way forward.”

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