The NileView
Strengthening Business Schools-Business Collaboration: A Pathway to Prepare the NextGen Agile Leaders
The Association to Advance Collegiate School of Business (AACSB) board of directors’ meetings and AACSB’s International Conference and Annual Meeting––#ICAM24––were held last week in the United States at the Big Peach–Atlanta. It was a long and busy week, but as always, it was enriched with dynamic and enjoyable discussions as well as invaluable takeaways about the future of business education, the impact of innovative technologies, and the strategy of AACSB moving forward. It was a unique opportunity to meet business and thought leaders and influential and accomplished academics who relentlessly work hard with their business school teams to help prepare the next generation of agile leaders ready with the mindset to make a difference in society.
Whether in the committee and board meetings or the conference sessions, the week was characterized by engaging conversations, stimulating ideas, inspiring keynote speeches, and informative panel discussions. It was also an incredible opportunity to catch up with good old friends, make new friends, discuss with colleagues issues of common interest related to the future of business education, and explore the possible opportunities for collaboration and partnerships.
More than 1,300 participants from 60+ countries attended ICAM this year, representing a truly global community of business educators, including deans, directors, associate deans, department chairs, faculty, staff, administrators, corporate partners, higher education experts, business and industry professionals, thought leaders, and many more. They all had one thing in mind: how to navigate the disruptions taking place, be innovative in transforming today’s challenges into opportunities, and become more agile and resilient by connecting with different ecosystems and working closely with businesses, business associations, and other stakeholders in society.
Earlier in the week, board members and members of the board’s innovation committee had the opportunity to meet with the members of AACSB’s Business Practices Council for a full day and wrap up several months of intense conversations on the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI)––among other transformative technologies–on the academic triangle of teaching and learning, research and service, as well as community development activities, and the various business schools’ operations and functions.
The discussions focused on how to collectively ideate innovative, sustainable, and scalable models and strategies for business schools and businesses to collaborate in preparing today’s students and tomorrow’s leaders for rapid societal changes. As for the pathways business schools can explore not just to sustain their academic offerings but also to augment their value proposition at a time when AI is taking the global markets by storm, the innovation committee published its most recent report titled Building Future-Ready Business Schools with Generative AI. The report includes suggestions of the areas that business schools should focus on while emphasizing how they can enhance the student-centered learning experience, the possible strategies they can adopt to achieve their mission and objectives, and how to envision the future of business education in light of the changes taking place––all while using a human-centric approach, furthering collaboration with the business world and leveraging the potential innovative technologies represent.
ICAM is always an invaluable opportunity to meet and interact with leaders and thinkers in business education and corporates from around the world. This year’s edition, titled Leading Beyond Borders, was all about predicting the future of business schools, rethinking how to measure impact, and the opportunities and challenges presented by AI––“which is not one technology but rather a collection of adapting technologies that keep improving and presents themselves in different ways and forms” as indicated by Soumitra Dutta, Dean of Said Business School, University of Oxford––and what employers and students expect in terms of knowledge and skills taught compared to what is currently on offer. On this note, the world of business–besides the valuable knowledge academic degrees bring to the market–is also looking for graduates equipped with a set of human skills including agility, creativity, communication, leadership, collaboration, a growth mindset, and the ability to analyze complex issues and explain them simply. Businesses need critical thinkers and storytellers.
Just before starting ICAM and during a dean-exclusive session addressing more than 370 amazing fellow business school deans, Suzanne Clark, President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, shared several inspiring ideas and thoughts on the role and impact of business schools in society. The one thought she shared that stands out for me, given both what it represents and its utmost reality, was: “If you are running a business school, you need to like business.” It is a simple yet powerful and well-thought message that explains how important the alignment and synergies between business schools and the business world should be and how influential it can become with more effective collaboration.
The conference sessions––through various keynote speeches, panel discussions, seminars, and affinity group meetings––attempted to address a wide variety of issues, including but not limited to: how can business schools strengthen their collaboration? Should they consider new business models and strategies? What needs to change, and how can it be stimulated? How can impact be created, measured, and scaled? How can business schools transform their offerings in light of innovative technologies such as AI? What are the implications of AI on business schools and business education? How to frame and structure the collaboration between business schools and businesses? How can the learning experience be transformed so that ordinary students can do extraordinary work when they graduate? How can AI create an impact through research? How are the faculty and staff adapting their experience and knowledge to address the unprecedented shifts and disruptions? How to support the students with the right tools? Are academic degrees enough? If not, what else is needed, and how can it be embedded into the learning experience? How can business schools offer more cross-disciplinary collaboration to stimulate the business world? How to identify applied solutions through partnerships to some of the pressing challenges business schools face to meet the needs of employers? These are just sample questions, and the conversation about the future of business education will continue and take different directions as the transformations and disruptions keep shifting.
The overwhelming focus in all conversations throughout the week was on what the prospects of technological innovations, in general, and AI, in particular, represent for business education and whether AI is a threat or an opportunity––it is probably both requiring understanding, adaptability, and agility. AI has tremendous power, speed, and reach; the question is how to use it effectively in the context of business education and maximize the value proposition from the learning experience. This includes how business schools explore emerging educational methodologies and inventive approaches in business education to ensure they contribute to shaping the next generation of leaders. There was an overwhelming agreement that there is a need for continued collaboration to overcome the challenges business schools face and seize the opportunities that lie ahead, ensuring that AACSB remains at the forefront of shaping future leaders and change-makers and harnessing its collective expertise to further its mission.
In today’s time and age, business schools around the world are navigating through a dynamic landscape, facing many key issues that are shaping their future: the future of learning, the future of work, and that of society. One of the common themes that were addressed repeatedly over the past couple of years and surely during ICAM was the agility of business schools to keep pace with the rapid acceleration of technological advancements––most recently GenAI––in addition to whether business schools are doing enough to keep pace with the changes taking place in the business world. We live in a world full of disruptions, transformations, and uncertainties. Accordingly, the issues that keep popping up are all related to the steps that business schools take to prepare their students to navigate the ongoing transformations and thrive in their careers. They include the following:
Digital Transformation: The rapid development of emerging innovative technologies––not just AI or even GenAI––and the increasing digitalization of systems require business schools, using a human-centric approach, to continuously adapt and upgrade their infrastructure and learning environments. The focus should be on the human talent ahead of technology. This requires a change of mindset and a reconfiguration of the organizational culture.
Sustainability: With growing concerns about climate change, poverty, societal divides––not just digital––and social inequality, business schools are challenged to integrate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) matters into their curriculum to progress in scaling their societal impact and educate students to become principled and responsible leaders. All are contributing to offering the best and most effective learning environment and presenting a more relevant value proposition to changing market needs.
Economic Shifts: Business schools must respond to massive economic uncertainties, such as inflation, supply chain disruptions, unemployment, and energy crises, to mention a few, by preparing students with strong and relevant market awareness and effective forecasting, analytical, and power skills.
Increasing Competition: The competitive landscape of business education demands that business schools adopt emerging technologies, focus on optimum resource utilization, and prioritize the needs of students and employers to stay ahead, leading to the preparation of an agile workforce ready to compete and excel in a transformative global environment. This can never happen without building better and more effective collaboration and mutually beneficial partnerships between business schools and businesses.
Meeting Student Needs and Expectations: Students are increasingly looking for curricula that address global challenges, responsible management, diversity, equity, inclusion, and ethical leadership. How much of this is seamlessly embedded into today’s curricula––not much. Surely, some schools are ahead of others and have these issues at the core of their learning goals, but in general, there is still a long way to go for most business schools. I understand that there is no one-size-fits-all, that societies vary in how they perceive and deal with these issues, and that a solid reflection and integration of the local context has to take place––I get that––but still, collectively, business schools are lagging, on all these fronts.
Evolving Industry-Business Demands and Employer Expectations: The rise of cloud computing, the Internet of things, data analytics, and AI has increased the demand for a series of advanced skills and high-value competencies among the workforce of the future, prompting business schools to accelerate their cycle of transformation while constantly adapting their portfolio of offerings to the changing needs of the marketplace.
These issues require business schools to be ambitious, flexible, innovative, quick, or rather quicker––which is surely not in the DNA of academia––and be able to constantly adapt to the changes taking place in the business world to remain timely, relevant and to ensure the sustainability of their success and excellence in business education.
In academia, nothing is more stimulating than discussing with fellow peers from around the world the challenges and opportunities facing the world of business education. We have the opportunity to listen to different perspectives and benefit from their shared practices. More often than not, we realize that as much as there are differences, there are also similarities in what business schools face and the opportunities presented to them. Therefore, sharing best practices, successes, and failures is invaluable to improving individuals, organizations, and society at large, and gathering such as ICAM offer such opportunities.
During day two of the conference, Amy Webb, CEO of the Future Today Institute, asked the participants the following question: “What needs to change to develop the future-ready business school that can ensure that tomorrow’s leaders have the mindset and the power skills they need to be adaptable in the wake of deep uncertainty?”
In my view, the answer is that business schools should collaborate more and share best practices, as well as partner more effectively with business and industry to reimagine the next generation of business schools that are future-ready and better positioned to shape the leaders of tomorrow. Today, naturally, societies around the world focus on the issues, challenges, and problems they face, but there is also ample space to look at the opportunities and openings presented through innovative technologies.
To conclude, despite all the talk about disruption, transformation, uncertainty, ambiguity, and the unprecedented pace of change the world is increasingly experiencing, I remain positive about the future and what the business school’s community worldwide––as one of the main stakeholders in society—and businesses can accomplish together in preparing the NextGen agile leaders who can make a positive impact on society.
About the author: Sherif Kamel is a Professor of Management and Dean of the School of Business at The American University in Cairo.
22 April 2024
Issue #39