INDUSTRY INSIGHT
Gaining valuable business connections As demonstrated by the Lyft example, these business challenges are set by people representing real companies, who will come to Hult and say, “I’m working on this new project that we’re thinking of launching soon. Please can you come up with a business plan for it?” In essence, our students act as consultants for these clients. Students love these live client challenges, which feature in every programme at Hult; that’s often why they choose to come to us in the first place. We ensure that our curriculum is connected to companies as much as possible. Students value the opportunity to work on something real and then debate the solutions with the clients. And of course, the students also get valuable exposure to professionals from di erent businesses and are able to forge connections. The challenge-based learning is complemented by our career service, which brings lots of people from di erent companies on to the campuses so students can benefit from active employer networking and corporate exposure. Hult students also receive job-focused career support tailored to their goals, with former recruiters and head-hunters acting as their coaches. In addition, Hult has an incredible alumni community of around 30,000 well-connected individuals, who work across an array of industries and countries. Becoming a better leader Challenge-based learning can certainly help an individual to become a better leader. Sometimes in an educational setting, people lose sight of the purpose of education. At Hult, this broader context is clear. We know, as do our students, that what they are learning will be beneficial to their career. They can clearly understand why they’re studying a topic and how it can be applied in a business context. By working together in small groups, they’re learning to ask the right questions about a real business situation from a real client. Most importantly, they’re constantly being exposed to di erent ways of thinking and contradictory points of view. They will be challenged on the way they approach the problem and will be forced to think about the di erent ways of analysing the world. Working in this way accelerates the development of critical thinking skills because the students are using it the whole time. That’s why challenge-based learning really is the future of business education.
about it. You have to put the time in to get good at something – and management is no exception. It’s a bit like having a personal trainer at the gym. Sometimes that person isn’t telling you anything you don’t already know, but they’re there to make you spend the time it takes to get something done. There’s an element of teaching these business skills where you could theoretically learn them on your own, but you wouldn’t because you’d try to rush through it, whereas learning is a gradual process. Simulating the business environment One of the biggest surprises for me since moving from a profit-led insurance company after 15 years to a non-profit business school is discovering how similar the entities are. In both jobs you’re running an organisation, managing people, creating a team and a culture. Both roles require you to have an understanding of who people are and whether they’re in the right roles. You’ll need to listen to customers and communicate properly with employees. At Hult, we replicate this business environment. Students work on real challenges from real businesses. People come to business school to learn how to do something and apply what they’re learning to the business world. That’s why almost all of the teaching we do is group-based and challenge-driven. For each real-world business challenge, we teach the strategy and content required to resolve the problem, such as the financial aspect for instance. There’s always a point to it, meaning that students apply the knowledge soon after they’ve learnt it. Instead of an essay or an exam, our students present the results of the challenge. Learning how to communicate is an important part of our training. If you do great work but can’t explain it to people, or can’t explain it in an interesting way, it loses some of its value. We therefore teach people how to soundly structure their ideas before they speak. For example, the MSc finance programme had a module last year, where the ride-hailing service, Lyft, wasn’t performing well financially. The challenge we set was to find out whether this app would ever be profitable. Over five weeks, students were taught the theory they would need for this challenge, which they would then have to apply themselves. This challenge required students to analyse Lyft’s competitors; look at the firm’s market strategies; review the company’s financial
BIOGRAPHY Matt Lilley is the president of Hult International Business School, which has campuses in London, the US and Dubai. After completing his PhD in particle physics and cosmology at the University of Cambridge, Lilley worked at Boston Consulting Group, Lehman Brothers and Prudential for 14 years, where he was director of strategy, director of investor relations and then CEO for Africa, responsible for building and managing Prudential’s insurance operations across eight countries. Prior to being appointed president of Hult, he worked as an academic and taught at university level for six years
analysis, projections and so on. They then had to turn this information into a reasoned argument about the future of the company, present it and defend it.
Ambition OCTOBER 2023 | 33
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