a job when they leave. We put them in contact with our alumni network during their studies and most, I think at least 90 per cent, will have a job before they finish.” José Esteves: “We also have embedded capstone projects, as well as consulting or entrepreneurial projects, depending on the pathway. Something that works well is how students want to get to know role models, so we have created a leadership talk series where we bring in business people to discuss their own experiences. This has been particularly successful on our female leadership programme – they are really interested in listening to key executives talk about their career journey within their companies. “[The other thing that’s worth mentioning is how] we are collaborating with industry partners on generative AI. We have partnered with OpenAI, Google, and so on – once the student completes the course, they can get an official professional certification, which is very valuable in the job market.” What are the ethical and reputational risks associated with rapidly evolving intelligent technologies and how can business schools prepare students to lead responsibly in this context? Delphine Manceau: “In a fast-moving international environment, it’s important to train our students to think globally and understand the geopolitical challenges and situations. Technology is also a source of responsibility: managers must be aware of the bias and risks associated with an extensive use of AI within organisations. “In the past, graduates from business schools would take up an analyst job for a few years and they would learn how to understand numbers through their first jobs, how to identify intuitively inconsistencies and outliers. Now it’s going to be much less the
that means almost all of our MBA students will secure jobs around three months before they graduate. Most of these jobs will come out of the internships that they do, so it really is a great fit. “One thing we are wary of in all of this is that we don’t want to custom-make [partnerships] with just any organisation. We’re looking at broader roles, industries and sectors, rather than making anything organisation-specific; the organisations primarily function as partners on centres of excellence and research hubs, more so than on specific programmes.” Delphine Manceau: “For our master’s and bachelor’s programmes, all our students do internships and on the master’s programmes I would say 100 per cent of our students get a job in the first three months [after graduation]. We have very close links with the business world – top CEOs at companies like Club Med, LVMH and Siemens are part of our board – and we have corporates as part of the advisory board of each programme. “About half of our classes are taught by practitioners and the other half by faculty members who do research. It’s a great combination between people who reflect on what companies do and publish research, while on the other hand you have people teaching about how things are done and how they could be improved. “For our executive MBA, it’s a different story because all our participants already have a job. However, if they come to us, it’s because they want to get another perspective. In this instance, corporate projects have a different role to play. The programme helps participants to think outside of the box, or their own company’s way of reasoning, and adopt a different point of view. “We also ask all our EMBA participants to develop an entrepreneurial capstone project. For those who have been working for a while at a large company, it allows them to think as entrepreneurs and to change their mindset.” Barbara Majoor: “We also have very close connections with the business world. We were founded by business, for business; we have good contacts, for example, at KLM, one of our founders. At Nyenrode, we use both faculty and external speakers from the world of work – a great combination for a business school. “Sometimes we co-create our programmes [with industry partners], so that we are really up to date with what they [employers] are looking for from our students because they get involved in programme development. “If people come to us to study for an executive MBA, it’s important that they get the opportunity to bring in their own business case and that we help them with it, using our knowledge and our research, but also our practical experience, in order to expose them to other points of view. We have an incubator where they can bring in their personal case and where they can work on that to, for instance, develop a new business model. “Connections are extremely important when it comes to being successful as a business school in the MBA category and the same applies when [ensuring] our full-time MBA students have
16 Ambition • ISSUE 6 • 2025
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