BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
‘We are seeing a trend towards social impact and entrepreneurship’
surprised, and – most important of all – they’re looking to think. Content is important, but it is only one part of the story. What business educators do is make the learning experience much more meaningful and, as we move forward, I believe we need to accept the inevitable when it comes to taught content. It is a starting point. Beyond this, we should be concerned with application, how to bring it to life, how to really stimulate critical thinking. Karen Spens, Rector, Hanken School of Economics How do we define what a digital native is? One thing we’ve found is that there are many students who aren’t at all digitally native, even now. So, we might be expecting too much if we think all students will be 100% digitally native in five years. Will everybody really be tagging along? If 40% say that they want more online courses, it’s still 60% saying that they don’t want it. So, I do think that we must always think about the other side and that it is an important thing to remember. Jordi Diaz, Dean, EADA I think, for students, the service offered [by a Business School] must be equal to the service a customer would receive. For me, in terms of service, my students are customers but when they are taking exams, they are not customers. We need to embrace this new era of customer-student relationship. In the past, we lived in a situation of asymmetry in which academic institutions had the power, but now it’s becoming clear: you cannot simply say ‘no’ to a participant, you have to give them an alternative. I think technology comes in here, making this more feasible, because if Business Schools can automatise, or if they can find ways of serving students better through technology, they will. The technology is here to maximise and scale, and to make existing services [that are on offer to students] more efficient.
in our hands, who is looking for a customised experience, a journey of professional and personal growth and development that is also convenient and flexible for their work-life balance. Ian Richardson, Director of Executive Education, Stockholm Business School, Stockholm University Given present levels of investment in digital content and platforms, and emergent forms of global competition, there will soon come a time when a core part of our Business School programmes will be delivered through content partnership agreements. Capabilities in areas of physical interaction and engagement, and augmentation of the content value proposition in executive education, will provide further scope fo r us to partner with organisations across territories and regions. I believe we will see a ‘hollowing out’ of the global executive education industry, in terms of competition and degrees of specialisation. Rather than doubling down on a traditional, and somewhat outmoded, approach to institutional content delivery, we should be open to partnerships and the integration of excellent, reasonably priced content that can be used to provide the backbone of what will become a much more flexible, relevant, and interactive proposition at the front end. Ultimately, it’s a mistake to believe that curation and dissemination of published content is the core proposition in executive education. Individuals and organisations have ready access to information, any time they want; they can always pick up a book. We talk about relevancy and personalisation but, any time it’s needed, information can be found at the touch of a button. The key point, in executive and commissioned education, is that we deliver something beyond information. When people invest in these programmes, they’re looking for immersive experiences, they’re looking to be stimulated and
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