INTERVIEW
It will be critical for policymakers to determine the distribution of more advanced education that will likely continue to command high tuition fees
Do you think recent events have moved us to a more democratised approach to business education? How can you see this evolving? The step-change in the availability of educational content and experiences via digital platforms is opening up access to regions and populations that have been historically undeserved. I think this trend will continue as we see the cost of foundational aspects of education decline and availability increase. That said, education is a moving target. The ‘best’ education a learner might acquire today may become standard tomorrow, with the ‘best’ becoming something new. So while the move to digital may democratise education in terms of given more people access to basic/foundational education at a low cost, it will be critical for policymakers to determine the distribution of more advanced education that will likely continue to command high tuition fees. Is the business education sector as a whole responding quickly enough to the growth of consumerisation and the changes in alumni demands? What would your advice to Business School leaders be in this area? I see some Business Schools moving quickly, while others are not. I don’t think it’s only about keeping on top of the needs of alumni, it’s about keeping on top of the needs of all learners across the life-cycle of an educational trajectory. That said, I think it’s critical to enagage with alumni.
Alumni can serve the eyes and ears of their alma mater on the frontlines of the world of work, helping Schools to track trends and anticipate dyanmics in the labour market. Where this relationship is bi-directional, an institution can provide better services to meet the needs of its alumni. Your own work and research centres on behavioral fitness and positive leadership, and in particular, on translating and applying behavioural science to help professionals optimise their performance in the workplace. Having worked in a major corporate organisation prior to joining academia, could you share insight into how your work bridges the gap between business thinking and business practice? In general, aquiring a lot knowledge through education is great, but… it doesn’t necessarily translate into real-world impact unless the knowledge is wrapped within skills – and to aquire skills, one needs to have experiences. What kind of experiences? When you look at what distinguishes people who are successful in the workplace from those who aren’t, it often comes down to differences in their ‘impact skills’ or ‘soft skills’ – which, in reality, are not in any way ‘soft’. These skills are are often the most difficult to acquire because they involve behaviour change. So, what we are doing at IE Business School is focusing on how to create the kind of game-changing
experiences that change mindsets and forge more impactful behaviours. These game-changing moments are behavioural moments in which there is turbulence and friction… that lead to growth. When you take a diverse group of students and give them an intense challenge and a short deadline, this is when you get turbulence. In the right academic setting, this turbulence leads to positive and lasting changes that can underpin a successful career. How did the Covid-19 pandemic change your School for the long term – and what have been your most important learnings during the lockdowns? We were among the very first entrants into the world of online education, going back decades. So, for us, the pandemic really only catalysed capabilities that we already had in place and provided us with a reason to scale these capabilities, in terms of our operations. Where I see the big change is in the general market acceptance of online education. We’ve known for a long time that the experience of students in our online and blended programmes is fantastic – not only in terms of explicit learning, but also in terms of the depth and quality of the relationships that students develop with each other in the digital world. I think that now the market understands this. The perception of education in digital formats is much more positive, and this is opening doors for us
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