A final reflection The combination of 4IR and the Covid-19 pandemic is changing the way we live and work – and how business leaders are educated. For academics and practitioners, the question remains: Where do Business Schools’ executive education programmes find themselves today, and how can Business School leaders proceed successfully at a time of great transition – not only in the workplace but in wider society? While workforce reskilling and upskilling – including the development of technological skills – can be accomplished, today’s business leaders will need to find global solutions to today’s grand challenges. Society is asking not simply for business leaders and managers who can ‘run the world’ but for insightful, connected, and empowering agents who create positive social change in a volatile, ever-evolving world. Academia needs to be prepared to surrender its monopoly on having all the answers about education. Today, in a world in which people expect a constant change of jobs, there is a mismatch between employees’ skills and those employers seek. This gap between work and skills can be bridged by generating an amplified new ecosystem of educational options, including degrees, credits, certificates, boot camps, skill-building programmes, internal training, and external partnerships. Tomorrow’s Business Schools will have to engage others strategically in innovative education ecosystems by committing to experimentation, innovation, and partnerships. Business Schools must embrace a new era as part of a wider ecosystem. We have a tremendous opportunity, which is the urgent need for reskilling. According to the World Economic Forum, 50% of the world’s workforce should be reskilled or upskilled by 2025. Business Schools, as standalone institutions, will not be able to cope with this challenge. Now is the time for us to accelerate the pace of innovation in reskilling and upskilling executive boardrooms to map a new road—one that points the way to new measures of progress and is consistent with the values of the new generation that is preparing to lead. Designing innovative executive education ecosystems will give Schools a secure footing in global economics and sustainability, enabling them to emerge as an important social actor in addressing the skilling/upskilling needs for tomorrow.
human-centric capabilities such as collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and systems thinking. Executive development programmes should aspire to equip future leaders with these skills, finding the right balance between digital and human skills. Work-based learning will help to shape business capabilities in real time. Automation, in tandem with the recession caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, is creating a ‘double disruption’ scenario for workers. Integrating academic lessons with contextualised experiential learning projects as part of everyday work shapes learning skills in real-time, for immediate use. In future-ready programmes, participants are required to demonstrate the application of academic concepts in their projects as a required component of each course. Co-creating education with industry partners will be critical. The future of work is changing rapidly, and agility is essential to serve corporate allies’ talent needs. The foundation for building a digital-first, diverse workforce can only be built if academic institutions and industry work together. By co-creating and co-building academic offerings with industry partners, companies and universities can combine strengths and develop impactful leaders. Co-creating education with alternative educational providers will accelerate the process. To respond effectively and quickly to the massive need for upskilling and reskilling , there will need to be to co-ordination between different learning providers. Business Schools will need to involve new corporate learning players in order to offer complex programmes that incorporate hard skills, soft skills, and digital skills in real time and at scale. The ‘new normal’ will be as much about content as the delivery model in executive education. Reskilling will need to revolve around social responsibility for business leaders and educators. Companies need to invest in improved human and social capital metrics by adopting environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics in line with renewed human capital accounting measures. Many business leaders and managers understand that reskilling employees, particularly in industry coalitions and public-private and academic collaborations, is cost-effective and has significant mid-to-long-term dividends – not only for business but for society.
JORDI DIAZ is a distinguished academic and business consultant, and a recognised innovator in Business School management. Since August 2020, he has been Dean of EADA Business School. Diaz holds an Executive DBA from École des Ponts Business School and a master’s in HR management from EADA Business School. He graduated from Harvard Business School in authentic leadership development and disruptive strategy.
DAPHNE HALKIAS
is Professor and Distinguished Research Fellow at École des Ponts Business School; Fellow at Institute of Coaching, McLean Hospital at Harvard Medical School; Faculty at IBS Paris; Research Affiliate at the Institute for Social Sciences, Cornell University; and Research Associate at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego. She is CEO of Executive Coaching Consultants and Editor of several journals. She is an award-winning researcher and author of 13 academic books and 100 peer-reviewed papers.
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