Archive for February, 2010

Interesting report on distance business education by The Economist, which, I’m happy to report, recognizes Thunderbird’s GMBA as one of the best of its kind in the world (full report available here).

DISTANCE-learning business education is a resounding success story. [...] If, perhaps, the very top tier of universities are yet to offer distance programmes, still some very notable ones do: Carnegie Mellon or Thunderbird in America, Warwick or Instituto de Empresa in Europe, for example.

Yet students who take their MBAs at a distance can find themselves railing against some intense snobbery. Full-time counterparts often decry that the only way to take the degree is to immerse oneself in the experience—to take time out from one’s career to contemplate.

Perhaps, in an ideal world.

The Open University Business School dean James Fleck likes to question the term “distance education”.  The relationship between a student on the last row of a 350 student amphitheater and her professor is more accurately described as “distance” than the very intimate relationship that technology can afford between learners and instructors and among learners themselves.  We definitely need a new language to describe what these programs do.

Read more »

Thunderbird MBA student Ben Balden ‘10 reports from Vietnam where he’s engaged in a TEM-Lab engagement advising a local consultancy.  The Thunderbird Emerging Markets Lab combines an on-campus Organizational Consulting Practicum prerequisite course with a team-based international consulting assignment.  It was launched last year with the hope that it would provide a transformational learning experience to the students as well as a valuable service to an organization doing business in an emerging market.

A quote from Ben’s posting:

Hoping to learn about Vietnam and the people, I have learned about myself. This is, I suppose, one of the benefits of cultural exchange. I love this kind of learning. The ability to apply the knowledge I have picked up at Thunderbird and before Thunderbird in a real setting has been wonderfully practical. The ability to do so at an international destination has been inspirational. For me, this experience has been a cultural learning experience both of the culture of Vietnam and my own individual culture. In the brief short time I have been here I have reassessed my individual responsibility toward those around me, my affinity to an assortment of foods, my low appetite for risks on the road, and the importance of family in celebrations. Seeing life lived in a different way has presented me with a new vantage point to view the way I live my life. Learning about the local culture has not only taught me who the Vietnamese are, but also who I am. This is what makes this experience so rewarding.

Telefónica’s corporate magazine Pulso published this week a collection of essays on innovation and technology by a number of political, business and academic leaders, which includes a piece I wrote about the low-carbon economy (in Spanish), where I argue that combating climate change will offer the greatest business opportunities of this century.

So far the public debate has been either wasting time in a state of denial of the evidence (”it snows ergo there is no global warming”), ridiculing the global governance process as displayed in Copenhagen (”why should we pick up the tab if others aren’t doing their share”), or focusing on the costs of dealing with the potential catastrophic phenomenon (”why should we care about a long-term phenomenon when we have a 10% unemployment” or “reducing carbon emissions will end our economic dominance”).

It is time we begin to spend some air time and bandwidth discussing also the tremendous opportunities that lie within the low-carbon economy.  Economists predict that containing carbon emissions can entail anywhere between a cost of 5% of world GDP (the equivalent of the economy of France) to a gain of 2% (the equivalent of India), with some consensus around a cost of 1%.

Avoiding a potential global disaster will test our capacity to innovate, to come up with new technologies for producing and consuming energy, new low-carbon cities and lifestyles, new business models that do not rely in the combustion of cheap fossil fuels.  Business that ignore this, may become economic fossils themselves.  Those that understand it may find the greatest business opportunities of the modern era.

Thunderbird alumni just created a website where all graduates are invited to endorse the Thunderbird Professional Oath of Honor.

The Thunderbird Oath is the first of its kind in the world.  It was the result of a student led initiative in 2004-05, which was later endorsed by the School’s faculty and board of trustees.  Students began a voluntary campaign to sign the oath at every graduation ceremony since 2005.  The oath was incorporated into the admissions process in 2006, and since 2008, it has been a formal element of the commencement exercises.  The new website will now allow the 35,000+ alumni from around the world to join the movement.

In 2009 a group of MBA students from Harvard Business School launched a similar initiative (MBA Oath) that ended up capturing the support of over half of their graduating class and spreading to other schools around the world.  In 2009, a group of Young Global Leaders at the World Economic Forum also committed to a professional oath, which is open for public support at globalbusinessoath.org.  In 2010 a new foundation was created to support and coordinate these multiple initiatives (which are still using different texts).

It’s official, The Oath Project website is out.  A couple of months ago, a foundation was created to try to bring together a web of until now loosely coordinated initiatives, which include the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders Global Business Oath, the student-led initiative MBA Oath, and the Thunderbird Oath of Honor.

The Oath Project foundation starts up its activities with a small board (Profs. Rakesh Khurana, Nitin Nohria, and Robert Kaplan of Harvard and yours truly) and an international council of CEOs and thought leaders (still under construction).  The foundation is being managed by the Aspen Institute (Business and Society Program).  The first objective is to try to harmonize the text of the oath and to produce a version that all groups can feel comfortable with.  Second we want to support any group that wishes to join the movement and adopt the oath.  Third, we will try to share ideas as to how to bring the oath to live.

Last week in Davos I had the pleasure of moderating a session titled “Rethinking Business Ethics” which included, in addition to a few but mighty YGLs from South Africa, the UK, Israel, and the US, UN Global Compact Executive Director Georg Kell, Transparency International Chair Huguette Labelle, Monterrey Inst. of Technology President Rafael Rangel and Ecolab CEO Doug Baker.  During the session Georg Kell announced the support of the UNGC to the initiative.  The week before, the steering committee of the Principles of Responsible Management Education agreed in NY to also lend its support to the Oath Project.

In sum, the stars are beginning to align beautifully.  With the backing of the WEF Young Global Leaders, the UN Global Compact, the Aspen Institute, PRME, and the MBA Oath, the experiences of a few business schools, and the backing of thought leaders of the caliber of Khurana, Nohria, Kaplan, Matthew Bishop and WEF founder Prof. Klaus Schwab, we are on our way to transforming management into a true profession.  Join the movement!!

Matthew Bishop, NY editor of The Economist, conducts a powerful autopsy of the global financial crisis in his latest book (The Road from Ruin) and surveys the road out of the mess and towards a safer capitalism.

Bishop and Green argue that the efficient market hypothesis has been taken dangerously far and that we need a new form of capitalism grounded on a more sophisticated understanding of human behavior, an argument that seems to be gaining support (see my review of Justin Fox’ The Myth of the Rational Market).

Bishop and Green dedicate a chapter to the idea of a Hippocratic Oath for business managers (with a direct reference to the Thunderbird experience) which they believe can contribute to the necessary professionalization of management and its commitment to the public interest.

In the presentation of the book in Davos last week (see inserted picture) Matthew Bishop recognized he had been initially skeptical about the power of an oath to change behavior, but that the current course of events make him believe that a change in values by those in charge of large corporations and financial institutions is long due, and that a professional code of conduct embedded in business schools and perhaps eventually in professional associations, could contribute to such change.

This morning it was the Board of Trustee’s turn to brainstorm on the future of the School for the decade to come.

I asked our trustees to dig deep into our mission, “to educate global leaders who create sustainable prosperity worldwide“, and to imagine how Thunderbird could evolve throughout the next decade, leaving aside (in fact questioning) the constraints of the traditional academic model.   What if we looked ourselves not as just a graduate school of management worried for its competitive position, but as a community of scholars, students and practitioners focused on creating sustainable prosperity worldwide.

I provided the following “incendiary” statements, not as expressions of what we are or must be, but as what-ifs to make us think differently about ourselves… What if:

• We don’t measure our success by what other deans think of us but what impact we have
• We don’t measure our success by how many people we exclude, but how many lives we touch
• We don’t measure our success by how much money our graduates make, but how much value they create
• We don’t invest in students with the highest GPA (Grade Point Average), but the highest GPL (Global Potential to Lead)
• We are not people who serve the market, we build markets that serve people
• We are not a think-tank, but a do-tank
• We don’t measure the quality of our research by how many papers we publish but how many people care to read them

Here are some of the highlights of our subsequent discussions:

Read more »

Justin Fox, who just joined the Harvard Business Review as editorial director after having worked as business editor for Time, blogs this week about the global business oath (Can Management Oaths Be Made Less Mockable? – Justin Fox – Harvard Business Review).

The other, more serious complication is that standards of behavior don’t mean a lot unless there are consequences for violating those standards. For doctors and lawyers, the consequences can involve being denied the ability to practice the profession. But how’s that going to work with managers? We certainly wouldn’t want to require all managers to follow a specific course of training. A better parallel might be the certified financial analyst designation — you don’t need it to be a Wall Street analyst or to manage money, but it’s a nice thing to have and something of an embarrassment to lose. The question will really be whether corporations even want “certified managers” around.

My prediction is that management will soon develop a voluntary certification system that will include a commitment to protecting the public interest (just as CPA’s do today) and a code of conduct that will include many if not all the commitments in the global business oath. And definitely, the commitment to personal development, which is central to any profession.

How Does Change Happen?
by Jennifer Corriero

How does change happen?
This is perhaps one of those eternal questions
that carries both simplicity
and depths of complexity
juxtaposed in a tension
so bright and dark that
emotions explode and identities blur.

Is your belief defined by your role
or is your role defined by your belief?

How does change happen?

POLICY says the policy maker
MARKETS says the business manager
MASS MOBILIZATION says the organizer

Read more »

From “Ayele Solomon”:
Dear Thunderbirds living in Addis, Hello!

There are 4 of us, as far as I know- myself, Michael Gizaw,  Joao Jorge, and Lane Bunkers. Mike and I thought of doing the first First Tuesday in Ethiopia!! I have copied you if you attended Thunderbird and had some connection to Ethiopia now or in the past (born here, worked here, etc). Please pass the word around, so we can find other Tbirds or friends of Thunderbird.

It will be this Tuesday, February 2, 2010 at 6 PM.

Venue: The outdoor beer garden in Tana Restaurant (across Bole Road from Boston Spa).

I have spoken to all of you about it – Lane is unfortunately out of town and will not make it this time. See you on Tuesday!
Ayele