ENTREPRENEURSHIP , INNOVATION AND EDUCATION

The Challenges for Management Education in the 21st Century

INSPIRING GLOBAL EXCELLENCE

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Association of MBAs in collaboration with White Loop Limited

Written by Jim Playfoot, White Loop Ltd Edited by Mark Stoddard & George Murgatroyd, Association of MBAs

Association of MBAs Marketing and Admissions Forum 2012

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ENTREPRENEURSHIP, INNOVATION AND EDUCATION

The Challenges for Management Education in the 21st Century
Report Focus
At a time when innovation is critical to competitiveness and societies and economies increasingly need creative, capable entrepreneurs, what context has this created for management education and how should provision evolve to meet the changing demands of the 21st century? We present here reflections on this complex but vital question. Our aim is not to dissect the organisational aspects of higher education. Nor is it to provide a review of the strengths and weaknesses of management education. Rather, we are interested in the impact that business schools are having on their learners and in understanding the value that these educational experiences bring. We explore the dynamic between what individuals, employers and societies want and need and what management education is providing. Ultimately, our ambition is to make a meaningful contribution to the debate around the future of management education. We explore the topics of entrepreneurship and innovation as a catalyst and focus for this debate. During our engagements, we have interacted with over 70 individuals from ten countries and four continents through a series of workshops and one to one interviews. Our approach has been stakeholder-led and has involved participants from a diverse range of backgrounds including employers and entrepreneurs, current learners, graduates and business schools. The thoughts, reflections and recommendations presented here are entirely drawn from that engagement process.

Summary of Challenges
The world needs more innovators and entrepreneurs. Economies need individuals who can create wealth and employment Individuals need the knowledge, skills and behaviours to survive in a changing, globalised economy Societies need innovations that will address the challenges we face Education will play a vital role in meeting that need. The issue of employability is critical and education is changing to address the demand for better skilled individuals who can meet workforce demands Record numbers are entering higher and further education but the value and relevance of qualifications has come under increasing scrutiny Graduate unemployment is rising in many parts of the world a good education does not guarantee you a job any more Management education is a key part of the solution. Management education can be a catalyst for collaboration and a source of talent and ideas but the role of the business school is changing and the need to demonstrate impact is increasing Traditional forms of management education are not delivering on entrepreneurship and innovation the content of what is taught, the teaching methods and the stakeholders involved are not fit for purpose and rapid evolution is required Management education is evolving and there is much to be applauded in how business schools are responding to a changing environment. That said, there is evidence of a widening gap between the innovators and entrepreneurs of today and some business schools, many of which need to modernise their approach and appeal to a broader audience This report presents the challenges in detail and subsequently offers a set of ten recommendations for management education.

Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Education

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Why are Entrepreneurship and Innovation Important?

Entrepreneurship and innovation are critical economically, personally and socially
The narrative around education and employment is broadening. It is not simply about fulfilling workforce requirements, it is also about job creation. Economies increasingly need individuals who can create their own employment and who can employ others. Entrepreneurs attract investment, create wealth and stimulate growth. Innovation is a critical aspect of competitiveness companies that fail to react to rapidly changing market conditions will struggle and those that innovate effectively will flourish. In the public sector, innovation is about finding new ways of doing things and about getting more for less, something hugely relevant to those economies seeking to reduce public spending. Employment is becoming more entrepreneurial. The 21st century employee will typically have multiple careers and is likely to be self-employed at some point. In a globalised economy, where technology enables us to work for anyone from anywhere, individuals will need to be entrepreneurial in order to be competitive within the labour market. An ability to be comfortable with innovation is vital within working environments characterised by change and uncertainty. If you can bring ideas to the table and make those ideas happen, even better. Globally, we face significant challenges climate change, inequality, poverty and we need individuals who can find ways to address these challenges. This means identifying and developing people who have the creativity and the ideas and who are then able to utilise these ideas in a meaningful way. We need to nurture the enterprising spirit and entrepreneurial skill that will make innovation happen. We need to recognise the social value of entrepreneurship alongside the economic value.

What kind of qualities do we want to develop in a person, so they can define their own opportunity? Its about exercising autonomy and competence.
Ross Hall, Director and Vice President, Education for Economic and Social Development, Pearson Education (UK)

Innovation is everywhere
The concept of innovation is complex and often misunderstood: it can be something that happens in small increments its not only the big idea. Nor is it all about the eureka moment that leads to a new invention or a new product. Service innovation is as necessary as product innovation. The idea is vital, but real impact can only be achieved if the ability to bring that idea to fruition also exists. This is about understanding the innovation process but its also about engaging the right people. Developing a culture of innovation is critical. In the economy of the 21st century, innovation is the dominant operating model.

Innovation is not about thinking outside the box. Its about creating a new box.
Pierre Casse, Professor of Leadership, Moscow School of Management-Skolkovo (Russia)

Innovation is happening in all types of organisations. Many of todays leading innovators are working in small companies, often collaboratively and often in fields and sectors that did not exist 20 years ago. Innovation at a corporate level remains vital but recent start-ups exemplified by the technology sector have shown how a new generation of entrepreneurs can build businesses from nothing if they embrace collaborative innovation. There is no shortage of good ideas. The challenge for innovators and business leaders is to develop the skills and approaches needed to manage innovation and to create the context for creativity to flourish. For some, this will involve investing in potential rather than focussing solely on the bottom line. Innovation can take time and involve significant investment and the return is uncertain: the process is inherently about trial and error; risk and failure. Many companies are not comfortable with these concepts. Businesses need to continually adapt, explore new business models and take account of new competition and new technologies. The pace of technological change and the uncertainty this creates is unprecedented and innovation must be a part of the response to this change.

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Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Education

Are we all entrepreneurs?

The concept of the entrepreneur is changing the corporate success stories of the 21st century are Google, Skype and Facebook. The business models are different; the way the organisations have evolved and grown and the pace of growth defies convention; the founders of these companies are not cut from the traditional cloth of the corporate CEO. These are businesses that rely on constant innovation to stay ahead of an ever-growing chasing pack. In parallel to this, our concept of what constitutes entrepreneurial success has broadened this could be about profit and growth, or it could be more about serving the community, solving a problem, following a passion or having an impact. There is not one unified notion of what a successful entrepreneur looks like. The millionaire in the limousine is no longer an adequate model. Consider social entrepreneurs ultimately, they are successful if they make themselves obsolete. Are we all entrepreneurs? That depends on who you ask. For some, being an entrepreneur is either in you or its not. For others, education can teach you how to become an entrepreneur. Whats clear is that there are entrepreneurial competencies that align closely to the 21st century skills that everyone needs, regardless of the career that they choose. We will not all be entrepreneurs if we define being an entrepreneur as creating something new and running your own business and we need to understand the difference between becoming an entrepreneur and developing entrepreneurial skills and behaviours. Those with entrepreneurial flair are needed in every business people who can drive forward ideas, lead creatively and take responsibility for innovation. Our understanding and experience of entrepreneurship is, to an extent, culturally defined: in the UK, entrepreneurs will struggle to raise capital if they cannot prove unblemished commercial success. In the USA, investors are more interested to see evidence of failure and see this as a critical part of the learning process that entrepreneurs need to go through. Not all organisations encourage entrepreneurial thinking and innovation. In many cases, the reward system promotion, bonuses etc. is based more on political nous than it is on the ability to be creative and entrepreneurial.

If youre an entrepreneur, its in the DNA: youre the person who can pull the bits together and turn it into something that makes money.
Dan Wright, CEO, Heliex Power

Whats the Link with Education?

Education has a fundamental role to play in fostering innovation, supporting and developing entrepreneurship and nurturing future talent. But education is under scrutiny. Learners, employers and other stakeholders are increasingly looking at the impact of education, particularly in countries where the cost to learners has risen. How we calculate value and impact has changed. The relationship between education and employability is more critical than ever. The relevance of education to the world beyond the classroom has assumed greater significance. The perceived value of qualifications, particularly amongst employers, has diminished. Many countries are experiencing high levels of graduate unemployment. There is a mismatch between the outputs of education systems and labour market needs. Employability is not only about giving learners the skills they need to do the job in many cases, there is no job. Within this context, there is an increasing trend towards the provision of entrepreneurship education: if you cant find a job, create one. The education experience needs to be practical and experiential. Learning also needs to be more personalised. These requirements create challenges, particularly within a context of pressure on education budgets. Education is sometimes seen to be lagging behind modern society: school children are taught basic computer skills and then go home and develop apps in their bedrooms. Although we have a strong concept of what a fit-for-purpose education system looks like, there are real and significant challenges in delivering this.

An entrepreneur is a business response to innovation and change.

Mark Alter, Professor of Educational Psychology, New York University (USA)

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Education struggles to deliver on entrepreneurship and innovation

The 21st century skills people need are not entirely in line with what they are currently being taught. We need better mechanisms to teach and assess these skills: entrepreneurial know-how fits into this category. Taking risks and learning from mistakes are essential parts of developing innovation and entrepreneurial qualities, and yet education systems typically militate against risk taking, tending instead to focus on more quantifiable, measureable success. Many education systems focus on achieving targets which are, in some cases, arbitrary. We need to relate the objectives of education more directly to impact rather than to targets. Although assessment remains essential it should not simply be for the purpose of assigning a grade. The function of assessment should be to understand whether a learner is meeting their learning objectives. The process should not focus on the accountability of the teacher but the achievement of the learner. Summative assessments still dominate but this approach is deficient in assessing the types of competencies that we associate with entrepreneurship and innovation, many of which are behavioural. Education needs to play a part in supporting the development and sharing of good ideas it needs to provide a safe, supportive space for learners to experiment. This has to start early primary and secondary education should nurture and support creativity, critical thinking, confidence and collaboration: all critical to an entrepreneur. If you try to change mindsets post-16, it might be too late.

In terms of bringing enterprise and entrepreneurship onto campuses there is a lot more we can do.
Nigel Lockett, Professor of Enterprise, Leeds Enterprise Centre

We know the recipe we should get cooking

Although the concept of the entrepreneur is changing, the fundamental needs of the entrepreneur in terms of knowledge, skills and behaviours remain constant and equate to a set of employability skills that all types of businesses typically look for: problem solving, communication, creativity, dealing with change, leadership, confidence, passion, resilience, focus and risk taking. The conversation around teaching entrepreneurship is, in this way, closely aligned to a wider conversation around 21st century skills. If schools, colleges and universities begin to educate learners in these competencies, they will, concurrently, be helping to nurture the next generation of entrepreneurs. The challenge around educating innovation is partly about creating and managing innovative environments. If a deeper understanding of this challenge is garnered, education will be better able to develop innovation skills in learners. The ability to communicate an idea and to bring people on board is as critical as the idea itself this is something that needs to be built into the curriculum. Building effective education programmes is as much about delivery as it is about content. At every level of education, the value of learning by doing is recognised as essential. This approach is compelling within the context of entrepreneurship and innovation. Entrepreneurs are often profiled as having succeeded in spite of their education rather than because of it. Education is sometimes accused of hindering creativity rather than encouraging it. But things are changing. We know that allowing learners to experience, to explore for themselves, to try and fail and try again are all vital components of a successful education journey. We now need to embed this across education, particularly in the business school.

An entrepreneurial and innovative mindset is very important as a manager in any business. There is a difference between an entrepreneurial mindset and being an entrepreneur.
Vinay Rai, Founder, Rai Foundation (India)

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What are the Challenges for Management Education?

Is the business school still relevant?
Within a context of high graduate unemployment and a competitive HE sector, management education needs to continually demonstrate relevance and value. A management education can be expensive, time consuming and therefore needs to prove its worth within the internationalised market of higher education. Business schools are often viewed externally as suit and tie organisations with around 40% of graduates gaining employment in the banking or finance sectors. If business schools fail to attract creative people, how will they become innovative, dynamic environments for the entrepreneurs of tomorrow? There is a perception that business schools are largely focussed on management skills and not on the development of wider capacities like creativity and entrepreneurialism. This is not true in all cases. Some business schools proactively and successfully engage with local entrepreneurs, but more needs to be done to shift this perception and expose business schools to a wider market. Some business schools have been slow to modernise with teaching methods and curricula that are out of step with what learners need. If the faculty members themselves are not innovative or entrepreneurial, how can they teach innovation and entrepreneurship? The way in which traditional business schools (particularly those closely linked to a public university) are set up is counter to innovation they are organisations that struggle with change. The business school is often hampered by regulation and procedure and this stands in the way of rapid evolution. Advances in technology are driving the highly creative, innovative and collaborative social contexts for young people today. If children are taught basic technology in schools and then develop apps at home, there is a mismatch between the innovation thats in young peoples lives and what education is offering them. This has implications for what many business schools are offering can they keep pace in a fast moving, technology-driven world? Do the young entrepreneurs of today see an MBA or the work of a business school as being relevant to them? There is clearly a role for management education in joining the dots between innovation and entrepreneurship we both need to support the innovators as they develop their ideas and we need to develop the entrepreneurial skills needed in order to bring innovations to market. Simply stated, if innovation can be seen as the management and leadership of creativity, then the business school should be playing a prominent role in shaping this journey.

There are new technologies, disruptive models that are coming up. You dont need to go through a full time MBA to understand these.
Anna Pearson, Founder, Spots of Time (UK)

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Business schools operate in an increasingly complex market place

Management education operates, like the rest of higher education, in an international market. There is high student mobility globally and new business schools are opening in countries which have hitherto exported students. Competition for international student fees is fierce. That said, higher education increasingly needs to engage at a more local level. Business schools that engage with their local communities and with employers in their area are seeing significant benefits to these interactions. At present, some MBA programmes are failing to make the most of opportunities at a local level. This is changing. Business schools need to explore new markets beyond the MBA this means providing a much more flexible, modular, personalised offer that will appeal to other HE students in different faculties, to business people and to entrepreneurs who are not looking to the business school for a sponsored MBA but want a more granular offer. The rapid rise of executive education is one response although it still largely delivers to what we might consider as the business schools traditional market. Executive education should diversify and address the needs of young entrepreneurs and start-ups. There is a noticeable increase in the demand for management education and entrepreneurship elements from other faculties within universities. Learners in engineering or computer science, for example, need to develop their business acumen alongside their specialism so that they are able, should they wish, to launch a business following graduation. There are a number of positive examples of this type of collaboration happening within institutions and this should be applauded.

We are actually getting academics from other departments beating a path to our door and saying can you create a module for us?
Gups Jagpal, Projects Development Manager, University of Birmingham (UK)

The way that value is assessed needs reforming

Lecturers and teachers of management education are, like colleagues across the university sector, predominantly judged on their publications rather than on their teaching. The career trajectory of a lecturer recognises published research as his or her primary achievement and rewards this accordingly. As a consequence, research remains the drive for many. Too great a focus on publishing research detracts from the fundamental purpose of what a business school should be doing. It is contrary to many of the ideas around how to develop innovation and entrepreneurship in education. A key performance indicator for an MBA programme, as in other parts of higher education, is the salary of learners six months after graduation. This suggests that the primary purpose of the MBA is to find, quickly, well-paid employment for learners. Such a short term view is increasingly reductive and unhelpful in considering the contribution a business school makes to entrepreneurship. A better model of assessing value would be to consider the pathways that graduates take and to track them for longer periods. A recent graduate who chooses to set up their own business is unlikely to be able to command a respectable salary six months after starting up. Talk to them after three years however and they may have generated wealth for themselves and others, created jobs or solved social problems. Its at this point that the value of their education can be better assessed. The process of ranking and accrediting business schools merits scrutiny. The metrics by which an institution is assessed should focus less on the publications of the faculty and more on the elements that will support innovation and entrepreneurship. This should include the level and effectiveness of their engagement with industry and the amount of practitioner experience within the teaching faculty.

The fault line is the way academics are rewarded for writing papers.
Wendy Currie, Professor of Information Systems, Audencia Nantes, Ecole de Management (France)

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The business school product is not attractive enough to the customer

The MBA is under pressure: in some quarters it is seen as too long, too expensive and of diminishing value. Those in the market for management education are increasingly looking for provision thats bitesize, modular and available in a way that suits their lives. There is a danger that if business schools do not evolve their offer to learners, they will go elsewhere online for example to get what they need and move away from the business school model altogether. MBA students want practical learning. They want to be out in the world, practising what they are being taught. Given the choice of writing a dissertation or working on a consultancy project, a large majority of learners will choose the latter. Although learners are keen to see innovation as a core part of the curriculum, some business schools do not see innovation as essential for every learner and, consequently, will offer innovation as an elective module. If the customer for management education is becoming more diverse, the offer needs to adapt. Entrepreneurs would like to engage more with business schools but can they get something that fits with what they want flexible, fast, affordable and online? The provision in the business school is too often something that lacks relevance to existing entrepreneurs. An understanding of funding and how to win it is critical to both innovation and entrepreneurship. This is built into many MBA courses but could be valuable to a wider range of potential students. Current MBA students are broadly positive about their experiences and have opportunities for exploring entrepreneurship and innovation within their course structure. The challenge for entrepreneurs is the time and resources they can give to continuing their education whilst running a business. Competition is increasing. We are witnessing the rise of technology-led offers and free online tools that could, in time, put pressure on the business school model. The rise of professional social media tools are making the building of professional networks a recognised benefit of undertaking an MBA easier and more accessible. The MBA remains prestigious and highly valued by a majority of those who complete it but there is increasingly a discrepancy between what is being offered and what some important sectors of the market need and want.

Why dont people do an MBA? One is affordability, right? Unless you get scholarships, unless the prices come down, not many people can afford it.
Anna Pearson, Founder, Spots of Time (UK)

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There is uncertainty over where entrepreneurship and innovation fit and how they are delivered
Innovation is hard to define as a competency. It is not a discreet subject area. This is challenging for business schools. The question, therefore, is how you teach it effectively and what place it has in the curriculum. Should innovation be embedded across the qualification or offered as an elective? Or should it be both? The same questions apply to entrepreneurship. The consensus view is that these concepts should be built into programmes at every level. The effective teaching of entrepreneurship and innovation requires a number of elements: materials, time, facilities, talented educators and a critical mass of students. These elements are not always easy to put in place, particularly within a context of increasing funding pressures and an expectation of needing to deliver more for less. Problem-based learning is becoming more widely utilised but business schools need to accelerate their own innovation. Learning materials need to be offered in a way that better utilises digital technologies. Online learning is in demand and fits with peoples lives: it also connects to the idea of a much more granular education offer where learners can construct their own learning pathways. The challenge with this is both the cost to the business school and the need to monitor and assure the quality, integrity and reliability of the learning process. The effective teaching of entrepreneurship and innovation requires the involvement of certain individuals. Business schools must connect with practitioners in a meaningful way. The role of the teacher should evolve towards that of a mentor, guiding the learner through a personalised learning journey. The approach to delivering innovation within the curriculum is mixed. In some cases, it is offered as an elective whilst other schools embed innovation across the curriculum through a focus on project-based work and an encouragement of creative thinking. The lecturing approach is generally not a format that will nurture innovation you do not teach someone how to be innovative by telling them what innovation is. They have to learn through experience and this is best done through collaboration with practitioners.

I think experiential learning has got to be at the heart of any form of entrepreneurship education. If you ask any entrepreneur how they learn, they would say from experience and mainly from their mistakes rather than from their successes.
David Stokes, Director of Entrepreneurship at Small Business Research Centre, Kingston University (UK)

Business schools are not always collaborating with the right people We need to remove shackles upon business schools to innovate, so surely that is a role for the Association of MBAs, to reward business schools who innovate on their course and a percentage of their accreditation should be based on how innovative they are.
Rajeeb Dey, CEO, Enternships.com (UK)

Collaboration between all stakeholders university faculties, industry, teachers and students is vital if a culture of innovation is to be created that supports students to develop the skills and behaviours they need. Industry involvement tends to revolve around organisations who are the traditional partners (and customers) of the business school: large corporations and consultancies. This is part of the legacy of the business school model and will be difficult to change. It is not always easy for start-ups and new entrepreneurs to engage with business schools but learners would benefit hugely from this interaction. There are some examples of this but more can be done. Significant innovation is happening in the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector. Management education needs to connect itself more directly to the new innovators and needs to embrace the new business models and approaches that these innovators are creating. This could be done very successfully at a local level. Facilitating learners to work on projects with smaller, more dynamic companies operating in a highly innovative environment will benefit the learner, the organisation and the business school. Innovation in higher education increasingly sits in faculties other than the business school. Many fields of technology for example have a strong track record of collaborative innovation with industry. Business schools need to deepen their involvement in these types of collaborations in order to increase the value and relevance of their core offer. Innovation often springs from collaboration. More inter-faculty and inter-student projects would stimulate collaborative innovation opportunities and benefit students from both the business school and the collaborating faculty.

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The brand of the business school needs greater clarity

The current market for an MBA education will remain but there are indications that demand is unlikely to grow and competition between institutions, and from alternative providers, will increase. The emergence of credible, well-funded international newcomers to the market from places like India, China and Latin America will further put pressure on all business schools to maintain student numbers. Therefore business schools will need to find new learners and they will have to do this by innovating in what they offer and who the offer is designed for. The MBA itself operates under a number of constraints it can be prohibitively expensive, it can take too long (particularly for existing entrepreneurs), it is often not seen as an attractive choice for those running their own business. The common perception is that a business school education, and an MBA in particular, is predominantly for those working in large corporations or those looking for a career change. By diversifying what the business school is offering and by embracing innovation and entrepreneurship as key aspects of this offer, business schools will find new learners and, simultaneously, generate new opportunities. The branding of a business school education will need to reflect the diversity of the offer and appeal directly to these new learners. Business schools also need to market themselves more effectively to employers, particularly those employers who do not currently believe business schools are relevant to their own organisations. Potential learners even those interested in an MBA often dont understand what is available to them and what a management education will provide. This needs to be addressed. Management education is evolving but this is not clear to employers nor to prospective learners business schools need to communicate their value and the nature of their offer far more clearly. Business schools increasingly need to differentiate themselves from each other this may involve some schools becoming more known for entrepreneurialism and innovation than others. Some schools still rely largely on past reputation and recognition of their brand but as learners become savvier and employers demand greater value for money, schools will needs to avoid complacency, improve provision and tell a new story to their customers.

I think the big problem with business schools is the lack of strategic differentiation.
Nick Badman, Chair at Peter Cullum Centre for Entrepreneurship, Cass Business School

Can you teach someone to be an entrepreneur (and is everybody interested)?

Can education create an entrepreneur? Is it in your DNA? This is a fiercely debated point and one without a clear answer. What education can do is provide the context for entrepreneurs to flourish and give them the tools they need to become better business people. Education can also develop the entrepreneurial qualities in learners that will equip them for the likely employment challenges they might face in the 21st century, regardless of their ultimate career choices. Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. Somewhere between a third and a fifth of all MBA students express an interest in running their own business. Part of the challenge for educators is a lack of understanding around exactly what students entering higher education want and need. Do we know what the abilities and aspirations of students are so that we can gear education programmes accordingly? If education is becoming more personalised, what does personalisation look like in the business school? One size does not fit all. If management education is to play a part in stimulating innovation and in nurturing entrepreneurialism, there has to be a sense of realism about what can be achieved and how those achievements can be measured. Supporting learners who show a genuine drive for running their own businesses and helping them succeed is part of the solution. But it is also about giving every learner the opportunity to collaborate creatively and to build their confidence and passion. These are things they are likely to need wherever they go and whatever career path they choose to take.

I think our MBA offers a safe place to develop entrepreneurial skills: it is a safe place for them to actually try things out.
Caroline Laurie, MBA candidate at Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, Strathclyde Business School (UK)

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What are the Recommendations for Management Education in the 21st Century?
The following recommendations are offered as a response to the challenges identified in this paper. We recognise that business schools are already responding to these challenges in their own ways and our research has identified a number of positive developments from the accredited business school community across a range of metrics. Our intention here is to offer input into that process. Current successes should be built on and, ideally, shared across the sector. A key message from our research has been that the business school can play a vital role in supporting entrepreneurship and innovation and that the opportunities and rewards are significant if management education can evolve in the coming years. These recommendations are not in order of priority but rather should be taken as a whole.

1.

Create a culture of innovation within the institution

Education institutions and business schools need to become more innovative in the way they operate and in what they offer to learners. The content and delivery of education should evolve in line with what is happening across industry. The business school model needs to be reshaped for a new century. This is also about culture: business schools should embrace risk more enthusiastically and openly. Specifically, they should promote the idea that failure is part of the learning process. Business schools should be more focussed on challenging traditional assumptions about business, about innovation and about notions of success. Constructive disruption is needed.

2.

Focus teaching approaches more on experiential learning

Management education should involve more learning by doing through project-based work backed up by reflection and analysis. This approach to learning will promote 21st century skills and build entrepreneurial qualities. The MBA can be a launch pad for tomorrows entrepreneurs but it needs to be offered in a more dynamic environment, connected to new industries and emerging business models and open to the changing concepts of what constitutes innovation and of what it means to be an entrepreneur in the 21st century.

3.

Connect practitioners with learners in a more sustained way

Increasing the amount of time that learners spend with practitioners will improve the learning outcomes, particularly in relation to entrepreneurship and innovation. By placing the learner where innovation is actually happening and giving them a role in that process, the experience for the learner will be more positive and the learning better embedded. The profile of teachers should give greater weight to practical experience than academic publication credentials. Teachers ideally need to have continued involvement in the field in order that their knowledge remains relevant.

4.

Increase engagement with the new entrepreneurs and innovators

There is a real opportunity for business schools to bring students much closer to real 21st century entrepreneurs who represent a cross-section of the modern entrepreneur women, social entrepreneurs, technology entrepreneurs not just the millionaire success stories. They should be encouraged to share their insights about failure as much as success. Better mechanisms are needed to promote this interaction and this will take time and resources.

5.

Collaborate more openly and effectively with other parts of the institution
Collaboration is a critical mechanism for driving innovation. There is a demand for greater collaboration between university faculties and business schools and this interaction will be mutually beneficial. It will expose the business school to new ways of thinking and to new learners. There is a place for innovation and entrepreneurship in many faculties in the university. Business schools need to collaborate more across faculties offering opportunities for learning that fit with the needs of learners. Where this has happened, real success has been achieved.

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6.

Diversify the offer

Business schools need to create programmes that better fit with the various learners they might serve rather than focussing predominantly on the provision of MBAs and executive education to the corporate sector. Schools need to make management education more attractive and relevant to new learners by offering programmes that support and nurture existing entrepreneurs, as well as those with entrepreneurial aspirations. Customised executive education programmes are the fastest rising sector of the market: this is where business schools can be more responsive to the needs of young entrepreneurs and start-ups. Such programmes can offer tailored short courses to these learners that fit with their needs, time and resources. The focus could be on demanddriven topics like how to raise finance, how to grow, how to approach and manage handover. There are some notable success stories here that should be utilised as best practice case studies for the sector.

7.

Communicate value and relevance to learners and employers

Business schools have to find better ways of articulating their offer to both learners and employers. For learners, this will involve demonstrating value, proving flexibility, talking in clearer language and recasting management education as more in line with the innovative environments that many people work in today. For employers, the argument needs to be made that a student coming out of an MBA programme or a short course from a business school will be well equipped to meet the challenges and demands of the 21st century workplace. Business schools must demonstrate to employers that they are able to develop students ideas and help them drive innovation forward. Business schools need to engage with learners individual aspirations. This will help in designing a more personalised, relevant learning experience.

8.

Focus more on developing local connections that promote collaborative innovation

Connection with the local economy and with local entrepreneurs within it is a growing trend in management education and one that should be encouraged. This relationship brings benefits to all stakeholders and creates a much greater sense of connection between what happens in the business school and what businesses are actually doing. If these local collaborations can include small and even micro-businesses, the benefit to learners and, potentially, the local economy could be significant.

9.

Change the way business schools are assessed

There must be a review of the metrics by which effectiveness or success is measured. This affects both faculty (who should be assessed more on teaching and less on publishing) and learners whose success should be judged against the achievement of personal goals rather than post-MBA salary levels. Business schools should be rewarded, as part of their ranking or accreditation, for taking measures that encourage innovation and that create more opportunities for entrepreneurial development. Primarily, this will be about engaging more practitioners as teachers and creating stronger links between learners and employers.

10. Embed entrepreneurship and innovation across the school

Entrepreneurship should be embedded across the curriculum in business schools rather than sitting as a standalone elective this is more about experiential learning than it is about knowledge. Business schools should be offering entrepreneurship education embedded into their current programmes, helping to nurture and educate the entrepreneurs of tomorrow and developing entrepreneurial skills in all. They should also provide tools and skills training in a format that is practical and affordable to existing entrepreneurs and those involved in startups.

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Thank you
The Association of MBAs and White Loop Limited would like to thank the following for their participation in this project:

Workshop Participants
Participant Gerard Gaffney Ross Hall Derek Goodwin Lily Lapena Steve Ackerman Michael Ter-Berg Imran Rehman Nigel Lockett Gurpreet Jagpal Mohammed Ismail Helen Emberton Guy Fraser-Sampson Caroline Laurie Dianne Dean Rajeeb Dey Dan Wright Kimberley Roditi Eoin Banahan Krsto Pandza Martha Mador James Fleck David Goss Mohamed Abdelkhalek Mahmoud Basma Nazer Position MBA & Business Publications Manager Director and Vice President, Education for Economic and Social Development Head of Global Entrepreneur Programme Founder and CEO Managing Director CEO Facilitator and Process Coach Professor of Enterprise Projects Development Manager MBA Candidate Head of Curriculum MBA Teacher MBA Candidate MBA Director CEO CEO Innovation Manager Managing Director Professor in Strategy and Innovation Head of Enterprise Education Professor & Dean Head and Professor of Entrepreneurship MBA Candidate MBA Candidate Leeds Enterprise Centre, Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship University of Birmingham Kingston University Peter Jones Enterprise Academy Cass Business School Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, Strathclyde Business School Hull University Business School Enternships.com Heliex Power DMGT A&N Media Round Rose Associates Ltd Leeds University Business School Kingston Business School Open University Surrey Business School Brunel University Oxford Brookes University Organisation Independent Newspapers Pearson Education UKTI MyBnk Somethin Else World Sage Inc, Future First (Chair), Liverpool University (Chair)

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Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Education

Participant William Lanham-New Rasheedah Lawal Emily Shenton Joysy John Anna Pearson Chris Locke Paul Trott David Stokes Audley Genus Jonathon Scott Nick Badman Amir Sharif Wendy Currie Susan Balint Chris Van Der Hoven

Position PhD Candidate MBA Candidate Director Founder and Head of Global Partnerships Founder Head of Product Commissioning Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Director of Entrepreneurship Professor of Innovation MBA Candidate Chair Director of MBA Programmes Professor of Information Systems Director of MBA Programmes Director Executive MBA

Organisation Surrey Business School Oxford Brookes University Arrival Education Startup Leadership Program Spots of Time Pearson Education Technical University of Delft, University of Portsmouth Small Business Research Centre, Kingston University Kingston Business School University of Surrey Peter Cullum Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cass Business School Brunel Business School Audencia Nantes, Ecole de Management University of Westminster Cranfield University

Interviewees
Participant Matthijs Leendertse Pierre Casse Gretchen Dobson Allan C Jones Mark Alter Vinay Rai Dana Wang Daniel Serrot Sebastin Auguste Position Senior Advisor Professor of Leadership Senior Associate Director President Professor of Educational Psychology Founder Director Admissions Director Professor Organisation TNO Information and Communication Technology, The Netherlands Moscow School of ManagementSkolkovo, Russia Tufts University, USA Emaginos, USA New York University, USA Rai Foundation India China(Shenzhen) Cultural Industries Fair Co. Ltd Torcuato di Tella Business School, Argentina Torcuato di Tella Business School, Argentina
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Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Education

Association of MBAs 25 Hosier Lane London EC1A 9LQ Tel: +44 (0)20 7246 2686 Email: info@mbaworld.com www.mbaworld.com

INSPIRING GLOBAL EXCELLENCE

Association of MBAs Programme Managers Forum 2012

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