Business School Insights

Business schools have spent decades teaching students how to survive technological disruption. Now, we are the ones living inside the case study. Generative AI can now match (and sometimes beat) human performance on the kinds of assignments business schools have long treated as core training. That should make management educators uncomfortable, not because students might outsource homework, but because it forces a sharper question: If a tool can already do the work we use to signal competence, how exactly are we creating distinctive value? In a paper with Michael G. Jacobides and Peter Zemsky, we argue that management education may be approaching a "third epoch." The first (early 1900s) was practice-oriented: training professional managers for industrial firms. The second (post-1960s) was research-driven: importing rigor from economics, psychology, and quantitative methods. The third will be shaped by AI systems that can execute much of the analytical competence business schools teach. We analyze this through a value-based strategy lens. A few implications: 1) The demand side is genuinely ambiguous. AI could substitute for entry-level analytical labor and compress MBA ROI. Or it could increase the premium on people who frame problems, interrogate outputs, and lead adoption inside messy organizations. We don't yet know which effect dominates. 2) Teaching shifts, not disappears. As AI tutors improve, lecture-as-delivery looks fragile. But teaching moves toward instilling judgment on what to ask, how to challenge outputs, and how to create value with AI tools. Combine that with peer learning, identity formation, and teamwork under pressure. None of it automates cleanly. 3) Research is the strategic lever. Business schools can study AI's organizational consequences with fewer conflicts of interest than vendors or consultancies. If schools become the credible source of "what works" knowledge on human-AI collaboration, they defend and refresh their role. 4) The business model tension is real. Teaching revenues have long subsidized research. If AI lowers the price of instruction or enables new competitors, schools need new ways to fund knowledge production. The execution challenges are real: incentive systems that reward the wrong research, business models built on teaching revenues AI could disrupt, and EdTech competitors building AI-native from scratch while we retrofit. But here's what makes me optimistic: business schools have something no EdTech startup can replicate. The ability to conduct rigorous, conflict-free research on what actually works. If we do this well, we don't just survive. We become more essential. If you work in management education or hire from it, I'm curious: where do you think business schools will remain uniquely valuable when the "analysis" part gets cheap? Read the full paper: "The Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Management Education." Links to the full paper in the comments. #AI #MBA #Strategy

💡 The college semester isn’t dying; It’s being disrupted. And business education should be leading the reinvention. 💡 Undergraduate and graduate students alike are looking for something more relevant, more flexible, and more future-proof than the traditional calendar can offer. The old rhythm of fall-spring-summer no longer fits the cadence of a world shaped by AI acceleration, venture capital urgency, and evolving learner expectations. This is not a crisis; it’s an opportunity. Business schools must answer the call. As a business school dean, startup founder, and VC investor, I see the disconnect every day between how most B schools educate and how the real world works. The solution isn’t to abandon structure. It’s to rebuild it with purpose. From day one, business higher education should feel like joining a high-performing startup: fast-moving, applied, and obsessed with outcomes. Whether it’s a first-year undergrad or a mid-career #MBA candidate, learners deserve a business education built for their reality which looks like this: ✅ Sprints. Six- or eight-week learning cycles tied to deliverables, not dates. From product strategy to data storytelling, learners should exit each sprint with a marketable skill and tangible portfolio piece. ✅ Stackable pathways. Business education should offer multiple on-ramps and off-ramps. Start with a certificate, add a credential, then build to a degree. Let life happen, and let learning flex with it. ✅ Built-in experience. Replace theory-only lectures with consulting engagements, startup incubators, and embedded internships. Every term should double as a résumé upgrade. ✅ Rigor through relevance. Make coursework align with current business challenges: real clients, real data, real stakes. Academic excellence comes from application, not abstraction. ✅ Metrics that matter. Attendance is not a measure of learning. Let’s track capability, confidence, and career acceleration instead. This shift is not about cutting corners. It’s about sharpening focus. It is about preparing students to move at the speed of the economy they are about to enter or are already leading. Ohio can become a national proving ground for this approach. We can create the blueprint for business higher education that is modular, interdisciplinary, student-powered, and employer-validated. The future of business isn’t stuck in a semester. It’s moving in cycles, in sprints, in moments that matter. Our responsibility is to build a system that moves with it and helps students lead it. #BusinessEducation #HigherEdInnovation #MBA #UndergraduateBusiness #StartupMindset #AIReady #FutureOfWork #ThePowerToDo #StudentSuccess #WorkIntegratedLearning #LeadershipDevelopment

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐁-𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐀𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 The latest AI Exposure Index from Anthropic offers a striking picture of how artificial intelligence will reshape the labor market. The occupations most exposed are not primarily manual or routine jobs—they are knowledge-intensive fields: business and finance, computer science, engineering, management, law, and the creative professions. In other words, the very domains that business schools traditionally prepare students to enter are among those most likely to be transformed by AI. This should prompt an important question for business education: Are we preparing students for a world where AI performs many of the analytical and cognitive tasks we once trained them to do? If AI systems can already draft analyses, synthesize research, generate code, and assist in strategic thinking, then the competitive advantage of tomorrow’s graduates will not simply be technical knowledge. It will be the ability to work with intelligent systems while exercising judgment, ethics, leadership, and creativity. Business schools should be thinking seriously about several shifts: • AI literacy for every student. Not just how to use tools, but how they work, their limitations, and where human judgment must intervene. • Human capabilities that AI cannot easily replicate. Leadership, ethical reasoning, negotiation, complex problem framing, and cross-cultural collaboration. • New forms of work. Students must learn how to manage hybrid teams of humans and AI systems. • Responsible innovation. Governance, risk, and societal impact of AI should become core managerial competencies. • Continuous learning. The half-life of technical knowledge is shrinking; business education must emphasize adaptability and lifelong learning. Business schools have navigated major technological shifts before—from the rise of computing to the internet economy. But the scale and speed of AI adoption suggest this moment may be different. Preparing students for the AI-augmented organization will require rethinking curricula, pedagogy, and even the purpose of management education. The question is not whether AI will change the professions our graduates enter. 👉 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐞 𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐲 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐟𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞.

BUSINESS SCHOOLS, DON’T MORALISE! In a discussion last week, a colleague insisted: “Business schools shouldn't moralise. Their job is to teach management and economics, not to impose values. Moral questions belong to private conscience—or, at most, ethics electives, not the core curriculum.” At first this sounds appealing: Neutrality promises respect for pluralism, and protection from ideology, while focusing on technical expertise. But the claim collapses under its own contradictions. Neutrality and moralisation are not opposites but drinking buddies. To demand value-free teaching is a hypocritical form of moral dictatorship—it pretends to separate “facts” from “values” in order to legitimate instrumental rationality and utilitarian calculus. Every curriculum is already steeped in moral choices: every case study privileges certain interests over others, every KPI encodes a vision of human flourishing, every theory of the firm rests on an unspoken anthropology. When business schools model rational, self-interested actors maximizing utility in competitive markets, they are not describing the world—they are fabricating dystopia. Refusing to face up to their choices doesn’t eliminate moralisation; it institutionalises wilfull blindness and sabotages critical thought. And what does this so-called pragmatism produce in practice? Students become experts at optimising our existing systems, never questioning their legitimacy. They master sophisticated tools for resource allocation and risk management, while collectively generating massive inequality, ecological destruction, and democratic erosion. They become efficient functionaries, blindly implementing policies that serve the interest of capital, without ever recognizing their complicity. That is what Marcuse called the one-dimensional man—technically sophisticated, political docile, morally hollow. Education must never be reduced to the transmission of skills. Universities do not simply fill people with tools; they shape their outlook, desires, and imagination. Business schools form citizens with specific relations to authority, community, and social responsibility. Moralisation in education is not about enforcing dogma, but about cultivating the capacity to recognise, navigate, and position ourselves within a world already saturated with competing moral claims. It requires not conformity, but a dialectical commitment to truth, care, and justice through honest engagement. The most profound duty of business schools is to nurture their students’ conscience, capacity for structural critique, and sense of values. Defenders of “neutrality” style themselves as protectors of liberty. In reality, they perpetuate injustice. To strip morality from the curriculum is not apolitical—it is totalitarianism by stealth. To indoctrinate students into a worldview they never chose is the worst kind of intellectual dishonesty. The silence of business schools on morality is not innocence—it is complicity. #leadership

At Davos, much of the conversation revolved around AI, geopolitics and new global fractures. But the question that struck me most – reading the reflections of Francisco Veloso, Dean of INSEAD – was a different one: what role should business schools play in 2026?   Veloso speaks about leaders who combine AI fluency with human judgment, efficiency with meaning, innovation with responsibility. That tension feels very real. Organisations are under pressure to accelerate AI adoption without losing people, culture, or direction.   This is a global conversation. And it concerns all of us who lead educational institutions.   When we redesigned the Full-Time MBA 2026 at POLIMI Graduate School of Management, we didn’t just ask which courses to add. We asked a more fundamental question: what kind of leaders do we want to help shape?   In a world where – as highlighted by the World Economic Forum – a significant share of today’s skills will transform in the coming years, the MBA cannot simply transfer tools. It must train leaders to navigate complexity. To integrate AI with critical thinking. To balance performance, impact and the human dimension.   The dialogue among business schools has never been more important. Because today, we are not just competitors in rankings and recruiting. We are, whether we like it or not, co-architects of future leadership. https://lnkd.in/dqrFa73M #make #connect #ignite #ShapingPurposefulFutures

𝗥𝗘𝗖𝗟𝗔𝗜𝗠𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗖𝗥𝗜𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗟 𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗡𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 (3/4) 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘀𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗶𝘁 If neoliberal institutions redesign critique into optimization, business schools perfect that redesign. Not because professors lack willingness or insight (I can testify that we try 😉). But because the structure of the modern business school makes structural critique difficult. 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁, 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. As Alasdair MacIntyre warned, universities risk becoming collections of specialized silos rather than sites of sustained rational conflict. In business schools, finance models capital, marketing models demand, operations models efficiency, strategy models competitive advantage. Each field becomes internally rigorous and methodologically sophisticated. What disappears is the integrative question: what are these practices for, and how do they reshape institutions? We do not produce broadly educated professionals. We produce highly trained specialists operating within methodological silos. Practical wisdom contracts. 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱, 𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. As Bennis and O’Toole observed, business schools increasingly adopted a model of academic legitimacy modeled on the hard sciences . Rigor became equated with quantification. What can be measured is privileged. What cannot be easily modeled recedes. Method quietly begins to substitute for truth. If something is statistically rigorous, it must be true. Emergent complexity is treated as noise. Structural contradictions are reframed as misaligned variables rather than as signs that the underlying framework might itself be inadequate. Statistical sophistication can create the illusion of explanation. 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗱, 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗽𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲. Much research is conducted at methodological distance from lived organizational realities. We simulate, regress, and model more often than we immerse ourselves in practices long enough to understand power, constraint, and moral trade-offs. Professional knowledge becomes abstract. Situated judgment thins out. From London Business School to Bocconi to INSEAD, the challenge is not intellectual capacity, but the institutional incentives that shape what counts as legitimate knowledge. Under these conditions, teaching “critical thinking” remains possible. But it is structurally constrained. Because it would require questioning not only corporate metrics, but also the academic ones by which business schools measure their own success. And that is rarely a comfortable move. In the final post (4/4), I will explore what reclaiming critique would actually require.

Lessons I Didn’t Learn in Business School I had the degrees. The titles. The bulletproof strategic plans. But the real lessons? They came later, Usually when something went sideways. Here’s what business school didn’t teach me  (and what I now tell every founder, operator, and investor I work with): Revenue is Vanity Profits are Sanity Cash Flow is Reality 1. Gross Margin and Gross Profit is more important than growth. Revenue looks good in headlines. Gross Profit keeps the lights on. Your value is in what you keep, not what you sell. 2. Simplicity scales. Complexity burns cash. You don’t need 19 pricing models, 17 dashboards, or 600 SKUs. You need clarity. And a team that can execute fast. 3. Great people fix bad strategies. But the reverse never works. Bet on teams, not just theses. Especially when volatility hits. 4. You will regret who you tolerate. Misaligned partners, toxic culture, underperformers. The cost is always higher than you think. Move faster. 5. “Good businesses” can be bad investments. Great revenue, great product, great leadership... But if the structure, timing, or exposure is wrong... Pass. Emotion doesn’t outperform the model. 6. Tariffs, supply shocks, rate hikes...they’re here. You can’t control them. But you can build for them. Optionality beats prediction. They don’t teach this in school. But this is what moves the needle in the real world. Follow 👉 Jay Greyson for practical insights on building, buying, and scaling businesses.

Can Business Schools Reclaim Their Noble Purpose? by Stuart L. Hart. "Business schools, the academic bastions of capitalism, are crucial platforms for addressing today’s most important issues, from environmental sustainability to inequality. Yet for the past four decades, as I have witnessed as a business school professor, their curricula have been dominated by neoclassical economics and its fixation on efficiency, profit maximization, and shareholder value. The lure of short-termism and the simplicity of quarterly earnings growth and stock price as the prime objectives of business have drowned out other critical and more nuanced views that should be taught in the classroom: the legal perspective, which clarifies that shareholders are not principals and that business leaders are not legally required to maximize profit; the organizational perspective, which holds that companies are human-centered organizations where shared purpose, culture, and values matter; and the environmental perspective, which emphasizes that economies are dependent on and subsidiary to the environment, not the other way around." https://lnkd.in/evEktTwf

If I'd do my MBA all over again, I’d play it differently Classroom teaches a lot, but the real game is outside it Here are 7 things that I’d do differently: 1) Treat Excel & PPT like languages, not tools Because you'll need them more than English Pivot Tables, Dashboards, Slicers > Data Dumping Data Insights gets to compelling storytelling! 2) Learn Finance, even if you're NOT from commerce. If you can't read a P&L, you're flying blind.  NPV, IRR, break-even, it's about understanding Finance is the backbone of every business conversation 3) Build global awareness early. You can't win debates (or interviews) without context. Read WSJ, The Ken, Economist, Financial Times. Know What's shaping the world, what’s disrupting it. 4) Perform. Not just Communicate. Prepare on how you'll push your point across. Make your point in 60 seconds or less. You don’t need to sound smart, you need to make sense. 5) Master your time like a Product Manager. MBA is chaos. Systems are survival. Google Calendar. Notion. Trello. Pomodoro. Your output = how well you manage bandwidth 6) Network before you need to. Most people reach out after they’re desperate. Flip that. Send that message. Follow up. Be real. 7) Stay disciplined, especially when it’s boring. Motivation dies by Week 3. What saves you? Relentless consistency. If you’re headed to a B-school, or your internship or first job, this is your edge. But don't wait for orientation to get serious. Agree! What else do you think students should do? #LifeAtIIM #BSchool #careers #management #Strategy #Networking

MBAs Don’t Make Founders. Everyone Knows That. So Why Are So Many Unicorns Coming Out of Business Schools? “Nothing I learned at business school had anything to do with starting a business.” Evan Moore, DoorDash co-founder, Stanford GSB alumnus (FT, June 2025) It’s a damning line and one that echoes what many in the start-up world already believe: real entrepreneurs don’t come out of classrooms. - they come out of accelerators, hackathons, kitchens and garages. So what’s the point of a business school if you want to start something? and yet… Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Babson etc are producing founders, funders, and unicorns at scale. In fact, nearly 30% of US-based unicorns had at least one founder with a graduate business degree (Stanford study, 2024). So what gives? The reality: is business schools don’t teach entrepreneurship but they do incubate it. The content is rarely what matters. The context does: Time to think and test ✅ A high-ambition peer group ✅ Access to networks, capital, mentors ✅ A culture that normalises experimentation and failure ✅ Accelerators like Y Combinator give you intensity. Business schools give you runway. If accelerators are sprints, business schools are labs longer, slower, more reflective, but still powerful. Not everyone can go full-throttle in 3 months. For some, the mix of space, structure, and serendipity in a business school ecosystem is exactly what unlocks their venture. For those unsure if they’re ready to build something? Warwick’s Simon Barnes has some good advice: don’t start - join. Be employee #10 in a growing start-up. You’ll get the chaos, the learning, the upside without jumping off a cliff unprepared. Business school won’t turn you into a founder but if you already have the mindset, it might just give you the edge. 👊 #startups #entrepreneurship #mba #businessschool #innovation #founderlife #venturecapital #accelerators #techfounders #unicornstartups #leadershipdevelopment #productivity #careeradvice #networkeffect #buildinpublic