Learning @ Babson...It's not your father's MBA
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I was so glad to hear from many of you who were interested in learning more about Babson's MBA classes and curriculum. Having almost finished the first-half of the core curriculum, I am now better armed to share my experience.
In a move away from the traditional MBA curriculum, Babson has created a truly integrative program. Integration at Babson means first identifying what students are supposed to get out of the day or concept, and then building the classes around those goals. As we all know business doesn’t happen in a vacuum, so if we’re looking at a particular concept we get to interpret it from several of the most relevant perspectives. For example, when we examined an emerging segment of the music industry using an Apple iTunes case, we looked at it through the lenses of strategy, marketing, and business law. At the end of the day, we had a more comprehensive understanding of how companies operate in an emerging market.
So, how is this different? We don’t go to marketing every Monday-Wednesday and then to finance on Tuesdays-Thursday. Instead, our class schedule is built around the topic…some weeks we’ll have strategy four days in a row, and in others we’ll see our strategy professor only once. In fact, sometimes we have joint classes where two professors teach together so we can immediately see how a company’s strategic decisions (strategy) directly impact its financial statements (accounting), and vice versa.
Furthermore, the entire year of core classes is modeled around the lifecycle of a business. So, in our first “module” which lasted 4 weeks we looked at issues and opportunities through a creative lens. In our current “module” we going through the processes of assessing business opportunities. After the holiday break, we’ll return to look closely at designing and managing business processes, and growing and renewing businesses.
I’ve found this approach to be extremely effective. The flow of the curriculum and the material is very logical and allows everyone to get the most possible out of classes.
To compliment what we’re learning in the classroom, we are simultaneously working on consulting projects, where we apply concepts to real world companies. I’m in the middle of compiling my final project for my consulting project…and will share more soon.
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The challenge, today, is not merely rearranging the courses focusing on one theme in one semester but that of identifying new hubs around which the future business and society will surround. Designing new business or management education is not the answer. The answer lies in developing those visualizing brains to lead, institutions to deliver agenda, which will keep leading the changing state, business, corporations and society. May be in a different sequence and mix from the one we are 'conditioned' to see. Education, including Business Education has been preparing minds for the future, as we have known in the past. Not any more, in social and management sciences. If we want to see this in reality, we do not find a good (not even relevant) written text book in post 9/11 environment on “international business” as well as on “international political economy”
This 'gap' between the desirable and what exists has so widened and is getting increasingly so, that only meeting what is required today (at present; with this 'present' changing continuously, not continually, any more) may be what our new hoped for institutions and the “mental infrastructure” should provide for.
Our academic disciplines are lagging behind the physical realities for the first time, in social, political, business and management disciplines. Why?
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