Interview: Gary Biddle of Hong Kong University

1 Reply

Gary Biddle

Gary Biddle, dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at Hong Kong University (HKU), discusses his school’s MBA and EMBA partnerships with London Business School and Columbia Business School, and the enduring importance of “Ny-Lon Kong.”

Is Hong Kong still a good gateway into Asia for executives?

Hong Kong has long been a bridge between East and West. Hong Kong knows the West, and it knows the East. For people coming out of China into the world or going into China from the rest of the world…when these people cross, sparks fly, because in our classes, people say, “let me tell you how things are done in Shanghai,” and another might chime in “let me tell you how things are done in Berlin or London or New York or New Delhi.” The instructors understand both, and we facilitate this exchange of insights.

Is fluency in Chinese essential for executives in Hong Kong and China? Are they coming to your program with these skills?

There’s no question that if one wants to pursue a career connected to China, you’d want to know the local language there. This is true in Germany and everywhere.

In our regular MBA program, we have a “China Track” designed specifically for people from outside of China to launch their careers in China. If they don’t know Mandarin, there’s an option that takes them to Beijing for an intensive language immursion experience. This is for someone from Europe, South Asia, or the Americas who doesn’t know Mandarin, but knows China is a big thing, and wants to have some conversational fluency in Mandarin. And then they continue during their MBA studies. There’s of course a natural limit to how much you can learn in a year and a half, but still, with this kind of structure, you can learn quite a bit.

Continue reading →

Interview: Patrick Moreton of the Washington-Fudan Shanghai EMBA

2 Replies

Patrick Moreton

The managing director of the Washington-Fudan EMBA program in Shanghai says language skills and international experience are now par for the course for executives – even American executives.

Is now a good time to do an EMBA?

There are many good reasons to do an EMBA program right now. The economic downturn creates time for reflection and housekeeping if you will. For Executive MBAs, just like MBAs, it is a good time to pause and reflect.

The skills and benefits needed that come to the forefront right now are twofold: First of all, the downturn often requires a reformulation of strategy, whereas in the past steady growth meant less motivation for change. Downsizing, restructuring – these are more difficult to do in a boom, whereas now there is greater organization initiative to make changes. It is a good time to make really hard decisions. Returning now to a program like the Executive MBA allows these decisions to be done in the context of a deeper understanding of how to reformulate strategy, to find strategic clarity of how the functional pieces of an organization fit together. If you are working on these issues in your organization, it will make what you are learning in a classroom more relevant.

Leadership challenges are another reason that makes Executive MBAs an attractive option right now. It is a serious challenge to hold organizations together, to motivate people – these skills are highly useful in the context of a highly challenging leadership situation. Restructuring in industries is also another pressing concern. It is a good time to reach out across industries, to have strategic resources at hand, to network, get one’s name in circulation at a time when it is uncertain as to which industries will come through the economic downturn and what the business strategies will be. Continue reading →

Interview: Steve DeKrey of the Kellogg-HKUST EMBA Program

3 Replies

Steve DeKrey

Is an MBA a good stepping stone into Asia? The founding director of the Kellogg–HKUST EMBA program shares some thoughts.

What should prospective MBA or EMBA students look for in an Asia-focused program?

There are definitely not enough Asia-related components in most US MBA programs. The need for that depends on an individual student’s career plan. My advice to prospective students is to be very open to global opportunity which will almost certainly require some time in Asia. Asia is such an important business destination for big and growing companies. An Asian component will be critical now more than ten years ago. Having an Asian base is also very important. This is where the growth is.

Prospective students need to make an assessment in terms of their skill path, career level and opportunity. This requires some research, from the websites, rankings, and publications. I encourage a candidate to find their match, not to “blanket” apply to ten schools. Students should look to find their dream school, 2-3 maximum, make sure that they are qualified and pursue that school. MBA forums can also be helpful. I recently attended forums in Hong Kong, London, and Dubai, and can report that the numbers are up and interest in Asia is also up.

A caution: Language skill is very critical especially in China, and without those language skills opportunities will be far less.

Continue reading →

Interview: Joseph Doucet of the University of Alberta

1 Reply

Joseph Doucet

Joseph Doucet directs the Natural Resources, Energy & Environment MBA program at the University of Alberta School of Business. He talks about why a good location matters for a business school offering an energy focus.

Edmonton is pretty far north. Why would someone want to go up there for an MBA?

Alberta is a natural location because of the significance of the energy, resource, and environmental sectors in the provincial economy. Our students come from all over the world, and upon graduation, have gone to jobs in the public and private sector in Canada and the US, and elsewhere. Although it is rooted here in Alberta, clearly the preparation and opportunities we give our students are global, because energy, environmental, and resource problems are global.

Business schools in London might want to exploit the advantage they have in terms of international finance. Here we take advantage of the fact that the energy and natural resource sector is so prevalent in the economy, so there are lots of opportunities for students to speak to business leaders, government leaders, and thought leaders in these different areas. We take students up to visit the oil sand plants or mines, we visit gas plants, electricity generation facilities, and pipeline and storage tank facilities.

Continue reading →

Interview: David Elmes of Warwick Business School

1 Reply

David Elmes

The energy industry is changing breathtakingly fast. David Elmes directs a new part-time Global Energy MBA program at Warwick Business School designed to help people in the industry keep up and succeed. Here is our interview with him.

What does it take to be a successful manager or executive in the energy sector now?

Basically, there are three things going on. Energy is getting harder to develop and produce. That applies to both the traditional oil- and gas-type resources, which are harder to find and more difficult to produce, and to renewable and alternative energies, where the ambition is to develop quite significant levels of energy production in a very short time. For many renewable energies, you’re looking at developing, implementing, and scaling-up industries at really amazing rates if you compare them to the normal evolution of industries. Whether it’s the old stuff or the new stuff – the first point is that the energy industry is becoming more difficult.

Continue reading →

Interview: Philip Delves Broughton

2 Replies

Philip Delves Broughton (Photo: Margaret Delves Broughton)

Last year, Philip Delves Broughton made a big splash with Ahead of the Curve, a candid and entertaining account of his two years doing an MBA at Harvard Business School (HBS). Having read and reviewed the book, we had a couple questions about his experience. He was kind enough to answer them:

As someone without a formal business background, how did you prepare yourself for HBS? Looking back, how might you have done it differently?

I don’t think I did prepare myself. I was too busy with my career as a journalist, which I think perhaps made me interesting to business schools. I had achieved a fair amount as a reporter and foreign correspondent and gained a little management experience. I think this was excellent preparation!

I suppose I could have read more accounting and finance books before arriving on campus or figured out Excel, and this might have helped me in the first semester. But really, there was plenty of time to do all this during a two year MBA. I spent the summer before getting to HBS leaving my job in France and on holiday with my family – and once I was presented with my workload in Boston, I was very happy to have taken a long vacation.

Did you find your unconventional  background (for an MBA student) a hurdle, an advantage, or a mix of both? What would you say to prospective MBA students with a similarly a-typical business school resume?

A mix of both, as you’d imagine. The great advantage is that you will stand out among the banking/consulting crowd when you apply. It’s very important to play to your strengths when you apply – emphasize what you have done and don’t try to whitewash your lack of business experience. Another advantage is that what you study at business school will be fresh, and with any luck much more interesting than for those who have been in business jobs.

The hurdle is that you do have some catching up to do. But that just takes a little time. Perhaps the greatest challenge is adapting to the cultural change of moving from a non-business setting to a world of business school students, who may have very different priorities and interests to those you were used to. But if you’re a curious sort, this can be fascinating too. I think what business schools want to know – and what you should have clear in your mind – is how an MBA fits into your ambitions. You don’t need to have some distinct career in mind, but at least some solid thoughts about what you think an MBA will enable you to do which you’d struggle to do without it. Becoming a management consultant does not count.

Continue reading →

Book Review: An Outsider at Harvard

Leave a reply

Philip Delves Broughton
Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School
Penguin, 2008

Ahead of the Curve is a first-hand account of how a relative outsider – a British journalist named Philip Delves Broughton – got into and graduated from Harvard Business School. It is a quick and amusing read that will be of interest to people considering business school, particularly those without the “conventional” MBA resumé.

At HBS, Delves Broughton’s resumé probably qualifies as unconventional. In 2004, he quit his job as Paris bureau chief of the Daily Telegraph. His experience at the paper – including leading the coverage of the September 11 attacks in New York – combined with good GMAT scores helped get him into HBS, probably the most famous business school in the world.

For much of the first half of the book, Delves Broughton plays catch up to the jargon and spreadsheet wizardry of his business-seasoned classmates. Eventually he does catch up, showing that with some hard work, there is hope – even someone who spent their university years reading Greek classics rather than macroeconomics.

Continue reading →

Interview: Nathan Shedroff of California College of the Arts

3 Replies

Nathan Shedroff

More business schools are adding design to their curricula, but only a couple programs cater to designers and creatives. We spoke with Nathan Shedroff, chair of the new Design Strategy MBA program at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, about what people working in the creative industries can get from doing an MBA.

Where do your students come from?

Around 70 percent of the students have a design background; that might be fashion, graphic design, interaction design, industrial design, or maybe a little architecture. The rest have a non-design background but all have an affinity for design. They might work for companies in non-design capacities but these companies use design strategically or are design-aware.

For someone in your program without a design background, will they learn design as well as business?

They will definitely learn more about design as they go through the program, but we aren’t a design program, and we don’t actually teach design skills in the traditional sense. There’s nothing about color, type, layout, etc. We often talk about those issues in classes, but they aren’t learning those design skills. Instead, they learn strategic design skills: design research, design thinking, managing design, managing companies, etc.

The first year of your MBA program has only just begun, but where do you expect your grads will end up?

We expect they’ll end up in one of three places, depending on what they’re interested and what the economy is like. We expect a small percentage of students will start their own companies, probably based on whatever their thesis is. That’s not for another 16 months, so it’s hard to gauge.

We think the bulk of our students will end up at the design-related consultancies that do strategic design. And they’re crying out for people to bridge the gap between design innovation and business. A big part of it is helping clients understand what the process is, and what needs to be done, and to be comfortable with it. And then there are the skills of managing innovation. Consultancies are searching desperately for these people. Not only is it hard to find people with this experience, but strategic work is much more profitable for them, as well.

Plus, much of the traditional design work is moving over to China at the moment. Graphic design not as much yet, but product design and industrial design is moving over to China rapidly. Interaction design is starting to follow, as well.

Continue reading →

Interview: Max Oliva of IE Business School

Leave a reply

To conclude our series of interviews about CSR and sustainability MBA programs and the job market, we publish excerpts from our chat with Max Oliva, associate director of the Social Impact Management project at IE Business School in Madrid.

What is the mood of the CSR community in light of the financial crisis?

We will obviously be affected by the crisis, but it will also be a good opportunity to see which companies were “walking the talk” and doing CSR strategically. They are the companies expecting benefits in innovation and bottom-line business.

But some companies were doing it on the PR or marketing basis without having it integrated, and it makes sense for them to cut back on those types of programs. You will see cutbacks in the companies that have not integrated it. That’s good for the consumers, and an opportunity for maturity in the sector and for going ahead strategically and innovation-wise.

As someone who works at a European business school, do you notice any differences in how Europeans and Americans approach CSR?

There are some differences. For example, in Europe we have much stronger government support for social issues. In the United States, philanthropy relates much more to individuals and companies. Having said that, that is only a very small part of CSR. The strategic part of CSR has been driven a lot here in the United States, but has been certainly driven as well by several European companies.

I tend to think it depends on the company. Multinationals have companies in the US and Europe. There are some companies that are quite ahead in this conversation: several American companies, but also several European companies that are approaching it much more strategically. I think the UK is a couple years ahead of the rest of Europe. I would even say that they are ahead of the US.

Continue reading →

Interview: Dan Vermeer of Duke University

1 Reply

Dan Vermeer

After seven years directing a sustainability initiative at Coca-Cola Company, Dan Vermeer has joined Duke University as executive director of the new Corporate Sustainability Initiative. In our interview, he says the financial crisis will separate the truly valuable CSR initiatives from the superficial.

Will corporate sustainability survive the financial crisis?

There’s no question that there will be a whole lot of stress on the job market in general, and nobody is going to be exempt from that. There are a few things that give me comfort. One is that a good chunk of the environmental sustainability agenda has a cost-saving benefit immediately. I think efforts around reducing energy use, water use, waste are going to have very direct benefits on the bottom line in a more efficient kind of enterprise.

This is what some business schools are saying, but is this something companies actually believe?

I think so. I would differentiate the larger national and multinational firms where I would say that it’s pretty well understood that sustainability efforts have financial and strategic value. Most companies are pursuing them, and will continue to do so. I’m pretty confident about that.

I think it is less institutionalized in smaller firms that have less exposure, access to the tools, and expertise in this area. But, in general, it’s pretty well established.

There are a lot of things that go under the umbrella of sustainability, and I think you will see some aspects of that suffer. Things that are framed more in philanthropic terms, corporate social responsibility terms, or corporate affairs terms – those things are likely to suffer because they are seen as more ornamental or  the kinds of things you do in good times to buff up your image.

Continue reading →