NOVEMBER 2006

Rising to the Challenge

Stanford’s campaign calls for cross-campus collaboration, a new home for the GSB, and a reinvention of management education.

Illustration by Cindy Salans Rosenheim

It’s bold, powerful, comprehensive,” said a confident Bob Scott, MBA ’70. The former president of Morgan Stanley echoed the sentiments of others who voiced enthusiastic support at a GSB Advisory Council meeting one afternoon last May. Faculty member Garth Saloner had just detailed the most complete retooling of the curriculum in a decade for the 50 alumni in the room. Its objective: to create a more personal, more intellectually engaging, and more global MBA educational model to carry the School and its students into the 21st century. “It leapfrogs us as a university,” Nike Foundation President Maria Eitel, SEP ’01, told Dean Robert L. Joss.

The School’s new curriculum, adopted by the faculty in May and to be put in place for the 2007 entering class, is just one of the changes creating momentum at the Business School and the University. In June, the Stanford trustees approved site plans for a new state-of-the-art business school campus. In August, the School announced that Nike Chairman Philip H. Knight, MBA ’62, will give $105 million—the largest gift ever to a business school—to help build the new campus and fund faculty. “We’re at a defining moment in the School’s history,” Joss said.

All this intersects with Stanford University’s October launch of The Stanford Challenge, the most ambitious campaign in its history—$4.3 billion for graduate education, multidisciplinary initiatives to solve real-world problems, the arts and creativity, efforts to improve K–12 education, and undergraduate education. The Business School’s priorities will include funding for curricular innovations, student financial aid, faculty, new buildings, and cross-campus collaborations totaling $500 million.

When University President John Hennessy unveiled The Stanford Challenge on Oct. 10, he outlined initiatives focused on problems including human health, the environment and sustainability, and international peace and security. All rely on unprecedented levels of partnership in research and teaching among faculty and students from different disciplines spanning Stanford’s seven schools.

With growing collaborations across campus as a backdrop, the passage of the new MBA educational model and the new campus site approval means “we will be making significant changes all at once and reinventing management education,” said David Kennedy, associate dean and director of development at the Business School. “It is a seminal moment, and it is a very exciting time for people to have the chance to help the Business School become dramatically different.”

As of this writing, the Business School has raised about half of its $500 million goal. That includes Knight’s generous $105 million gift, most of which will significantly underwrite the new $275 million campus. And last year, the School received a $30 million challenge commitment from Anne T. and Robert M. Bass, MBA ’74, that supports, in part, Bass Seminars—classes that match about 30 students with a faculty member to explore and research business topics.

But School fundraisers are not focused solely on large gifts to meet the Business School’s needs. “We want every alum of the School to know that he or she can play a role in this campaign,” said Kennedy. Indeed, Bass’ gift included $20 million to be given only as matching gifts for other donations both large and small. “We need very broad-based support from our alumni and our friends. Every gift counts.”

New Collaborations

Unrestricted gifts have seeded new multidisciplinary courses and will continue to foster innovation. Hennessy has spoken specifically of the Business School’s role as “combining academic rigor and practical application” by focusing on “how to get things done through the management of people and resources” and across different fields. The University’s graduate-level course in Biodesign Innovation is one such example. Faculty and students from engineering, medicine, and business work together to develop devices for unmet medical needs. (See related story.)

Both Hennessy and Joss envision more collaboration. The Business School pioneered a Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship for non-business graduate students this year. Seventy students, including 7 from Earth Sciences, 14 from Medicine, 37 from Engineering, 9 from Humanities and Sciences, and 3 from outside Stanford, attended the four-week program. A typical day had three or four one-hour classes. Subjects included economics, finance, accounting, operations, teams, negotiations, strategy, marketing, entrepreneurship, growth, and design. There were also sessions on presentation skills and how to construct a venture pitch.

A Personalized Curriculum

The new MBA curriculum was proposed by an 11-member task force of faculty, students, and alums led by Saloner, the Jeffrey S. Skoll Professor of Electronic Commerce, Strategic Management, and Economics. “We decided we didn’t want to tinker at the margins,” said Saloner. “We wanted to propose something that was pretty bold and sweeping. We think this fits the bill.”

The new model creates a personalized experience for students with increased academic advising. It encourages intellectual depth, emphasizes leadership development, and expands global content. It also capitalizes on the School’s relatively small size. “It’s going to be a fantastic way for Stanford to differentiate itself from other business schools,” said Sean Harrington, second-year MBA student and cochair of the student academic committee.

One of the challenges the task force addressed was ensuring that every student is engaged and challenged by his or her education. “We’re dealing with a very diverse group of students by way of background and experience, not by way of ability,” said Saloner. “We have some who have as many as six years on Wall Street, and then we have some who were liberal arts majors and spent three years in the Peace Corps. There will be a base-level course in each required subject, which is the course we have now, but those with more experience in that course area will take a different level.”

A new Critical Analytical Thinking course, each section having only 20 or fewer students, is designed to provide advising for academic placement while helping students understand issues of general management and how their other courses fit together. It will be one of eight such courses required in the first year. “When you’re deep into the financial accounting behind pensions, you’re so focused on one particular element, you can’t understand why that’s important to you as a manager,” said Harrington. “Hopefully, this intro will show students the impact.” A Strategic Leadership course will encourage students to begin thinking early about their own leadership style and skills.

Expanded global content with more international cases will be a hallmark of the new curriculum. Most important, MBA students will be required to participate in an international experience during their two years—an internship, study trip, student exchange, or service-learning trip. “We think it’s a great step,” said Advisory Council member Gene Sykes, MBA ’84, a managing director at Goldman Sachs. “We have been saying the GSB didn’t do enough to address how intensively competitive the global environment is and how companies are now working across borders almost seamlessly.”

Lecturer Leo Linbeck III, MBA ’94, who is also CEO of Houston-based Aquinas Corp., says the new curriculum is an opportunity to change the way management education is taught. “It’s hard to overstate the opportunity here,” he said. “There will be a lot of work to get the implementation right, but I think it is revolutionary.”

New Campus

One key point of implementation will be creating an environment to accommodate curricular changes and increased cross-campus interaction. The campus—to be known as the Knight Management Center—is expected to include eight buildings around three quadrangles that will provide flexible space for varied class sizes. It will be built across the street from the Schwab Residential Center. Planned for completion by 2011, it will replace three existing buildings, the oldest of which was dedicated in 1966. The University will eventually allocate the old location to other uses.

Plans call for a library, a 450-seat auditorium, spaces for dining and socializing, faculty and staff offices, and a parking facility. While a final design is not yet ready, the facilities will be equipped with state-of-the-art instructional technology and cover some 81,000 square feet more than the existing campus.

“All these changes came about as a group of faculty challenged itself, with graduates and students providing feedback,” Joss said. “Generous alumni have demonstrated early their belief in what we are trying to accomplish. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for all of us to help reshape management education to address the demands that will be placed upon tomorrow’s leaders and organizations.”

Introducing The Stanford Challenge, a university-wide campaign focused on seeking solutions and educating leaders. Every gift to the GSB counts toward The Stanford Challenge. For more information see www.gsb.stanford.edu/giving.

FEATURES IN THIS ISSUE

The Stanford Challenge

Top Business School Priorities

• $85 million in unrestricted annual giving through the Business School Fund. These gifts are essential to providing the flexibility to seed new ideas and respond to opportunities.

• $95 million to support excellence in faculty research and teaching, including the addition of faculty to support the new curriculum.

• $30 million for student financial aid to stay competitive in recruiting the best students.

• $40 million to invest in the ambitious agendas of the School’s four centers in entrepreneurship, global management, leadership, and social innovation.

• $250 million toward the construction of a new campus.

Stanford Business