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About the GSB

 

From the Dean

State of the School, October 2007

Dear Friends,

One of my favorite stories about why people choose to attend the Stanford Graduate School of Business comes from Jean-Pierre Garnier, MBA ’74, now CEO of GlaxoSmithKline. He once told a gathering of alumni in London that as a young Frenchman, “I thought they were inventing the future out there on the West Coast. I had to go.” He was exactly right.

Stanford is in one of the most innovative and dynamic economic centers on the planet. In the field of management education itself, the Stanford Graduate School of Business has been at the forefront of curricular innovation for decades. It has been the academic home of three Nobel laureates since 1990. Textbooks by our faculty are regularly used by other business schools, our case studies are sold worldwide, and multidisciplinary courses like Biodesign Innovation have been replicated at peer institutions. Our faculty members break ground with new teaching formats such as Charles O’Reilly’s just-introduced Leadership in Focus videocase series, which the Wall Street Journal highlighted in its Theory & Practice column.

With a new MBA curriculum now in place, I can report to you with confidence that our leadership in management education has never been stronger.

Our New Curriculum Is In Place

More personal advising, more leadership development, more global content

In September, we rolled out a new MBA educational model that builds on the School’s strategically small size―less than half that of most of our peer schools―and allows us to better prepare our students for managing and leading in the 21st century. All of us are grateful to our dedicated faculty for putting incredible effort into retooling the curriculum in just 15 months. The new program has many innovations, but I would like to highlight four: 1) a comprehensive new introduction to general management, 2) greater personalization and intellectual challenge, 3) increased leadership development, and 4) increased global content.

First, entering students are getting off to a fast start with a program of fall-quarter courses that gives them a strong sense of the challenges and responsibilities of general management. All students begin with a common portfolio of eight General Management Perspectives courses, including Strategic Leadership and Ethical Analysis.

Second, greater personalization is reflected in the new 16-person Critical Analytical Thinking seminar, through which students will receive individual advising while tackling multifaceted readings and writing assignments. This first-quarter course will give students a sense of the complexity and scope of general management. Topics include:

Should Google amend its China internet policies? Did someone kill the electric vehicle? Should health care and education be publicly produced or privately produced? Students will write a weekly paper, graded by professional coaches for writing skill as well as by professors for content. Our aim is to teach students how to build well-constructed arguments.

Following the first quarter, students, with advising from their seminar professors, will be placed into one of three classes offered for each of 11 General Management Foundation courses such as finance and operations. In the past, core subjects were mostly one-size-fits-all. This more tailored approach addresses the diversity of student backgrounds―from hedge funds to the Peace Corps―and allows each person to maximize his or her learning. A rich array of electives, including student-driven Bass Seminars, limited to 30 or fewer participants, will follow the second year.

Third, there is more leadership development. For the first time, all incoming students will participate in Leadership Laboratories, a series of team-based exercises, personal coaching, and feedback. This hands-on program is an integral part of the Strategic Leadership course that examines leadership cases and styles. The labs will culminate in an Executive Challenge in December, when more than 150 senior alumni are expected to join real-world simulations for all students involving 48 teams of 8 participants each.

Fourth, there is more global content. The fall Global Context of Management course will teach students how to develop both a business and a cultural understanding of countries unfamiliar to them. It also will give them frameworks for understanding strategic management in an international context. For the first time, students will be required to engage in an international experience through a study trip, a service learning trip, or an internship. For example, last year 18 students traveled to Guatemala to study the coffee supply chain. They helped in the harvest and learned about the production of organic coffee and fair trade. Faculty member Garth Saloner led another group to East Africa to study microfinance.

More Collaboration

New joint degrees and the Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship

This past year, we expanded opportunities for students to take greater advantage of the intellectual resources of the University. The Master of Public Policy/MBA is being offered for the first time this fall in conjunction with the School of Humanities and Sciences, along with a new MS in Environment and Resources/MBA that is a collaborative effort with the School of Earth Sciences. These programs complement our established joint degrees, the JD/MBA and MA Education/MBA.

Multidisciplinary interaction between graduate schools has already produced real-world results. For example, in Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability, students from the engineering and business schools created d.light design, a company that manufactures a safe, cheap, and easy-to-power LED light to replace polluting kerosene lamps. This was the second student effort to develop a product of this nature. And in Evaluating Entrepreneurial Opportunities, students cofounded an eco-tourism company.

Similarly, the Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship reflects the School’s leadership in extending our expertise to graduate students from other disciplines. Offered for the second time last summer, the four-week program attracted 75 students from outside the GSB―including the schools of earth sciences, education, engineering, humanities and sciences, law, and medicine―who gained analytical skills and knowledge critical to launching a business.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Sustainability

As we encourage more multidisciplinary thinking, we’ve developed more offerings in the burgeoning area of environmental sustainability, a field where change and innovation are moving rapidly. Our faculty has developed courses such as Environmental Entrepreneurship and the seminar in Business and Environmental Issues. Students may also enroll elsewhere on campus in Environmental Science for Managers and Policy Makers, The Coming Energy Revolution, Global Environmental Ethics, and Economics of Natural Resources.

We bring executives to campus to demonstrate how business can be an active agent in solving challenges. In a talk last year, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard pledged that by 2010 his company will make all its clothing from recycled and recyclable materials. I am always impressed that no matter what field they go into, our graduates try to change the world for the better. In September, for example, Oprah featured Jessica Jackley Flannery, MBA ’07, and her husband, Matthew, for their efforts with Kiva.org, a startup microlender in 37 countries financed by everyday people, $25 at a time. More than $12 million in online loans have been raised to date. Jessica recounted how hearing a speech on microlending by Grameen Bank founder and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who visited the Business School, mobilized her to embark on the Kiva startup.

In September, faculty member Bill Barnett directed our first executive education program in Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability. Last April more than 200 corporate and nonprofit leaders attended our first conference on “Socially and Environmentally Responsible Supply Chains: Making the Business Case,” codirected by the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum and the Center for Social Innovation. It will be offered again next April. Alumni also have an opportunity to join a Back-to-School Program January 11–13, 2008, called “Reduce Your Ecological Footprint: Choose Environmentally Sustainable Business Practices.”

New Campus for a New Vision

A commitment to sustainability also has been evident in the planning for our exciting new Business School campus, to be called the Knight Management Center in honor of Nike founder Phil Knight, MBA ’62, who provided the lead gift for the anticipated $275-million project. To fulfill our vision for academic innovation, the new campus must support a growing diversity of learning contexts. We need space for seminars, labs, simulations, team-based projects, small group breakouts, large lectures, and technology-enabled interactions, as well as more traditional case discussion rooms. Opened in 1966, the current GSB South Building cannot accommodate the varied instructional spaces that today’s and tomorrow’s curriculum demands. Indeed, our peers are already ahead.

Wharton, Chicago, and Michigan have new facilities; MIT has started construction; and Harvard has undergone substantial building and remodeling.

Our goal is to build a sustainable campus that will support us for 75 years or more. We are aiming for the highest Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification. Some of our targets include reducing water usage by at least 30 percent and exceeding current energy efficiency standards by at least 40 percent.

By pushing boundaries as educational innovators, we are demonstrating the role universities can play in solving important world problems while educating tomorrow’s leaders. We’ve made a commitment to both teaching innovation and living it. The School is leading the way in curricular as well as physical plant improvements that will ensure that future generations receive the finest management education available.

Sincerely,

Robert Joss
Philip H. Knight Professor and Dean
Sloan '66, MBA '67, PhD '70

If you would like to share your thoughts, email me at joss_robert@gsb.stanford.edu

If you would like to tap into the ideas and activities at the Business School, go to https://alumni.gsb.stanford.edu/lifelonglearning/