jerseyshorejohnny
Well-known member
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Sep 17, 2015
CESARE MAINARDI, Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management:
At a time when the world desperately needs more expansive thinkers than ever before (and when higher education in the U.S. has never been more expensive), too many schools are churning out narrow specialists ill-equipped to deal with the vast complexity of today’s uber-global, rapidly changing reality. Harking back to the guilds of the Middle Ages, too many institutions are ivory tower jousting arenas for internal competition and traditionalism, rather than breeding grounds for innovation, problem solving and world-changing points of view.
When guilds were originally established in the Middle Ages, their primary purpose was to build and protect the value of skills and knowledge. Craftsmen allied themselves to essentially create firewalls around their primary offerings to the market. These inward-looking groups were able to impose discipline on their practice: enforcing standards, mentoring and training new entrants, and refining and building on old expertise to create new, more valuable knowledge. In contrast, early universities were hallowed ground for higher-order thinking and the advancement of the human condition.
Unfortunately, a guild mentality now seems to persist within universities, where thinking is forced into boxes in traditional departments such as economics, biology, mechanical engineering and history. Like a guild, each of these departments looks to become world-class at what it does. Each has its own set of mandates to fulfill and each has a very rational and plausible internal rationale for asserting its primacy.
Unfortunately, this mentality often creates the opposite of excellence. Departments end up battling each other—for funding, for the time and attention of university leaders, and for the most talented people. The result is unproductive internal competition, and worse, the development of graduates who are rewarded for narrow expertise and completely unprepared to solve the vexing multidisciplinary, complex problems that pepper the real world.
The modern job of higher education is to prepare graduates to lead in a world where change is the only certainty – nimble innovators who will adapt and thrive in a future we can’t even imagine today. How do we do that? By disrupting the entrenched approach to education and ending the guild-like silo mentality. Ideas that will change the world don’t fit into neat little boxes, and students shouldn’t be forced to either.
Motivate academics to work on cross-disciplinary issues and collaborate on big ideas. Most academics are currently incentivized to focus on narrow academic questions that populate the pages of academic journals and achieve little else. We need to reframe the focus and identify the fundamental academic questions associated with the most important business, social and economic challenges that businesses, communities, even countries, are dealing with today. Then we need to create innovative grant structures, programs and other incentives to encourage each institution’s best thinkers to work together – across departments and disciplines – to address and advance these issues.
Break down institutional barriers. Individual incentives aren’t enough. We also need to break down structural barriers to collaboration. This can be jump-started by establishing permanent or temporary institutes to mobilize the best talent on and off campus to solve a complex problem. Or it can be achieved by putting the entire institution “on a mission.” This is what’s being done at the Kellogg School of Management (where I teach and sit on the Global Advisory Board). The burning issue we’ve chosen is “driving growth.” The school has refocused every aspect of its work on developing brave leaders who inspire growth in people, organizations and markets. Change is a team sport and more schools need formal and highly visible mechanisms to harness the power of collaboration to drive their thought leadership and show their students how to work and think like this.
Make it real for students. Change happens when teams of top problem-solvers work together to deliver practical solutions to tough problems. To inspire this way of working and bridge the often troublesome gap between learning and doing, some schools are now forcing students out of the classroom and into the fire. Consider the FIELD Global Immersion course at Harvard Business School or the Innovation for Humanity Project at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. These programs send students to places such as Peru, India and Rwanda to partner with businesses and organizations to build and deliver solutions to real-world problems. This kind of practical education helps produce more collaborative, innovative graduates who are global thinkers, wired to think on their feet, and deliver transformational results.
These are just three ideas. It will obviously take thousands of ideas brought to life in schools around the globe to effect real, lasting and revolutionary educational change. It will require a massive feat of innovation and collaboration that’s already under way at leading institutions.
And the stakes have never been higher. It’s estimated the amount of human knowledge currently doubles every 12 months and some predict it will soon be every 12 hours. Equipping graduates to understand, navigate, and channel this tsunami of information with a practical and cutting-edge combination of knowledge and know how is essential to our collective futures.
Cesare R. Mainardi is an adjunct professor of strategy at the Kellogg School of Management.
Sep 17, 2015
CESARE MAINARDI, Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management:
At a time when the world desperately needs more expansive thinkers than ever before (and when higher education in the U.S. has never been more expensive), too many schools are churning out narrow specialists ill-equipped to deal with the vast complexity of today’s uber-global, rapidly changing reality. Harking back to the guilds of the Middle Ages, too many institutions are ivory tower jousting arenas for internal competition and traditionalism, rather than breeding grounds for innovation, problem solving and world-changing points of view.
When guilds were originally established in the Middle Ages, their primary purpose was to build and protect the value of skills and knowledge. Craftsmen allied themselves to essentially create firewalls around their primary offerings to the market. These inward-looking groups were able to impose discipline on their practice: enforcing standards, mentoring and training new entrants, and refining and building on old expertise to create new, more valuable knowledge. In contrast, early universities were hallowed ground for higher-order thinking and the advancement of the human condition.
Unfortunately, a guild mentality now seems to persist within universities, where thinking is forced into boxes in traditional departments such as economics, biology, mechanical engineering and history. Like a guild, each of these departments looks to become world-class at what it does. Each has its own set of mandates to fulfill and each has a very rational and plausible internal rationale for asserting its primacy.
Unfortunately, this mentality often creates the opposite of excellence. Departments end up battling each other—for funding, for the time and attention of university leaders, and for the most talented people. The result is unproductive internal competition, and worse, the development of graduates who are rewarded for narrow expertise and completely unprepared to solve the vexing multidisciplinary, complex problems that pepper the real world.
The modern job of higher education is to prepare graduates to lead in a world where change is the only certainty – nimble innovators who will adapt and thrive in a future we can’t even imagine today. How do we do that? By disrupting the entrenched approach to education and ending the guild-like silo mentality. Ideas that will change the world don’t fit into neat little boxes, and students shouldn’t be forced to either.
Motivate academics to work on cross-disciplinary issues and collaborate on big ideas. Most academics are currently incentivized to focus on narrow academic questions that populate the pages of academic journals and achieve little else. We need to reframe the focus and identify the fundamental academic questions associated with the most important business, social and economic challenges that businesses, communities, even countries, are dealing with today. Then we need to create innovative grant structures, programs and other incentives to encourage each institution’s best thinkers to work together – across departments and disciplines – to address and advance these issues.
Break down institutional barriers. Individual incentives aren’t enough. We also need to break down structural barriers to collaboration. This can be jump-started by establishing permanent or temporary institutes to mobilize the best talent on and off campus to solve a complex problem. Or it can be achieved by putting the entire institution “on a mission.” This is what’s being done at the Kellogg School of Management (where I teach and sit on the Global Advisory Board). The burning issue we’ve chosen is “driving growth.” The school has refocused every aspect of its work on developing brave leaders who inspire growth in people, organizations and markets. Change is a team sport and more schools need formal and highly visible mechanisms to harness the power of collaboration to drive their thought leadership and show their students how to work and think like this.
Make it real for students. Change happens when teams of top problem-solvers work together to deliver practical solutions to tough problems. To inspire this way of working and bridge the often troublesome gap between learning and doing, some schools are now forcing students out of the classroom and into the fire. Consider the FIELD Global Immersion course at Harvard Business School or the Innovation for Humanity Project at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. These programs send students to places such as Peru, India and Rwanda to partner with businesses and organizations to build and deliver solutions to real-world problems. This kind of practical education helps produce more collaborative, innovative graduates who are global thinkers, wired to think on their feet, and deliver transformational results.
These are just three ideas. It will obviously take thousands of ideas brought to life in schools around the globe to effect real, lasting and revolutionary educational change. It will require a massive feat of innovation and collaboration that’s already under way at leading institutions.
And the stakes have never been higher. It’s estimated the amount of human knowledge currently doubles every 12 months and some predict it will soon be every 12 hours. Equipping graduates to understand, navigate, and channel this tsunami of information with a practical and cutting-edge combination of knowledge and know how is essential to our collective futures.
Cesare R. Mainardi is an adjunct professor of strategy at the Kellogg School of Management.