Yesterday, Philip Delves Broughton, author of What They Teach You at Harvard, wrote an opinion piece in The Economist that questioned the value of MBAs. In it, the accompanying diagram tracks the fall in Return on Investment in terms of salaries before and after graduation with an MBA degree.

I think it's telling that it's still seen as acceptable and significant to measure an MBA program by salary increase (if any) simply because it's easy to measure. It's typical of traditional business approaches. In a world where we sorely need meaningful and sustainable innovation, we should be using other measures that better reflect what innovation leaders are capable of achieving during their careers. Most graduates who leave to start companies do so at great decrease in short-terms salary and, instead, trade it equity and much larger long-term gains. In addition, these leaders and innovators are much more likely to create lasting, and more significant value to both economies and societies. How do we measure that? When this is the case, a decrease in salary after graduation is actually a good thing.

I'm not arguing that many traditional MBA programs don't serve students well. I find many lacking any preparation for a future that must be sustainable (socially, ecologically, and financially) as well as profitable and meaningful for customers and citizens, and employees alike. I see very few programs that question the failed economic models of the neoclassical paradigm nor prepare students to function in a world in which these new models must not only be replaced ASAP but where they will need to reflect new understandings of leadership, massively more transparent governance, and a different set of intersecting cultural contexts than the old "salary man" paradigm that was enshrined when the MBA itself was born.

An excellent interview with Michael Shuman, from BALLE.

http://transitionculture.org/2011/02/14/an-interview-with-michael-shuman-if-were-serious-about-localisation-all-of-us-have-to-go-to-business-school/

14 Feb 2011
An Interview with Michael Shuman: if we're serious about localisation, "all of us have to go to Business School"...

Excerpt:

In my mind, we need to make localisation politically attractive across the ideologies. I think one of the places where I depart from a lot of my fellow travellers here in the US is that I spend a lot of time working with and breaking bread with most conservative parts of American society, which put to shame the conservative parts of Europe!

What are the things that they care about? Reducing taxes, freeing markets, getting rid of big government, and so I think that it is very useful to begin to conceptualise localisation politically around those ideas. In point of fact, I think that a lot of the reason we're in the mess we're in right now is that large government agencies and major government subsidies and legal frameworks have made globalisation unwisely and irresponsibly cheap and if we begin to dismantle those, a lot of localisation will occur naturally.

In the US nearly all subsidies are around big things - big oil, big natural gas, big utilities, big cattle, big farms - it's so perverse. Stripping away those things, that conservatives want to do right now, would be a tremendous boost for localisation. Even when you get to the State level it's the same thing. I just finished a study for the Kellogg Foundation where we looked at the three largest economic development programmes within 15 US states, so we looked at 45 programmes in all. What we found, counting the dollars in the grants that went to these various economic development programmes was that 80% of the programmes were giving money to non-local business, that is out of state business attraction or attention.

About a third of them were giving more than 90% of their money to non-local business. So basically, if you abolish economic development as we know it, and save lots of money, which many conservatives are seeing the virtue in, it'll be a huge boost for localisation, because the effect of these subsidies is to make non-local business more competitive, more powerful than local businesses.

The second thing I would say - the second area where this is true - is security law, so this kind of moves into the investment domain and what I've noticed about localisation discussions in the US and Europe and in Australia, (those are the places where I've spent some time), is that things are very much focused on consumption and buy local, produce local and all that is great, but there's been really inadequate discussion about investment. What is perverse, this is true in the US and true in Australia, I don't know for sure about Europe, is that when I go to an audience and I say, "by a show of hands, how many of you are doing your banking at a local bank or credit union?", and almost all the hands go up.... but then when I say, "how many of you have your pension funds in local business?", and all of the hands go down.

The MBA in Design Strategy community had its annual charrette night on Saturday, Feb 12th, 2011.
This year had a twist: competition!
Teams of CCA MBA in Design Strategy (dMBA) students and professionals from the industry squared off in a heated contest of design chops to see who could produce the mightiest game-changing ideas for solving wicked problems.

Round 1 of the Innovation Challenge was to design a solution for one of the following:
• report card for the 21st Century
• clear, easy-to-use sustainability product label
• more sustainable airline flight
• more sustainable shipping options
• health care program to combat obesity
• curriculum to insert into K-12 education
• transportation policy for a suburban city
• new corp structure that prioritizes sustainability
• www.schadenfreude.com website

Round 2 of the charrette was re-ideation and innovation of the Round 1 Challenge winners. The Judges for Round 1 were Nathan Shedroff, Teddy Zmrhal and Susan Worthman. The teams were judged based on originality, feasibility, creativity and sustainability. Round 2 was judged by round 1 judges and round 1 challenge winners.

Pictures from the event night captured by our dMBA students Eric Persha and Jessica Watson:

-By dMBA alumni Erin Mariel Mays.

The research process is no longer linear. The widespread and decentralized availability of data, and the ability of a new generation of Design Researchers to manage and utilize this content, has lead to a new way of conducting research. Those of us entering the profession today are part of the generation known as Digital Natives, born from approximately 1980 to 2000 -- a generation that came of age immersed in information and user-generated content. We see the boundaries between disciplines as fluid and we adopt processes grounded in diverse disciplines, from anthropology and sociology to design and business. Spurred by its newest practitioners, design research has evolved to take on a holistic approach that exploits the convergence of the equally important analog and digital worlds and examines the way in which this interplay can influence how we conduct research. Like the content itself, the way people continuously process, gather, analyze and communicate information has also adapted. It is dynamic, ever changing, agile, and never finished. Traditional social science research processes still play a very critical role in how we conduct research. We are not changing the intention of research, but re-framing the way it's being done by harnessing today's ubiquitous data, tools and social behaviors. This paper addresses the evolving tools and techniques that Digital Natives bring to the discipline and what this shift means for traditional processes in design, strategy and business. We outline strategies for exploiting an abundance of content, dealing with ambiguity to create meaning, and taking advantage of the ongoing multi-directional conversation that technology enables.