Fixing the MBA for the Digital Age.....

The authors of this article in the #harvardbusinessreview of Nov'21, were pondering the update that MBA programs need in the Digital Era. They deserve congratulations, for the utter honesty in asking the question, and also eliciting the impact of digital on business as we know it.

Let me for context, put on record that my opinion comes from a person who is quite the antithesis of an Ivy League MBA preceded by some equally distinguished bachelor’s degree. I am a homespun, rolling stone, seat of the pants entrepreneur who stumbled into public policy and digital health through hard knocks, and sees things from the opposite end. I also do not have any research to quote, just experience and observations.

The article has some telling phrases…..say for example “While MBA curricula are evolving to meet the changing needs of corporations…..”; “This department structure mimics that of a 20th-century automobile or industrial company…..” “The dominant strategy then becomes to establish first-mover advantage, grow your market, and become the global market leader as quickly as possible “Given this background, let’s look at the main departments in a typical MBA program…”

Forgive my saying so, but this still isn’t out of the?box……the truth is; There is no Box ! And until we own that emotionally, we shall continue to address the shift from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge age with tools that belong to the industrial age.

The fact that we describe it as a Digital revolution is at the root of the problem to my mind……digital is merely the tool currently at our disposal perhaps even merely the flavour of the day. The knowledge age will produce more such tools, capable of exponential change.

A look over the shoulder, at the last two decades, will show that all innovation now takes place at the cusp of several disciplines sometimes as many as half a dozen !! Take Digital Health for example…..it is an pot that has Medicine, Healthcare Management, Public Health,?Technology, Governance, Behavioural Sciences rolled into its skill demand not to mention the fact that health being a Non Fungible Domain – culture, geography and environment play a central role as determinants to?it !

Even a Matrix Structure with no hierarchical rigidities for binding fails to address its requirements if several of these disciplines are not ‘in-the-same-brain’. Attempting to transform a nation of 1.4 Billion to Digital Health has afforded some wonderful insights.

The article still talks about re-architecting departments; when it is time to reimagine things at a more fundamental level. The industrial age is truly over…the need isn’t to design and train an employee, the need is to nurture and inspire thought leaders who dare to take on the Unknown-Unknown !

The velocity of change will brook no less !

Education at large, and Management education in particular, has thus far focussed on looking at the human being as a jig in a workshop. Not much distance travelled, from Taylor’s time and motion studies!!

We have emasculated it to suit industrial corporations, removed all traces of humanities, 'de-culturized' it to a point ,where it cannot serve the purpose of cross domain disciplines. Education itself has become an industrial product.

The temptation to use borrowed Templates to solve problems across domains of life is so ingrained into the neural networks of these university grads that they would rather cut the foot to fit the shoe! While that may work in more fungible domains like Banking, Finance and Perhaps Manufacturing – convergence is steadily making it redundant.

The arrogance that Technology and Industrial Age Thought bestowed us with is wreaking untold damage to Homo Sapiens who tends to consume his own myths and dig himself into a hole. All one needs to do is look around!

The US and its adoption of Digital Health is a great example of What is good for the Corporation is not necessarily the best for the People that make up for a nation, or the world.

The Rent Seeking behaviour that is so endemic to Industrial Age B-School Education and its strategic content, has stopped serving humanity.

Look around the globe…most conflicts are based on this rent seeking behaviour. Look at the thought leaders of the day around the world – long past their best by date…still pedalling ideas of dominance and building squatting rights. Quarter-to-Quarter Boardroom thinking makes it impossible for a normal business leader to break his chains that I have discussed above.?Look at what we have done to the Healthcare and Lifesciences industry and the havoc that it has wreaked a s result.

Just a handful of entrepreneurial exceptions who escaped B-Schools for the most part, are driving the change – good or bad!!

B-Schools, and Education in general required a complete imagination.?We need to restore Humanities, Arts and Culture, Literature back into education so that people may grow in time.

Most of?us realise that the world changes at a velocity today, which makes what you studied dated before you leave school.

We teach them to deal with certainties which no longer exist. What they are required to deal with is something that is still evolving – DevOps, if you like.

More than that, It needs new masters, if any at all.

Let us worry about building human beings, business will take care of itself anyway.

As Frederick Douglass said, "It is easier to build strong children than repair broken men"

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