INSEAD is the No. 2 business school in the world. Its dean says grads have to leave better in 3 essential areas

Choosing to get an MBA is a significant investment of money, time, and energy. To get a sense of what kind of ROI you can expect, you need to look at whether your B-school of choice is keeping up with the constantly changing landscape of business and technology. A great tool that can help: LinkedIn’s first global Top MBA list, assembled from exclusive data measuring how well alumni excel in the workplace.?

For the latest This is Working, I talk to Francisco Veloso, Dean of INSEAD, No. 2 on our list, about his approach to modernizing the MBA.?

Francisco studied physics and got a PhD in Technology, Management and Policy from MIT before embarking on his academic career as a professor at Carnegie Mellon, later becoming dean of Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics, and Imperial College Business School (No. 34 on our list).?

INSEAD had long had a reputation as a great global school before Fransico joined. Its 1,300 students across campuses spanning three continents come from all levels and industries adn bring their local business cultures with them. One year into his tenure, he’s focused on one thing that he thinks will tie all business leaders together, no matter where they’re growing their careers: a need to focus on sustainability, responsibility and be masters of AI.?

Here's how he sees each:

Responsibility

In his view, teaching responsible leadership is complementary to the main reason students are after an MBA. “They are business savvy. So they're making an investment in their education, in their capabilities, and therefore they want to reap the returns of that investment.?

But, he also says the students have a responsibility to take their learnings and capabilities back to the business world--and make change for the better. "It's not just about what you can do for yourself," he says.

Sustainability

Francisco emphasizes the importance of integrating sustainability into the core curriculum, making sure it’s not a side topic but a thread that runs through everything they’re learning. This approach prepares students to lead in a world where they have to consider costs and impacts that other generations might not have, or might have assumed someone in the ESG division would handle. That sustainability drive was that first curriculum-wide change at INSEAD since 2017, not an easy process.

”We looked at the 14 core courses that our students have to go through and we said, ‘Okay, our core courses need all to have some element of sustainability, so that our students can understand how this is featured by a strategic lenses, by an operation lenses, by an organizational behavior lenses, by a finance lenses,’ and not, ‘Oh, there's this kind of side thing, which is sustainability.’ No. This is part of business, and so we need to have these various lenses through which you can look at that.”

To ensure students have internalized the above lessons, they all take part in a capstone project in which they’re put into a simulation. As Francisco explains, “They have to think about how they move that business forward, towards a more sustainable journey also while at the same time being profitable, and responsible. So, it's that combination of the knowledge and the action so that when they go into business, they can be out there immediately saying, ‘Oh, I know how to tackle this.’”

AI

Finally, there’s AI, which Francisco said has to be central to not just the students’ education but the faculty’s approach to teaching. He envisions AI enabling personalized learning journeys, and enhancing research and teaching capabilities. How? He’s not 100% sure but he’s pushing instructors and students to make it central to their efforts. Similar to the capstone work, they’ll learn by doing.

“We need to make sure that they're using [AI] themselves in the way they learn, the way they write reports, in the way that they prepare their courses, because they will be doing that when they go back to business. So they need to be completely prepared and completely comfortable with that if we want to be training them to be at the cutting edge.

“The faculty may have some tutors to help them also navigate and manage some of that, some of the curriculum. …I would argue that the way that we would organize that education is going to be quite different from the way that we do that… The role of the faculty member will evolve, it will become more of a mentor, a guider, a helper to create the right settings, to set up the right challenges for that learning journey, to curate a learning perspective and to integrate these various views into a learning journey that you can have when you come to a business school. And if you do that properly with the right tools, I think it can be an amazing learning opportunity, which whether that's disruptive or not, it will depend on how you judge it.”

Francisco isn’t alone on this path. There were few business schools in our list who weren’t thinking about AI in how they teach and train. But where INSEAD stands out is doing it with an extremely global and philosophical focus: Students will go back to their home countries, and when they do, they’ll bring sustainable practices to companies around the globe, influencing policies and colleagues.?

I’d love to hear from you: What guiding principles should MBA programs be teaching. If you are thinking of going to b-school or an alumni of one, what do you hope to learn or wish you’d have learned? Tell me in the comments.?

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On LinkedIn’s video series, This is Working, I sit down with top figures from the world of business and beyond to surface what they've learned about solving difficult problems. See more from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett, Avelo Airlines founder Andrew Levy, Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel, Slutty Vegan founder Pinky Cole, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, CVS CEO Karen Lynch, PwC’s Bob Moritz, Merck KGaA CEO Belén Garijo, Athletic Brewing CEO Bill Shufelt, AI leader Fei-Fei Li, former US President Barack Obama, filmmaker Spike Lee, Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva, cosmetics legend Bobbi Brown, F1’s Toto Wolff, and many more.