World Economic Forum Aided by Saïd Business School Team: MBA News

A team of MBA students, alumni and doctoral students from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, have seen the fruits of their year-long collaboration with the World Economic Forum published with the release of the ‘Outlook on the Global Agenda 2014’ report.

The report highlights ten key issues that global leaders will face in the coming year, as well as providing insights into societal complexities at both regional and global level that are aimed at helping policymakers to formulate appropriate responses.

It is the annual flagship publication of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council, drawing on a survey of more than 1,500 experts across its network of 86 councils. And for this latest release, they enlisted the help of Saïd Business School to bring about a redesign.

“Students on the Oxford MBA learn to critically evaluate how the world is changing and the issues and challenges this presents to business, economies and societies. It’s this deep thinking on critical global issues that makes our students attractive to high impact global agencies”, said Saïd Business School’s MBA director, Stephan Chambers in a press release for the school.

Global Agenda Council widens scope of its annual survey

Three current MBAs, two alumni and two doctoral students formed the Saïd Business School team which worked with the Global Agenda Council over several months. The remit was to assess the approach and methodology of its annual survey as well as to advise on the structure of the ensuing ‘Outlook on the Global Agenda’ report.

Previously treated as two separate products, the team first advised the council to combine them as one report to maximize its impact. After then looking at the network of global thought leaders available to the Global Agenda Council, the team concluded that the survey’s scope could be widened to analyze not just the key issues which leaders will face in 2014 but also why these issues matter, who they will affect and, crucially, who is in a position to address them.

Oxford’s team was delighted to have been a part of the project, not least because of the opportunity it gave to put a specialist skill set to good use.

“Global leadership is a distinctive and critical skill set. The World Economic Forum-Oxford project was a chance to see how this kind of expertise works in practice across a wide range of sectors”, said Elizabeth Filippouli, one of the MBA alumni involved in the project and the founder and CEO of Global Thinkers.

The ‘Outlook on the Global Agenda 2014’ report was launched on November 15 at the World Economic Forum headquarters in Geneva.

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