Predictions for 2015: Business Schools and Beyond

As we settle into 2015, it’s natural to wonder what the year to come will hold (this is what happened last year, by the way). We can expect to see a solar aircraft circumnavigating the globe for the first time, the reactivation of the Large Hadron Collider at double its previous energy and the world’s first advertisement on the moon. It’s also the International Year of Soils, according to the UN, and, of course, is the year Back to the Future II is set – so we can expect hoverboards to be a key trend, naturally.

But what can we expect in the world of business education, and business in general? We spoke to faculty members and staff at eight top schools from around the world to find out what trends they anticipate in the year to come…

What will 2015 hold?

MBA hiring will be strong again this year. And many of our graduates are opting for startup careers over more traditional corporate offers.

Julia Min Hwang, assistant dean for the career management group & corporate engagement, Haas School of Business 

In recent years the highly competitive private equity industry was the on-trend aspiration for MBA applicants. This remains an area of interest, but we have seen a big increase in candidates hoping to move into social entrepreneurship after graduating, utilizing our strong entrepreneurship concentration and resources. The trend of increasing interest in the non-consulting and banking ‘corporate’ industry sector remains strong. We are seeing good numbers of applicants from the sectors for which we have established new scholarships hoping to draw in more talent. In addition to our existing regional, military, general and finance scholarships, we are now offering awards for applicants from engineering & technology, energy, healthcare, entrepreneurship. We are also seeing a small but significant group of candidates interested in luxury and retail, in line with our luxury program on the MBA, and other new scholarships.

David Simpson, admissions director for MBA & Masters in Finance, London Business School (read more about Europe's number one school according to academics and employers)

IMD is in the heart of Europe and we’ve seen turmoil all around us. Will Greece exit the eurozone, will the European Bank turn the economy around and will Switzerland continue to keep its head out of water? If I could answer all of those questions, I’d be in investing rather than education! But what I do know is that 2015 will be a return to human interaction. Trendy online education is spiraling downward and those that succeed in the future will reestablish a human bond to support online activity. Goodbye MOOCs! And what we know a lot at IMD is executive education. For executive education providers, courses and trainings will have to be more customized and adapted to business needs. No longer can educators package together a course on something as general as marketing. Development programs will specifically need to target the needs of the client and particular situations that their companies are facing. Likewise with the MBA; students in degree programs are going to expect to be given a path closer to business and it’s our job to get them out of the classrooms to make sure that happens.

Dominique Turpin, president, IMD

Business schools will continue to look for greater innovation and more seriously consider the potential for disruptive innovation in our industry. MOOCs, online courses by superstar faculty and a need for less theory and more practice-oriented research and teaching are areas that B-Schools will make more progress on in 2015. It is going to be a challenging year, things seem to be on the mend in the US but Europe remains in trouble, as does Japan.  The emerging world continues to deliver on growth but the key players are evolving.  It is a ‘hang on to your hats’ kind of year.

Karl Moore, associate professor of strategy and organization, Desautels Faculty of Management

For business schools, 2015 will be the year of belt-tightening. No increasing of fees anymore, broader choices for candidates, and more consolidation among traditional schools and outside providers of educational services. In the wider business world, the US and China will lead the world economy to a ‘new normal’: lower growth, but growth nevertheless. More governments will run out of money and lose credibility. Demographics will become more important topics, ranging from migration to aging and financing of healthcare and pensions.

Hellmut Schutte, dean, CEIBS

We know from research on management fashions (and fads...) that trends in business come and go in cycles. We also know that ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ trends alternate. ‎Since we are coming out of a period with much emphasis on cost control and managing the numbers, I suspect that we will see a return to an interest in the management of people, and people as a source of competitive advantage. However, at the same time, we see that many are skeptical of anything that reeks like management hype – which is probably why the market for business books has all but collapsed – perhaps because many big corporations have failed so badly over the past six years. I myself have noticed that executives nowadays often ask (and rightly so), "What's the evidence of that?" and "How does that play out in the long run?" Evidence-based management – also when it comes to the management of people – will be a welcome new trend, at the expense of business alchemy, in 2015.

Freek Vermeulen, associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship, London Business School

It looks like oil prices are going to be low throughout most or all of 2015.  Among other effects, this is going to drive wealth creation in the world from natural resources to knowledge-based industries.  That, in turn, will put a premium upon innovation, and reward greater collaboration and openness among firms in industry.

Henry Chesbrough, adjunct professor and faculty director of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, Haas School of Business

We find that prospective MBA students are demanding responsible management to be woven into the entire MBA curriculum. It is a trend which has developed over the past few years in the wake of the financial crisis, and we expect demand to rise further in 2015. The current generation of MBA students are in it for the long haul and their priorities are not first and foremost on making money for themselves, but rather on developing a strategy which sets the company and themselves up for long-term success.

Poul Hedegaard, MBA director, Copenhagen Business School

We expect interest in the technology sector to continue to grow. Students will be looking at opportunities to join large multinational companies and experience working in startups from across the technology space including the growing FinTech and AdTech sectors.

David Morris, assistant director and head of corporate sectors, London Business School

The pace of change in global business is relentless and business schools must keep up. Leading schools will calibrate curricula so as to attract and educate the talent sought by the world’s best companies. These are future business leaders that can find business advantage through innovative thinking, harness opportunities in disruptive technologies, value from emerging markets, while being mindful of environmental responsibilities and the greater good. The biggest trend we are seeing at Imperial College Business School is companies coming to us and asking if we can work with them to find value in their big data.

Diane Morgan, associate dean of programs, Imperial College Business School

We will increasingly see the irruption of new players with lower cost structures, tapping into the ocean of opportunities that digitization has unleashed. Some of these new players will deliver appealing value propositions in the elite segment of business education, which will push traditional players to choose between reasserting their value propositions or go into troubled waters.

Ivan Bofarull, director of the Global Intelligence Office, ESADE

Customers are getting used to valuable services that they don't have to pay for (e.g. use of Google maps) or pay a fraction of what traditional services cost (transportation with Uber). How do companies make money of such services? These new services require a good understanding of business models. One of the changes is in how important business model innovation has become. At INSEAD it has become part of the core course on operations management but is also among the most popular electives. In 2015, business in Europe is again going to be very affected by political instability and macroeconomic shocks. After about two years where 'the European crisis' was not a constant headline, the huge swings in oil prices, exchange rates, and political instability, will generate large winners and losers – the US being a winner together with US customers. The losers are Russia and Europe – this time the northern part of Europe will also be affected. Energy-related sectors are losing business in the near term but transportation will benefit. 

Urs Peyer, dean of degree programs and associate professor of finance, INSEAD

In terms of curriculum, we are continuing to build out our offerings related to business analytics (‘big data’) while continuing to explore new approaches to teaching and learning across the core disciplines (e.g. ‘blended’ – online/on-campus courses, ‘flipped’ classrooms, flexible classroom learning spaces).  We are also building new connections between pedagogy in business and the arts (‘collaborative innovation’), engineering and the sciences, and the other professional schools (e.g., law, information, public health) at Berkeley.

Jay Stowsky, senior assistant dean for instruction, Haas School of Business

In 2015 we expect to see more MBA students wanting to set up their own businesses. We have seen a 10% year-on-year increase in MBA applications to London Business School’s Incubator. The Incubator is supported by the Deloitte Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and provides a cash injection, office space for a year and expert mentoring from alumni entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship and innovation are crucial to organizational success in today’s fast-moving business environment. Technology and globalization don’t stand still. And neither do MBA graduates.

Richard Bland, head of employer engagement, London Business School