The Exec-Ed Zone

One of the odd things about education is that the higher up the learning tree you progress the more snobbish, or at least, elitist it becomes. There is no cache attached to which nuresry or pre-school you went to; little importance is given to your primary or elementary institution; in the UK your secondary or high school needs to top the government league tables or if it is a public (private in the US) school then there may be a considerable amount of store associated with its name. When you get to higher education then the name of your university is often vastly more influential when it comes to your career than the subject you major in or even the degree or GPA you achieve. Ivy League schools in the US, Grande Ecoles in France, Oxbridge in the UK - they all mark you out.

This pattern continues with graduate schools and particularly business schools. I have noted before that the ROI on an MBA is not so much tied-up in what you learn on the program but the contacts you make and the alumni network you can tap into on leaving. When it comes to Executive Education you only need to look at the press releases attached to appointments of new CEO's to see "and attended the Advanced Management Programme at London Business School" or wherever being flashed about. So what makes a business school worthy of these badges of honour?

There is a virtuous circle of benefits that a successful business creates for itself. To an extent it is partly a function of longevity - the Harvard's, Stanford's, INSEAD, LBS's and IMD's have been around for a long time and built up their reputations - and alumni networks over time. In addition, especially in the US where the philanthropic discipline of alumni is more established, they have accumulated large endowments which enable them to attract the best academics. However new schools, with the right money, can also attract the right reputation particularly if they are attached to established prestigious institutions - Oxford's Said and Cambridge's Judge schools spring to mind. In the developing world the Indian School if Business (ISB) has built alliances with Wharton, Kellogg and LBS - and built themselves a reputation as the leading school in India in only six years. ISB also benefitted from the benevolent help of a group of influential founders such as McKinsey managing partner Rajat Gupta.

All of this leads me to the point that a graduate school's reputation is cemented together by its alumni network but it is built with the academic reputation of its faculty and their research. So want a great reputation - get great faculty. And how can you tell whether one Professor is "better" than the next? Well, short of signing up to all the specialist journals and reading their peer-reviewed research (not very practical) we are left with prizes/awards and then more worryingly fame. Fame is probably more important. Amartya Sen, the 1998 Nobel Economics laureate is less well-known than his Harvard colleague Michael Porter for instance. You will get more seats filled at a Porter lecture than a Sen one - I would guess.

With this truth in mind, Des Dearlove and Stuart Crainer, visiting faculty at LBS also run Suntop Media which publishes a bi-annual ranking of the top 50 management thinkers. The 2007 list was published last week. The list is made up from a mixture of practitioners (Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Jeff Immelt - even Donald Trump) full-time gurus (Edward de Bono, Steven Covey, Tom Peters) and fully tenured professors, albeit ones with great book sales behind them (Michael Porter, Warren Bennis, Lynda Gratton). The academics/professors make-up 54% of the list; 24% practitioners; 8% management book gurus; and the balance of 7% is left to a miscellaneous collection of a former VP of the USA (Al Gore); the creator of Dilbert (Scott Adams); the editor of the HBR (Thomas Stewart); and the NY Times op-ed columnist Thomas Friedman.

So which schools come out top by having famous faculty - according to The Thinkers 50 at any rate? Here's the balanced scorecard (with due acknowledgment to Kaplan and Norton at position 12!):

• Harvard (Business School 8; GSof Education 1) 9
• London Business School  5
• INSEAD   3
• Ross School of Business, University of Michigan   2
• Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College  2
• Ashridge 1
• Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University 1
• HSE Stockholm 1
• Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University 1
• Marshall Goldsmith School of Business 1
• MIT Sloan School of Management 1
• Stanford GSB 1
• University of Southern California 1

I am intrigued by this breakdown. If I were to expand it to include Nobel laureates and other prestigious prizes and awards (still teaching) aswell as other management thinker lists and then rank the schools by these - would anyone be interested? Let me know - add a comment below.