The Exec-Ed Zone

In an interview in this month's European Business Forum  (EBF Online) , the magazine of CEMS (Community of European Management Schools), Finn Junge-Jensen the President of Copenhagen Business School talks about the benefits of having philosophers and anthropologists in the school's faculty:

 "Unless you have a broader range of disciplines, you are not able to focus on the complex problems facing companies, public organisations and international organisations.... Anthropology, for example, is important if you talk about user-driven innovation....It’s not only about listening to what the users want, because very often they don’t know what they want until they get it. It’s also about being involved with the user community, having constant dialogue and feedback..."

What Junge-Jensen is describing is not unique to Copenhagen Business School - but it is an asset available to only the larger, multi-faculty universities. Stand alone business schools and those from smaller universities do not have the breadth of academic disciplines to draw from to add the contextual depth that these new approaches can offer. This added contextual depth is also a USP for business schools as they face up to the competitive challenge being presented to them by consultancies and high-level training organisations. There will be few consultants at AT Kearney, Bain & Co or DDI that can offer a professorial level of teaching in anthropological research and its insights into marketing behaviour as applied to consumer goods, I would imagine.

If schools can make this discipline cross-over relevant and effective then they will again be able to offer a highly exciting level of extra value to their programs that the newer entrants to the sector will find very difficult to match. They will also be able to add a level of colour and variety to their programs that will make them more memorable and rewarding - and therefore, possibly, more likely to be implemented.

There would be an irony if the most effective programs turned out to be the ones which focused on the behaviour of Guayanan tribes people over those that dwelt on experiences of a Procter & Gamble case study.