This is a question I have been dealing with deeply in recent years. Here is how I came to it...
I was accidentally exposed to the world of art all over again. I had painted in my early years...as artistic expression and as a way to bond with family. I am amazed now at what I actually did of artwork over the years. I did not forget it ever, but the career got very busy with the world of building the university, its development, quality, recognition....the normal things in the life cycle of a young university. But with all the training as a social scientist, research, and publishing, I never lost the passion....
McLuhan said "the medium is the message". Sometimes the message is the messenger. The two get so involved, and we get so involved, that it may not ever matter, or it may be revealed later, but we are delivered to certain understandings. In my case, this happened.
Art spoke out. It lit my fires for creativity like something of a combination of a bonfire and an eternal flame. Then I looked at the arts profession, and the field, and schools which specialise in fine arts, music, and media. I started to see it, and the picture was not that pretty. I mean for us business schools, not that pretty.
Artists and art school communities live for one thing....exhibitions. Music scholars and schools live for performances. Media folks live for productions. Just check out the websites. These drive the professions and they all have one thing in common, which business schools do not have at all.
It is a physical, permanent contribution to this world, and civilization. Visual in nature, maybe digital, but stuff that hangs on walls forever, fills stages ongoing with the sounds of music, and media which entertains as far as and as long as people want to be entertained.
Business schools teach people and leaders to be better at business which fuels the human workforce for our economies, but what do we have in the end to hang on the wall? To put on a stage, to fill the screen?
PowerPoint presentations and business plans that are not at all like paintings, or songs or movies. Most of our business products have a half-life....the shelf-life is as long as the business deal or as much as anyone is willing to pay. Over the past two decades, business schools have been as much the place of self-centered deal creation and egotistical eliteness as they have been of service to the global village or the societies of our time. Wall Street nearly imploded and nearly brought down the global economy because of exquisite creativity of the wrong kind. Bernie Madoff is the king of this side of the empire. Hundreds have faced federal indictments for insider trading this year alone and many have business degrees from top business schools.
Thus, what is to be the lasting heritage of a business school? What is our equivalent of a painting, an exhibition, a symphony, a Broadway play, a major film?
That's the challenge, plain and simple. Not to diminish all of our collective efforts or even our own. The purpose of my challenge is to stimulate us in possibly a direction which could claim someday to be so proud to be able to show itself under the lights. Not the beams of law enforcement, but the lights in the eyes of children and mothers and fathers who embrace their daughter or son having just graduated with a business degree. The light of anticipation of something great that we all can actually see....
Like maybe the creation of a company!
A school? A cause? A global project, A global........
What will be our heritage?
I was accidentally exposed to the world of art all over again. I had painted in my early years...as artistic expression and as a way to bond with family. I am amazed now at what I actually did of artwork over the years. I did not forget it ever, but the career got very busy with the world of building the university, its development, quality, recognition....the normal things in the life cycle of a young university. But with all the training as a social scientist, research, and publishing, I never lost the passion....
McLuhan said "the medium is the message". Sometimes the message is the messenger. The two get so involved, and we get so involved, that it may not ever matter, or it may be revealed later, but we are delivered to certain understandings. In my case, this happened.
Art spoke out. It lit my fires for creativity like something of a combination of a bonfire and an eternal flame. Then I looked at the arts profession, and the field, and schools which specialise in fine arts, music, and media. I started to see it, and the picture was not that pretty. I mean for us business schools, not that pretty.
Artists and art school communities live for one thing....exhibitions. Music scholars and schools live for performances. Media folks live for productions. Just check out the websites. These drive the professions and they all have one thing in common, which business schools do not have at all.
It is a physical, permanent contribution to this world, and civilization. Visual in nature, maybe digital, but stuff that hangs on walls forever, fills stages ongoing with the sounds of music, and media which entertains as far as and as long as people want to be entertained.
Business schools teach people and leaders to be better at business which fuels the human workforce for our economies, but what do we have in the end to hang on the wall? To put on a stage, to fill the screen?
PowerPoint presentations and business plans that are not at all like paintings, or songs or movies. Most of our business products have a half-life....the shelf-life is as long as the business deal or as much as anyone is willing to pay. Over the past two decades, business schools have been as much the place of self-centered deal creation and egotistical eliteness as they have been of service to the global village or the societies of our time. Wall Street nearly imploded and nearly brought down the global economy because of exquisite creativity of the wrong kind. Bernie Madoff is the king of this side of the empire. Hundreds have faced federal indictments for insider trading this year alone and many have business degrees from top business schools.
Thus, what is to be the lasting heritage of a business school? What is our equivalent of a painting, an exhibition, a symphony, a Broadway play, a major film?
That's the challenge, plain and simple. Not to diminish all of our collective efforts or even our own. The purpose of my challenge is to stimulate us in possibly a direction which could claim someday to be so proud to be able to show itself under the lights. Not the beams of law enforcement, but the lights in the eyes of children and mothers and fathers who embrace their daughter or son having just graduated with a business degree. The light of anticipation of something great that we all can actually see....
Like maybe the creation of a company!
A school? A cause? A global project, A global........
What will be our heritage?
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