Design a Better Business

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Are we teaching business leaders the right skills for today’s dynamic, unpredictable, and yes, exciting environment?

ASK YOURSELF WHAT THE QUESTION IS AND NOT THE ANSWER

If you earned a master’s in Business Administration more than five years ago, you would have studied the prescribed disciplines of marketing, economics, finance, operations, organizational behavior, and leadership through lectures, textbooks, case studies, and group assignments. You would have learned that marketing revolved around four P’s, competition comprised five forces, and strategy boiled down to one of three choices: market leader, fast follower, or low-cost provider. A leader was someone who could communicate the big picture, and managers had operational skills to oversee projects and people. A lot has changed since then. Today, constant change is fueling new disruptors and disruptions, leaving old strategies in the dust.

CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS

Nathan Shedroff is the Founding Chair of the MBA in Design Strategy program at the California College of the Arts. Shedroff envisioned a totally different type of graduate business program that would expose emerging leaders to the mindsets, disciplines, and practices that would allow them to imagine and design better futures that were not only profitable, ...