Rethinking the MBA -- Without Simulations?

This year my employer, Harvard Business Publishing, published Rethinking the MBA:  Business Education at a Crossroads.  Authored by Harvard Business School professors Srikant Dakar and David Garvin and research associate Patrick Cullen, the book provides "an in depth look at the current state of business education and a blueprint for the future".  It identifies eight essential business needs for the future that today's schools fail to teach sufficiently and ultimately illustrates "a diverse set of approaches for responding to these challenges, including: radically redesigning curricula, offering greater customization, linking knowledge to application through experiential learning, and more".  Sounds great, but I was really disappointed at how little simulations-- or any eLearning products, platforms, or tools -- are mentioned in the book.

It's particularly surprising because simulations so clearly represent such a powerful example of one of the book's primary recommended solutions: experiential learning.  See earlier blog post on Experiential Learning Environments for Business Education for the overall context, but specifically simulations can be a valuable part of meeting the eight unmet needs that the authors describe:

• Gaining a global perspective
• Developing leadership skills
• Honing integration skills
• Recognizing organizational realities and implementing effectively
• Acting creatively and innovatively
• Thinking critically and communicating clearly
• Understanding the role, responsibilities, and purpose of business
• Understanding the limits of models and markets

The authors concede that "to make progress in these areas, business schools will need to continue to experiment with, and commit more broadly to, new pedagogies.  Many of these techniques involve hands-on exercises and experiential learning".  I like the categories the authors have identified.  And you can find easy related skills in the literature on simulations.  One of my favorites is Clark Aldrich's description of situational awareness. The authors even share with Aldrich the descriptions of learning by knowing, doing, and being (see more on Aldrich's blog and in my interview with Clark Aldrich).  The book does cite Aldrich in a footnote -- more on that later.

When talking about faculty developing new competencies, the authors recommend strategies that include developing "a critical mass of faculty who are comfortable with melding the worlds of theory and practice". Again, this is precisely what educational simulations are designed to do. Comparisons to medical students are made more than once, and medical schools represent an educational environment rich with computer simulations specifically designed to meld theory and practice. Medical environments showcase one of simulation's most powerful principles: the ability to practice without risk of adverse consequence.  The same is true for business simulations -- even McKinsey believes that simulations may be preferable to "real world" experience due to their ability to hi-light cause and effect (see summary and link at Forio.com).

The book also goes into some detail on the challenge of the decline in student engagement at business schools.  One factor cited is that employers largely rely on MBA programs for their 'screening and selection role', enabling them to hire students early during their MBA tenure with the result that students start to "check-out" of their coursework.  I'm sure this observation bears truth.   But could it also be true that the rote replication of 'paper case' preparation and debrief also begins to drain on the overall engagement factor?  I've seen many second-year MBA students become completely engaged when immersed in innovative, powerful eLearning applications -- simulations among them.  Those of us who work with simulations hope and believe that 'engagement' is not itself the only benefit to these tools, but we certainly believe that it is one of the beneficial side effects.

It's surprising to me that simulations wouldn't be cited more often considering their prevalence in use on the HBS campus.  In addition to our product line of HBP simulations, most of which are used at HBS in addition to classrooms across the world within all tiers of business schools, the HBS campus includes several ground-breaking simulations not distributed by Harvard Business Publishing -- simulations that directly relate to some of the eight challenges listed by the authors.  One would think they would be touted as examples of experiential education that should be replicated by other schools. These include the Venture Capital Game authored by Felda Hardymon, the upTick dynamic markets simulation developed by Josh Coval and Erik Stafford, the Tip of the Iceberg cultural team communication  simulation developed by Tsedal Neeley.  My point is that HBS is a hotbed of educational simulation activity -- if it's not going to be hi-lighted here as an example of the changing face of the MBA curriculum, then where?

The book does mention simulations a few times.  One is a footnote within the chapter on "Meeting the Challenges of Globalization, Leadership, and Integration" (This is the footnote that cites Aldrich's 2004 book, Simulations and the Future of Learning).  The footnote reads:

In a global world, leadership has become increasingly virtual -- those in charge of organizations and teams must often lead and influence from a distance.  Simulations offer an interesting new opportunity to teach leadership by focusing on the leadership environment, speed, sensemaking in ambiguous environments, and managing virtual teams.  Simulations also dovetail well with the learning styles of the current generation of students...

In this context in particular it's surprising that they wouldn't mention our Everest teams and leadership simulation -- the most popular simulation in our product line and a simulation used by thousands of business school students each year (including being used by all 900 first-year HBS MBA students as well as the HBS' executive education flagship Advanced Management Program).  The book's co-author Garvin has even co-authored several cases and exercises with former HBS professor Mike Roberto, co-author (with HBS Professor Amy Edmondson) of the Everest sim (see this great article by Roberto on leadership lessons from simulation).  Yet this entire passage omits mention of any teams/leadership simulations and is relegated to a footnote.

The Looking Glass Experience is given a few pages' worth of coverage in the book.  This is a face-to-face simulation where the vendor (The Center for Creative Leadership) stages an elaborate mock business day for participants.  According to the book the simulation "was behavioral and therefore deliberately low-tech".  They are not given email access for fear that they will try and manage via email.  Instead they must confine interaction "with anyone within or beyond the company by memo, by phone, or in person."  I'm quite sure valuable learning lessons are gleaned from this exercise.  But it sounds like a 1980s office environment.  It sounds like the kind of simulation run and recommended by people who aren't familiar with today's online business simulations.  I'm not suggesting that online is always better.  But I am suggesting that creating a simulated environment that does NOT reflect reality risks reducing the value of the simulation.

An "MGEC Market Games" simulation is described as being used at Wharton and INSEAD.  And the Executive Challenge simulation is mentioned as being used at Stanford.  Executive Challenge is developed by Enspire Learning (see my interview with Enspire CEO Bjorn Billhardt).  Harvard Business Publishing currently distributes their Global Supply Chain Management simulation and is planning on distributing additional simulations from Enspire in the future.

I understand that the authors are describing desired changes at the curriculum design level, not the product level. But I also think the book's content betrays that these authors see technology at best as an enabler (and sometimes perhaps an impediment) to "real" experiential learning, rather than an occasional exemplar of that pedagogy.  I'm biased but I don't like to see a "blueprint" for changing the MBA curriculum that doesn't include a serious consideration of how eLearning and simulation can enable some of that needed change. 

Comments

[Erin Murphy]

Great post Denis! Hope you are doing well. Reminded me of how well it went last year when the Learning Lab helped run a Forio simulation for a MGMT 652 Leadership course.

Check out the summary in the link below.

[Denis]

Thanks Erin! Folks - here is the link Erin refers to: http://www.pennedutech.org/mgmt-652-leadership-simulation-a-story-about-potential/