Read about Participation of Graduate School of Business Experts in INNOPROM Session ‘Business Education for Industry’
What should we teach future managers of industry? What technical courses should a business school teach? How can we reach the level of leading global business schools and surpass them? Those are the topics that the participants of INNOPROM Session ‘Business Education for Industry’ discussed. The session was organized on February 10 in partnership with HSE Graduate School of Business.
Mikhail Akim, one of the moderators of the session, board member of Association of European Business (AEB) and head of AEB working group on modernization and innovations, professor of Graduate School of Business, pointed out new trends in business education: last year the number of people planning to receive an MBA degree declined but more people got interested in specialized programmes. Thus emerged a trend for customizing education regarding new challenges – green agenda, supply chain restructuring during the pandemic, robotisation and automation.
Arkady Dvorkovich, president of the ‘Skolkovo’ foundation, believes that we should not apply the word ‘teach’ to top managers of business enterprises. Rather we should talk about helping them navigate the new technology, practices, macroeconomy, and industrial politics in regard to global tendencies. It is possible to receive knowledge in the context of those tendencies by taking part in global programmes.
Loran Boshero, head of the department of science and education of Delegation of European Union in Russia, noted that Russia actively participates in educational initiatives of EU and holds the first place in the number of participants of ‘Erasmus’ European student and professor exchange programme. In 2021, scholarships for online education will be introduced.
First Vice Rector, Dean of HSE Graduate School of Business Valery Katkalo agreed that the term ’business development should replace the term ‘business education. “As a vice president of European Foundation for Management Development I can say that this tendency is apparent everywhere: instead of saying transfer of knowledge we use development”, - said Valery Katkalo, underlying three trends in the development of business school today.
The first one is a shift of focus from fragmented education to life-long learning. Valery Katkalo pointed out that currently after getting a master’s degree people can go through executive development. The second trend is about balancing different technologies in the education process, primarily online and offline formats. The change of formats strongly affects the contents of education and nature of interaction among people. The third trend is connected to the necessity of updating skills that business schools give their attendees. 20th-century dichotomy of hard and soft skills is now complemented by digital skills, which are an integral element of the qualification base of a successful manager, - says Valery Katkalo. He talked about a new Master’s programme of HSE Graduate School of Business – ‘Production Systems and Operational Excellence’, which corresponds to modern demands.
Igor Agamirzyan, HSE vice president, thinks that there is one important question about professional education that has not been solved yet – it is the question of balanced combination of engineering and management competencies. Soft skills are relevant not only for solving external problems but for working inside ecosystems and digital platforms.
Companies need business talents of a new age, agrees Tadzio Schilling, chief executive officer of AEB. It is important not only for Russian companies but also for European investors of Russian companies. For them, one of the key factors that influence their decision for localization of business is existence of qualified employees, together with availability of resources, market size, and its potential.
Automatization and robotization of work, digital transformation of manufacturing – these are global megatrends, says Tadzio. That is why we need to participate in the formation of new leaders, who will promote these trends. The third most important tendency: today, you cannot just get a diploma and hang it on a wall. Leaders’ development never ends, at any age, any stage of a career.
Aleksey Uchenov, director of the Department of Strategic Development and Corporate Policy of Minpromtorg, believes that lockdown positively influenced digitalization of all processes in industry and economics. Companies mostly managed to adapt to the new conditions. He also discussed corporate universities. They appeared because the traditional education does not always quickly respond to changes of conditions. Most companies conclude agreements with learning labs of the biggest universities to prepare professionals for the company’s specifics. The government is preparing a new strategy of socio-economic development, in which there will be a big unit devoted to industry. The ministry will have offers connected to staff training, and it is also planning to communicate with education community to form new educational standards.
Other participants of the discussion: Andrey Yakovlev, acting rector of Tomsk Polytechnic University, Andrey Mityukov, managing partner of TalentTech, Severgroup, Anton Atrashkin, director of Innoprom’s business programme.
You can watch the full session on the INNOPROM online website.