100 Year M.B.A Birthday. Is it a “Right Brain” World & Age of the M.F.A.?

by Jenny Ambrozek

April 8, 2008 at 9:20 pm · Filed under Talent Management

Did anyone else see the April 6 New York Times piece promoting “Whole New Mind” author Dan Pink’s argument that the “M.F. A. is becoming the new M.B.A.?” Titled “Let Computers Compute. It’s the Age of the Right Brain” it makes the case that:

“… now that computers can emulate many of the sequential skills of the brain’s left hemisphere – the part that sees the individual trees in a forest – ….. it’s time for our imaginative right brain, which sees the entire forest all at once, to take center stage.”

The NY Times quotes General Motors’ Robert A. Lutz in support. On being hired to “whip the product development into shape” Lutz told “The New York Times” about his new approach:

“It’s more right brain. It’s more creative” … “I see us as being in the art business” he said, “art, entertainment and mobile sculpture, which, coincidentally, also happens to provide transportation.”

The NY Times writer argues:

“When a car company like G.M. is in the the art business, every company in any other industry is, too.”

March 8 The Financial Times marked 100 years since Harvard began a masters of business administration program. Eight, all men, finished with another 25 class members failing to do so. The thrust of the FT piece title “Masters and misgivings” is whether the 100 year old coveted MBA qualification has proven it’s full worth. The article explores aspects from student perceptions through reasons companies like Google hire MBA’s, to public criticism of MBA programs and the challenges business schools face adapting to serve internet generation students. I’m curious to hear from TheAppGap contributors and readers on this topic. Does the MBA remain an essential qualification for business leadership in the future, and or, do you see a shift to more focus on “right brain” talents and recruiting MFA’s? ~ Jenny Ambrozek

Share:

Permalink

5 Comments »

Interesting links. As a “business professional” with a fine arts degree, I consistently find my “studio” skills to be my most valuable asset. However, the MBA “brand” is extremely powerful and I’m certain it will not be replaced by the MFA anytime soon…

Ben, really appreciate your insights and experience as an MFA. I’m intrigued by your:

Reading your forecast about the strength of the MBA “brand” relative to MFA made me realize though that practically it’s probably increasingly an “and both’ world: MBA and MFA. Skills required are being ratcheted up in every direction.

Recently I co-wrote a piece on prediction markets for “Inside Knowledge Magazine” that included an interview with prediction markets guru Jed Christiansen. He made the case that:

“Ever narrowing profits and a highly competitive business environment are driving use of ‘quants’; as Jed Cristiansen told us, “[they] are becoming more highly prized because the ‘easy’ profit in many industries is gone. As an industry matures, it needs more information and better analysis to keep profitability, thus the need for quants. I think this is certainly the case for
prediction markets”.

Tom Davenport’s “Competing on Analytics” that I’ve been re-reading advocates similarly I believe.

Jenny – Ok, it’s eerie synchronicity time. Last week, at the Boston KM Forum, Ray Sims stepped up to give the presentation before mine (E2.0 = KM2.0?), and mentioned Dan Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” book, which I might repeat, is a truly fine read.

That night, I get home, and from NetFlix, awaiting me is a copy of the DVD of an hour-long presentation by Dan Pink on the book, which had been back-ordered for months. I’d forgotten it was even in my queue.

And here we are on The AppGap, and it comes up again, for a book that came out just over 3 years ago.

I agree with Ben – don’t see MBAs going away any time soon, as the designation does (and frequently, although not always, SHOULD) carry quite a bit of legitimacy to it.

But companies running out to hire MFAs instead of MBAs? Not a chance. I do believe smarter teams are being built these days, although that’s still more rare than common. (I’ve had somewhat of a front seat on that process, as my wife has been involved in Boston University’s School of Management, and their Center for Team Learning, for many years now)

I do agree that “design thinking” is beginning to penetrate into the heads of business managers and leaders, as well as into the minds of computer scientists and developers. But moving out of the easily quantifiable (or at least, quantifiable) world and into the mushy world of design, art, emotion, etc., is a tough one to teach, although it is certainly “learnable.”

Dan, Such gifts you bring. It is intriguing to watch how new perspectives emerge and take hold but often so slowly. A colleague and I just wrote a piece on prediction markets for Inside Knowledge Magazine. Building on Newsfutures data Robin Hanson has a wonderful graphic showing the bump in adoption rates following the release of Surowiecki’s “Wisdom of the Crowds”. (Article posted here if you are interested. http://hanson.gmu.edu/press/Inside-Knowlege-3-08.pdf )
No doubt given the entrenched interests in retaining the MBA brand, any fundamental changes to the program or degree of influence are unlikely in the short term.

My same colleague, Victoria Axelrod and I are working on an article for “Effective Executive” Magazine for a special KM edition. It starts by revisiting Bob Buckman’s early initiatives that became known as KM. I have a quote from Buckman saying:

“What I really tried to manage and nurture was a culture that would encourage and expand the flow of knowledge.”

In light of this I found your study findings slide 54 with with it’s 4 C’s timely. Would appreciate the chance to further discuss as your schedule allows. Thanks.
~ Jenny

Jenny – happy to discuss any and all of the above! I’m glad you’ve found some interesting tidbits from our Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0. If you haven’t already grabbed the entire report, please do – freely available at http://www.aiim.org/enterprise20 – over 800 people have downloaded it in the last 3 weeks, but I’d be perfectly happy to edge closer to tens of thousands!

The prediction markets article is very interesting – glad to hear that coverage, discussion, and adoption of prediction markets is growing, although it is odd that the pace has not quickened even more. We’ll have to do something about that, eh?

Feel free to get in touch via e-mail, and I suspect we can discuss MANY things in quite a bit of depth. I am going to be on vacation for a week, however, so there will be a slight delay in response. If we can schedule something the first week of May, that would work well for me.

Incidentally, I’m personally always looking to send great writers/researchers in the direction of our (AIIM) magazine, E-Doc. If you are interested (or anyone else – please pipe up), I would be happy to introduce to the best people to facilitate getting great articles published.

Your comment

HTML-Tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>