The good times are back

(CNN) -- The market is booming for MBAs, according to a new survey -- so much so that the one factor that might rein in the market is employers' worries about arrogant would-be executives demanding sky-high starting salaries.
But overall, the numbers are very cheering for anyone leaving business school this year.
The TopMBA.com International MBA Recruitment and Salary Report 2006, which surveyed 445 companies in 33 different countries, says it gives the most global perspective on the MBA market.
Of the respondents, 28% were based in Europe, 38% in the North America, 13% in Latin America, 11% in the Asia Pacific, 6% in Eastern Europe and 4% in the Middle East and Africa.
According to the findings, the call for new MBAs among recruiters worldwide will set records in 2006, with an overall 24% increase in demand, rising to 38% in the consulting sector.
During this year, average MBA salaries have increased by 7.5%, according to the survey, 5% more than the average inflation rate in the main industrialized nations.
Salaries for new MBAs are also now above levels seen before the downturn in 2001, with those taking jobs in North America or Western Europe beginning with an average salary of $90,500.
"This increase reflects a high level of optimism amongst MBA recruiters and increased competition for the top talent." the report's authors, QS Research, said.
Risk of overheating?
Among the employers surveyed, 35% of employers expect to increase MBA hiring in the next 12 months against just 3% who anticipate a decrease.
However, the report warns that this might slow down during 2007 as the market overheats, with some respondents fearing "that the huge growth in demand over the last two years cannot be sustained, not least because the supply of MBAs is not growing as rapidly and companies may not be willing to push salaries much higher."
Also, the authors say, there is a fear of a return to "the bad old days," when new MBAs had a reputation for arrogance.
"MBAs coming out right now are beginning to have a sense of entitlement once again," Tiffany Wogelwede from appliance manufacturer Whirlpool told the report's authors.
"The ego is sometimes getting in the way of the hiring process."
But for now, it is a job-seekers' market, with business school career services "delightedly reporting their best year on record," according to the report.
"By April 2006, over 90% of our class had at least one full time offer. We expect all the class to have offers by graduation," Kim Keating of Tuck Business School in the United States told the authors.
Outside of the traditional MBA hotbeds of North America and Western Europe, MBA salaries are gradually catching up in developing markets -- while there is still a 30% salary gap between the highest and lowest paid regions, this gap is narrowing each year.
And although the United States long paid the highest salaries, this crown has now been taken by Western Europe, although this is partly due to the weak dollar increasing the value of European salaries when denominated in the US currency.
Other MBAs, meanwhile, are playing a longer game and turning their attentions to Asia.
"More and more MBAs are joining Chinese companies from international MBA programs and Asian MBA business schools," Michael Yang, general marketing manager of Motorola (China) told the authors.
"I think the attraction for these MBAs is not the starting salary, but the growing opportunity. For example, the average MBA salary growth rate is higher than 15% per year here in China."

The vexed issue of MBA league tables

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Another new survey of business schools, this time exclusively in the U.S., has confirmed one increasingly evident fact for those considering an MBA -- there is a clear elite in the field.
The top of the list of graduate business schools produced by U.S. News and World Report sees a series of names familiar from other, similar league tables.
In top place comes Harvard Business School, followed by Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton school, MIT's Sloan and, in joint fifth, the Kellogg school at Northwestern University and Chicago.
Other well-known names -- Tuck, Haas, Columbia, Stern -- follow to make up the rest of the top 10.
These are the names that tend to crop up in most of the series of business school rankings published each year, for example the well-known lists drawn up by the London-based Financial Times and by Business Week.
The process tends to be exhaustive. For example, U.S. News and World Report canvassed 406 schools, of which 113 provided enough information for a ranking to be assessed.
A school's score was then compiled via a complex procedure combining the assessments of deans from other schools and from recruiters, salaries attracted by graduates, the academic scores of new students, and other data.
However, one fact cannot be avoided -- however rigorous the process, it will necessarily be subjective, meaning the ratings inevitably vary.
For example, Yale School of Management makes it into the Financial Times top 10, but is ranked 14th by U.S. News and World Report, 19th by Business Week's 2006 poll and 24th in the annual list compiled by the Economist magazine.
Differing views
Much of this is due to clear differences in methodology -- some lists are U.S. only while others consider schools from around the world, but there is no escaping the stress such tables cause deans and admissions offices.
Some schools even refuse to take part, doubting the validity of league tables in properly informing students.
"They are inherently unreliable due to the differences in methodology and I'm not sure they present an accurate picture of the worth of a good MBA program," Ken Jones, dean of the Faculty of Business at Ryerson University in Toronto, told Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper last month.
Taking part in such exercises "adds additional expectations to the faculty and students that are not always realistic," he said.
Other schools, however, accept that for many would-be MBA students, one of the very first things they look at when deciding which school to apply for is a league table of this type.
"While no survey can completely capture the richness and impact of a two-year educational experience, we take the results of each survey seriously," Joel M. Podolny, dean of the Yale School of Management, said shortly after the U.S. News and World Review ratings were published in the school's official assessment of such lists.
"Our foremost objective is to understand what information that survey reveals about the perceptions and experiences of our key stakeholders to whom we are accountable," he said.
"We then integrate this information with that from many other sources as part of our ongoing effort to make institutional changes that support our very noble mission of educating leaders for business and society."

Helping Africa help itself

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Africa is generally seen as the continental poor relation in business school terms, lagging behind North America, Europe and Asia, even South America.
However, as detailed before on Executive Education (click here), Africa does have a number of top schools, and the Association of African Business Schools is working hard to raise general standards.
Also, schools elsewhere are also getting involved, as illustrated by a recent conference hosted by Insead, the highly-ranked school based jointly in France and Singapore.
Deans and other staff from more than 30 business schools worldwide got together at Insead for the second annual meeting of the Global Business School Network Academic Advisory Council, an event based around the theme of "Nurturing Business Education in Africa."
The aim was to lay out a precise plan of action on how leading schools in developed nations can help their African counterparts grow and improve.
Africa is in desperate need of qualified and talented management to help its economies, not only running companies but helping entrepreneurs and ensuring more effective corporate and legislative governance policy.
Qualified African managers can also help put together vital inward investment with policymakers, multinationals and charities.
With its own global perspective -- it has faculty from 32 different countries -- Insead "has a responsibility to support business education in Africa and thereby help to build the foundation for economic growth and poverty reduction," said the school's dean, Frank Brown.
Partnerships and progress
Among subjects discussed at the meeting were the possibility of mentor professors teaching in African schools, joint student projects, pro bono consulting support projects and even formal pairings or partnerships.
"The challenges that African nations face as they try to improve the welfare of their people are enormous, and those of us who can help, even if only modestly, have an obligation to do so," said Landis Gabel, professor of management and the environment at Insead.
"We will be looking for practical ways that business schools and their professors can strengthen the capability of African schools to train the continent's future managers."
The meeting is part of a wider series of projects organized under the umbrella of the Global Business School Network, a non-profit body put together by the International Finance Corporation, the private sector investment branch of the World Bank.
It brings together schools, companies and international organizations to develop sustainable programs for management education and training in developing countries.
Among the members are a series of leading US business schools, as well as their equivalents in countries ranging from Denmark to India and Nigeria.

Competing for more than profit

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The entrepreneurial challenge has long been a mainstay of MBA life. Students get together before a panel of judges to pitch their business ideas, the best being rewarded with accolades and -- often -- start-up cash.
However, more and more these days the judges are looking for something beyond just a cold-eyed profit opportunity -- they want sustainability.
This is illustrated by two contests at leading schools, one just gone and the other upcoming.
Several weeks ago, students from eight US school gathered at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School to take part in a competition which labels itself the only such event to consider the so-called "triple bottom line" of profit, environmental friendliness and social equity.
The second Sustainable Venture Capital Investment Competition has another twist to other contests in that the students get to pick one of four business plans from real world entrepreneurs and, together with them, pitch it before judges.
Making this even trickier, students receive the plans in advance but only have 15 minutes to quiz the entrepreneurs in person.
"Part of the game plan was to get as much information as possible, but also to be friendly," said Heidi Lubin, one of the winning group of MBA students from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
"The challenge was to build a rapport and avoid putting the companies on the defensive under a difficult, but necessary, line of questioning."
Big prizes
In a similar vein, next month sees the grandly-named 21st Century Challenge Competition at Oxford University's Saïd Business School.
The contest -- which carries a healthy $40,000 first prize -- is intended to promote sustainable new businesses that mix financial returns with "significant social and environmental benefits."
These can include new products and services, innovative operational processes and business models.
"We want to contribute to broadening the idea of business and encourage radical thinking in the pursuit of sustainable business models and markets," said Fiona Reid, Director of Entrepreneurship Saïd, the entrepreneurial arm of the school.
"We hope the competition will become a launch pad for successful commercial ventures in key challenge areas facing society."
A third contest has taken a different approach to business idea competitions -- handing the winner no-strings cash so they can work on their idea during their MBA vacation, when they would normally be carrying out a more formal internship.
The newly-devised Wharton Venture Award saw six students from the University of Pennsylvania's business school of the same name handed $10,000 grants.
Many of the winners are high-tech ideas, such as SpotShop, a company which has devised tools that allow local businesses to build and place video ads online.
Winning the award "has really jump-started our company," said a grateful SpotShop founder, Nat Turner. "Resources in a startup are always tight."

Doggedly pursuing a business answer

LONDON, England (CNN) -- It's a common dilemma for a start-up business -- to expand, you need complex marketing data analysis, but this is an expensive process.
One company's solution? Go back to school.
Petplan USA, which provides insurance for pet owners to cover veterinary bills and the like, was itself the product of a business competition at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in 2003.
Founders and Wharton MBAs, Chris and Natasha Ashton, thus had the perfect place to go for advice when they realized their fledgling firm could not afford to pay for a mainstream market research group to help devise a possible nationwide marketing strategy.
They were put in touch with Alan Abrahams, a visiting Wharton professor who teaches the complex and expertise-heavy subject of data mining, in which large amounts of information are surveyed to glean the required information.
After a test run in the summer of 2006, in which a student dug out some sample data about the location of veterinary surgeons' offices nationwide, the co-operation went further.
Abrahams used the Astons' dilemma as a "live case" for his data-mining class, instructing students to come up with the best possible algorithms for analyzing the reams of data relevant to Petplan's marketing campaign.
Surprise findings
First, the Ashtons visited Abrahams' class, presented their business plan and took questions. "The students pushed back on our ideas and really tested our assumptions," Chris Ashton said.
The three best plans were then used to help Petplan decide where to focus its marketing efforts.
"The project would help us to identify demographically favorable parts of the country," Chris Ashton explained. "The students were trying to identify indicators that would make households more likely to buy pet insurance."
The analyses came up with some interesting findings -- not only did the students confirm that average household income and average age played a big role in deciding who was most inclined to buy pet insurance, they also discovered that proximity to pet superstores and even race played an apparent role.
As well as providing very real benefits to a business, the exercise helped get the students out of the theoretical forum of the classroom and textbook and into the real world.
"In most, if not all, of my classes, you go to the lectures and do readings," said Daniel Sabido, who came up with one of the three best solutions.
"Then it's a lot of applying what you learned in a test. This class was a lot more practical. This sort of setup should be done again. It was very useful for us as students."
The exercise was also useful in that the data mining class includes both business students and those from the university's engineering department, among them graduate computing student Rosskyn Dsouza, who gained some new commercial insights.
"I learned how to calculate the cost-to-market of Petplan's policies and how to calculate the profits that Petplan or any insurance company could make by selling their product," he said.

Opening the book on business history

LONDON, England (CNN) -- While business schools are renowned as dynamic academic institutions where eager students are fed the very latest in strategy and research, underpinning it all is many decades of thinking about the most fundamental questions of how companies work, and how they can work better.
One of the most influential figures in this process of understanding, a pioneer in the fields of business history and corporate strategy, was Harvard Business School's Alfred D. Chandler, who died this week aged 88.
In a career as extraordinary as it was long, Chandler produced some of the most significant ever studies of big business and its history, formulating ideas that are still used in MBA classes around the world today.
Chandler -- professor emeritus of business history at Harvard at the time of his death -- wrote dozens of books and articles which influenced scholars in not only management but also history, economics and sociology.
While his subjects and methods varied enormously, the central thesis was constant: How were things done at a certain time, how were they done later, and what happened to cause the change?
"Al Chandler created the field of business history and nurtured it at this school with the help of outstanding colleagues who worked closely with him and admired him as a mentor and friend," said the HBS's dean, Jay Light.
Throughout his books, Chandler looked at the factors that made the U.S. economy thrive in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, identifying things such as railroads, concentrated urban markets, mass production techniques and electrification.
Business strategy
In "Strategy and Structure," published in 1962, he examined four industrial giants from the 1900s to the 1940s -- General Motors, DuPont, Exxon, and Sears, Roebuck & Company -- and studied their organizational structures, helping give birth to the entire field of corporate strategy.
In the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business" from 1977, Chandler argued that the 'visible' hand of management had replaced the 'invisible' hand of market forces in coordinating and allocating the economy's resources.
There was little need for middle managers prior to 1840, he found, whereas by the mid-20th century the companies they administered had become the "most powerful institution in the American economy."
He also looked into different business approaches around the world through a historical context, and carried on working until the very end of his life.
In 2001 he wrote "Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industry," which contrasted the fall of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and the rise of Sony and Matsushita in Japan.
As late as 2005, he turned his attentions to a book on the global chemical and pharmaceutical Industries.
"Al Chandler was an extraordinary scholar whose research and publications over five decades exercised a transformational effect far beyond his own discipline in business history," said Geoffrey G. Jones, HBS's Straus Professor of Business History.
"Although he began his career as a traditional historian who labored long and hard in archives, his resulting insights on the growth of firms and the emergence of modern management were so compelling that he became a major formative influence on many areas of management studies."

Degrees go for specialist redesign

(CNN) -- The traditional one-size-fits-all MBA degree could soon be consigned to the dustbin of history as business schools look for ways to boost flagging enrolment numbers.
Keen to ensure their academic offerings stand out in a competitive market, growing numbers of schools are redesigning their degrees around specialist areas.
Rather than the conventional structure which focuses on generic business fundamentals, these new MBA degrees contain content tailored to specific industry segments.
The schools believe specialist MBAs will appeal to students who have a clear idea of the direction they want their careers to take. Whether it's manufacturing, finance, tourism or the arts, it's increasingly likely they'll be able to find an MBA to match.
For years, MBA participants have been able to mould their degrees through careful selection of elective subjects covering the areas of most interest to them. However the bulk of the course has remained a standard block of core material.
The new specialist degrees, however, have been designed from the ground up to be directly relevant to a particular business sector or industry.
One high-profile example is the MBA offerings at the University of Wisconsin's Madison School of Business. Students entering the school's course can choose from one of 14 different areas of specialisation. Areas range from arts administration and marketing research to supply chain management and real estate.
School dean, Michael Knetter, says the school has made a conscious effort to appeal to students who have a clear career objective.
"By making the choice to serve that specific segment of the market, we can serve them better than anyone else," he says.
The State University of New Jersey's Rutgers Business School has also been busy, carving out a niche by offering an MBA course specialising in pharmaceutical management.
Working with a range of companies that includes Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Roche, the business school has designed its MBA course to provide the specific skills required in this rapidly evolving and highly competitive industry.
"The goal is to have graduates who can hit the ground running as quickly as possible, and require as little extra training by the employer," says school dean Howard Tuckman.
He says the school uses a board of external business advisers to constantly give feedback on the MBA course curriculum. This monitoring, he says, is vital if MBAs are going to remain relevant in the business world of tomorrow.
While such specialist degrees are currently only offered by smaller, second-tier business schools, the larger players are watching their success with interest. If these schools manage to grow their proportion of the overall market, it's likely the big names will follow suit.
Meanwhile the Richard Ivey School of Business has also announced a revamp of its MBA course structure, incorporating what it calls "cross-enterprise leadership".
Rather than approaching study by considering individual disciplines such as finance, marketing and accounting, the course uses a series of modules which draw information from multiple disciplines.
The modules cover areas such as cross-enterprise management skills, competing in a global environment and developing leadership skills.
Ivey dean Carol Stephenson says the school recognised that the old-model MBA was not working as well as it could to produce graduates with the skills required by the modern business world.
"When we looked out at the business school landscape, we realized that the traditional model did not really deliver any more," she told CNN. "So we decided to turn it inside out -- to start with the goal of producing cross-enterprise leaders and to build from there."
Stephenson says rival schools are watching the changes with interest and she expects others to begin offering similar course structures in the not-too-distant future.

Marketing your business school

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A great deal of attention is paid to the tricky business of how aspirant MBAs can identify and then get into the best courses at top business schools.
But there is another side to this, one that is less often remarked on but is equally crucial for the whole process -- how business schools can attract students.
At the sharp end of this equation, business schools have to make sure they have sufficient enrollments each year to pay the wages of their professors, not to mention the host of other bills involved in running such an institution.
Yet even when every place is massively over-subscribed, leading schools still pay great attention to getting their message across to would-be students, making sure that the very best and brightest beat a path to your door.
Much of this marketing is conducted overseas. For example, this week, managers from the UK's highly-rated Manchester Business School have been in Dubai for an information session aimed at business professionals.
Executives can quiz the school's team on their various MBAs, which can now be studied for via distance learning through a center in Dubai, as well as existing bases in Hong Kong and Singapore.
In a different vein, San Francisco State University has taken a novel approach in making its courses more accessible to students -- it has moved its College of Business graduate programs to a new base inside a downtown shopping mall.
As well as shifting existing students out of cramped accommodation on a satellite campus into plush new rooms in a former department store -- "from the VW bus to the Cadillac or Mercedes of classroom space," according to Aaron Anderson, director of the Executive MBA Program -- the new site is more easily accessible.
"The new location is in a vibrant area of town. It is an exciting place that has a lot of visibility," said Gail Whitaker, dean of the College of Extended Learning, which offers classes mostly for mid-career professionals.
"This new location is going to be excellent for people to find us and to get to us to continue their education while living their busy lives."
Newspaper ads
Even a name as revered as Harvard Business School is not above marketing tactics -- the school has just begun a new push for its executive education programs, including a cheeky print campaign.
The ads feature the famous HBS crest or emblem, much like those usually sewn onto a blazer, with various tongue-in-cheek statements such as "Nobody Has Time for This; That's Why They Come" and "On Today's Agenda: Tomorrow."
The school believes it has a lot to shout about.
"Since Harvard Business School established the first executive education programs in the world 60 years ago, we have distinguished ourselves by our strong focus on practice through the case method, the broadened perspective the programs nurture among participants, and the action-oriented lessons that can be put to work immediately," said Professor David Yoffie, chair of executive education at HBS.
The ads began appearing shortly before Christmas in publications including The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and the Financial Times.

It's not easy being green

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Global warming is no longer purely the concern of politicians and environmental campaigners -- business is increasingly affected.
In October last year, a major study of the potential economic impact of climate change, commissioned by the UK government, warned that failure to tackle the issue could eventually cause a global slump.
Then this year, the latest report by the IPCC group of international scientists studying the problem concluded that global warming is almost certainly the result of human activity.
As with so many emerging issues, business schools have been paying attention.
Earlier this month, the highly-rated Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S. launched its response to the problem, the Laboratory for Sustainable Business.
Also known, in a more catchy fashion, as the S-Lab, it aims to help future business leaders tackle the issues connected to climate change.
Interactive computer-based simulations will let students to play the role of entrepreneurs seeking to maximize their profits investing in companies that do not harm the environment.
In doing this, they will learn the challenges of using renewable resources within the framework of existing business models.
One exercise will make students examine an attempt by oil major Conoco-Phillips to win an oil development contract in Ecuador's tropical rain forest, looking at the choices that can minimize ecological disruption and restore the environment.
Major challenge
The creation of the S-Lab recognizes the scale of the challenge caused by climate change, said Richard Locke, one of six MIT professor who set up the new courses.
"A critical issue for global warming is the ways in which the risks are communicated, and the framing of the solutions, both for specific organizations and for communities," he said,
"S-Lab will teach future CEOs and business leaders the challenges of implementation and how the science of sustainability can be best communicated to policymakers and citizens.
"Up until now we have considered aspects of sustainability -- climate, energy, water, food, poverty, and social development -- in isolation," he said.
"S-Lab is developing an integrated framework to consider the system-wide dynamics of human society along with tools and methodologies for measuring and monitoring sustainability efforts and their applications."
Other business schools around the world are also responding.
The Indian Institute of Management in Lucknow, in the country's north, has started a special course to help MBA students understand the complex system of carbon emissions trading, whereby companies and countries can buy and sell their permitted outputs of greenhouse gases.
The course will also deal with more general ways in which companies can minimize their environmental impact.
It is estimated that India could see an income of around $2 billion from carbon trading in the future, Sushil Kumar, professor of agribusiness at the Institute told the country's Economic Times newspaper.
"There is tremendous potential for companies to grow in this segment and hence essential that future managers are made aware of this," he said, adding that he had already talked about the issue with some of India's biggest corporations.
"They feel there is a need for future managers to be aware of carbon markets and environmental issues," he said.

The business boat race

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Britain's two most venerable universities, Oxford and Cambridge, are popularly viewed as bastions of traditional learning, all manicured lawns and academics in flowing gowns.
Yet the institutions are continually at the forefront of new initiatives in all academic area -- now including business.
Both universities have highly-rated business schools, Oxford's Saïd school, set up in 1996, and Judge at Cambridge, in operation since 1990.
Oxford and Cambridge have a friendly rivalry dating back centuries, largely fought out in sporting prowess, most famously the annual boat race every spring on the River Thames in London between the 'light blue' rowers of Cambridge and their 'dark blue' opponents from Oxford.
This month, the inter-university competition has taken on a new form: Business ideas.
Saïd Business School hosted budding entrepreneurs from both universities who pitched their business ideas before a daunting panel of successful businesspeople and venture capitalists, with almost $20,000 in capital up for grabs.
The competing sides fought their way through qualifying rounds at their own university, respectively Oxford's "Idea Idol" and the "Business Ideas Competition" at Cambridge.
Innovative ideas
Oxford's three teams were Camerge, who developed an algorithm that helps digital cameras work better in varying light conditions; Matoke Matoke who have set up a fair trade company to sell embroidered napkins made by women displaced in the civil war in northern Uganda; and Design the Time, which lets people buy minutes to store personal content on the Internet.
The latter team so impressed one venture capitalist judging the Oxford heats that he has already offered them start-up funding.
Turning out for Cambridge were NeoHeal, who aim to use nanotechnology in place of traditional surgical sutures; RemRom Medical Devices, who specialize in the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of medical devices used in minimally invasive surgery; and TouchSight, who have developed a glove allowing disabled people to 'sense' their surroundings using ultrasonic and vibration feedback devices.
Among the judges was multi-millionaire entrepreneur Peter Jones, best known in Britain for his participation in a BBC television series, "Dragons' Den," in which inventors and would-be businesspeople pitch their ideas to a sometimes scathing panel of experts, Jones among them.
Other judges included Martha Lane Fox, co-founder of well-known British Internet travel firm Lastminute.com, and Ian Lobley, a senior partner at leading venture capitalists 3i.
The runners up were Matoke Matoke and RemRom Medical Devices, while the overall winner -- getting almost $10,000 in capital -- was TouchSight.
'The competition was a huge success and we had an exciting and inspirational evening of commercially viable entrepreneurial ideas," said Rajeeb Dey, president of the Oxford Entrepreneurs student society.
"The quality and diversity of the entries was superb and all contestants did a fantastic job. Often great business ideas lie dormant; by providing a rewarding platform, we hope to germinate a company of real significance."

Crossing the Anglo-French divide

LONDON, England (CNN) -- One of the most important parts of any business education program is teaching would-be executives how to conduct themselves in different commercial cultures.
This is true whether the geographical distance between the companies involved is many thousands of miles or -- in the case of Britain and France -- a mere 21 miles, this being the narrowest part of the English Channel (or, if you are French, La Manche).
In fact, Britain and France have a centuries-long traditional of mutual misunderstanding. While generally this is treated indulgently by "the frogs" and "les rosbifs," as they call each other, it is something businesspeople must take far more seriously.
It is a major issue given the size of the two countries' enormous mutual trade and one a leading UK business school has decided to tackle in a slightly quirky yet very illuminating way by looking at the two nations' contrasting approaches to leadership.
Saïd Business School, part of the University of Oxford, has taken as its starting point the fact that both nations are about to get new leaders -- Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to announce his departure date within weeks, while France's population have just voted for a new president to replace Jacques Chirac.
The study, by Marshall Young, director of the Oxford Strategic Leadership Program at the Saïd School, and Jo Owen of the Leadership Partnership interviewed several dozen senior leaders in both countries to compare their different approaches.
It found that while France has yet to mimic the rapid economic transformation Britain saw under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, its leaders remain in awe of the so-called Thatcher revolution.
"The scale and speed of change experienced in the UK in the Thatcher era is something they cannot imagine happening in France without extreme social unrest," the authors noted.
Public vs private
Much of Thatcher's doctrine involved replacing state intervention with the private sector, and this remains another major difference found by the researchers -- that the state is still seen as a highly prestigious employer in France while private companies tend to win the war for talent in the UK.
Another key difference they identified was French skepticism at what British leaders called "pragmatism" in decision-making, but which to their Gallic cousins -- who expect a severe level of intellectual rigor -- seems shambolic.
And while Britain is traditionally seen as the home of the old boy network, through elite private schools such as Eton and universities like Oxford, the research noted that this is even more the case in France.
Just 100 people a year graduate from France's ultra-elite Ecole nationale d'administration, which has provided a string of the country's leaders, and French people tend of value personal and professional networks more highly than the British, the study found.
There was some ambitious reasoning behind the study, said Owen. 'This may look like a light-hearted issue but a more serious question prompted the research," she said.
"Much of the leadership literature and research reflects a very Anglo-Saxon view of the world.
"We felt that this was increasingly inappropriate in a global context, and wanted to explore the different business and leadership models that exist in order to understand better what helps drive success in different economies.
"Global companies are working across a range of different implicit models in different cultures and may struggle to harmonize or work within them all. We believe these organizations would benefit from a map of the models in operation, and more guidance on how best to work within these contexts."

When news meets business education

(CNN) -- At some point in their course, pretty much every MBA student will encounter "synergy," a modern-day business buzzword for the mutually advantageous combination of separate elements or interests.
And what better example of the phenomenon than this: a media group owning a famous magazine name and a fast-growing online university combines the two for a branded business degree.
Meet the Newsweek MBA.
Launched with a flurry of publicity this month, the new MBA promises a "revolutionary approach" to business education, with fresh classes of students beginning the distance learning course nine times in the coming 12 months.
It combines the resources of Newsweek, the venerable news magazine which sells more than 4 million copies worldwide, and Kaplan University, an online-only institution with 26,000 students.
Both are subsidiaries of the Washington Post Company, also owners of the newspaper of the same name.
The new MBA's main selling point is the provision of up-to-the-minute case studies from the journalism resources of the magazine, rather than dusty examples from the past, as well as personal input from magazine staff.
The intention is to "use breaking business news to illuminate the issues and theories that are part of traditional MBA course work," according to the company.
"The Kaplan/Newsweek MBA will offer the best of both the classroom and the real world," said Newsweek Editor-in-Chief Richard M. Smith.
"The program will also provide an important new outlet for Newsweek's all-star cast of business reporters and editors and allow us to use online education to build an audience of young people who are on track to become the decision-makers of tomorrow."
Personal input
In practice, this will mean students receiving instruction from senior Newsweek staff on everything from global business strategy to leadership and the ethics of business transactions.
The online teaching will include interactive seminars, online quizzes, one-on-one feedback from professors and discussion forums.
"Traditional M.B.A. programs rely heavily on case studies, some of which are decades old," said Eric Goodman, Dean of the Graduate School of Management at Kaplan.
"While these studies have great value, students also have much to learn from events that are happening in the business world right now, events that Newsweek -- which recently broke the controversy over the Hewlett-Packard board of directors -- is in a perfect position to discuss.
"In addition, given Newsweek's strength covering international politics and business, this program will help us provide a global perspective to all our courses, from economics to finance to human resources management."
Of course, synergy tends to imply something more than just elegant efficiency: profit. Kaplan had revenues of more than $1.4bn last year, a figure it aims to add to thanks to the lucrative MBA market.
Whatever the innovation, some observers have been slightly skeptical at the idea, noting that Newsweek is more of a general interest news title than a business-specific one.
The writer of one finance-based weblog, or blog, said he was "not sure" about the concept, saying: "It's impossible to know how many business professors assign Newsweek as required reading, but it is probably a low number."

The business school touchdown

LONDON, England (CNN) -- One thing that modern-day sports stars are very good at -- apart from the obvious -- is making money. Unfortunately, too many prove less adept at keeping hold of it.
While the old stereotype of the embittered former star spending his twilight years running a ramshackle bar or restaurant, regaling customers about the glory days, is largely defunct, there is instead a litany of tales about sports people losing considerable sums in badly-judged business ventures.
Some sportsmen and women have also had well documented problems paying their tax on time: To take just tennis, in 2002 Boris Becker was convicted of tax evasion while Steffi Graf's father served a jail term for mishandling her tax affairs.
Luckily, more than 100 players in the U.S. National Football League (NFL), are now less likely to suffer such problems, thanks to four leading business schools.
They are attending a series of specially-arranged executive education seminars this month and in April at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, Harvard Business School, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
The NFL Business Management and Entrepreneurial Program, as it is officially known, is organized by the NFL and the NFL Players Association to help athletes prepare for life after football.
"This program helps smooth the transition from locker room to the business world and enables players to use football as a pathway to a second successful career," said Professor W. Carl Kester, Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs at the Harvard school.
Sports field to boardroom
"A critical part of this rigorous program involves helping players hone their business judgment so that they can recognize the difference between attractive and unattractive business opportunities."
The curriculum includes topics such as financial analysis and valuation, marketing strategies, real estate investment and -- very importantly -- legal and tax issues.
During a four-week break between the two modules, players will research a business concept or entrepreneurial venture and then discuss the idea with faculty members on their return to campus.
This is the third year of the program and 116 current and former players have enrolled, against 112 last year and 66 in 2005.
Among this year's intake are New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, his Chicago Bears counterpart Brian Griese and Matt Light of the New England Patriots.
"I'm always looking for ways to better myself whether it is on the field or off the field," Brees said ahead of the first set of lessons.
"I see myself starting a business or multiple businesses when I'm done playing so this program will give me a foundation to build upon. It is great that the NFL puts together programs like this for its players."
Players' representatives are keen for their charges to acquire more learning, whether in business or elsewhere. Under the NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement, players can be reimbursed up to $15,000 for education expenses at an accredited institution.
Last month, some NFL representatives were at another business school, Sloan, part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, this was for a seminar on something far more familiar -- how to win.
Executives from basketball, baseball and hockey also attended to learn about how to introduce a more analytical approach to their personnel and business operations.
Among key questions addressed by the conference were why are some sports teams and leagues tend to be more successful than others, and how business-style analysis methods can help teams decide on drafting and trades, not to mention areas such as ticket pricing.

Learning from the king of con men

LONDON, England (CNN) -- It might seem peculiar for one of the world's leading business schools to invite as a guest speaker a man who made his name -- and, for a while, his fortune -- by conning a succession of corporations.
But then again, Frank Abagnale Jr. is no everyday con man.
Immortalized in the 2002 Steven Spielberg film "Catch Me If You Can," in which his youthful self was portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio, Abagnale was one of the most notorious fraudsters of his era, stealing millions in the 1960s and impersonating an airline pilot, a pediatrician and a lawyer.
After being arrested in Paris in 1969 and serving a prison sentence, Abagnale turned himself into an anti-fraud adviser for both the FBI and a series of corporate clients, something he has now done for more than three decades.
Although Abagnale's Oklahoma-based company specializes in combating high-tech fraud, as he himself says, it was all very different when he began his own career as a con man.
Most famously, he impersonated a Pan Am pilot, visiting around 250 cities in 26 countries, free of charge. A key element of this scheme involved faking a Pan Am ID card, a process he completed by taking the logo from an airplane model kit sold at a hobby store.
This was the essence of his address to the assembled audience at Wharton -- businesses have to be even more vigilant against fraudsters nowadays, because technology has made their work so much more simple in many ways.
"What I did more than 40 years ago is now about 4,000 times easier to do because of technology," he said after his speech.
"When I used to print checks, I needed a Heidelberg printing press -- it was a million-dollar machine, it was 90 feet long and 18-feet high, and it required different printers and color separators and negatives.
"Today, I can open up a laptop, create a check from a large, existing Fortune 500 company, capture their logo from their web site, print it on their check and come out with a perfect document in a matter of just minutes."
Fast-moving fraud
With technology -- and its possible abuses -- advancing all the time, Abagnale says he is never short of clients.
"Technology tends to breed cons, and it always will," he said. "There are always people willing to use technology in a negative, self-serving way."
Abagnale began life as a con man aged 16 after the trauma of his parents' divorce prompted him to leave the affluent family home in New York state.
After arriving in Manhattan, Abagnale, who looked considerably older than his age, began trying to support himself with real work, but then started writing fraudulent checks.
He then began impersonating a pilot, keeping himself in cash by cashing bad airline checks at airport terminals.
As he points out, fraud in a lower-tech age was often far more difficult.
"You know, when I said I forged checks, people would say to me, 'How did you know who signed Pan Am's checks?' I said I had no idea. 'How did you know where they are drawn?' -- I would just make that up. I had no idea.

Breaking the MBA gender barrier

LONDON, England (CNN) -- When asked to picture the archetypical MBA student, most people will describe someone relatively young, fiercely ambitious and focused on success. Oh yes, and most likely male.
While women make up slightly more than half the potential global workforce, they fill only around a third of seats in classrooms teaching MBAs and other graduate business degree courses.
There are a number of reasons for this, everything from prejudicial attitudes towards women in the workplace to the greater demands family life can often take on businesswomen.
However, there are now also increasing resources for those seeking to break through the so-called "glass ceiling" limiting women's business ambitions, by taking an MBA.
The MBA Women site (here) contains information about special events as well containing as things like the top 10 interview tips for trying to gain admission to a business school.
Schools themselves are also taking direct action, for example Northwestern University's highly-ranked Kellogg School of Business which is this week holding a special forum for women considering an MBA or similar course.
The two-day Women's Leadership Workshop, held at the Kellogg campus, is, according to the organizers, "designed for high potential women, early in their career, in industries and functions where an MBA is not considered a part of the traditional career path and who are looking to enhance their leadership skills."
And while MBAs themselves generally cost many thousands of dollars, the two days of networking and expert advice comes with a price tag of just $65.
Talking and networking
Those attending will hear talks by both faculty and top businesswomen, and will be able to take part in discussion groups on subjects such as negotiating and network strategies. They will also have the chance to meet current Kellogg students.
"This is a real opportunity for both Kellogg and the women attending," said Liz Mahler, co-organizer of the event,
"We hope to open a dialogue and encourage these women to embrace the leadership possibilities ahead of them."
Among the speakers is Stephanie Gallo, granddaughter of Ernest Gallo, who along with his brother Julio founded the famous wine house taking their two names. Now senior director of marketing, she graduated from the Kellogg program in 1999.
Women are said to often pick their MBA on different criteria than that of men, looking for personal development and a well-rounded curriculum rather than a more direct and traditional career path.
"Anecdotal evidence shows a spectrum of women working in the non-profit or otherwise non-traditional MBA track sector," said Mahler. "We want to show them how the skills developed through the Kellogg School can truly propel their career and passions in any industry."
This is not the only such event. In June, New York University's Stern School of Business is hosting the three-day MBA Forum for Women, this time aimed particularly at those seeking to enter the financial services industries.

The latest MBA must-have job

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Every generation of MBA students has its dream job.
In the 1980s, it was the paneled boardrooms of Wall Street, while in the fever of the dot-com boom, those that actually stayed on to complete their course generally left carrying a portfolio of planned Internet start-ups.
Now, according to a series of reports, private equity is the sector that has MBA students salivating over their lecture notes. It is fashionable, booming and - most importantly - it can be fantastically well paid.
However, one business school is warning that some of the shine could come off the sector, meaning newly-minted MBAs who manage to get a position in private equity might have missed the peak of the party.
Private equity, in the strict sense, refers to investment in a company or other asset in which the cash injected is not from a publicly traded source.
In recent years, a series of private equity funds - stars include the likes of the Blackstone Group and the Carlyle Group - have created headlines with the scale of their purchases, often taking companies listed on the stock market back into private hands and parachuting in a new management team focused on boosting value.
Standing out
According to Business Week, the very best newly-minted MBAs can command salaries and bonuses totaling more than $400,000 in private equity, meaning the competition for spaces is fierce, even if many funds are expanding.
Students seek to stand out by joining private equity clubs on their MBA course, and in some cases going even further: some students at the Tuck School of Business passed up the chance to go on vacation this winter break to fly to India and work for free from private equity firms there.
But could all this effort be in vain?
A new report by the University of Pennsylvania's highly-rated Wharton business school warns that while private financing looks set to remain strong this year, some are worried.
The school cited the reaction of one investor when a private hedge fund grabbed all the $10 million second-round financing of a life sciences start-up he owns: "A warning flag went up in my head. I hope we're not in for a repeat of the (dot-com) bubble era."
The caution was echoed by Wharton finance professor Pavel Savor, although he said the good times were not about to end straight away.
"Everything is very peachy now, and maybe the only way to go is down, but I would say that nothing is imminent," he said.
"Last year was the best on record by size, and 2007 in all likelihood will be even better in terms of activity. Whether it will be a good year for investors is an open question."
Saikat Chaudhuri, a management professor at Wharton, noted that the rush into private equity means the quick profits might be harder to find soon.
Hedge funds, which once dealt mainly with public companies and had a short-term outlook, are now dealing with far bigger businesses that might need more patience for a good return.
Typically, buyout firms come into a new company and can quickly create value with a new financial structure, simple operational fixes or big cuts in the workforce.
"As you start to get into these large deals -- in the double-digit billions -- that's going to require management expertise in the field and probably also holding the company for a longer period of time," Chaudhuri said.

Pitching 'outrageous' business ideas

LONDON, England (CNN) -- As business pitches go, it's certainly unorthodox. Two young women, dressed in what are clearly hastily home-made bridal outfits, stand in a corner of an elevator and talk to a video camera.
One speaks at length about how much she learned planning her wedding, while the other laments the amount she still has to do before her own big day.
Then, with a flourish, they pretend to tap on computer keyboards and simultaneously 'discover' a new Web site, Brideboard, "where brides advise brides."
Welcome to Columbia Business School's annual Outrageous Business Plan Competition.
This event allows the school's MBA students to pitch slightly more unorthodox or untested ideas before a panel of top businesspeople and venture capitalists. As one student says of his own idea: "It may be outrageous but it's not crazy."
This year's contest began with a series of two-minute mini pitches. These are all delivered to a single video camera by the individuals or teams themselves, all standing in the same place -- the somewhat unglamorous location of the corner of a stationary elevator.
Mixed approach
A near-hour long compilation of all the pitches can be viewed on the school's website (click here -- video file) and offers an illuminating insight into both the sheer variety and imagination of the ideas, and the extremely different ways in which they are presented.
Some are clearly well-rehearsed -- in a similar vein to Brideboard, one team offers up a quick but heartfelt dramatic vignette in which a couple who forget about an imminent social event are saved from their disaster by their son, who tells them about "bpampered," a Web site that sends hairdressers, beauticians and the like to your own home.
One of three eventual third-place winners, KidsLunch.com, not only have a warning slogan -- "are your kids packing on the pounds?" -- but end up throwing items of junk food around the elevator as they try to market their healthy school lunch delivery service.
Others are more prosaic in approach: Some pitches involve a single participant clutching a sheaf of notes and mumbling their spiel to the camera -- in one case, speeding up noticeably towards the end to beat the two-minute time limit.
Likewise, the ideas themselves vary greatly, everything from technical sounding business-to-business ideas to the more clearly unorthodox, such as another third-place winner, a designer clothes range purely for online communities such as Second Life.
The top prize and formal title of Most Outrageous Business Venture -- along with a $6,000 prize -- went to MBA student Michael Dwork for GreenWare, a line of disposable plates, cups and bowls that are organic and biodegradable.
Second place, and $5,000, went another single-person team, Brandon Kessler and his submission, ChallengePost, a Web site which aims to solve problems using co-operation and group action shaped by market imperatives.
"We are very pleased to recognize this year's winners," said Glenn Hubbard, Dean of Columbia Business School.
"Bold, original, and thoughtful, this year's entries demonstrated the kind of entrepreneurial thinking that we seek to cultivate in all of our students."
The contest, hosted by the school's Entrepreneurship Program and the Columbia Entrepreneurs Organization, is now in its eight year.
Unusual ideas from previous years include Gifts From the Grave, which allows consumes to continue to give gifts to loved ones after they have died, and Misfortunes, a company selling broken fortune cookies containing messages of ill-luck.

Teaching business to the arts world

LONDON, England (CNN) -- One of the biggest trends in modern business education is trying to help future executives be more creative in their thinking.
As documented before on Executive Education, students are now exposed to everything from the craft of acting (read here) to art gallery visits (read here) and lessons from works of literature (read here).
However, a leading Italian school is now taking a parallel approach -- teaching those in the creative world to be more businesslike.
Bocconi University, based in the northern Italian city of Milan, home of the famous La Scala opera house among other cultural treasures, has since 1999 offered an undergraduate course in such management.
Now it is going a stage further, and from September this year would-be executives in the creative world can begin an MSc in Economics and Management in Arts, Culture, Media and Entertainment.
Taught entirely in English, the course is aimed at managers and professionals in industries such as cultural heritage, media, entertainment, fashion and design.
The two-year program will see students explore economic, legal and managerial issues relevant to their industries and develop specific managerial skills.
As well as taking a mixture of general and specialized courses, the students will be encouraged to test out their skills in seven so-called "learning laboratories" aimed at specific areas such as cultural heritage, cultural tourism and design.
Real world experience
They will also have the chance to undertake placements and research at institutions partnered with the university such as the Rome-based International Center for the Study and Preservation of Cultural Property, which manages archaeological sites in the Mediterranean, and the elite Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, in the central Italian city of the same name.
Those taking the undergraduate version of the course have previously gone on to work for organizations including the Royal Opera House in London, EMI, Virgin and MTV.
There was now clearly room for a more advanced equivalent, program director Stefano Baia Curioni said.
"After eight years it became clear that the overall transformation of the cultural industries, arts markets and the growing attention paid to creative activities by institutions has produced a demand for high-level managerial capabilities with an international perspective," he said.
The international perspective comes from the opportunity for students to take part in one of several dual degree programs that Bocconi has established with other universities, such as Copenhagen Business School in Denmark and Science Po in Paris.
Some will also get the chance to carry out internships with institutions such as the Getty Center in Los Angeles.