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22 November/ December 2014 BizEd November/ December 2014 BizEd 5 22 November/ December 2014 6 BY ALEX TRIANTIS R esearch shows that creativ- ity rises with ceiling height, so why not raise the roof when asking students to be innova- tive? This fall at the University of Maryland's Smith School of Busi- ness, we'll actually remove the roof altogether in the undergraduate class called "Creativity and Innova- tion for Business Leaders: Outdoor Edition," taught by Distinguished Tyser Teaching Fellow Oliver Schlake. Students will first form teams and brainstorm products for outdoor enthusiasts; after visiting various retailers to observe custom- ers in action, they'll return to the classroom to tweak their ideas. Then it gets interesting. Using scanners and 3-D printers, students will create prototypes that they test in the wild over a full day spent out- doors in the forests around Washing- ton, D.C. In case there's inclement weather, Schlake will bring a large customized and heatable teepee to provide shelter. Upon returning to the classroom, each team will pitch its product to the others. The four most promising will be chosen, the teams will realign, and students will build and field-test a new gen- eration of prototypes. Meanwhile, students will draft their marketing pitches and shoot video footage to use for crowdfunding campaigns on websites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo. At the end of class, they'll make presentations to a live audience of potential investors—and maybe launch a new business or two. We're not the only business school offering students a chance to field-test ideas and see business in action. For instance, Harvard Busi- ness School now embeds its MBA Get Real because they offer educational opportunities to people who have little other university access, but also because of their potential to expose groups of students to new ideas from people they might otherwise never have met. In fact, Vivek Goel, chief academic strategist at Coursera, notes that some students in Asian countries have taken MOOC classes and then been accepted into main- stream universities. Solving Problems No matter what path they take, business schools must build inno- vation into their curricula because today's businesses require gradu- ates who are creative, adaptive thinkers. Tony Wagner, expert in residence at Harvard University's new Innovation Lab, made that point when he spoke at AACSB's Annual Conference in 2013. He said, "Work is no longer defined by your specialty. It is defined by the task or problem you and your team are trying to solve or the end goal you want to accomplish." When innovation is the goal, Wagner notes, critical thinking and problem solving are the "first criti- cal skills" young graduates need to develop. A grounding in traditional subjects like accounting and finance is still valuable; even innovation processes are subject to time and budget constraints. But business schools need to supplement those traditional disciplines with pro- grams that teach students to think creatively, not just in one class, but throughout their working lives. Loick Roche is dean and Mark Thomas is associate dean for international affairs and professor of strategic management at Grenoble Ecole de Management, France. ciplines to cooperate as they develop their projects in applied research. Another way to give students a new perspective is to bring in an outsider who challenges the students' ideas. At Grenoble EM, we've exper- imented by inviting in a philosopher to question students at the end of a lesson. This not only forces them to look at situations in an entirely dif- ferent way, but it also allows them to defend their ideas to someone who is not part of the mainstream business world. This is a key skill that they will need later on. Encourage cross-disciplinary— and cross-cultural—perspectives. Students who pursue joint degrees sharpen their critical thinking skills, which is one reason for the popu- larity of degree programs that pair business with math, design, history, philosophy, law, and psychology. But students develop even broader per- spectives when they engage in cross- border studies by taking some classes at other universities. When schools from different countries and conti- nents develop joint degree programs, students get a chance to explore many different ways of thinking. They also see how innovation can be a global phenomenon. As Amar Bhidé writes in The Venture- some Economy: "A Briton invented the protocols of the World Wide Web—in a lab in Switzerland. A Swede and a Dane in Tallinn, Estonia, started Skype, the leading provider of peer-to-peer Internet telephony." Students learn how innovation can be sparked and strengthened by global connections. Stop worrying about MOOCs. In fact, embrace them. MOOCs encourage innovation not only