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44 November/ December 2014 BizEd WAVE B R EAKM E DIA LTD/TH I N KSTOCK 44 November/ December 2014 BizEd ■ On the road to receiving their business school acceptance letters, most MBA hopefuls expect to run the gauntlet of applications, essays, and a few on-campus interviews. But the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management in Can- ada has added one more activity to the list: the Rotman Problem Solving Challenge. Since 2013, Rotman has given prospective and incoming full-time MBA candidates the opportunity to "dive deep into a messy, unstructured problem," explains Ken McGuffin, who manages media relations for the school. Faculty choose a win- ner, who receives a full scholar- ship to the MBA program, and several runners-up, who receive partial scholarships. In 2014, they explored the opportunities and threats pre- sented by the growing prevalence of social media. This year, the school awarded CAN$300,000 in scholarship money. The challenge benefits the school in three ways, says Leigh Gauthier, the acting director of recruitment and admissions for the school's full-time MBA program. First, it attracts pro- spective students from around the world to campus. Second, it gives participants a preview of what it's like to attend Rotman's programs. Finally, says Gauthier, the challenge gives the school's admissions team an opportu- nity to "scout for talent" and see potential students in action before making final acceptance decisions. How can business schools teach students to think innovatively? By creating interdisciplinary courses that force them to integrate differ- ent kinds of skills and knowledge— and by cultivating an environment where entrepreneurial teaching is rewarded. Here are several schools that are pushing that envelope: ■ In May of this year, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, launched the Inte- grated Innovation Institute, which hopes to "speed the pace of inno- vation" by cross-training students in business, design, and engineer- ing. The institute is co-directed by Peter Boatwright of the Tepper School of Business, Eric Anderson of the College of Fine Arts, and Jonathan Cagan of the College of Engineering. The institute is a joint initiative of the three schools. At the core of the institute are three degrees: the new master of integrated innovation for products and services (MII-PS), a master of science in software manage- ment, and a professional master's degree that debuts in fall 2016 as part of the university's new inte- grated media program. In all the programs, the three disciplines are emphasized equally as engineering, design, and business students work side by side in courses and on proj- ects. Instructors from two or three of the different disciplines team- teach many classes. The capstone course of the MII- PS, called Integrated Product Devel- opment, takes multidisciplinary project teams through the four phases of product creation: identifi- cation, understanding, conceptual- ization, and realization. Teams have worked on projects ranging from Innovation That… Reframes Innovation…In the Classroom