Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/55470
that we can eliminate bureaucracy. We will form a Faculty Senate, who will be in continuous contact with school lead- ership regarding curricular design and development. Facul- ty also will reside on campus, to encourage informal, daily interaction with students and other stakeholders. Our students will be older executives—typically 35 to 45 years old—with different professional, educational, cultural, and national backgrounds. They will bring their real-world experiences into each course and be able to put what they learn to the test almost immediately. We will teach through "living" case studies, which will be assigned to students as consulting projects or presented by guest speakers who have lived them. Our EMBA students will complete "living research projects" that will demonstrate positive impact on our students and the companies where they work. In all respects, we view this new school as a meeting infrastructure isn't as driven by bureaucracy as other larger schools. Finally, the 40-year-old institution offers the advan- tages of an established network of students and alumni and a location near Zurich, a business center. My aim with the Lorange Institute is to develop an alternative "blueprint" for how a top business school will look in the future. Within this blueprint, the program is completely part-time, there are no permanent faculty, and there are always fresh perspectives coming through the doors. Because our students continue to work and our fac- ulty come from a variety of institutional and research back- grounds, we will maintain a continuous connection to the changing business world. Making It Work This model presents significant challenges. We know we must attract strong first-tier research faculty, because research is key for cutting-edge teaching. Faculty, in effect, will be "moonlighting" at the Lorange Institute from other institu- tions to work with us on a part-time basis. However, we realize that other institutions have cultivat- ed the talents and research skills of these faculty. We do not want to be accused of cherry picking the best talent from other schools, so we will ensure that their commitment to their home institutions is fully recognized. We will not only support our part-time faculty members, but also compensate their parent institutions for their contributions. In addition, we will embrace a "flat hierarchy," where all faculty are involved with the governance of the school, so place for ideas. It will be a place where students and fac- ulty share their immediate experiences. We are committed to the Socratic method, where all participants engage in debate about what really works in practice, rather than in one-way communication from professor to student. "Constructive" Innovation Clayton Christensen talks of "disruptive innovation." I do not see my purchase of GSBA as disruptive in the way Christensen describes. Still, what we are doing is different. We aim to make the customer—the student—the complete focus of our attention. We might do this, to some extent, at the expense of the professor. Many might view this approach as controversial. But I view it as constructive, rather than disruptive, innovation. I argue that we shouldn't be criticizing what business schools do or don't do, or what they have or have not accomplished. Instead, we should be acting on what our customers need from us—fully integrated education that, at all times, links the curriculum to the workplace. I want to create an alterna- tive to the status quo of management education and push it in a new direction. I think that we're missing the most critical factor in effec- tive business education: guarded optimism! We must be opti- mistic that we can change the way we teach business, that we can create new business opportunities for our students and faculty. To do that, we must change our model so that focus is squarely on our students—rather than on our faculty. ■ z Peter Lorange is president of the Lorange Institute of Management Zurich in Switzerland and the author of the book Thought Leadership Meets Business. BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010 41