Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/80527
from the editors The New Competitors O ne February about a decade ago, I heard an interesting radio ad that went something like this: "Don't buy your wife candy and flowers for Valentine's Day. Think outside the chocolate box! Let your creativity bloom! Buy her a cell phone instead." I thought, Wow, Godiva and FTD have their work cut out for them now. They weren't just competing with other floral shops and candy-makers for the market segment poised to spend big bucks on Valentine's Day. They were dealing with a whole host of new competitors—any company that could make its product look like a stand-in for "I love you." The truth is that, for every market segment there is, new competitors pop up every quarter. That old cell phone company I heard advertising in 2002 was probably put out of business by Nokia and RIM—who have seen their own fortunes falter as the iPhone took center stage. At this point it's hard to imagine anyone dethroning Apple, but history has taught us that a likely game changer is already lurking in the wings. Competitors are mor- tal, but competition is eternal. Business school deans and faculty, who actually teach the topic of competition, know this better than anyone, but even they might not be entirely braced for all the new con- tenders popping up in their field. These upstart new competitors are forcing traditional business schools to examine their own programs in terms of content, delivery, and student base. This issue of BizEd explores how competition is changing the management education industry. In the big-picture story "We Have to Rethink…Everything," David Bach of Yale takes a hard look at the macro trends that are reshaping business and business education. In "Bricks and Clicks Come Face to Face," we get inside information from two new deans at online business schools—Daniel Szpiro of Strayer University's Jack Welch Management Institute and Rebecca Taylor of Open University Business School. And in "Race to the Top," a number of business school representatives explain how they have been adjusting their programs to meet the competition head-on. There's no question that traditional management education will have to adapt, but that doesn't mean it will fall by the wayside. In the last 15 years I've gone from a landline to a flip phone to an iPhone, but I still have a phone. Likewise, many business students have moved from face-to-face courses to blended formats to com- pletely online programs—but they still want to learn. Business schools that design the kinds of educational products that people want, in the packaging they prefer, will always have a market. Because even though competition is eternal, so is innovation—and business schools are certainly poised to deliver that. 6 September/October 2012 BizEd RAQUITA HENDERSON