A momentous time
Preparing business leaders for a future shaped by AI, innovation and unprecedented change
A common theme running through virtually every interview in this issue is the extraordinary impact of the accelerating digital age we are living through.
Take the words of our new Honorary Professor Ismail Amla who writes about how, in the future, countless business services will become ‘AI native’ where no person is actively involved. As he writes: "An AI native world starts with no people and that requires a different business strategy. Every organisation will have to determine what their business will look like in the future and how many staff they will employ."
Preparing leaders
As technology rapidly evolves, so too must the way we prepare the business leaders of tomorrow. This theme is picked up by Ian Crowther, Programme Director of our Manchester Leadership Development Programme, who writes about how business leaders today face "dynamically complex problems" and "challenges with no clear solution". Perhaps for leaders this is the ultimate challenge. After all, how do you respond when there is no obvious solution to a particular problem? How do you prepare for future challenges you are not even aware of?
Aurore Hochard, Director of Entrepreneurship at the Masood Entrepreneurship Centre, picks up on the point too in her interview too. As she adds: "You cannot ignore AI. You need to understand and use it. The best entrepreneurship education prepares people for what’s coming, not just what’s already here."
What is abundantly clear is that doing business the way it has always been done is a recipe for business failure. As MBA alumna Lety Cavalcante, who today has a senior leadership position at Waymo, says in her interview: "Doing things a certain way just because they’ve always been done that way often leads to stagnation rather than innovation."
Bart van Ark, Director of The Productivity Institute based at AMBS, also picks up on this theme as he writes about the benefits of a strategic productivity course for business leaders, and how real time big data and data processing technologies offer vast opportunities for business to raise productivity.
Concerns
But alongside the huge benefits of new technologies there are undoubtedly concerns. These are neatly brought together in a fascinating new report from the National Forum for Health and Wellbeing at Work based at AMBS which looked at the impact of AI on health and wellbeing.
So far almost all the debate has been around the huge positive technological changes that AI will bring to the workplace, while there has been comparatively little discussion about its potential impact on our health and wellbeing. For instance, how is AI affecting our levels of engagement? Is it enhancing job quality?
What impact is it having on our levels of autonomy and independence? Is it making us happier at work? I would urge you to read the report to hear some answers.
Momentous year
As well as a momentous time for business, this is also a momentous year for AMBS as we celebrate our 60th anniversary. As part of our celebrations, later this year we are publishing with Manchester University Press a book entitled 'Reimagining Business Schools for the 21st Century' where academics and business leaders discuss the huge challenges that businesses face today and how, as a business school, we need to respond to these challenges.
In this issue you can read all about the book which will be published in the autumn, and please feel free to pre-order your copy.
Tags:
