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Education For The Next Economy – a personal view

The theme of this year’s Rotterdam TEDx series is Great Heights. At first you may wonder what the connection is between food and education and great heights. I hope it will become clear.

Food courts Food courts are very popular across Asia. In the modern metropolis of Singapore – people still flock to food courts like Newton Circus.

Most shopping malls will have a floor or a large part of a floor devoted to food. So even in luxurious shopping malls featuring shops selling all the latest Parisian fashion – there will be plenty of food choices.

They are a more recent phenomenon in The Netherlands. At Erasmus University there is a modest food court for students. In Utrecht – they have Speys as part of the Jaarbeurs convention centre – and of course, here in Rotterdam – we have the new Markthal offering a wide variety of foods – although strictly speaking this is not a true food court – as it is not possible to find a table where you can sit down and have a family eating food from multiple food stores.

In a typical food court, you'll find there is a wide range of food options each served at a specialty outlet.

Individuals can mix and match their selections and then come together in the centre and converse over their separate meals.

Families love this because in one spot you can satisfy mum, dad, grandma, grandpa, and all the kids – each eating their favourite food.

Perhaps one will see that something another person is eating looks tastier and decides next time to try that. On the next occasion each is free to try a different food.

A food court serves food at all hours: breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks from morning until late at night.

A TED presentation of a few years ago started with this picture – Hogarth’s depiction of a coffee house, often the source of many new ideas that drove the enlightenment – social, political, scientific, and manufacturing revolutions.

Let’s see how a modern day food court might fit in.

The 21st Century is truly VUCA We are living in what has been popularly described as the VUCA World. As with much of the modern language of business, VUCA comes from the military, in this case the US armed forces describing conditions in Afghanistan.

V for Volatile – just try to follow President Trump from one day to the next! U for Uncertain – just what will Brexit mean? C for Complex?

The Rotterdam University Research Centre, Sustainable Port City, Duurzame Havenstad, known as RDM to most, has set out 21 trends that could have an effect on the way the Port functions all of which illustrate the potential VUCA.

These trends include the increase in the use of robots and drones, the impact of the circular economy with reverse logistics becoming as important as forward logistics, the rise in renewable energy, and self-propelled vehicles.

Simple arithmetic says that the interaction of these 21 trends adds up to a staggering number of potential combinations.

51,090,942,171,709,440,000!

A for Ambiguous?

We’re already very familiar with robots in manufacturing – but what about Artificial Intelligent robots?

Will these robots yield fewer jobs? Fewer but higher-paying jobs? More jobs – but paying less?

Technology Change We are currently in the 3rd, 4th, or 6th wave – depending on which academic you prefer to read. 

The Australians developed the concept of the 6th wave of innovation.

The Germans described the 4th Industrial Revolution – adopted by the World Economic Forum.

And the American academic, Jeremy Rivkin – talks about the 3rd. Whatever it is – the future is being driven by rapid advances in technology. Just looking digital alone – here is one projection of the growth in connected devices. 50 billion by 2020.

Roadmap – Next Economy In an attempt to make sense of the future – 23 municipalities have combined together to set out how the Rotterdam Delta should prepare for this future “In 2025, the metropolitan region of Rotterdam and The Hague will be the international market leader in the design, development, manufacture and marketing of solutions in the area of sustainable living in a heavily urbanised delta region. In the region, coherent solutions will be devised, tested and produced for global logistic, energy, food and safety issues.”

The Roadmap sets out five strategic areas of focus – or future economies - for the Delta:

Smart Digital Delta

Smart Energy Delta

Circular Economy

Entrepreneurial Region

Next Society.

Arising out of this, in Rotterdam we have the Innovation Quarter seeking to redevelop older parts of the harbour known as the RDM and M4H districts. In fact, all this week we have had 90 students, from the Rotterdam Business School and the NEOMA Business School in France, tackling a problem specific to attracting new businesses to the planned circular economy area of M4H.

The question arises, are we preparing our students to be a part of this Road-mapped economy?

The Problem

'The Times' recently published its 2018 world rankings of universities. I was pleased to see my alma mater, Oxford, remaining on top of the global list.

But more troublesome are reports that student satisfaction is low.

A third of students don’t believe their course is offering value for money

Over a quarter believe feedback from tutors is poor and too many students end up regretting their choice of course.

In the recently published book, 'Overschooled and Under Educated' the author John Abbott asserts that education is about preparing children to become good citizens and adults who will thrive at unstructured tasks - not just successful pupils.

In 2014, The London School of Economics found a mismatch between what universities were providing and what businesses need. Their research among CEOs identified three core capabilities sadly lacking in recent graduates:

Problem solving

The ability to connect different parts of the business in a holistic way

Collaboration and teamwork.

These capabilities are echoed in a Twente University paper entitled "21st Century Education".

As the eminent international advisor on education and creativity, Sir Kenneth Robinson, has pointed out, our model of education was developed during the industrial revolution - fit for purpose in the 19th century. If you were to ponder who succeeds in the current system, he asserts - the answer is university professors.

But if we are to achieve the goals of the Road Map then what we don’t want are more university professors.

Greatness? Now, you might be wondering. This is all very interesting, but what does this have to do with greatness? The theme of this conference? Here’s my concern. Are we providing our students, our future leaders, the kind of university education that will allow them to be great? While my focus is on University Business Education – I believe that there are lessons across all levels, from nursery school or kindergarten up.

Inspiring them to pursue their own greatness? To find, what Sir Ken Robinson calls their Element. Where they can unleash their potential. Over the past three years I have been inspired by my students. They come from everywhere. All parts of Asia. The Middle East. Africa. The Netherlands and other parts of Europe. Central and Latin America. Even Australia. They come to study business but they are also imbued with a desire to create a better world. They are aware of the problems of the modern world – climate issues, poverty, and they want the businesses they work for, or create, to be good citizens.

So, are we providing them with the education that will prepare them for this future? Allow them to be great? I know that we are not. Too often this is the view of the classroom. And old textbooks are the focus of learning. We need schools that start to encourage new capabilities. Pupils to learn basic facts and theories but also we need to encourage an entrepreneurial spirit, nurture and develop their imagination and creativity and not snuff out these innate capabilities.

I was quite intrigued by this Infographic – produced by Funders and Founders. Everyone will become an entrepreneur.

I have asked several cohorts of graduate students – has your university career prepared you to be more entrepreneurial? To be creative, innovative? The overwhelming response has been NO or maybe just a little. As Prof Ken Robinson has pointed out the current education system, in many countries, stamps out creativity and instils uniformity.

An interlude – what do you see on this next slide? We need to encourage young people to develop a flair for learning to learn. This capability is going to be fundamental in the 21st Century. With knowledge changing rapidly, we are going to have to be continually re-learning. What do we need?

Of course we are going to need specialist skills, built on a foundation of facts and proven theories - so engineers of all types, scientists, and doctors. I am not arguing against the need for pure science and academic rigour in disciplines – what I am arguing is that we need a different approach to conveying that knowledge from the academic world to the community at large. We also need creativity, entrepreneurial spirits to foster new technological, business, and social solutions:

Encourage inter-disciplinary work - active interaction between researchers, lecturers, students, and business people

Develop stakeholder-engagement and cross-sectoral partnership building skills

Nurture creativity and entrepreneurship.

We see so many advances being made by differing specialists collaborating, for example,

New health solutions combining basic medical knowledge with nano-robotics, engineering, and IT

Engineers studying nature - zoology and botany to create new materials or new ways to harness energy from the sun.

Back to the food court Which topics are important to teach is hard to fathom. I was perusing Friedman’s book ‘Thank you for being late’ where he discusses Teller’s view of the rate of growth of new, technological knowledge and contrasts that with human adaptability.

How do we cope? How do we train students to cope where solutions offered at the start of their degree may be obsolete by their final year?

One of my colleagues is studying 21st century skills and has found a large discrepancy between what educators think their students need and what students believe are their priorities.

But why should we try to force students into a specific box at the start of their adult careers? Maybe numeracy Is not important – now – but perhaps will be in the future. So why not allow students to return to add to their knowledge – when they need it?

Thus, my view of the future business university is a kind of educational food court.

The university of the future should allow students to mix and match topics of their choice. Not just choosing from a range of pre-structured, fixed degrees - but choosing from a wide range of subjects. Including the creative arts. Why not a degree in which you study management, mathematics and music? Just as a food court serves food at all hours so students will be encouraged to return to the university at all times in their lives - to learn new stuff. The current stuff.

I see the university of the future offering short, specialised courses. And as new technologies and new capability requirements emerge in the 21st century, universities will develop new very-focused courses perhaps only a week in length.

Instead of degrees – business schools will offer shorter courses in specific skills and capabilities and award certificates attesting to achieved competencies. In the same way that boy cubs, scouts and girl cubs and guides collect proficiency badges.

Right now I'd like to sign up for a cryptocurrency proficiency course and badge. Financial Literacy might not be a priority right now – but when the IT student starts his new business – returning to his university to do a crash course in Finance for non-Finance managers might prove valuable. Then.

Businesses will send their managers armed with live problems to these courses - aiming to achieve solutions to their current business issues - collaborating with lecturers and full-time students.

Perhaps studying for a degree might become obsolete for business. It may well be that certain disciplines (such as medicine and law) will still need focused basic degrees – although rapid changes in medical technology will force constant retraining.

But universities are too silo-ed. As David Grayson of Cranfield University writing in the 'Financial Times' asserted: “Part of the problem is the emphasis for academic career progression on publication in three- and four-starred academic journals which can encourage incremental development of academic theory."

The Roadmap may need such incremental development in basic sciences and technologies - but it also requires breakthrough, creative solutions.

The Barrier In a recent blog on LinkedIn, Sahed Ladapo produced these graphs, showing technology, businesses and public policy.

If you then take one of the observations of Sir Ken Robinson, that our educational systems were designed in the 19th century, we can posit that they were fit for purpose in an era when the rate of change of knowledge was sedentary when compared to that of the 21st Century.

Now we can understand the frustration of forward-thinking educators – I’d like to include myself in that category - who recognize that their role is really to help students grapple with a fast-changing world and would thus like to focus on building fundamental capabilities, like learning how to learn - but have to operate in a rigid structure that discourages change.

Our educational systems need to become more fleet-footed. We need members of our education boards and administrators to return to school and study entrepreneurship and creativity - then return to their roles and transform the system.

Look at what is happening in China. Often we think of China as being just a cheap manufacturer of western products – with education in a world of Confucius inspired learning by rote - but their students of today are being prepared for a different world.

If we are going to inspire our new generation to become great leaders – whether in business, politics and society, the sciences, or the arts – we need to introduce some radical changes.

I challenge our educational bureaucrats – unleash the greatness in our current generation – start to become versatile, creative, and fleet of foot yourselves and if you can’t or won’t - get out of their way.

This blog is written on March 9th 2018 by Ron Ainsbury, associate applied research professor Business Responsibility & Sustainability, Research Centre Business Innovation, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences.

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What happened to Unilever?

Business performance lists are often contentious.

Are sales comparable across industries as a basis for measuring size? How did the compiler assess profits across countries? And so on.

The latest list to be published is the Toronto-based Corporate Knights’ annual Top 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World (http://www.corporateknights.com/). Their 2018 ranking was unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The ranking makes interesting reading.

In editorial columns on their website Corporate Knights claim that “it is not enough to be focused on CSR”. For too many companies CSR is seen as an optional extra’. Smaller businesses focus on the “C”- corporate – and argue, “nothing to do with us, we‘re not corporate. Others focus on the “S” - social – and the response is “when we have improved our profitability then we can consider giving something back to society”.

But being a sustainable business is not about CSR. The focus should be about embedding responsible and sustainable business prices into the everyday operations of the business. Build your products, supply your services in such a way that you don’t harm either the environment or society. It is not an add on

In a related article on the website, Corporate Knights report that Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, has abandoned the phrase, CSR, and doesn’t allow its use within the company. And yet, no mention of Unilever in the top 100 , despite the great progress that Unilever has made in driving sustainable change across its portfolio and embedding their Sustainable Living Plan, announced in 2010, as the basis for their strategic development.

A strange omission especially when one looks at companies that do make it on the “sustainable” list - #2 is an oil and gas company. The list includes several automobile companies and several global chemical companies.

With a wind turbine company ranked only #96 one wonders just how sustainability is measured?

This blog is written by Ron Ainsbury, associate applied research professor Business Responsibility & Sustainability, Research Centre Business Innovation, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. 

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The VUCA World

In this blog I want to return to a theme I wrote about in an earlier blog, “Will you find a job when you graduate?” (http://bit.ly/2gcKBex).

VUCA, coined by the US military to describe the conditions following the cold war, it became more popular during the Afghanistan conflicts and has made it way into the business and political lexicon in the late noughties.

V = Volatility. The nature and speed of change, compounded by the growth of global population after WWII and the increasing rate of change of new technology.

U = Uncertainty. The unpredictability of issues and events; the current riots on the streets of Iranian cities, for example. Who would have predicted these a month ago?

C = Complexity. The confounding of several issues. Right now we have regions wanting to secede from one grouping but remain part of a larger grouping, try explaining Scotland, Brexit, and the EU or Catalonia, Spain, and the EU?

A = Ambiguity. The haziness of reality, the potential for misreads. This often shows up in trying to separate cause and effect, does correlation mean causation?

The IPSOS study, “Global Trends: Fragmentation, Cohesion, & Uncertainty”[1] provides a wealth of data on just how a few trends are common across the globe. This survey, conducted across 23 countries and covered over 18,000 adults, identified four megatrends which reinforce the VUCA-ness of the world.

Technological Acceleration (well-rehearsed phenomenon)

Demographic change and dynamic populations, e.g.,

Movement from rural to urban centres

Increase in the ratio of elderly to working age

Multi-polarity

No longer a ‘west’-dominated world

By 2030, 2/3 of the world’s ‘middle class’ will be living in Asia

Sustainability

Water issues (drought and floods)

Waste (China has stopped accepting UK Plastic waste)

Plastic pollution affecting food chains

Energy.

In a recently-published book, WTF[2] (No, not what you think it means! What’s The Future?), Tim O’Reilly sets out a sweeping review of the way in which technology has developed and offers some thoughts for the future in a section he calls “It’s up to us”.

He asserts that we don’t have to run out of jobs. As many writers have been pointing out, each technological change has resulted in more jobs to replace the old, but these jobs are different. So we need to augment people, not replace them.

[1] https://www.ipsosglobaltrends.com  [2] “What’s the future?” by Tim O’Reilly Random House 2017

This blog is written by Ron Ainsbury, associate applied research professor Business Responsibility & Sustainability, Research Centre Business Innovation, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences.

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What do we mean by entrepreneurship?

In business and university circles we often hear the phrase “students must become more entrepreneurial.” We read articles arguing that everyone will have to become an entrepreneur in the new economy[1] and one of the key focus areas of the ‘Roadmap to the Next Economy’[2] is startup economies. The EU has a 2020 Entrepreneurship strategy[3] and, in 2014, the World Economic Forum sponsored a workshop entitled ‘Fostering Innovation- driven Entrepreneurship in Europe’, in which they put forward the structure of “stand up, startup, scale up” as a means to supporting the creation of new businesses.[4]

Asked for a definition of an entrepreneur, my graduate students will come up with familiar names; Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg and Musk. They will describe a vision of a lone wolf working in a small workshop or garage, coming up with a brilliant idea that creates a billion-dollar business.

I recently interviewed 90 final year bachelor business students about becoming an entrepreneur and most replied “I don’t have what it takes”. Only five planned to start a new business after they graduated and a further 75 said – “Maybe in a few years’ time, but not just yet.”

No-one responded “Yes” to the question: “Has university prepared you to be able to start your own business?” Most only replied “Somewhat”.

This after three and half years of study at our business school!

Are we doing a good job at HR Business School helping our students become entrepreneurs? Perhaps we are discouraging ambition by projecting the wrong image of an entrepreneur?

That would not be surprising when there are so many ideas of what an entrepreneur is. For example, ‘Business News Daily’s’ Paula Fernandes interviewed 15 company founders and received different 15 versions of what makes an entrepreneur.[5]

In a recent ‘HBR’ article[6], John Hagel III reminds us that high growth new businesses (often referred to as ‘gazelles’ or ‘unicorns’) are few and far between and argues that we shouldn’t unduly focus on them. With new technologies making production and distribution processes more reachable to smaller businesses, perhaps we should focus our students, not so much on the building of multi-million dollar enterprises but, in Hagel’s words; “making a comfortable living for themselves and perhaps a small team of people” by “designing and commercializing products that are targeted to the specific needs of small groups of customers rather than the mass market.”

One can start to see this in the rise in new small businesses challenging global players - such as specialty gin companies, artesian bakeries, boutique breweries, and bean-to-bar chocolatiers.

Most of our graduates join small businesses rather than large ones and therefore don’t see the need to be entrepreneurial, but even existing small businesses need entrepreneurs to remain competitive.

The EC writes that “Europe’s economic growth and jobs depend on its ability to support the growth of enterprises. Entrepreneurship creates new companies, opens up new markets, and nurtures new skills. The most important sources of employment in the EU are Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The Commission’s objective is to encourage people to become entrepreneurs and also make it easier for them to set up and grow their businesses.” [7]

So, as the HR Business School, what should we be focusing on? I suggest three capabilities:

Creativity and Innovation: How can we involve other parts of the university more with our business school? How do we encourage closer collaboration between our students and those of, say, the Willem de Koning Academy, CMIT and the RDM Campus?

Problem-solving, teamwork and collaboration: The recent Rotterdam International Case Competition, in which teams of students tackled complex business cases under time pressure, is an example of what the few participants would say was a wonderful learning experience. But why just for a select few students in the occasional competition? Could we not use this methodology as a regular feature in more of our courses?

Calculated risk taking and learning from failure: It is often thought that entrepreneurs are risk takers, but a recent study revealed that they take carefully-considered risks and, importantly, they learn from their mistakes.[8] Perhaps we can encourage our own FU nights[9] within the HR Business School – where we invite current students and recent graduates to share their experiences of mistakes made and lessons learned?

[1] “Why everyone will have to become an entrepreneur” Paul B Brown Forbes May 13, 2012

[2] https://mrdh.nl/RNE

[3] https://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/promoting-entrepreneurship/action-plan_en

[4] http://www3.weforum.org/docs/AM14/WEF_AM14_FosteringInnovationDrivenEntrepreneurshipEurope_SessionSummary.pdf

[5] “Entrepreneurship Defined” Paula Fernandes Business News Daily, March 2, 2016

[6] “We need to expand our definition of entrepreneurship” John Hagel III, HBR, September 2016

[7] https://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/promoting-entrepreneurship_en

[8] “Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise” by Saras D. Sarasvathy  Edward Elgar 2008

[9] https://fuckupnights.com

This blog is written by Ron Ainsbury, associate applied research professor Business Responsibility & Sustainability, Research Centre Business Innovation, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences.

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Trust and Business Leadership

Can much of the current political unrest be explained by the decline in trust of our leading institutions by the majority of citizens? A brief read of Edelman’s Trust Barometer might cause one to agree.

https://www.edelman.com/trust2017/

In answer to the question: ‘How much do you trust?’ in a survey of 33,000 respondents aged 18 and over in 25 markets 53% said they trusted NGOs, 52% trusted business, 43% trusted the media, and 41% trusted government. The level of distrust varies across countries but in almost every country there has been a steady decline in trust over the past the past few years.

Reading behind these global figures are some interesting details.

In a crisis government official are only rated as very or extremely credible by 29% of the population, CEOs fared a little better at 37%. Most people are skeptical about what they are told by leader in a crisis.

Edelman sets out the path of a downward spiral as concerns turn into fears. Edelman focuses on five major concerns: corruption, globalization, eroding social values, immigration, and the pace of innovation. As concerns among the population grow to fears their belief in the system is eroded. Trust declines. The risk of population action rises.

Implications for Business

If CEOs, NGOs. And government are not credible – then who are credible?

A person like me 60%

Technical expert 60%

Academic expert 60%

Even these figures are not encouraging, 2 out of 5 people do NOT find these people credible!

‘Business plays a role in stoking societal fears’ says Edelman as people worry about losing their jobs because of lack of training ,or to foreign competitors, or to immigrants willing to work for lower wages, or because jobs are moved to offshore. Little surprise then that protectionism is on the rise.

The advice for business is clearly set out. Citizens expect that businesses should stop:

Paying bribes

Paying senior executives hundreds of times more than workers

Moving profits offshore

Overcharge for products that are necessities of life

Reducing costs by lowering quality …

and instead:

Adopt ethical business practices

Treat employees well

Pay fair share of taxes

Listen to customers

Offer high quality products / services.

There is a wealth of detail behind these statistics and while details vary from country to country what seems to be clear from Edelman’s report (which has been conducted annually since 2001) is that across the world people are crying out for leadership. And business leaders have the opportunity to provide responsible leadership. But they need to put the interests of consumers and their employees above their own personal desires.

This message is amplified by Simon Sinek in his talk “Why leaders eat last”.

This blog is written by Ron Ainsbury, associate applied research professor Business Responsibility & Sustainability, Research Centre Business Innovation, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences.

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Will you find a job when you graduate?

One of the major concerns of students and employees is – will the Digital Economy mean less jobs to go around? This fear is compounded in the west by the export of many jobs to lower-wage countries - globalization.

This is a natural concern when looking at recent headlines:

“RBS moves 443 jobs to Mumbai from the UK”

“Mothercare looks to halve the number of stores”

“Will the rise of AI terminate our jobs?”

Even in some of the lower-wage cost countries, jobs are being lost. IBM India recently announced that at least 5,000 jobs might go – and an IBM spokesperson explained: “re-skilling and rebalancing is an ongoing process as we accelerate the benefits of cognitive and cloud technologies for clients around the world”.

The optimist suggests that (as predicted by John Maynard Keynes) that our problem is going to be how to fill the leisure time that is going to be created by day-today jobs being filled by robots of one kind or another. Indeed, Warren Buffett praises companies that reduce staffing levels: “They have followed the standard capitalist formula ... of trying to do the same business with fewer people. People live better when there is more output per capita.” But are we living better? The pessimist points out that despite the rise in digitalization and use of robots most people are still working as hard as ever. The realist in me suggests that if everyone is going to benefit from digitalization, artificial intelligence, robotization, etc. – then we are going to need a radical change in how society functions

In the meantime, what are we (and you) going to do? One point of view suggest that in the future we will all be entrepreneurs – that will require new skills and capabilities, particularly creativity.

Perhaps the news from Infosys in India shows the way for those of you who don’t have an entrepreneurial bent. While annual hiring of full-time staff in Infosys India will be lowered to around 6,000 new employees in 2016-17. At the same time 11,000 employees had been moved from manual repetitive tasks and redeveloped them to positions requiring creativity and imagination. Infosys further claims it has retrained 140,000 of its 200,000 staff since 2014 – resulting in higher productivity, more creative positions. So clearly being able to develop new skills helps those at Infosys keep their jobs.

Have business schools kept up with changes? In a 2014 blog, “Business Schools have lost a staggering amount of credibility in the business community” two London School of Economics lecturers assert that many business schools have failed to develop curricula that satisfy the needs of employers who require a workforce that can evolve alongside a continuously changing world.” They point out that what businesses seek is: problem-solving, the ability to connect different aspects of business and think in a holistic way, and the courage to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity.

So – what skills and capabilities are you going to learn while you study for your business degree – that will prepare you for the world of tomorrow? Do you know how to learn and keep learning?

In the RBS Graduate Department we are evolving to help you with courses such as Critical Thinking (creative problem-solving) and giving you assignments such as those in International Project and Managing Corporate Sustainability that take you out of your comfort zone forcing you to work with people of different cultures with different ways of thinking and working.

We live in a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous). To survive we are going to need to be creative and imaginative. Is your degree helping you prepare?

This blog is written by Ron Ainsbury, associate applied research professor Business Responsibility & Sustainability, Research Centre Business Innovation, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences.