Overcoming Challenges to Innovation

• Business schools that are reluctant to challenge their existing pedagogy risk becoming complacent, which limits their ability to foster a culture of continuous innovation.
• One of the main challenges business schools encounter when bringing innovative thinking into their curriculum is ensuring collaboration and diversity of thought with students from outside disciplines.
• Successful innovation relies on the commitment and cooperation of all stakeholders, emphasizing the importance of a positive narrative around change and improvement.

Transcript

Josep Franch: [0:15] Well, the challenge to innovate is the resistance to changes that normally we have. All business schools have their legacy. Typically, legacy is sometimes misunderstood as no need for change. Because we have been doing very well in the past, why to change?

[0:35] This is something that we have to convince people that we need to innovate and change constantly.

“Being able to bring different strengths from different disciplines, and to come and think of ideas and look at those ideas and solve problems from different perspectives, that does bring creativity.” —Morris Kalliny

Morris Kalliny: [0:45] I would say that the biggest challenge that we face in business schools for lack of innovation is being able to go outside our discipline and being able to be comfortable in working together collaboratively.

[0:56] Being able to bring different strengths from different disciplines, whether it's education, art, communication, engineering, business, entrepreneurship, and to come and think of ideas and look at those ideas and solve problems from different perspectives, that does bring creativity.

[1:12] It does bring innovation to these solutions, because if you take just one discipline, basically it makes it really difficult for somebody to be able to come up with a solution that is optimal. You're able to overcome that with bringing students together to be able to solve different problems.

“If you've got the will and if you've got the commitment of others and you're willing to work with those people, you can always find a pathway towards innovation.” —Andrew Beer

Paul Drews: [1:29] Many of the innovations that we see are also ethical issues. For addressing them, we need to teach our students to deal with them. For this, for example, we created serious games, serious moral games, which help them to better understand the challenges, the ethical challenges related to digital transformation and AI.

Andrew Beer: [1:47] I think the great challenge for innovation is always people. There's an old saying that all problems are people problems. If you've got the will and if you've got the commitment of others and you're willing to work with those people, you can always find a pathway towards innovation.

[2:03] It's about bringing stakeholders with you, bringing your staff with you, and making sure the story that you tell about innovation is a positive one about change, about how we can do better, how we can achieve more, and how we can achieve our mission.