Marseille Conference Report (5): Areas of Research
Walter Baets Director of Research and MBA Programs at Euromed Marseille presented a model of how business schools should combine the learning activities of acquiring theory and competencies with the dimension of personal development. This dimension cannot be reduced to a course or a set of programs; it has to permeate all knowledge and competency learning activities.
In his speech he took a step further by presenting his vision of what the business school of the future would look like. Is there any reason a business school should be separate from business itself? Do we need to have classes and students in a separate institution? Walter shared with us his vision of a business school that would be within the normal business of a company, with learners who build competencies and take initiatives inside a company?
Following Walter Baets, I summarized briefly my own work in progress on career dreams with results of surveys comparing Europeans and Asians, first year university students and senior international executives. I will communicate the results of this work in another newsletter.
Although the conference was rich in speakers, there was not much time for participants to intervene. So our concluding session was held as an Open Space where participants could identify the research areas they consider important to pursue. They organized themselves into small group discussion and proposed ideas for further study.
The feedback I received from the participants centered on two major things they appreciated. The first was the quality of the speakers and the second was the ability to network with a limited number of people who were themselves at a very high level of expertise in personal development.