U.S. corporations have changed dramatically over the last 40 years or so. Among the world’s most valuable companies today are Microsoft, Meta (Facebook), Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and Alphabet (Google). Aside from Tesla, which owns Gigafactories, these digital natives use knowledge, talent, subscriber networks, and innovation as their key assets. This is unlike the 20th-century giants — General Electric, U.S. Steel, General Motors, Ford, Goodyear Tire, and ExxonMobil — that rely on land, buildings, machines, warehouses, and physical infrastructure to produce physical goods. The magnitude of this seismic change can be judged from the fact that, according to our calculations, each 21st-century digital giant is at least 10 times more valuable than an average 20th-century industrial giant.
MBA Programs Need an Update for the Digital Era
The degree was designed to meet the needs of 20th century business — not today’s.
November 11, 2021
DenBoma/Getty Images
Summary.
The MBA has been the quintessential managerial education program and has supplied more ready and trained managers to U.S. corporations than any other graduate program. While MBA curricula are evolving to meet the changing needs of corporations, the authors assert that the pace of change must accelerate to keep the MBA degree future-proof. Otherwise, the danger is what Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, described: “When MBAs come to us, we have to fundamentally retrain them — nothing they learned will help them succeed at innovation.” This article provides a look at the main departments in a typical MBA program and what changes to the way business is done they need to keep up with.