Creative, Adaptive Leaders for Tomorrow

• Fostering creativity and resilience will equip students with the ability to turn obstacles into opportunities for innovation and impact.
• Pedagogical shifts that prioritize active, hands-on learning foster deeper skill development beyond traditional entrepreneurship courses.
• The definition of success in business education must shift toward social and environmental value creation rather than mere financial wealth accumulation.

Transcript

Rana Sobh: [00:15] In this rapidly evolving business landscape, with increasing uncertainty and all the disruptive forces and sustainability challenges, business schools need to prepare change agents who are capable of addressing and tackling some of those grand challenges and generating a positive impact in any context.

[00:42] Which means that business educators need to graduate competent, but also socially responsible graduates, who are creative, resilient, and adaptive. Basically, graduates who are able to reinvent, constantly reinvent themselves.

[01:05] So if you think about it, our graduates should think like entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs do not merely create businesses.

[01:15] They solve problems, they are creative, they turn challenges into opportunities, they are resilient, they are adaptive. They fail many times, and they emerge stronger.

[01:25] And I believe these are the skills and traits that all our graduates should be equipped with to navigate the complexities of the 21st century and add value in any context.

Business schools need to prepare change agents who are capable of addressing and tackling grand challenges.

[01:37] Entrepreneurs can add value to their organizations, companies by being intrapreneurs. We also need graduates who think like entrepreneurs. To solve societal problems, we need social entrepreneurs.

[01:57] This is, of course, in addition to graduates who can create their own opportunities and start new businesses. This is one thing, we need to equip them with the skills and knowledge.

[02:08] That doesn't mean that we should teach them entrepreneurship courses. We can do it just by changing and innovating our pedagogies, being student-centered, focusing on experiential learning to develop critical thinking skills, design thinking, creativity, confidence, and resilience among students.

[02:33] But beyond skills and competencies, I believe that we should do things at a deep level.

Success is about creating value and driving positive impact.

[02:42] To be able to generate a sustainable impact through our graduates, we need to help them redefine success, teach them how to redefine success, or probably redefine success ourselves.

[02:59] I think we should teach them that success is not about wealth and material accumulation. We should teach them that wealth is about how much value, significant value, they can add to society and their organization: social value, environmental value.

[03:19] Success is about how many lives they can improve. Of course, these are things that we cannot measure because they are priceless. This is what matters in the end.

[03:31] So, in addition to equipping them with skills, competencies, and knowledge, they need to really care.

[03:38] They need to understand that success is about creating value and driving positive impact.