Learner-Centric AI in Business Schools

• AI is reshaping the role of business schools by broadening access to learning, strengthening human–AI collaboration, and accelerating new forms of creativity and problem-solving.
• Learner-centric design is emerging as a defining opportunity, with AI enabling more personalized, interactive experiences that deepen critical thinking and judgment.
• At IMD, AI is transforming the institution by extending lifelong, context-rich learning beyond traditional programs and enabling greater agility in its educational models.

Transcript

Sarah Toms: [00:12] AI’s potential for transforming the value proposition of business schools is really to move from being one where they are gatekeepers of opportunity to really democratizing access and unlocking and catalyzing human potential.

[00:27] AI has an incredible capability here to unlock a new wave of what business education can look like.

[00:35] One thing that’s particularly exciting is the findings of a number of new studies. That is when you start to integrate AI into team dynamics and teamwork, that really is unlocking a lot of new potential.

[00:48] New potential in creative thinking, new potential in idea generation.

[00:54] This is an opportunity where AI at the table, integrated with diverse teams, can really unlock new potential ideas and thoughts for humans.

[01:03] This is driving new innovation and driving new mindsets with respect to the interface between humans and AI.

[01:11] One thing we need to be careful about in business schools is whether we are developing humans to be more AI-savvy or are we developing AI to be more human-savvy?

AI has an incredible capability here to unlock a new wave of what business education can look like.

[01:21] So, making sure that AI technology is developed in ways that are human-centric.

[01:28] For business schools and their AI strategy, number one is thinking about what can we do now that we couldn’t do before? This is where we began at IMD.

[01:37] We started to look at the aspects of learner-centricity and how we could make our curriculum not just more personalized, but also more interactive.

[01:47] We know interactivity leads to more reflection. It also leads to more practice-based critical thinking skills and the development of situational judgment in the leaders we’re developing.

[01:59] Ultimately, what we’re looking at IMD is how AI is transforming our institution and allowing us to expand our impact, so we can go well beyond what an online program looks like.

[02:16] For example, we can put our AI tools in the pockets of our learners and allow them to have lifelong access to very context-rich conversations coming out of their programs at IMD.

[02:30] It really is shifting what business education looks like, and we’re making sure that we are adaptable and remain very agile in our approach as we bring more and more of the new technological capabilities of AI into IMD.