Boston University’s Barbara Bickart Answers Our 5 Questions
In our latest installment of the MetroMBA “5 Questions” series, we speak with Barbara Bickart, Associate Professor of Marketing and Senior Associate Dean for MBA Programs at the Boston University Questrom School of Business. Bickart talks about the school’s new Online MBA, what’s next to come for the business school, and what type of student may be a perfect fit for the program.
1.) Why You Believe Now Was the Right Time for BU Questrom to Introduce an Online MBA Program?
“Significant advances in digital technology and education delivery platforms makes it possible to now offer high-quality and rigorous degree programs in an online setting. Because of these changes, at both the university and the school level, we felt it was imperative to develop the capability to offer online degree programs at scale. Further, the global market appears strong, particularly at the lower price point. edX has received over 10,000 inquiries for an online MBA program, making it their most requested Master’s degree. The edX technology platform is scalable and has a global reach of over 20 million learners, which will help us to expand our portfolio to reach a unique segment of business learners.
In addition, the global market for online professional education is sizable and there remains value in the MBA degree credential overall. According to a 2018 survey by the Financial Times, MBA grads nearly double their pre-MBA salary within three years of completing the degree.
Finally, the invitation to partner with edX provides an opportunity that aligns with our social mission to expand access to a top-tier business education throughout the world.”
2.) How Will the Questrom Online MBA be Different from Other School’s Online Programs?
“Unlike other online MBA programs, our program was designed from the ground up with the global online learner in mind. In the design process we leveraged knowledge gained from the BU Global Business Education Jams to create an updated and relevant MBA for the 21st century. Key themes include creating a socially responsible business, decision-making in a data-driven environment, managing with integrity, global business strategy, and developing an innovative mindset.
In addition, most other online programs offer traditional disciplinary-based courses. In contrast, our program focuses on developing the capabilities that lead to managerial and business success. By focusing on delivering capabilities versus disciplinary based courses we can leverage more fully the expertise of our alumni and other business leaders in developing exercises and cases that can better support a problem-solving approach to learning in a scaled environment.”
Barbara Bickart, Associate Professor of Marketing and Senior Associate Dean for MBA Programs at the Boston University Questrom School of Business.
3.) How Important is Being One of the First Major Business Schools in Boston to introduce an Online MBA?
“We are not the first online MBA in Boston. Babson, Simmons, and Northeastern offer traditional online MBA programs. We are, however, the first scaled MBA in Boston and only the second in the world.
Traditional online MBA programs are offered by about twenty of the top fifty MBA programs in the United States, and charge the same tuition as their residential program. Our scaled online MBA through edX is a new MBA category; and lies outside of the traditional and increasingly crowded online market. Our program will increase the accessibility of an online MBA both in the Boston region and globally.”
4.) Is This a Sign of More Programs to Come?
“Definitely! Entering the online MBA market at this time allows us to generate new capabilities, content, and infrastructure that will create hybrid flexibility in our current program portfolio and introduce new credit-bearing and noncredit-bearing programs in the future. We see also this initiative as creating the technology platform to develop forms of digital engagement to drive lifelong learning for our alums.”
5.) What Do You Believe Will be the Ideal Questrom Online MBA Candidate?
“The ideal BU Questrom Online MBA candidate is someone who has been working for about five to seven years, does not want to leave their job, and is seeking to advance their career. These individuals work in a variety of organizations, including the business, not-for-profits, education, and government sectors. They are busy people with complicated schedules and therefore seek the convenience of an online program. In addition, they may live in a location (either in the United States or abroad) where access to a high-quality MBA program is limited. They are curious and are motivated to complete a degree in an online setting.”
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The Twitter Echo Chamber (Sort Of), and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
Here’s Why Twitter Isn’t the Echo Chamber You Think It Is – Questrom School of Business News
In new research recently published in MIS Quarterly, Northeastern Questrom’s Jesse Shore and Chrysanthos Dellarocas with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s Jiye Baek (Questrom, Ph.D. ’18) found that Twitter users tend to “post more moderate content” than the content to which they are exposed.
Shore explains that this finding stands in stark contrast to the theory that the platform “opens us up to a greater diversity of perspectives, nudges us to ever-more extreme positions,” and creates an echo chamber for opinions.
“I hope this study helps move the public conversation beyond the notion of echo chambers. In many ways Twitter users are the opposite of the way they are described in the press: they are exposed to diverse information, but post more moderately,” Shore says.
You can read more about the research here.
How ‘Credibility-Enhancing Displays’ Can Boost Sales and Drive People to Action – MIT Sloan Ideas Made to Matter
MIT Sloan Associate Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences David Rand and Yale doctoral candidate Gordon Kraft-Todd pursued new research that suggests that businesses will inspire potential customers to engage their services if they “walk the walk” since “beliefs are spread more effectively by actions than by words because actions reveal information about the actor’s true beliefs.”
Kraft-Todd explains:
“This is true of solar panels, but it’s true of any campaign where the common denominator is some new or rare behavior. If practitioners organize a campaign around a novel technology or practice, then the first thing they should do is get spokespeople and advocates who themselves are adopters.”
You can read more from the full article here.
Dysfunctional Teams – Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson was a guest on a recent episode of HBR’s advice podcast “Dear HBR,” where she and co-hosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn unpack listener questions about “what to do when your team isn’t communicating, doesn’t respect its leader, or has one employee who’s causing problems.”
When Professor Edmondson was studying medical errors as research for her new book The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, she discovered that the better teams were “more able and willing to talk about the mistakes that occurred so that they could catch and prevent them from causing harm. People have to feel safe to bring their brains to work. And [that feeling of security] is not normal. Fear is really quite widespread.”
In the episode, Edmondson fields questions that touch on office dynamics between junior employees and senior management, sudden shifts in decision-making processes, as well as the surprising drawbacks of more transparent cultures.
You can listen to the entire HBR episode and read more about Professor Edmondson’s research here.
Revolutions in Big Data, Housing, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
So Much For The Robocalypse – Everett
BU Questrom School of Business Richard C. Shipley Professor in Management Iain M. Cockburn, an expert in innovation, was recently interviewed by the business school’s magazine, Everett, about his new paper “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Innovation.” His research, written alongside members of Harvard and MIT and published in the National Bureau of Economic Research, explores the long-standing potential of artificial intelligence, which can become a more all-purpose technology, rather than a niche concept or simply a tool to replace every degree of human labor.
Cockburn argues that AI, if used wisely, can replace the menial tasks associated with white collar employment, such as legal services.
“What a lot of people are sitting up and noticing is that this form of automation or replacement of human work with a computer is now percolating into areas that have been largely unaffected by previous technological revolutions,” he says. “Take legal services. It turns out that by using this technology, you can create systems that will do a lot of low-level legal work, like scanning contracts, reviewing contracts, or reviewing documents.”
A pessimistic view could say developments like this could lead to job loss, which may be true. However, in the evolution of the modern job environment, flushing out repetitive tasks that do not require critical or imaginative thinking could allow people to focus on larger issues, rather than bogging down daily routines.
“Then there’s a second question: ‘If I didn’t have to spend so much of my day doing that, what could I be doing that involves imagination, insight, critical thinking?’ So, for some people, their jobs are going to get much more interesting.”
You can read more from the Everett interview of Cockburn here, and check out the “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Innovation.”
Could Big Data Replace the Creative Director at the Gap? – Harvard Business Review
Assistant Professor Ayelet Israeli, “an expert in channel management, pricing, online marketing, and eCommerce” took to HBS’s Cold Call Podcast to discuss Gap CEO Art Peck’s move to eliminate its creative director and “turn to big data to predict what the big next designs are going to be.”
Since Gap is now identified as a basics brand, Israeli explains that “maybe it’s okay to sell the trend that everyone else is selling. If you’re selling something that is more fashion forward, then you’re in a bigger problem because you need someone to create this new trend and not just spot the trend that everyone else is doing.”
“The other part of [Peck’s big data] strategy is essentially to shorten production cycles that they had at the Gap. They were from traditional companies that take about 10 months, almost a year, from when they decide on something and it reaches stores. Now they shortened it to about eight to 10 weeks for most of their product categories.”
You can find the full HBS article here.
Corcoran Center to Debut Housing Case Competition – Boston College News
BC Carroll’s Corcoran Center for Real Estate and Urban Action announced a new case competition and panel discussion moderated by Boston Capital Vice President and Director of Communications David Gasson entitled, “The Future of Housing.”
The competition is “intended to hone students’ analytical skills in the field, raise awareness about issues connected to affordable housing development, and offer an in-depth look at the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit as a tool that helps both communities and developers of affordable housing.”
Corcoran Center Executive Director Neil McCullagh writes, “This competition will be a way for students to understand that housing challenges are deeply connected to every facet of our lives. It will also provide them great vision into an industry where they can do well while doing good.”
“In the competition, students will be analyzing a real housing deal. They will need to present their best understanding of the policy and their analysis of the deal outlined in the case. They will then present their solution and recommendations to the judges. The best team will walk away with the grand prize.”
Read more about the “Future of Housing” case competition here and the full Boston College News article here.
MIT Faculty Director Explains Wave of “Alt” Jobs – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
How Transportation Disruption and Electric Vehicles Can Slash Greenhouse Gases – Questrom School of Business Blog
BU Questrom Professor of the Practice and Director of the university Institute for Sustainable Energy (ISE)’s Peter Fox-Penner and Research Fellow Jennifer Hatch recently co-authored new research with UC Berkeley’s Will Gorman, which illuminates how the car sharing, electric car, and autonomous vehicle trends could “lead to massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions—without overtaxing the electric utility grid.”
Hatch explains, “Transportation emissions are 26 percent of the total emissions in the United States. We need to look at realistic ways to reduce those numbers. To significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we know what we need to do: electrify the transport sector and decarbonize the electricity grid.”
You can find the group’s complete study on Science Direct.
Alt-Labor, Explained – MIT Sloan Newsroom
MIT Sloan Professor and Good Companies, Good Jobs initiative Faculty Director Thomas Kochan recently unpacked what he calls the emerging “alt-labor” movement.
“Traditional forms of union representation have declined to the point where advocates inside and outside the labor movement are searching for new strategies that work with today’s economy and workforce. Most of these new forms are working outside of what is considered traditional collective bargaining.”
Kochan adds, “Management had better start to listen to the workforce. And it better recognize that if it doesn’t start to look at more sensible forms of labor law, of labor policy, then it will be in a reactive position when the public does finally stand up and say enough is enough.”
You can read more about Kochan’s work here.
Restaurateur Partners with University to Battle Food Insecurity – Sawyer Business Blog
The Suffolk University Sawyer Business School recently profiled the CARES Pantry, a new initiative developed to address food insecurity on campus and give students access to healthier lifestyles.
Gene Lee, EMBA (’96), President and Chief Executive Officer of Darden Restaurants, who funded the initiative, says, “The goal is for every student in this University to be properly nourished, in and out of class, at work, and in their everyday lives.”
Gene Lee (’96) appearing at a recent event at Suffolk University / Photo via suffolk.edu
“It’s hard enough to be a good student in a competitive environment without having to worry about your next meal. The pantry will provide students with a safety net and a place they can count on and that they deserve.”
You can read more about Lee’s appearance at his alma-mater and the CARES Pantry here.
