MIT’s Unique Team Building Tool, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
Stop, Collaborate, and Listen: Music Making as an Effective Teaming Tool – MIT Sloan Newsroom
The MIT Sloan School of Management recently hosted an Innovation Period workshop entitled “Music Making as Effective Teaming Tool,” which focused on leadership training through music. The workshop was developed in conjunction with New York nonprofit Found Sound Nation, which uses “collaborative sound-making as a tool to help enhance communities and build bonds.”
MIT Leadership Center Associate Director Abby Berenson explains, “Through music-making, they create a sense of community and a sense of teams, and through teams, this leadership practice. That’s really at the heart of what we try to bring for any of the SIP workshops we do.”
Sloan MBA student Faye Cheng added, “Being able to experience failure in a low-risk setting gave [me] new insight into how it can open up new avenues for creativity and innovation. It didn’t have to be a perfect sound, it was just ‘Let’s try things out and layer them on.’ In real life, it can be more daunting to fail in that way or make a decision and have to undo it later.”
You can read the full article here and listen to the students’ songs below.
How Companies Can Identify Racial and Gender Bias in Their Customer Service – Harvard Business Review
The Harvard Business Review recently published an article by HBS Organizational Behavior Ph.D. candidate Alexandra C. Feldberg and UVA Darden assistant professor of marketing Tami Kim in which they explore the prevalence of racial and gender bias within customer service.
As part of their ongoing research, Feldberg and Kim “audited 6,000 hotels in the U.S. by sending email inquiries from fictitious email accounts that signaled senders’ race and gender. By systematically examining replies to these inquiries, we observed that frontline employees were less responsive to nonwhite customers and objectively less helpful and friendly. In other words, compared to white customers, black and Asian customers received worse quality service.”
They offered four effective strategies that large companies can implement to combat racial and gender bias:
- “Develop anticipatory service protocols.” In other words: “standardize scripts and develop rules.”
- “Develop channels for employee feedback” to accommodate any new customer service issues.
- “Emphasize not just “best” service,” which the researchers argue can be “onerous and subject to interpretation,” but “equal” service.
- “Diversify employees’ experiences … through hiring and employee rotations.”
You can read the full article here.
Real World Statistics with Professor Ed Vieira – Simmons Blog
The Simmons School of Management blog recently re-published an interview with associate professor Edward T. Viera, Jr., whose 2017 textbook on applied statistics raised a number of interesting questions related to how big data and statistics can be utilized in the health care industry, for instance.
Professor Viera explains, “Statistics allows us to analyze complex problems and provide reliable results, which humans cannot as easily do. Statistics offers the tools to “objectively” analyze a situation so that we can make reliable, data-driven, informed decision … with unprecedented precision.”
He adds, “Through the use of health care analytics, which deploys advanced software and hardware technologies, we can monitor and adjust our research or treatment based on the collection of data in real time.”
Check out the complete interview with Professor Viera here.
Our 5 Favorite MBA Podcasts Right Now
Clear Admit recently looked into some of the best business school podcasts out today. Take a look at a few of the premiere productions below.
Many business schools and MBA students have recently begun to produce podcasts, discussing the diverse range of student and graduate experiences as well as current trends and relevant topics in business. These podcasts are unique in that they provide a candid, first-person look at business school from those currently enrolled, allowing for an open platform to discuss business topics outside of the confines of the university. While this is a fairly new trend, there are several different podcasts out there for those who might be interested to learn more. We’ve assembled our five favorite MBA podcasts right now, and we’ll keep an eye out for new podcasts to highlight going forward.
Business Beyond Usual, by Ross Business School Students
One very cool MBA podcast on our radar is Business Beyond Usual, produced by students at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. The podcast tackles a variety of issues of interest to both prospective and current business school students. Recent episodes have delved into topics including:
- Is business education a waste of money?
- Do school rankings actually mean anything?
- If you want to make a difference in the world, is working for a consulting firm selling out?
The podcast describes itself as having no rules or moderators, so those looking for an unfiltered opinion on the MBA experience may be interested in what these Michigan students are doing. With more than 20 episodes in the series already, there’s a wealth of material already for this relatively new podcast. Business Beyond Usual is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Soundcloud.
Why CBS Podcast
Those looking for an Ivy League perspective may be interested in the Why CBS Podcast, a series for Columbia Business School hosted by Fahad Ahmed, a 2017 graduate of the program. Why CBS features interviews with students, faculty, and alumni who speak candidly about their MBA experience at Columbia, as well as the time leading up to the program and their lives and careers after graduation. Why CBS is currently available on the iTunes Store.
Wharton FinTech Podcast
MBA students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School have been producing their own podcast, FinTech, since 2015, one of the earliest examples of this fairly recent trend. Boasting a back catalog of almost 50 episodes, this prolific podcast focuses specifically on global financial services, featuring diverse perspectives from CEOs, investors, students, and researchers. This “informative and high caliber” podcast is well-liked by its listeners, offering “a great source of insight into the minds of the founders, investors, and leaders in financial technology,” according to one user review.
Berkeley-Haas Podcasts
While they do not produce a serial podcast like many others, UC Berkeley’s Haas School offers a variety of podcasts and webinars on its website, including several produced by the admissions staff that provide a wealth of information for prospective applicants. There’s a series on financing your MBA, another series of webinars featuring current students discussing the school’s various areas of emphasis, and a third three-part series by Stephanie Fujii, the former executive director of the full-time MBA program, focusing specifically on what the school looks for in its applicants and how best to prepare for your application process.
There’s also a Humans of Haas Podcast produced by students in the full-time MBA program, though most seem to have graduated last year and it’s unclear whether anyone has taken up the reins to continue the podcast going forward. But there are four episodes available on Soundcloud that are worth checking out if you want to get a feel for the school’s students and culture. Each episode focuses on a specific theme and their titles include “Love at Haas,” “Vets at Haas,” “The Politics of Hair,” and “But Where Are You Really From?”
University of Chicago Booth School of Business Podcast
Also of note is the Chicago Booth Podcast Series. This production interviews a variety of CEOs, faculty, and other experienced professionals on a wide array of topics related to current and historical trends in business and finance. Selected archived episodes are available to stream for free on the school website and include diverse topics such as gender and the pay gap, interviews with important historical figures in business, and research on fiscal and monetary legal policy.
These are just a few examples of the many podcasts out there being produced by students and graduates as well as more officially by the schools themselves. These types of podcasts offer a fresh alternative to the often noisy, polluted world of online business commentary and there’s likely a podcast out there devoted to almost any topic that a prospective or current MBA might be interested in learning about.
