The European Business Review

ESMT BERLIN Chengwei Liu is the faculty lead of the Global Online MBA and is an associate professor of strategy and behavioural science at ESMT. Rebecca Loades is the director of ESMT's MBA programmes. Both believe in the transformational power of education and, in this article, they share what makes the Global Online MBA unique. Prof Liu says the motivation behind the program was to enable more students to benefit from the knowledge and expertise of ESMT's world-class faculty so that they can have greater impact in their professional lives. ESMT has structured the Global Online MBA around choice and flexibility. Students choose what and when they will study, and can pause so the program takes 2-5 years to complete. AN INNOVATIVE PROGRAM FOR THE INNOVATORS OF THE FUTURE A part-time MBA is often taken…

The questions asked included: “How should we best prepare the next generation of students for a world that is unknown and for jobs that may not yet exist?” “You mentioned that tech companies such as Google, Meta, and Apple are developing their own academic institutions to train their future workforce. How do we as public educators compete?” “How do I inspire my students and motivate them to realise the danger and take action to learn these skills now? I have students whose grandad was a plumber, dad was a plumber; and they assume they will just become a plumber, too. How do I get them to aspire to be more?” “How long do we have before we are replaced by machines?” What are the skills needed to become entrepreneurial? How could they create a premium…

Can you turn a brilliant technical person (accountant, engineer, lawyer) into a manager and a competent, even inspirational, leader of that function? This is a simple question but one which has exercised many in business, most of all those responsible for helping select, promote, and assess leaders (often HR), as well as those who work out costs and return on investment (finance). In short, is it really a waste of money? Hence there are enthusiasts and sceptics. The former believe that leadership, like anything else, is perfectly learnable and trainable. They are to be found, of course, among the many groups offering this service, especially business schools, coaching academies, consultants, and trainers. They used to quote the 10,000-hours idea that anyone can be “super-proficient” at anything with enough practice. The question…

Q Good day, Mr Tanase! It's lovely to have you with us again. What do you most love about email? A Thank you so much for having me back. I'm honoured to be welcomed. There's so much to love about this communication medium that unquestionably connects the entire world. Pretty much wherever human beings roam, email goes with us. It's personal, professional, informative, instant and - what I love most - it's not intrusive. Social media channels rise and fall, but nothing keeps you in the loop quite like email. Even social media channels send us alerts and notifications via email. Our inboxes are great. Email puts information and interpersonal communication right in front of us, one message at a time, in a linear fashion. What do I love just as much about email? It's…

A recent industry study found 300+ human resources (HR) technology start-ups developing AI tools and products for HR or people management, with around 60 of these companies “gaining traction” in terms of customers and venture capital funding. Eightfold, an Al-based talent intelligence platform that helps attract, develop, and retain top talent, has raised $220m in funding and is now valued at over $2bn. Phenom, an HR technology firm that automates job tasks and improves the job search experience, was reported by Forbes as having “quietly become a billion dollar unicorn”. Accenture has made a strategic investment in the London-based start-up Beamery, which offers its own operating system for recruitment and has a reported valuation of $800m. Large global technology firms have also started to make AI central to their people management…

During this time of great stress and economic uncertainty in Europe, artificial intelligence is shaping up to be a vital tool supporting much-needed gains in efficiency and innovation—in the region and across the world. Yet even in the past few years, we've seen glimpses of AI's huge potential to influence society and business. We witnessed AI's influence on public health: Mainz, Germanybased BioNTech harnessed AI to develop life-saving Covid mRNA vaccines in a fraction of the time that it takes to produce traditional jabs. We saw AI's impact on corporate revenues: our research shows that the share of European-headquartered companies' revenue that is Al-influenced more than doubled between 2018 and 2021 (from 10% to 23%, on average). We observed the positive signal that AI sends to investors, too: our research revealed that…