7th MIT Sloan Leadership Conference
25 February, 2006, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Conference Events » Thought Leader Sessions
David H. Maister
David H. Maister (bio)
Authority on the Management of Professional Service Firms
"Why Business Schools Can't Develop Managers"
In this workshop David Maister will explore the key attitudes and skills that determine managerial success, and compare them to the processes that business schools use to screen, admit and develop MBA students and participants in executive programs.
A crucial distinction will be made between knowledge and skill, and we will explore how each is developed. David will make the case that many people who go to business school (Including himself) do not have the appropriate core attitudes to succeed as managers, and that business school worsens, not improves this situation.
David will also argue that the methods of selecting business school faculty do not promote the chances that managerial skills in students are developed.
Shoshana Zuboff
Shoshana Zuboff (bio)
Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School
"Markets of Pain: 21st Century Challenges for Leadership and Wealth Creation (Are You Ready?)"
During the last fifty years, people have changed more than the private and public institutions they must depend upon for consumption, employment, and public services. The chasm that now separates them is full of rage, frustration, and mistrust. That pain has, paradoxically, created vast new markets for trust, relationship, and individualized support. Wealth creation, and the very nature of global capitalism in the 21st century, will depend upon new business models that can satisfy these more intimate individual needs on a global scale. How do we free commerce and technology from the steel trap of the 20th century managerial canon? What kind of leadership is necessary for such liberation? What kind of leadership will sustain fundamentally new business models based on economies of trust? Are you interested? Are you ready?
Vijay Govindarajan
Vijay Govindarajan (bio)
Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business
Tuck's Center for Global Leadership
"Strategy as Creating the Future"
We now live in an era of almost constant change. First, new technologies continue to emerge at an ever-more rapid pace. Second, lobalization brings with it new markets, new customers, nontraditional competitors, and new challenges. Third, the Internet has created much greater transparency to any company's strategy, actions, and performance. As a result of these forces, companies find that their strategies need almost constant definition-either because the old assumptions are no longer valid, or because the previous strategy has been imitated and neutralized by competitors, or because technological developments and globalization offer unanticipated opportunities.
Rooted in these premises, the strategic challenges for organizations become:
How do we identify the market discontinuities (e.g., fundamental shifts in technology, customers, competitors, lifestyle/demographics, globalization, regulations, etc.) that could transform our industry? How do we analyze the opportunities and risks, as a result of our understanding of market discontinuities? How can we create new growth platforms with a view to exploit the market discontinuities? What are our core competencies and how can we leverage them in the growth platforms? How do we allocate resources to support growth? What is your role in shaping the future of your company? What kind of organizational DNA must we have in order to anticipate and respond to changes on a continual basis? How do you execute breakthrough strategies?