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For Wendy, an MBA had been one of her personal goals for some time but the growth of her own business took priority. “I went to vet school because I wanted to own a business which is a slightly different motivation from most people,” says Wendy. “I had probably wanted to do an MBA for about 10 years, but we opened a very large hospital in 2011 and it was so busy I couldn’t have taken it on. But when things settled down a bit I thought if I don’t do it now I’m never going to do it.

“I wanted a scenario where we could get the business side of the vet practice as good as it could be.”

The decision was the right one, she says, with each module of the MBA bringing benefits – some in ways she did not expect. “There was not a single module that wasn’t relevant to me in some way,” she says. “For example, something like economics gives you a much more holistic view of industry. The vet industry is going through a consolidation at the moment whereas it was very fragmented before. The understanding of economics made you understand industry as a whole which in turn helps you understand what’s going on in your sector.” Another top module for her was finance: “I found it challenging and hard – you do push yourself. And obviously, operations management and marketing are really useful in any organisation.”

The focus on reflection – prized highly in the Nottingham MBA – is an element whose usefulness has taken Wendy by surprise, she admits. “I never thought I would hear myself say this but the reflections that you do as part of the modules do make you stop and think about your own influence on outcomes. That’s been more useful that I sceptically thought it would be.”

As well as taking that focus on reflection into her own business, she has found that modules like entrepreneurship and SDO have also made her think more “laterally”. “It’s very easy to get stuck in the day to day of doing your job or running the business so SDO and entrepreneurship and the strategy element made you take that step back – almost from the outside looking in.

“The whole course makes you look at how can you make things better, what can you do to push the business. It encourages you to take the time out to put that time into business development.”

Consequently, Wendy and her partners deliberately set aside time to reflect on how they could push their own business forwards – looking ahead years, rather than just weeks or months. “At a practice level we have undergone massive amounts of change. I think more about if you are pushing things to change what the consequences of that are and how you are going to smooth the process?”

As well as the course content, Wendy has found the exposure to people from a range of environments and industries incredibly useful. “It really makes you step outside the bubble of the industry that you are in and see things through different eyes. Even if people are from a different industry, being exposed to them pushes you to think about what you can take that from that industry and ask yourself what did they do to make that work, what can we do similarly to help our own business and to do things better.”

Similarly, group work, while challenging, has brought its own benefits. “It is challenging because you are constantly working in groups of people you don’t know, so being able to work in a new team dynamic and get something out of that has been challenging but very good. It teaches you to work in the business environment in a team as fast as possible.”

Asked what she has got from the Nottingham MBA, Wendy openly admits that it has not only met her expectations but far exceeded them. “I would not change it for anything, I would absolutely recommend it,” she says. “It’s something I wanted to do on a personal level but I have got even more out of it than I had hoped.

“It’s difficult in terms of time – I have always been very organised but it does take an enormous amount of your time if you are going to do it and get the best out of it.

“It’s completely changed the way I think for the better. And at Nottingham in particular the modular element and the flexibility has been really useful for me and the business.

“It’s not for the faint-hearted but it’s definitely worth doing.”

Wendy Furness MA VetMB CertEP MRCVS Partner Scarsdale Vets LLP

Wendy will complete her Executive MBA in September 2017. She graduated from Cambridge University in 1997. Wendy’s first job was at the Animal Health Trust in Newmarket completing an equine internship with an emphasis on equine lameness and problems of the performance horse. After completing this she joined Scarsdale Vets in 1998, gained the RCVS Certificate in Equine Practice in 2003 and became a partner in 2006.

This piece was written by Ellen Manning, a freelance journalist, writer & blogger. Ellen writes for several leading publications, and also helps our MBA students to develop their media skills.

Images: Joan of Arc by David & Playing horse by Ken Banks.  Flickr.com under Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

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Featured image courtesy of the Library of Congress

The triumph of progress

In the last century or so the notion of progress through economic development has proved so popular that governments positively encourage it. The mindset has moved from suspicion to imperative. Innovation has become a buzz word: sometimes it’s “innovation for its own sake” and sometimes it’s “innovation as rhetoric” and these only complicate the three responses to change we have already identified: optimism, pessimism and fatalism.

Remember none of these is uncontested, but they are all expressed with totally unwarranted certainty — if is not one thing then it must be another — and the very human faculty of cognitive dissonance means that we can hold elements of them all, in varying measure, at the same time.

We ought to be alarmed by any government’s adoption of an act of faith as policy, especially if they are unaware that it is one. But progress has momentum.

In 1965 Gordon Moore was asked what would happen in the silicon components industry over the next ten years. His prediction proved accurate enough to be called “Moore’s Law.” Forty years later he reflected:

There was no way we could predict very far down the road what was going to happen. It was just a lucky guess…but the industry made it a self-fulfilling prophesy, now the industry road maps are based on that continued rate of improvement, various technology nodes come along on a regular basis to keep us on that curve, so all the participants in the business recognize that if they don’t move that fast they fall behind technology, so essentially from being just a measure of what has happened, it’s become a driver of what is going to happen. — Intel Corporation website

Futurologist Ray Kurzweil sees a principle of accelerating returns in Moore’s Law with the dramatic conclusion that immortality is just around the corner. The argument, in a nutshell, is that life expectancy has increased year on year. It has increased by more than ten years in the last fifty. If it continues to increase exponentially soon the rate of increase per year will be more than one year. And if your life expectancy increases faster than you grow old you will live forever. The illusion of finality once more — the key word is if: “Much virtue in If.”

There are consequences to innovation developing a life of its own. Donald T. Campbell  describes what happens when the measure becomes more important than what it is supposed to be measuring in Campbell’s Law:

The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.

And “laws” like these become part of the cultural baggage:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. — The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, J.M. Keynes (1934)

One idea that has been encroaching gradually is a distinction between two phases in the lifetime of anything new: radical change followed by incremental change. If we use the language of business, an innovative product or service is introduced and then the production/delivery process is honed and refined over time until it is replaced by something better.

And so we have periods of acknowledged uncertainty interrupting periods of (unwarranted) certainty.

The pace of change is vital to our understanding of the history of innovation. In ancient times change was slow enough to go unnoticed. By Victorian times technological innovation was undeniable. Marcus Aurelius saw nothing new after the age of forty; Prince Albert was less than thirty when he spoke of a period of wonderful transition; but almost anyone born today will have seen constant change by the time they reach adulthood. We have all seen innovations rise, fall and die in a matter of a few years – remember the pager, floppy discs, the electric typewriter? These were not failures, they returned on investment, but they were short-lived and easily forgotten.

The inevitability of crisis

The gales of creative destruction blow louder and faster. Meanwhile the so-called benefits of progress are challenged, confidence is undermined and no one can tell if or when we might get “back to normal.” Short-termism or inertia are seen as the only safe bets — for investors the exit strategy has become all-important. Even supposedly serious news organizations are unable to present anything more than a couple of minutes long. For example the BBC’s flagship news program which broadcast a timely piece on the dangers of short-termism on the day before the U.S. government was due to default.

Asked why short-termism is so prevalent Pascal Lamy, launching the report Now For The Long Term, suggested one reason is technology:

If you look at how the financial markets work now it’s all about short term; the news business is very much about short term. You probably had a bit of a time finding a bit of a slot on BBC Today this morning saying I’m going to have to talk about long term — “ooh ooh long term that doesn’t make sense for our listeners.”

Asked how would we change thinking he explained that some global issues such as Y2K, the millennium bug, and HIV Aids have been reasonably well addressed.

On the other hand , “Oceans, over fishing — a catastrophe; climate change — gridlock…” His report has analyzed these contrasting cases to draw some conclusions leading to “a few provocative proposals.”

At this point the interview, which has lasted around 90 seconds, is wrapped up with these words:

“We may have to wait until next time to hear exactly what those proposals are, but Pascal Lamy thanks very much for joining us. And now — sport.” — BBC Radio Four Today 16/10/2013

So what are we to make of it all? Adam Smith, writing of the need for political wisdom in times of disorder described the challenge as:

 When to re-establish the authority of the old system, and when to give way to the more daring, but often dangerous spirit of innovation. — The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)

Quite how dangerous that spirit can be is illustrated by the words of Saint-Just, arguing for continuing revolution:

Tout ce qui n’est point nouveau dans un temps d’innovation est pernicieux. [In a time of innovation, anything that is not new is pernicious.] — Speech to the Convention (19 Vendémiaire II) [10/10/1793]

Sadly for St-Just it was he who was found to be pernicious — a few months later along with Robespierre he met the latest judicial innovation: the efficient and “humane” Madame Guillotine.

Most of us, whether in favor of or against any particular change, look forward to the calm after the storm and want to achieve some sort of balanced view of a way ahead.

Misia Landau asked, “Can science use literary theory?” We can ask, “Can literary theory help us understand crisis?” An argument from another revolutionary decade:

Our own epoch is the epoch of nothing positive, only of transition. Since we move from transition to transition, we may suppose that we exist in no intelligible relation to the past, and no predictable relation to the future. — The Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode (1967)

This loss of confidence has consequences, as per sociologist Robert Holton:

Those who believe in crisis cannot give us a convincing account of whether new patterns of normalcy will be established. Without any clear sense of the possibility of new patterns, crisis becomes a more or less permanent condition — a chronic illness or a dream without end. In place of the epic narrative we now have the soap-opera. — Problems of Crisis and Normalcy in the Contemporary World (2002)

Advice for the rationalist at the gate of the year

The contrast between epic and soap sounds pejorative but if we must explain culture in narrative terms consider this:

The thing about epics is that they always have an ending — they are not sustainable. Towards the close of Morte D’Arthur, the king sails off to Avalon leaving behind his old friend Bedivere who asks:

What shall becom of me, now ye go frome me and leve me here alone amonge myne enemyes?

To which Arthur replies;

…do as well as thou mayste, for in me ys no trust for to trust in.

To which Bedivere must have thought, “Well thanks a bunch! Now you tell me. That sword might have come in handy.”

Actually soap operas are not that bad: many of them are long lived and successful, they are built to last and are capable of great change and innovation during their lifetimes. They only get into serious trouble when they try to be epic. Epics get into trouble when they try to become soaps. There should be room for both in the schedules. Epics might have higher status but they don’t have the staying power. Some entrepreneurs and inventors fill the epic role of “great men” but most innovation is carried on by the rest of us with a lot less fanfare. If instead of always trying to cast ourselves as heroes, we recognized ourselves as actors (some of us bit players, most of us mere extras) in a larger, evolving story which requires us to interact with a multiplicity of possibilities, we might be able to look at the new season with a little more confidence.

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Nottingham has been ranked third in a list of the UK’s most entrepreneurial cities according to a new study from global office broking service Instant Offices. Analysis of vast amounts of Companies House data and comparisons of population estimates with business growth helped determine an ‘Entrepreneurial Index’.

While Brighton and Manchester held the first two spots, Nottingham was placed third ahead of cities including London, Birmingham, Leeds and Edinburgh. With its prime central location offering excellent connections to all parts of the UK; first-class international airport; a thriving business community and prominent global brands such as Boots and Speedo calling it home, perhaps it is no surprise that Nottingham has been recognised as a key business hub.

Nottingham University Business School has long been at the forefront of entrepreneurialism and business innovation through its Haydn Green Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Its mission is to be a centre of excellence in the development of enterprise and entrepreneurial skills, innovation and understanding the commercialisation of research. The Institute encourages innovation and growth regionally and nationally and has developed specific MBA and Masters degree programmes in entrepreneurship. Through its Ingenuity Lab based at the University of Nottingham Innovation Park, it has created an environment where students and alumni of the University can explore ideas and start their own enterprises. The Lab has supported the incubation of hundreds of new and early stage start-up companies and runs the UK’s largest entrepreneurship competition.

A great base for entrepreneurial start-ups

Aaron Dicks is founder of Impression a digital marketing agency based in the heart of Nottingham’s Creative Quarter. In 2013 he took part in ‘Growth 100’ an initiative delivered by the University to help small companies from across the city develop the skills and knowledge needed to grow their businesses. Impression now employs over 30 staff and is looking to expand further.

We asked Aaron what makes Nottingham such a great base for entrepreneurial start-ups:

“These business owners all chose Nottingham, some hailing from the region and others making the move here from other parts of the country, attracted by the inward investment and growth opportunities.

“Being in Nottingham has been a huge factor in our very fast growth. From the early days, we were able to take advantage of various financial schemes intended to help businesses like ours find their feet, including technology grants to equip our staff with the very best tools. Opportunities to learn through schemes like the Growth 100 programme at the University of Nottingham helping me develop as a manager.

“We’ve been able to work with some really supportive people too, including the local councils, universities and organisations, which has helped us build our brand and grow our client base.

“The funding and formal support are all huge benefits. But for me, it’s more about the community that we have here. There are so many formal and informal networking groups and meetups that bring people and businesses together for mutual benefits, and that’s really helped us. There’s a real buzz about the city, it’s exciting to be here and we fully intend to stay for much longer yet!”

Affordable housing

Lower first-time house prices is another reason Nottingham is likely to continue and strengthen its position as a leading entrepreneurial city. New research by Post Office Money shows that Nottingham is one of the most affordable places for first-time buyers making it more appealing to graduates and those looking for work in comparison to cities like London.

Nottingham entrepreneurs believe recruitment is easier than ever thanks to lower property prices and could even attract people away from the capital to work here.

Aaron Dicks said: “Choosing Nottingham as the base for my agency was easy. Having studied in Leeds, I’d seen how inward investment was driving the city’s growth, and similar things are happening here in Nottingham. I believe Nottingham to be on a similar trajectory to Leeds; we are already seeing the fruits of our decision in the fast growth of our business.

“House prices certainly have an effect. Especially in the digital industry, places like London, Leeds and Manchester are well known and it’s easy to see how graduates and those looking for a digital career might choose to go to those cities. But with prices here in Nottingham well below those of the like of London, not just for house prices but for general living expenses, we’re seeing more recruits moving into the area, making for a bigger and better talent pool.

“We’ve recently recruited a team member from Leeds, who cited house prices amongst his reasons for choosing Nottingham.

See the full Most ‘Entrepreneurial City in the UK’ rankings 2017

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Gaining global experience is an essential part of any MBA and something highly prized at Nottingham. A key way of getting that experience is through study tours and the partnerships we have built with other universities across the world. As members of our cohort return from our latest trip to our partners in China, this blog takes a look at study tours and the role they play in the Nottingham MBA.

For Paul Caulfield, Director of the Nottingham MBA, students gain vital global experience in a number of ways. The first is simply by coming to Nottingham to study. “Many of our students come from overseas and are studying in the UK to get that experience,” he says, with a typical cohort including more than 20 nationalities. “They gain incredible exposure to different cultures and backgrounds literally from being in the room because of the diversity of the cohort.”

Added to this, the teaching of the Nottingham MBA is designed to highlight different international centres and help students understand how different business can work across the globe.

Against this backdrop comes a range of tours and trips which help students deepen their knowledge of one particular geographical area. Current locations include China, the USA and Malaysia, with plans to expand Nottingham’s portfolio in the future to potentially include countries in Africa, South America and Russia.

“Group study tours is a vehicle we use to get deeper knowledge about countries and operating contexts as part of a global approach to the MBA,” says Paul. “Typically a study tour will be one week-long immersion in the country including trips to businesses, other organisations and cultural visits, and as part of the trip we look to involve alumni from those countries.”

One of those tours, which took place earlier this year, is the result of long-established partnership between the University of Nottingham Business School and Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, with students from each institution travelling across the pond to gain experience of business in a different context and culture.

One of those students is Matt Tripoli, a part-time MBA student at Lehigh who visited the UK in March as part of the study tour programme. Matt, who has undertaken a tour to Ningbo, China, said they are potentially the most valuable part of his MBA. “The general idea is it’s meant to be a learning opportunity for MBA students at Lehigh that’s based on being an intensive experience with companies and professionals in a different country,” he says. “A look you wouldn’t get as a tourist, meet with companies, see how business might be the same or different to how it’s done in the US.” During a packed six days to the UK, Matt and his fellow students visited business organisations, social enterprises and start-ups across England and Scotland, including London, Nottingham and Glasgow, along with cultural visits such as to the Houses of Parliament.

For someone like Matt, the study tour is a vital way to build his own experience in business outside of the US. “My work experience has been all US domestic business,” he says. “I work in the energy sector and certainly have aspirations that one day I will be in a role that will lead me outside of the US so this is a good way of getting exposure.” For Matt, being completely immersed in a variety of business and cultural environments is the perfect way to see firsthand how business can differ from country to country. “It was all around an eye-opening type of experience,” he adds.

The Lehigh visit took participants to a range of businesses including financial, logistical, entrepreneurial and socia, from Thomson Reuters in London and Santander in Glasgow to tech start-up Makerble Worldwide, also in London, and social enterprise Growing Spaces in Nottingham, each bringing their own unique experience to the visitors. Summing up the experience and what it brought to his MBA, Matt says: “For me in particular, without the international experience on my resume, this trip and the trip I took to Ningbo were by far the most valuable courses I have taken on the MBA programme in Lehigh and I strongly recommend it to anyone who has leadership aspirations.”

This piece was written by Ellen Manning, a freelance journalist, writer & blogger. Ellen writes for several leading publications, and also helps our MBA students to develop their media skills.

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The provision of finance to small, entrepreneurial firms is a vital element of any dynamic economy. Such businesses constitute one of the traditional links between radical innovation and economic development, yet they are also unusually susceptible to market failure.

Many years ago, when much of my teaching was in the area of finance, I faced the challenge of how best to help students understand the relevant issues. At the time I was involved in a significant survey of SMEs and their attitudes to banks, which meant I could at least use data to bolster the confrontation with theory.

I set about demonstrating the difference in mindsets between those seeking finance and those tasked with bestowing or refusing it. I also called on entrepreneurs and bankers to offer what I thought would be valuable insights. And yet I was never convinced that my students came close to feeling immersed in the process of financing novel and previously unknown ideas.

It was only as my own focus shifted more towards radical innovation and creative problem-solving that I started to make sense of the situation. Everything has a before, a during and an after, and my efforts to enlighten my students had been too firmly rooted in just one of these. The imagination and invention that precede a new business start-up – the before – had been overlooked; similarly, the many hurdles that remain to be leapt once financing has been secured – the after – had been ignored.

The narrowness of such an approach becomes almost embarrassingly apparent if we search for analogies in fields of study more familiar to the masses. Consider, for instance, a history module that covers World War Two with no reference whatsoever to causes or repercussions: no mention of Hitler’s rise to power, no discussion of the emergence of Italian fascism or the growth of militarism in Japan, no analysis of the consequent fates of competing empires – just a self-contained, strictly fettered trawl through the events of September 1 1939 to September 2 1945.

Viewed in this deservedly unflattering light, my attempts to explain the provision of finance to small, entrepreneurial firms begin to look somewhat inadequate. And so they were. I draw on them here in the spirit of fairness and guilt (as Basil Fawlty remarked: “Do I detect the smell of burning martyr?”) and because doing so makes it just a little easier for me to suggest that the very same shortcomings, unhappily, are still rife in the sphere of enterprise education.

It is useful, I believe, to think of this in terms of “learning velocity”. This is a concept of which I have become quite fond, notwithstanding that another piece of jargon is among the last things business schools require at a time when debates about teaching and learning are rightly leaning towards greater clarity and transparency.

Learning velocity refers to both speed and direction – the pace at which students learn and the outcomes, good or bad, that result. For our purposes here – and in keeping with my earlier post ­about the crucial difference between “know-about” and “know-how” – we might translate the term into a question: how rapidly are our students nearing the point at which they have the skills necessary for life after graduation?

Ideally, every aspect of a curriculum would ready students for what awaits them when they leave university. There would be no gap between what they learn and what they go on to discover. This would produce an optimal learning velocity of one. If a curriculum were to bear no relation to students’ ability to survive in the “real word”, as is too frequently the case, learning velocity would be zero; and if a curriculum were actively to reduce that ability, as sometimes also happens, learning velocity would be negative.

This brings me to what I hope will be taken as a helpful illustration rather than as a self-regarding statement of belated personal vindication.

In 2000 my colleagues and I redesigned the entrepreneurship module at Nottingham University Business School. Our objective was to provide a before, a during and an after and to immerse our students in all three.

With this aim in mind, we invited students to create, finance and market their own brainchildren – to assess the opportunities available, to zero in on those seemingly most viable, to try to raise funding and to sell to the community. We were well aware that few would succeed, but we also knew that recognition of failure would itself deliver a valuable lesson. We wanted their learning to be profoundly experiential and to close as fully as possible the chasm between what we taught them and what they would find when they left us to embark on their careers.

I do not pretend that we achieved a learning velocity of one. I have long favoured an outlook that borrows from the Austrian-influenced philosophy of economics, which accepts that perfection is impossible. I am sure no module, course or curriculum will ever be able to prepare the entrepreneurs of the future for each and every eventuality they might encounter in business. But I do think that in our case learning velocity increased substantially for all concerned.

Maybe the ultimate lesson is that short-termism and incomplete frames of reference are justifiable only very rarely. They may be defensible – even appropriate – when technological and market conditions are relatively stable and predictable, but they fall far short of what is required when change is endemic and accelerating.

We live in an age of uncertainty. Moreover, the next generation of entrepreneurs can expect to find themselves in an age more uncertain still. We have to acknowledge that this alone demands a much broader sweep of understanding – one that extends beyond the relative sureties of the present to encompass both what has gone before and what may yet come.

Martin Binks is the former Dean of Nottingham University Business School and a Professor of Entrepreneurial Development at its Haydn Green Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

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If like me you’ve ever wondered what makes an MBA so special, as Business Schools are continually telling us, then my recent visit to the east coast of the United States may provide part of the answer.

Having been invited to attend the annual US Study Tour, I jumped at the opportunity, curious to learn more about business in the States, visit the Business School’s US partners (Lehigh University) and spend some quality time with our current cohort of MBA students. I was not disappointed. Indeed the trip exceeded all my expectations and simultaneously put into perspective just what it is about an MBA that makes it stand out. Let me explain…

The first and most significant point of differentiation with a traditional business management degree is the very fact that international study tours are an integral part of any good MBA. Sure there may be occasional company visits or external industry speakers on an undergraduate business degree or specialist postgraduate course, but these tend to be ad-hoc provided at random intervals. By contrast, industry involvement is built in to the very fabric of the MBA programme.

Nottingham University Business School (NUBS) has been organising international study tours as part of its MBA for over ten years. Past tours have included Argentina, Chile, China, Malaysia, and the US. This year NUBS will be visiting the US and China. The tours provide MBA students with an opportunity to learn about how business is done in other countries and gain new cultural experiences. In Nottingham’s case it has taken full advantage of its global footprint through its international campuses in Asia (Malaysia and Ningbo China), allowing MBA students to witness emerging and rapidly developing economies at first hand.

The US Study Tour was an intensive week long trip to three contrasting east coast locations i.e. New York, Bethlehem (Pennsylvania), and Washington DC. The tour incorporated visits to commercial businesses, not-for-profit organisations and social enterprises, in addition to high quality lectures and talks from a variety of speakers.

In New York we went to the United Nations to learn about the principles of responsible management education, visited Barclays Bank and explored the financial district. Bethlehem was a complete contrast to the busy hustle of NYC. The town has successfully reinvented itself over the past two decades following the collapse of the steel industry it was formerly dependent on for over 140 years. Today, it is a thriving cultural and arts centre with music, arts and literature festivals. It is also the home to Lehigh University, one of the top universities in the US and considered one of the twenty-four Hidden Ivies in the Northeastern United States. From there, the group moved to the nations political capital Washington DC, visiting the headquarters of National Geographic and heavyweight economic think-tank the Cato Institute.

International Study Tours are only part of a series of opportunities for MBA students to interact more closely with business. Throughout the demanding one year programme at Nottingham, students will also be taught by industry specialists at various points, get the chance to visit major organisations, listen to top business people through the ‘Business Leaders’ and ‘Financial Minds’ speaker series for example, and network with alumni at specially organised events. A highlight of the MBA programme is ‘Business Practice Week’ which takes students off-curriculum for a week of visits and tours of local companies but also in London and other UK cities. Several Lehigh MBA students also join the week and this year the group visited the financial area of the City of London, arts and cultural centres in Glasgow, and the airline EasyJet among many others.

For me, the second element that marks out the MBA at Nottingham is the sheer diversity of the student cohort. People of eight different nationalities attended the US Study Tour including British, Malaysian, Kazakhstani, Chinese, Singaporean, Indian, Taiwanese and Spanish. This is similarly reflected in the 2017 student cohort as a whole which boasts individuals from 17 different countries around the globe creating a unique and distinctive group dynamic. Moreover, the students also bring with them a huge variety of work and life experiences producing a richness and cultural diversity that is truly special.

I myself successfully completed an MBA way back in 2000 (not at NUBS), however, at that time there was nothing like the international dimension that exists on a high quality programme such as that offered by Nottingham, both in terms of the diversity of the cohort or opportunities to gain international business exposure as provided by the US Study Tour.

An MBA is a huge financial and personal investment so for each individual to seek an answer to the question what makes it so special is perfectly understandable. I am convinced that its global outlook and international diversity set it apart from other business management degrees.

Adrian Mateo is Alumni Manager at Nottingham University Business School

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The world of business doesn’t stay static, which means it doesn’t make any sense for an MBA course to either. That’s why at Nottingham we pride ourselves in keeping up with the times. For an MBA to stay relevant, it’s vital that we innovate and keep up with changing agendas and the demands of our practitioners. 

To that end, we have introduced a new module to the Executive MBA – Sustainable Finance. Led by Bob Berry, Boots Professor of Accounting and Finance at Nottingham University Business School, this module will teach practical techniques in financial decision-making and analysis. It will also highlight the extent to which these techniques either form a barrier to the attention given to sustainability issues or help with the consideration of those issues.

For Prof Berry, who has worked in the pharmaceutical and motor industries as well as holding academic posts at the universities of Warwick and East Anglia, it is about going right back to the basic assumptions of corporate finance and looking at them differently. And by doing so through an MBA rather than an academic paper, it is getting attention from practitioners themselves rather than just fellow academics, he says.  

“I wanted to be talking to practitioners,” says Berry. “It was fairly clear we could extend the module in corporate finance but when I thought about it I could see the possibility that the way in which finance is typically presented could raise a set of barriers which stopped sustainability being considered effectively.

“I have always had a sense that if I worked in a business school my attention should be directed to the problems of practice, ways in which practice can be improved and I thought that the sustainability agenda was important enough to warrant attention from practitioners.

“My normal teaching is corporate finance and over the years I have broadened the material in that module so that I pay rather more attention to what the objective of a company should be rather than the standard textbook ‘companies should operate in the interests of shareholders’.

“Essentially what I am doing is looking at the basic assumptions that a finance textbook or standard finance teacher would make when starting to teach corporate finance.”

The new Sustainable Finance module will cover areas including: the shareholder value basis of financial management; discussion of the concept of sustainability; issues in capital budgeting and examples; financial forecasting and financial planning; working capital management and sources of finance and financial flexibility.

 One aim of the module is to reconcile the sustainability agenda within the corporate growth agenda and encourage students to challenge the assumptions that might be made in traditional corporate finance. “It’s a case of picking up the standard statement we teach when we teach finance and saying I can help students understand that better by asking, ‘what does that assume?’, and the environmental and sustainability agenda helps me do that. What I’m basically saying is look at corporate finance, recognise that we need companies to generate products, service, but look at the way we analyse them and think about the blinkers that finance might be putting in our way when we look at the consequences of what we are doing.”

And while the Sustainable Finance module will focus on the financial decision-making process rather than the the analysis of CSR or sustainability reports, it’s not one that CSR-focused practitioners should ignore. “You have to be able to understand the finance in order to counter the finance person’s argument,” says Berry. “This will do that.”

Many MBA Executive students often abandon finance, says Berry, but he hopes the new module will tempt them to stay. “What I would be saying to them is I will teach you the core ideas of finance and I will teach them in such a way that you can put them in a broader context and understand them better. I see this module as valuable to people who want to learn finance but I imagine they want to learn finance for a variety of different motives. I am also hoping that I can convince some people who have decided never to do finance again that this might be something to convince them that they might want to try it again.”

 This piece was written by Ellen Manning, a freelance journalist, writer & blogger. Ellen writes for several leading publications, and also helps our MBA students to develop their media skills.

Images: 1) Aaron Patterson Money-2) Anton Diaz – Money is an effect
Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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The Modern Slavery Act 2015 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is designed to tackle slavery in the UK by establishing a Commissioner for Anti-Slavery, and requiring businesses to publish a statement that identifies the actions taken to ensure that slavery and human trafficking are not taking place in the business or in its supply chain (See: BitC Paper).

Supply chain concerns have been on the responsible business agenda for many years. Modern Slavery and the issues of human trafficking are now reigniting critical concern for the future, as we face increasingly complex supply chains with multiple tiers of suppliers in different jurisdictions (See: Channel 4 Documentary).

Sadly, no country in the world can claim to be slavery free. Whilst the extent of issue varies between nations, there are an astounding 46 million people worldwide living under slavery. In 2016, there were 3266 recorded victims of slavery in the UK of which 30% were children. The types of crime include forced labour, sexual exploitation etc.  Much of this is hidden, either by location or by the complexity of our operations. A considerable number of our products maybe the product of slavery (See: productsofslavery.org)

The UK modern slavery act requires businesses to make a statement about how companies are acting to ensure their supply chains are robust and free of human abuse. Many leading companies have strategies that assess risks of modern Slavery across their operations. For these businesses working in partnership is key to better practices in this area. Transparency is key to ensuring progress on this issue. There are estimated to be 12-17,000 companies that must comply with the Modern Slavery Act, but the Act alone is no guarantee of practice improvement. The level of compliance with the act is currently slow and patchy.

A number of local initiatives are emerging across the country to establish slaver-free communities. These projects aim to increase local resilience to slavery, raise awareness of the issue, empower civic leaders to address issues, support victims, and ensure a slavery free economy (See: Nottinghamshire Police Commissioner).

For proactive companies, the best approach maybe to act to establish a process for continual improvement, be honest and clear about what is actual done, and provide a transparent and reasonable plan for the future.

Some positive examples of corporate projects:

• John Lewis https://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/content/dam/cws/images/tempfolder/csr/human-rights-june-16.pdf

• Nestle
  http://www.nestle.co.uk/asset-library/documents/39506_nestle_mod-slave-act_ab_30sep.pdf

The implementation of Modern Slavery Statements is challenging, often across functional divisions from HR to logistics. Further challenges mean that smaller, second tier suppliers often face an unfair burden for the reporting of standards with larger businesses leveraging their power to force compliance and auditing costs down on to their suppliers and contracts.

Taking action

As part of a recent workshop with Business in the Community, we conducted a short exercise that looked at stakeholder perspectives on modern slavery. This was based upon a fictitious fashion retailer Wearing Well with a complex supply chain.

Participants were asked to imagine they were stakeholders of Wearing Well and to consider how Modern Slavery impacted them in this role.

• 1: Top management team of Wearing Well (CEO, COO etc.)
• 2: Employees of WW on the shop floor or in distributions centres
• 3: Local communities where Wearing Well operates
• 4: Suppliers and second tier suppliers to Wearing Well
• 5: NGOs and Media (e.g. Human Rights Watch, Transparency International etc.
• 6: National, International, and Local Government
• 7: Missing Stakeholders (e.g. Victims)

Below you can see some highlights of the discussions

 What are the main learnings?

Alignment and collaboration is key to success for initiatives. In particular, establishing dialogue and partnerships with suppliers. Projects should be considered as ongoing processes for continual improvement, rather than one-off box ticking.

Establishing senior level leadership for modern slavery should be regarded as an opportunity. The cross-functional nature of the challenges needs an engaged leadership team that can bring together efforts from human capital and legal, with concerns from supplier and investor relations.

It was also felt that there was an opportunity to better align, supranational, national and local government efforts on modern slavery to ensure a more comprehensive and cohesive approach.

Making the narrative around modern slavery accessible whilst engaging with victims as human beings is essential.  There needs to be balance between promoting and rewarding better behaviours as leading examples, along with greater penalties for those who ignore or worsen the problem.

Read more on our blog here

Paul Caulfield – Director of the Nottingham MBA

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The logic guiding the career choices of many business school students is often comparable to the infamous American hold-up man Willie Sutton, who when asked why he robbed banks – an activity reported to have earned him approximately $2m before his final arrest in 1952 – allegedly replied: “Because that’s where the money is.”

Unsurprisingly, students are attracted to multinational blue-chip companies, as they seek to maximise the reward for their efforts and talents. However, for a good number the dream will remain precisely that. Many of the most dynamic students will launch their own businesses; others will work in small or medium-sized companies. In short, their destinies will lie in the confines of the local economy.

Problematically, business schools frequently remain reluctant to recognise this phenomena. For them, the Willie Sutton philosophy also holds a similar charm. As Sutton realised only too well, changing a tried and tested formula that is so lucrative seems incomprehensible.

Yet this ethos risks neglecting the most important duty of any business school i.e. to prepare students for the challenges likely to confront them post graduation. Developing skills that bear little relation to the issues they will face in their professional lives has restricted value, hence business schools must acknowledge that theories almost exclusively rooted in the art of thinking big are of limited use when practice turns out to be in something altogether more modest but equally worthy.

It is this reality that makes initiatives like the Small Business Charter so important. Historically, business schools’ collaborations with small businesses have been rare and typified by one sided  – when the goal should be to build relationships from which everyone gains.

The benefits for students are clear. They receive a proper grounding in small business life and thus better equipped to handle the decisions, risks and pressures present in their careers.

In parallel, many within the small business community welcome the expertise business schools are able to impart, often taking the form of helpful insights into issues such as effective administration, professional credibility, the ability to survive and thrive and other everyday concerns.

At Nottingham University Business School we talk about the “co-creation of local knowledge”. The phrase encapsulates many of the outcomes of our collaborations with the small business community.

For example, consider the case of a couple working in the floristry trade in a provincial town. They attended an executive education workshop we hosted to seek advice about how to compete in a market with low profit margins. In due course they were able to put into practice solutions based on the more efficient use of resources and innovative ways of differentiating themselves from competitors; and at the same time our students enhanced their own understanding of the day-to-day problems of life beyond the blue-chips.

Regrettably, myopia and snobbery may well prevail in some quarters. There will always be those who find little to admire – and less still to study – in companies with a handful of employees or firms with six-figure turnovers.

What these people overlook, of course, is that every big business began as a small one and that even the most celebrated entrepreneurs are likely to have started out with a dream or an idea and not much else. Our own Growth 100 scheme, which encourages local owners and directors to participate in practical sessions designed to help them expand their operations, was founded on these truths, which are too routinely disregarded in the blinkered pursuit of “masters of the universe” status.

The “real world” tends to catch up with everyone in the end. It even caught up with Willie Sutton. To ignore this is to imperil one’s judgement. There will always be those who insist big is better, but we should never forget that small can also be beautiful.

This blog first appeared on the Small Business Charter website – ‘There is life beyond the blue-chips’

Simon Mosey is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Nottingham University Business School and Director of its Haydn Green Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HGIIE). simon.mosey@nottingham.ac.uk

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