Executive MBA Program Blog

“Anything is possible: today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed.”  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)

To the short list of death and taxes, I would add the certainty that college faculty will regularly voice their concerns regarding the poor writing skills of their students. Having been part of those conversations for more than 15 years, it appears that the issue has not only not disappeared, but has become an even bigger problem. 

On Sunday, December 9, 2018, the New York Times published a feature article in the business section on the “Sheryl Sandberg Problem.” Simply put, it describes how Facebook's chief operating officer went from a corporate folk hero, originator and model for the “Lean In” movement to a person, whose picture members of the Lean In contingency want removed from the website. “Sheryl’s not really Lean In,” says Emily Schwarz, who runs the Lean In chapter in Atlanta. Facebook has had a series of damaging press reports suggesting Facebook under her management was slow to respond to Russian manipulation and the aggressive attack against critics. Less than two weeks after the original article (December 18, 2018), the New York Times reported that Facebook shared data with corporations without notifying members.

As program director for the Executive MBA program, I speak to many prospective students, and field numerous questions about the program. Most of the inquiries have to do with the operations or outcomes of the program—the time commitment each week, the technology used for delivery, the cohort model, or ROI for the program, to name a few. I am surprised, however, by the questions that often don’t get asked:

• “Will I think differently as a result of this program?”
• “Will my colleagues view me differently?”
• “Will I form meaningful relationships with my cohort or instructors?”
• “Will I have the confidence to lead a major project when I’m done with the program?

For many applicants, pursuing an MBA degree is perceived as a relatively simple exchange—take these courses; receive your degree. However, there is a much more meaningful exchange that occurs at RIT.

There are hundreds of MBA programs in the U.S.—both on-campus and online, that can offer just that. Most deliver a basic core curriculum of management, finance, accounting, and marketing courses, and a sizeable majority offer specialty programs or concentrations. However, the basic offering remains essentially the same—a set of tools for the manager’s tool belt. The result is a hyper-competitive MBA market.

In this type of market, where potential students find it difficult to perceive real differences among programs, schools try to out-compete their rivals by acquiring similar resources and developing more, but generally similar, capabilities. However, this is a losing proposition for most schools. Michael Porter of Harvard Business School calls this “competition to be the best” since only a very few schools can be crowned “the best.”

At RIT, our Executive MBA program has taken a different approach. We give significant thought to the distinctive value we can deliver, adapting curriculum to industries’ demands, as well as to the type of students who would best benefit from our resources and capabilities. We thought our value was largely in the high-touch delivery of our program: small classes; smart, committed faculty; and a dedicated and innovative staff to deliver a friction-free Executive MBA experience. While we continue to believe that high-touch experience is unusual and does in fact create value, we’ve come to see that our distinctive value is in creating a meaningful MBA experience for our students, an M²BA, for short.

What do you know about doing business in Taiwan and why the heck should you care?

When we were first informed the international trip for our class was to Taiwan, many cultural norms, facts and economic statistics were thrown our way. None of these figures could have prepared us for the experiences ahead. On our first day in Taipei we were astounded by the kind-hearted nature of the locals. Having lived abroad for over a year in Europe, I was conditioned to refuse help on the street, out of fear of being taken advantage of. Here in Taipei, the capital city of Taiwan, the opposite was true. The only trouble we found was that asking for help could result in a long conversation and relationship building taking up time needed for the task at hand.