This year's Hong Kong EMBA students with the Richard Ivey School of Business are the first executives here to get a taste of the future of business education under a bold new programme to produce the business leaders of tomorrow.
Turning more than a century of business learning on its head, Ivey has embarked on a programme to teach its students to think across disciplines instead of applying each separately in what the school calls traditional 'silo' instruction methods.
Kathleen Slaughter, dean of the Hong Kong campus of the Richard Ivey School of Business, said the change was overdue in a world crying out for leaders who were smart, lateral thinkers.
'We've taken quite a departure from the strong functional roots where the course's focus on marketing, finance or other elements is reinforcing silos that just don't work anymore in business,' Professor Slaughter said.
'Organisations now are much more complex - they may have strategic partners in one part of the world with whom they compete in other markets. They may be generating ideas in India for components developed in China for a product manufactured in Taiwan. The changes mean it's not viable for the old model of hierarchical management anymore.
'It's a question of preparing new managers to face the challenges and complexities of organisations operating on a platform of innovation and globalisation. These complex issues require an integrated approach to business education.'