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Business school ‘must focus on tomorrow to stay relevant today’

Providing the level and style of business education required by today’s high-flying executives entails constant reassessment of course content and close monitoring of new trends and themes.

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Business school ‘must focus on tomorrow to stay relevant today’

Providing the level and style of business education required by today’s high-flying executives entails constant reassessment of course content and close monitoring of new trends and themes.

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With so much changing so fast, spurred in large part by the forces of globalisation and digitisation, the top schools must go beyond the basics of management process to offer instruction and insights on what will come next and why it matters.

“In terms of the big picture, we can see that Asia is becoming China-focused and China is becoming more Asia-focused,” says professor Bernard Yeung, dean of National University of Singapore Business School. “For many enterprises, that is a source of new challenges and opportunities – and something of which our MBA and EMBA programmes need to be mindful.” 

The implications and repercussions of such developments are likely to be far-reaching and long-lasting. It should mean, for instance, continuing economic growth not just for China, but also the rest of Asia. At present rates, the combined volume of exports to the rest of the world and “intra-regional” trade, involving the 10 Asean countries, India and China, is set to far surpass trade figures recorded by the United States and Europe.

“All the numbers show that the most significant growth is within Asia,” Yeung says. “Therefore, we expect three things; that Asia will be the largest intra-regional trading bloc; that the national economies will become more integrated; and that ‘the dragon’ – China – with its dominant position in exports and imports, will be at the centre.”

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Analysts often focus on the volume and rate of expansion of China’s global exports. But in doing so, they tend to overlook the fact that the mainland’s two-way trade with Asia is already “huge” and that the flows of both inward and outward direct investment for fixed asset formation are following a similar pattern. Around 12 per cent of China’s inward investment is now from countries in Asia and, at the latest reckoning, of the mainland’s total outbound investment a matching 12 per cent was going to partners and projects in the region.

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