Lets be ‘Inside the Box’ Please!

Globally, business schools face multiple challenges to stay relevant. Over the last two decades, business schools are being questioned on many things, including the value they are adding. In India particularly, majority of the business school graduates are unemployable and even among the top institutions have faced placement challenges recently. In this article, lets focus on one ‘ Lets be inside the box’ solution.

Over the last two decades, in the business schools, the writer has overheard or heard this phrase many times ‘Lets Think Outside the Box’ as shared below

1. We need to think outside the box.
2. What we are missing is outside the box thinking.
3. We need to get our outside the box thinking right.
4. When will someone start thinking outside the box and give some innovative ideas.
5. Your problem is you donot think outside the box.
6. I am trying to think outside the box.
7. I wish I could think outside the box.
   …..and so on.

This is a wrong approach as most of the time it is done incorrectly, many a times there is not any innovative idea coming out from this for them and many a time a copied idea is presented as outside the box thinking !

What business schools need is not outside the box thinking but simple plain comman sense. And if everyone is outside the box, than staying inside the box properly is a good differentiation strategy !

There are many ways to tackle this challenge. Lets look at a simple five step way.

First is to go back to basics.

Second is to ask some fundamental questions, as why do business schools exists? What should a business school do? How does a business school add value?

Third is to revise the programs and courses in the program in line with the first two questions.

Fourth is to focus on the implementation of the first three steps.

Fifth is to stay focused on these four steps and not to be part of rat race and copy other business schools.

These five step process can be the good starting point to ‘stay in the box’ properly and working on these can start getting answers to the challenges being faced by business schools.

If nothing else, the outside the box thinking needs to be done correctly and by using it correctly one can get some innovative ideas.