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GLOBALLY COMPETITIVE, LOCALLY ATTENTIVE

PUBLIC NEXT GENERATION GLOBAL STUDIO

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A number of management schools have begun to articulate responses that capitalise on the trend toward globalisation, but which simultaneously attenuate the pervasive global paradigm with a locally-specific value proposition.

INSEAD, for example, now offers field work in the Middle East, China and India that deals with locally-specific issues such as health, corruption and direct investment.

These initiatives recognise the importance of the gradual shift in global business industries away from an Anglo-American focus. They understand the importance of an approach that takes into account the needs and aspirations of developing economies and local markets.

But the manifestation of globalisation in the business school industry – increased foreign student intake, international campuses and global models of cooperation between business schools – will also have substantial implications on the way business schools are strategically planned and spatially designed.

The location of business schools; the facilities that they offer; the design of teaching spaces; the increasing need for ancillary spaces; and the ways in which these facilities are operated are necessarily changing in response to globalised trends.

So, what can property professionals expect? And how can they respond appropriately to the professional and academic sectors that are taking a more global approach?

The key take-away message to professionals responsible for property-based decisions at business schools is that the planning, design and operation of school facilities needs to embody the school’s point of differentiation.

Meanwhile, the newly-formed Moscow School of Management in Skolkovo offers an MBA that focuses on coping with corruption, navigating a failing legislative environment, and dealing with powerful bureaucracies.

02 Globally competitive, locally attentive by Matthew Lynch

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The College of the North Atlantic, Doha, Qatar

Macquarie Group’s One Shelley Street, Sydney, Australia

The design needs to communicate what sets the school apart from its regional and global competitors. Basically, a business school’s facility needs to capitalise on the school’s point of difference.

In most cases, this point of difference will already be well known to the school’s faculty, its students and its alumni. But while the school’s competitive advantage might have been carefully crafted, strategically planned and well-explored, this point of difference will not likely be apparent from the environment in which the students learn, the teachers teach and the alumni unite.

Take, for example, the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, which ranks 25th on the Global MBA Rankings 2011 published by The Financial Times (up from 28th in 2010) and eighth on the Best US Business Schools 2010 list published by Bloomberg Businessweek (up from tenth in 2008).

The school’s dean, Rich Lyons, aims to turn what has been typically regarded by industry as a downside – the university’s ‘radical non-conformism’ – into a virtue. Lyons believes that the Haas School of Business is poised to shine in an age where the financial and professional services industries are placing increased emphasis on collaboration, creativity and innovation.

Non-conformism is a form of creativity that has been embraced by the global IT, finance and insurance industries – and now it is a valued attribute among MBA graduates.

Or take, for example, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) which, in 2007, announced Woods Bagot the winner of an international competition to design its Institute for Advanced Study as well as its School of Business and Management (SBM).

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong

Typically, teaching is done in a lecture theatre, lab work is done in a computer room, and socialisation generally happens outside of the school’s facilities. The school’s competitive advantage is not typically communicated in its property-based strategy – an unfortunate forfeiture of a tool that can be used for significant leverage.

So, even in cases where the school’s point of difference seems minimal or arbitrary, there are examples of business management schools that have successfully turned their cultural downsides into virtues and opportunities.

Building 5 Block A&B, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia

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HKUST’s SBM, ranked sixth on the Financial Times Global MBA Rankings 2011, is a truly global business school that maintains AACSB and EQUIS accreditations and collaborates with the Stern School of Business at New York University and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

The school seeks to attract foreign students and to produce successful global alumni, while maintaining local relevance in a period of rapidly changing social, economic and political dynamics within Asia.

The school’s globally competitive difference is based largely on its unique positioning at the crossroads of Eastern and Western business environments. It is particularly well positioned to educate foreign students that want to focus strongly on China: it offers unparalleled networking with Chinese business leaders; field trips to Chinese centres of business; and case studies where Chinese examples feature prominently.

Chance encounters between visitors, students and staff are promoted by the myriad spaces and settings created within the masterplan. Within the SBM, open volumes that link floorplates are brought together with circulation paths, creating a continuous landscape that blurs boundaries in an effort to stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration.

The arrangement of the wings of the 20,000m² SBM building were derived from the geometry of the existing campus overlaid with the geometry of traditional Chinese timber screens.

The building will be punctuated by a series of visible case study rooms or ‘knowledge lanterns’ that expose and highlight the contemporary learnings of students.

But perhaps most important is the high level of technology that will be integrated into the building, designed to fortify the SBM’s position as the cornerstone of business education wedged between China and the Western world.

As such, the design of the new AUD 150 million facility for the business school – which is currently under construction – needed to communicate this competitive difference.

Woods Bagot began with the close integration of the SBM with the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), another new and iconic building designed by Woods Bagot to attract globally-recognised industry professionals and intellectuals.Together, these two facilities provide a gateway between academia and the professional paradigms. The facilities complement and assist each other in achieving the vision and objectives of each of the schools, as well as meeting the broader objectives of HKUST.

With an empathetic nod to local cultural norms and architectural devices, the new campus that contains these two schools uses an orderly series of courtyard spaces, which generate a lively, activated street system drawing inspiration from the classic hill town.

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– http://www.mydigitalfc.com/news/gateway-riches-324 – http://english.eastday.com/e/110825/u1a6071375.html – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_simulation – http://www.economist.com/whichmba?page=1 – http://mbaoath.org – http://universityfinancelab.com/photo-gallery – http://www.economist.com/node/18802722 – http://english.eastday.com/e/110825/u1a6071375.html

References

– http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/world/europe/27iht-educLede27.html – http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/3817239/article-Russian-MBA-program-tackles-real-world-hassles – http://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/stories/2010/03/08/focus1.html – http://www.economist.com/node/16208000 – http://www.coydavidson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/110727_GIST_The_Mobile_Worker4.png – http://www.futureofcities.ox.ac.uk – http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/25a79a4e-a252-11e0-bb06-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=a9543bac-edcc-11db-8584-000b5df10621.html#axzz1VtoKsYtQ

– http://www.capitalvue.com/home/CE-news/inset/@10063/post/3158313 – http://www.mbaworld.com/blr-archive/mba-market/6/index.htm – http://www.economist.com/whichmba/mba-diary-was-it-worth-it – http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2011/05/higher-education_bubble – http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/05/the_business_school_tuition_bubble.html

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong

Matthew LynchSenior Consultant

Matthew Lynch has over six years of experience delivering highly successful strategies that are both human-based and business-drive across a diverse array of architectural, planning and design projects. He has unique experience conducting rigorous upfront research and has lectured at Columbia University’s GSAPP and at The University of Melbourne’s MSD. Matthew regularly contributes to publications such as Architectural Record, Urban Land, AIArchitect, Archinect and Conditions Magazine on a wide variety of issues.

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