Michigan’s Young Dean on the Future of B-Schools

Two years ago, Scott DeRue, at 40, became one of the youngest business school deans in the U.S. The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business has since risen in the rankings, seen a jump in applications, and pulled in more money from big donors. DeRue talked to Bloomberg Businessweek about innovation, leadership, and B-school branding.

The word “innovation” is used a lot by B-schools, especially to tout how they’re evolving and changing. What does innovation mean at Ross—what’s really changing?
Business schools are preparing talent, people, for jobs that don’t exist today but will 5, 10 years from now. So the question is, how do we prepare and ready talent for that future world of work? We believe work is more global, more cross-functional, it’s rife with uncertainty and ambiguity. So innovation is not about creating a solution to a problem, it’s about identifying what the problem is and framing that problem in the context of innovations. We should ask ourselves, “What are the experiences we are providing our students that are going to ready them to address those problems?” and then provide an experience that is as close to the action as possible.