Business School, Beijing Normal University

Dean Lai Desheng:“Change”is a“Given Topic”for Business Schools

Time :2016-04-05

The first Xinhuanet Business School Forum was recently held in Beijing. BNU Business School Dean Lai Desheng expressed on the forum that how to improve innovation and entrepreneurship abilities are the major issues that business schools will be facing. Innovation abilities and entrepreneurship spirits will make people receive a greater return in the long run.

The internet can improve resource use efficiency, break down geographical restrictions and closer connect global education resources. Business Schools have also been constantly adjusting their status. The new environment has pressed the “Enter Key” for every business school educator – self-adjustment and self-change is a “Given Topic” for business schools in China.

Lai believes that business school education should first balance the relationship between “Learning by Doing” and “Learning by Studying”. Business Schools need to consider how to provide students more opportunities, allow them to improve their abilities through “Learning by Doing” while ensuring students master theoretical knowledge, tools and methods. When speaking of talent cultivation concepts, Lai expressed that it is important to balance conventional and unconventional education. While improving the quality of conventional education, tolerance is also required, so that innovative talents are not neglected.

One of the characteristics that differentiate “Entrepreneurs” from the general public is their “Entrepreneurship Spirits”. Such spirits allow enterprise leaders to exploit through their vision, thus prompting the continuous growth and expansion of their company. As such “Entrepreneurship Spirits” could be originated from business schools, it appears to Dean Lai that “Entrepreneurship Spirits” and “Innovation Spirits” have become key standards of evaluating a business school’s education quality.

In China, there is an old saying referring to the commerce process, which is “Business is Business”, meaning that the purpose of business is to make profits, and other things such as personal feelings should not interfere. But Dean Lai believes that business schools should not only teach their students “Business is Business”, but also “Business is Not Just Business” – business schools should “integrate responsibility and morality into business education”, because “humanistic education and moral education is also helpful to innovation”.

Innovation is also reflected in business school’s adjustment to the constantly changing environment, as the “Internet Plus” trend is over whelming; Lai believes that business school education not only “Could Plus” but also “Must Plus”. Under the rapid development of high-technology, business schools have launched online and on the “cloud”. Using advanced contemporary technologies to change modern education has become an essential step for business school development. Dean Lai says: “In the era of mass innovation and entrepreneurship, business schools opening high-quality resources and sharing its excellent courses to everyone, so as to better promote the innovation abilities and entrepreneurship spirit of the general publicis the key mission of business school development.”

Source: Xinhuanet, 2016.3.29