Business school: Champion of diversity and helicopter MBA parents

Welcome to the FT Business school newsletter, a weekly serving of management wisdom, reading recommendations and business-related challenges. FT subscribers can sign up here to receive the newsletter by email every Monday. If you have feedback about FT Business school, please email bschool@ft.com.

Work & Careers round-up by Wai Kwen Chan

Andrew Hill is away for the next four weeks. In the meantime, here is a summary of the latest stories from Work and Careers :

• Sir John Parker, the former chairman of Anglo American features in our weekly series  How to Lead — for readers who are interested in what makes good leadership. He talks about how he is promoting gender and racial diversity in the workplace.

• Do you find that when the public has their say, their answers are often silly? 'Earnest engagement campaigns often end in ridicule, as JPMorgan discovered in 2013,' writes Helen Barrett, Work and Careers editor.

• Is 'unrealised innovation' like 'trapped wind'? Well that's what Sol thinks, the management expert on Colonarchy. Meet the work tribes, and share your examples of your favourite types of co-workers (or those you can’t stand) — anonymised, please.

• How do you curb lateness? Perhaps, by banning pointless meetings and pointless attendees.

• Find out how podcasters make a living. Is not that as easy as you think.

• What do you read on your commute? Jim Kaplan, CEO of a luxury carpet company Tai Ping, tells us why he reads business biographies.

MBA Quiz

Do you think your business school is the smartest on the planet? Then take part in our quiz — at the FT in London — and raise money for Alzheimer’s Research UK.

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Thank you, Andrew Hill

Professor's picks

Every week a business school professor or academic recommends useful FT articles.

Elspeth Murray, associate dean of MBA and masters programmes at  Smith School of Business at Queen’s University, selects:

Zuckerberg’s 2018 personal challenge: Fixing Facebook   Mr Zuckerberg’s challenge would be to “focus on issues like protecting the social media site’s community from abuse and hate and defending it against interference by nation-states.” His  challenge is germane to everything business leaders need to contemplate now, as technology puts power “in people’s hands”.

Our civil society has relied on many institutions  – central banks, regulatory bodies and the like – to protect the public, for example, from scams. This reliance appears not to be working in the era of Facebook. In future, will the responsibility to maintain that civil society and to protect the public shift increasingly to social media companies such as Facebook?

Tech trends for 2018: the big will get bigger The article mentions that the “main engines of growth for the biggest tech companies in 2018 are ones that have already become a deeply ingrained part of business life,” such as digital advertising and ecommerce. Advertising and retail opportunities are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Five years ago, who would have thought that Google and Apple would venture into healthcare?

A thorough review of what these big companies mean for corporate strategy should be at the top of everyone’s agenda. For example, if you were head of GE Healthcare or Medtronic, and thinking about the future strategy, it would be irresponsible to not discuss Google and Apple as part of the analysis of your competitive space. What are the threats and opportunities they pose?

Bitcoin price is a distraction, says big technology investor Cryptocurrencies are changing the fabric of the financial services industry. Some are based on blockchain technology, which every business leader need to understand.

However, there are fortunes to be won and lost in the chaos of the current bitcoin melee — buyer beware. Many people don’t even understand how bitcoin works, and as such, have little ability to differentiate the potential Levis Strauss jeans from the Acne jeans of this new gold rush. Huge potential for people to be scammed if they don’t do their homework.

Jonathan Moules's business school news

The helicopter parents have landed on campus. The fact that concerned mothers and fathers are not just paying for MBA advisors but making the call to agents themselves could be blamed on the rising pressure to get into a top school. Also,  without the bank of mum and dad, many business school students would not be able to afford their course fees.

Another way to offset the escalating price of a good business education is to find a scholarship programme. We have researched some of the grants available to female MBA applicants, but there are many other aid schemes available to people that fit other criteria, such as low income or ethnicity. The problem is often tracking down these programmes, so we are trying to highlight at least some of those available. 

Ask the academics

Got a question for leading business school experts? Send it to bschool@ft.com  and we will publish the best replies in future newsletters.

Test your knowledge

How good is your grasp of the news? Test your reading of last week's top stories with the FirstFT quiz.

Edited by Wai Kwen Chan — bschool@ft.com