What essentials should HBS stress for the future?

1. Morals, ethics, values
2. Globalization
3. Entrepreneurship
4. Technology, computers
5. Leadership

Teaching Tomorrow's Leaders

As for the role of business in the coming decades, 73 percent of alumni respondents saw the influence of corporations on society as the same or increasing. So what should business schools, and HBS in particular, be teaching? Morals, ethics, and values led by a wide margin, followed by globalization, entrepreneurship, technology, and leadership.

Suggested essentials for HBS include "equipping students for the global marketplace (culture, languages)," "business relationships with government," "human interaction with technology," "entertainment as thought leader," "corporate influence on society," "closing the wealth gap," "more balance in life/work," "leaving the world better than you found it," "managing radical change in very short time frames," "the role of business as society begins to seek more balance between material acquisition and spiritually oriented directions." Both alumni groups, especially younger grads, saw business schools as having only the same or less influence in the future compared with today. Just 16 percent of respondents felt that b-schools would have more influence in the future than today.

Twenty-five years from now, we trust that the Bulletin, in a format - or device - that may look quite different from the magazine you are now holding, will revisit this and other predictions. Will the vaunted analytical skills of HBS alumni prove to be on target? Stay tuned.

- Garry Emmons. Data collection by Ericka Webb.