A rare tweet

A recent study from Harvard Business School has dared raise one of the most important unspoken questions since a small boy wondered aloud why that Emperor fellow was naked. Exactly what is the point of Twitter? The technorati—and the media—may be enamoured with the micro social-networking site, where people can keep their “followers” informed of their every move in 140 characters or fewer, but, it turns out, very few others are. The study, conducted by Bill Heil, a Harvard student, found that Twitter’s usage patterns are different from other on-line social networks. “A typical Twitter user contributes very rarely,” says the report. “Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days.” The study, which examined the activity of over 300,000 people who had signed up to the site, also found that the top 10% of users accounted for over 90% of tweets.

So, to return to the original question: given those figures, what exactly is the point of Twitter? Despite describing itself as “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected,” Mr Heil believes that, in reality, it has become little more than a marketing tool for companies and celebrities. Quoted on the BBC, he said: “Twitter is a broadcast medium rather than an intimate conversation with friends…The Twitter management need to decide if this is a problem, and if they decide it is, how they will tweak Twitter to become more acceptable to the average user?” Answers in 140 characters or fewer please.

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Flying the nest

The University of Maryland’s Robert H Smith School of Business is on the move. It has announced plans to relocate to a bio-medical research park in the Westside district of Baltimore, putting it “at the nexus of great research and innovation,” according to G. Anand Anandalingam, the school’s dean. It is currently situated in the university’s School of Nursing. The move will give the school more than four times the amount space of its current home. It expects to begin offering its part time MBA in the new facility in 2010.

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Eight year itch

Dipak Jain, the long-standing and popular dean of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, is standing down from his post. The school has announced that Professor Jain is to take a year’s leave of absence, starting in September, before returning to Kellogg’s ranks as a faculty member. Professor Jain joined Kellogg as an assistant professor in 1986 and has been at the school’s helm for eight years, during which time it headed the Economist Intelligence Unit’s ranking of MBA programmes for three consecutive years between 2002 and 2004. Northwestern University said it would shortly be appointing an interim dean while a search for a full-time successor was undertaken.

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No interest

Reims Management School, in France, has announced that it is to offer an Islamic Banking and Finance course to students enrolled on its Masters in Management programme. The school reckons that the value of assets in Islamic banks now stands at close to $1 trillion, meaning that it is an area of growing importance for business schools. “Growth in the sector of Islamic finance is advancing at 15 to 20 percent per year throughout the world,” according to Professor Ghassen Bouslama, who coordinates the programme. “At a time when the conventional financial model is discredited by the crisis, the model of finance called ‘Islamic’ is emerging and gaining strong interest.”

Islamic finance is based on a set of principles derived from sharia law, including a prohibition on charging interest or investing in morally dubious areas. France, which is home to Europe’s highest number of Muslims, is well placed to tap into increasing interest in the sector. However, it is in Britain—one of the most important Islamic finance hubs outside of the Middle East—where the sector garners most interest among business schools. City University’s Cass Business School and Lancaster University Business School, for example, have been running similar programmes since 2008.

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Final frontier

Treading a path walked by many a Chinese enterprise before them, the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), is heading into Africa. On May 19th, in Accra, Ghana, the school kicked off its two-year executive MBA, the first stage of its “Africa Programme”, announced in early 2008. The first intake has 42 students—30 Ghanaian and 12 from neighbouring Nigeria. Nine of the students are women. The programme is headed by Kwaku Atuahene-Gima, a native Ghanaian who has been a professor of marketing at CEIBS for several years. Classes will be based on CEIBS’ Chinese programmes, but with African-specific case studies also featuring.

The inspiration for the programme comes from Pedro Nueno, CEIBS’ executive president, who has been involved in similar projects in Latin America. He believes the CEIBS model, which has proved pioneering in the tough Chinese environment, will prove effective in Africa, which he describes as “the last big opportunity left on the planet” for business schools, even in the context of the global recession. CEIBS is frank about the brand-extension qualities of the programme, if not the money-making ones.

China’s inclinations towards Africa are well-known—and with Ghana on the cusp of exploiting its oil and gas wealth, as well as offering a relatively stable model of governance by African standards, it is easy to see why a government-backed Chinese business school may want to go into Africa. Ghana’s government is also supportive—the country has a decent educational tradition, but is strapped in resource terms. And it is possible that the programme’s professed aim—to become a pan-African model for African business education and African business in general—is achievable, bearing in mind CEIBS’ success in China. Best of all, African business talents will have educational possibilities that do not require them to become expatriates—a journey which, too often, has been one-way.

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Bad rep

The Economist recently mused on whether those chief executives most implicated in the current financial crisis deserved a second chance in corporate life (see article). In an interesting twist, two, it seems, have found their way onto the advisory board of a research centre advising on corporate reputation. The appointment of former chief executives Andy Hornby of HBOS, a failed British bank, and John Tiner of the Financial Services Authority, the much-criticised UK regulator, to the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation has raised some eyebrows. Although the original invitations were made last year, prior to their troubles, Jacob Turner, the president of the Oxford Union Labour Club, is quoted in Cherwell, Oxford’s student newspaper, as saying: “The phrase ‘corporate reputation’ might be a contradiction in terms these days, but the least they could have done might be to select someone who is not a bastion of exploitative capitalism.”

However, when it comes to learning about the pitfalls of corporate reputation—which is generally considered by boards as one of the major areas of corporate risk—the executives who have made the biggest mistakes might just make the perfect teachers. Indeed, faculty at the centre believe that, although appointing tarnished executives may not have been part of their original brief, it may have become a lucky beneficiary of their demise. Certainly the views of Andy Hornby on the importance of protecting a firm’s reputation is going to be a far bigger draw now than would have been the case 12 months ago.

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Local knowledge

Twenty-two higher education institutions in British Columbia have signed an accord to offer more business education to First Nation Canadians. Research from the province’s Ministry of Advanced Education has suggested a need for greater participation in business programmes by Canadian aboriginals, something that faculty from University of British Columbia (UBC) agree with. “Aboriginal graduation from high school is well below the provincial average,” says Dr Jo-Ann Archibald, UBC’s Associate Dean of Indigenous Education. “This means that aboriginal participation and completion in post-secondary business studies requires a comprehensive programme [to encourage them]“

UBC has been championing the cause through its Ch’nook Aborigial Business Education Programme. Its Advanced Management course, which seeks to teach business from an aboriginal perspective, recently graduated its third class. UBC says that sometimes the aboriginal perspective can be a matter of simple geography: many Ch’nooks come from the interior north corner of the province, which is home to the oil, gas, forestry and mining sectors, while many others are from coastal areas where fishing and tourism are common. However, according to John Claxton, director of the programme, although many of the skills needed for business are universal across cultures, Ch’nooks can develop thier own unique, successful approach. “We start by working to dispel the stereotype that all businesses are identical in terms of the motivators behind business activities,” he says. “This makes it easy for students to see how their values can impact their business practices.”

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Second time lucky

Timothy Smunt is to be appointed the new dean at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business. Mr Smunt, who will take up the position in August, is currently a professor at Wake Forest University’s Babcock Graduate School of Management. He is taking over from V. Kanti Prasad, who has been associated with the school for over 30 years and has served as dean since 2002. The school had to abort its original search for a new leader last year, after it failed to identify a suitable candidate.

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Double first

Harvard Business School has topped its second major ranking in the space of two weeks. After heading US News & World Report’s list of American graduate business schools (see article), it has now also retained its crown as the world’s best provider of non-degree, executive-education courses according to the Financial Times. Swiss school IMD came second in the overall ranking, which combines the results of separate ratings of schools’ open-enrolment and customised programmes. Duke University’s Fuqua school and Spanish institution IESE were joint third. In the individual categories, Harvard topped the open-enrolment section, while—for a seventh consecutive year—Fuqua won out for its customised programmes.

With executive education budgets being cut by companies as the recession bites, these are tough times for business schools. The FT says that a 20% drop in demand for non-degree courses is being commonly reported by the top schools, while a report from Icedr, an industry research body, says that 60% of companies have reduced their training and development budgets. The paper says that open-enrolment programmes seem to have to been hit harder than customised ones. With one of the major issues being a moratorium on air travel at many companies, schools are having to change their models away from campus-based programmes, in favour of delivering more programmes at companies’ headquarters or remotely using distance learning technology.

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French lessons

As the Anglo-Saxon economies reap their hubristic deserts, and the French bask in a told-you-so glow (see article), now might be just about the perfect time for ESC Rouen School of Management to launch its new MSc, Marketing with French Excellence, focussing on how to market “with a French touch”. The programme, which is taught entirely in English, will focus on areas of French renown, such as the luxury goods market, the nuclear industry and high-speed rail. It is aimed at executives hoping interested in working for a French business, be it nationally or internationally.

In what may be a less timely development, however, the school is also launching a new campus in Paris in a joint venture with the Reims Management School. The campus will focus exclusively on executive education, something that Arnoud Langlois-Meurinne, Rouen’s dean, accepts is a tough arena given the economic climate. With firms cutting back on both staff and training budgets, there appears little appetite currently for the short, expensive executive development programmes so important for business schools’ balance sheets. However, Mr Langlois-Meurinne, believes that by including post-graduate degrees aimed at executives, such as an MSc in Legal Management, which may not be as hard hit by the recession, the schools should be able to limit their exposure.

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