Posts tagged business education

For my business students #2

The March meeting of West Auckland Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) school companies at the Trusts Stadium, Waitakere.

This was the first meeting where the school companies met coaches and ATEED organisers for the YES programme.

Several staff members from Unitec’s Departments of Management, Marketing, Accounting, Law, and Finance were advisers to the YES companies at this event.

DOMM Bachelor of Business student Aroha Vause launched the YES programme at Nga Kakano Nga Kakano Christian Reo Rua Kura this February, following a pilot project she ran with the school whilst studying BSNS 5391 Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Unitec in 2011.

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Education for Enterprise at Nga Kakano Christian Reo Rua Kura

Management student Arohanui Vause and her team of learning partners from Unitec Institute of Technology introduce college students at Nga Kakano to the principles of business finance and legal structures. This experimental workshop led subsequently to the school committing to embed an Education for Enterprise (E4E) programme into the school.

The workshop comprised part of the Unitec students coursework for BSNS 5391 Innovation and Entrepreneurship, http://thedomm.com/2011/07/18/creating-the-future-through-innovation-and-entr…

For later developments, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SOu2qxWBpo

Mellalieu, P. (2012, March 17). Advancing educational outcomes through Education for Enterprise in a Maori/Pacifika school: The case of Nga Kakano Christian Reo Rua Kura Part ONE: Strategic development issues. Innovation & chaos … in search of optimality. Retrieved March 17, 2012, from http://pogus.tumblr.com/post/19444076798/advancing-educational-outcomes-through-education-for

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A substantial gap is opening up between business faculties and leading edge business practice. Academics tend to dismiss the innovative struggles of leading edge businesses as faddism. By doing this they fail to recognise that what is often happening is that practising managers are confronting actual, experiential situations and finding that traditional practices no longer work. What seem to be fads are actually people struggling with new situations for which they have in- adequate models to help them understand - and they are getting inadequate help from academics at both the research and teaching levels.

Business Line - Education
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Annaq Smith, Business Education Quarterly Review, The National Business Review, Feb 2, 1996 cited in Mellalieu, 1998

Mellalieu, P. J. (1998). Weaving the threads of innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurial learning through a university-located reality-TV and master class: Enterprise MasterWorks (EMW)™. International Conference on Higher Education and Small/Medium Enterprise (SMEs). Presented at the International Conference on Higher Education and Small/Medium Enterprise (SMEs), Rennes, France: Centre Études et Recherche EURO PME, Rennes International School of Business. Retrieved from http://tinyurl.com/emw1998

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IN MY day people who wanted an easy time at university studied geography or land management. Now, in the United States at least, the soft-option of choice is business studies. Business students of various sorts are the most numerous group on American campuses, accounting for 20%, or more than 325,000, of all bachelor degrees. They are also, according to a long article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, by far the idlest and most ignorant.

Business majors spend less time preparing for class than do students in any other broad field: less than 11 hours a week in the case of more than half of them. Not coincidentally, they also register the smallest gains in test scores in their first two years in college. One student, with a respectable 3.3 grade-point average, describes his typical day: “I just play sports, maybe go to the gym. Eat. Probably drink a little bit. Just kind of goof around all day.”

What accounts for this educational wasteland? To some extent it is a matter of self-selection. Many people choose business studies precisely because they don’t have a lot going on upstairs. And they prefer to spend their time networking and looking for jobs rather than, say, grappling with Schumpeter’s ideas about business cycles. But universities also bear some of the blame. Many universities have treated business studies as a cash cow: there is lots of demand, business students do not require expensive laboratories, and business academics can supplement their incomes with outside consultancy. Business studies is also a mish-mash of subjects, many of them soft and ill-defined, like leadership and business ethics. It is notable that students who focus on “hard” subjects, such as finance, put in much more work than those who study “leadership” and the like.

Students also complain about the quality of teaching. Why pay attention in class when all the instructor is doing is regurgitating chunks of a textbook? And why bother stretching yourself intellectually when the university does not seem to know what you are supposed to be studying (is business studies a branch of economics or psychology, international relations or history?)

Whatever the explanation, the dismal state of business education is beginning to register in popular culture, and presumably reduce the job prospects of the people who study it. In “Futurama”, Gunther decides to give up studying science, which is too demanding, and reconcile himself to a future as a moderately successful monkey who wears a suit to work. He enrolls in business school.

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Schumpeter. (2011, April 19). Business education: The race to the bottom. The Economist. Retrieved April 26, 2011, from http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2011/04/business_education?fsrc=nlw|mgt|04-20-11|management_thinking
RelatedGlenn, D. (2011, April 14). Business Educators Struggle to Put Students to Work. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved April 26, 2011, from http://chronicle.com/article/Business-Education-Not-Always/127108/

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Shifting frontiers, new priorities, creating pathways: Elevating the case for tertiary education for sustainable development (Video)

The announcement for the 2009 New Zealand Tertiary Education Summit asserts that “Tertiary education and research underpin the realisation of New Zealanders’ goals and aspirations, and the sustainable development of New Zealand’s economy and society…. Daunting new challenges … identify the need for tertiary education to assume new responsibilities.”

This presentation addresses two of New Zealand’s challenges:

  • Building national capacity for long-term wealth-creating innovation, and
  • Responding to business’ and society’s concerns about sustainable development.


The presentation argues that education for sustainable development - appropriately implemented - contributes strongly to establishing:

  • Valuable foundations for the emerging ‘sixth wave’ of innovations that underpin the creation of a nation’s distinctive core competencies, and
  • The trans-disciplinary academic literacies required to support competitive success in the 21st century.


A presentation delivered to students of BSNS 5391 Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Faculty of Creative Industries and Business, Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand


An earlier version first presented at:

Mellalieu, P. J. (2009). Shifting frontiers, new priorities, creating pathways: elevating the case for tertiary education for sustainable development in New Zealand. New Zealand Tertiary Education Summit 2009 (TES). Presented at the New Zealand Tertiary Education Summit 2009, Wellington, New Zealand: Bright*Star Conferences & Training Ltd. Retrieved from http://preview.tinyurl.com/tes2009

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The Enterprise MasterWorks (EMW) format engages students in producing their own learning through the genre of an “as-live-to-air” master-class and reality-TV format. This video clip shows the key elements of a typical lesson (or “episode”). Think of “The Apprentice” but with the aim of generating insights, ideas, and shared learning, rather than firing someone!

The sequence of a typical EMW ‘episode’ is:

  • Introduction;
  • Presentation of the dilemma or ‘master’s challenge;
  • Background information;
  • Fishbowl discussion by selected audience members;
  • Breakout task groups to devise solutions to the dilemma;
  • Report back of solutions;
  • Critical feedback from the expert master(s);
  • General discussion;
  • Summary of key insights, ideas, and new learning;
  • Action planning for implementing solutions and sharing insights.


The proceedings are #video recorded for subsequent use in reflection, review, teaching and publication in #multimedia formats.

In this episode, the student (Ross) - as Master of Ceremonies - introduces the guest innovator, Dr John Baker of Cross-Slot No-Tillage Systems, http://www.crossslot.com/.

Next, the guest’s “challenge” is issued to the audience of students. In this case, the challenge is to consider how one would market a home-garden version of Baker’s cross-slot no-tillage invention. There is a brief demonstration of the principles of the “no-tillage”invention compared with the conventional agricultural practice of ploughing a field then sowing the seeds. (The conventional method of ploghing destroys soil structure, increases soil run-off, and is more energy expensive compared with Baker’s no-tillage method)

The students raise questions with the guest #innovator. The teacher makes linkage between ideas presented during the episode and textbook material. Finally, a process debrief is conducted in which the participants reflect on their learning, and how the studio process was different, better than previous episodes, and what improvements could be made in future.

Related YouTube videos
Behind the scenes of Enterprise MasterWorks (EMW). (1997). . Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYrQLeJLfH0&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Elements of an Enterprise MasterWorks (EMW) learning adventure. (2011). Palmerston North, NZ: Massey University Television Production Centre. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYya4gfcxs4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Enterprise MasterWorks - EMW Concept overview. (1997). Palmerston North, NZ: Massey University Television Production Centre. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4IKa6dy7_I&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Evaluative questioning as a risk management tactic whilst innovating in teaching practice: The case of Enterprise MasterWorks (EMW). (2011). Palmerston North, NZ: Massey University Television Production Centre. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn_49OEpjhs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

For background explanation (text), see:
Mellalieu, P. J. (2009, July 1). Case study: An engaging user-centred learning environment designed for innovators, creators, and entrepreneurs: Enterprise MasterWorks. User-centred learning for enterprise. Retrieved July 4, 2009, from http://web.mac.com/petermellalieu/Teacher/Examples/Entries/2009/7/2_Case_study%3A_An_engaging_user-centred_learning_environment_designed_for_innovators%2C_creators%2C_and_entrepreneurs%3A_Enterprise_MasterWorks.html

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