Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.
At the end of his post Dean Danos raises the question: “What is the relationship between cutting edge research and relevant courses?” I think it’s important to ask ourselves the question: What exactly is cutting edge research? Traditionally, there has been a taxonomist effort to distinguish between academic and applied research, theoretical and clinical knowledge, speculative and pragmatic thinking. The tension between those two broad types of intellectual contributions has upgraded the status of academic research at the expense of applied studies. A recent article in HBR by Bennis and O’Toole How Business Schools Lost Their Way questions this conventional approach of how research should be conducted. Basically, they assert that business schools have adopted an inappropriate and ultimately self-defeating model of academic excellence because they assess their performance almost solely by the rigor of their scientific research. Their accusation is causing lots of debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Is it sound?
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