2019 Innovator Award Announcement





2019 Innovator Award
Winners Announced

Early Stage Innovation – Asia School of Business
Established Innovation – Colorado State University


 
The MBA Roundtable is pleased to announce that Asia School of Business and Colorado State University have won the 2019 MBA Roundtable Innovator Award.

The MBA Roundtable Innovator Award was created in 2011 to promote educational initiatives that advance innovation in MBA education and acknowledge the institutions that drive change in the field.  The Innovator Award raises awareness of ongoing continuous curricular and co-curricular improvements and educates employers, business school leaders, and faculty about innovative practices of best-in-class MBA programs. For business schools, the Award publically recognizes their leadership to initiate and achieve curricular reform.  For 2019, the Innovator Award was split into two categories, allowing the MBA Roundtable to honor established innovations as well as new, early stage innovations.

Initiatives are first evaluated on concept, execution, and impact; finalist schools are identified and interviewed and one school is selected as the award recipient in each catagory.  Any business school that offers an MBA degree and has taken initiative such as program revision, course content or delivery changes, or co-curricular experiential learning opportunity is eligible to participate.   Since its inception, over 95 business schools have submitted their initiatives.  Finalist and recipient school initiatives cover every aspect of the content-pedagogy-format curricular framework with impact reach locally and globally, and with benefits to the learner, business and community.

The 2019 Innovator Award Finalists were Fordham University, University at Buffalo, University of Colorado and the University of Rochester. 

The MBA Roundtable would like to send a special thank you to our panel of finalist judges: 
  • Janet Chen, Director, Business-Higher Education Forum
  • Phil Miller, Assistant Dean For MBA & MS Programs, Carlson School Of Management, University Of Minnesota
  • Jackson A. Nickerson, Frahm Family Professor Of Organization And Strategy, Olin Business School, Washington University In St. Louis; Senior Nonresident Fellow In Governance Studies, Brookings Institution
  • Michael A. Smith, Senior Vice President, General Manager & Executive Innovation Officer, Worldstrides Isa Custom Programs
 
About the Asia School of Business:
The Asia School of Business (ASB) was established in collaboration with MIT Sloan School of Management in 2015 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the initiative and support of Bank Negara Malaysia (Central Bank of Malaysia) as a response to the demand for highly-qualified, industry-ready talent to meet the needs of the growth opportunities of the emerging world, in particular of Asia. 
ASB’s mission is to combine the MIT Sloan academic rigor and discipline with regional expertise, insights and perspectives of Asia and emerging market economies, to become the premier business school and hub for global knowledge in the region, which is also recognized for its ability to develop transformative and principled leaders who will contribute to a better future and to the advancement of the emerging world.

ASB’s unique value proposition is to deliver high quality education through an intense action learning curriculum that provides its students productive opportunities to engage, each of the 5 semesters with partner companies all across the region and beyond in month long projects of various range and focus. Since 2015, ASB has partnered with more than 127 companies on over 237 action learning projects in 22 countries across the world.

Along with this unique curriculum, the ASB global student population is equally unconventional. Representing over 26 countries, ASB students spend four weeks  at  MIT  Sloan  in  Cambridge,  USA for an immersion program and two-weeks of visiting and learning from companies within the technology, manufacturing, financial and policy-making sectors in both the US and China.

Still under construction, ASB’s sprawling new, state-of-the-art campus in Kuala Lumpur is set to be ready in June 2020.

 "‘Mens et Manus,’ Mind and Hand, has been the motto for MIT Sloan since its inception in the 19th century. In today’s business world, this motto is as relevant now as ever, because the world needs leaders and changemakers who can be actively engaged in bringing leadership to a mature organization, as readily as they would in a hands-on role, building a start-up.   Our ASB graduates not only earn an MBA that is embedded with MIT Sloan DNA, but also gain an Asian perspective and an entrepreneurship mindset in the process. On behalf of the entire team at Bank Negara Malaysia, MIT Sloan and the extraordinary and unconventional ASB community, we want to thank you for this award that recognizes all of our collective efforts."  - Prof. Charles Fine, the ASB President and Dean

“Receiving the Early Stage Innovator award from the MBA Roundtable is an important validator for our ambitious start-up filled with so many extraordinary goals. We want to thank not only the selection committee for the acknowledgement but especially all members of our community: students, faculty, staff, corporate partners and supporters of the school who made this happen".  - Prof. Loredana Padurean, Associate Dean and Faculty Director for Action Learning

About the Colorado State University’s Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise MBA:
For more than a decade, Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise (GSSE) MBA students have learned to merge their business goals with their desire to nourish, empower and protect people. In GSSE, students gain hands-on experience and the business skills necessary to identify and create opportunities where the market falls short.

The GSSE MBA teaches students how to build and manage global ventures that achieve sustainability with results focused on the triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental performance. The unique summer practicum requirement, embedded social and sustainable enterprise curriculum in every class, and diverse cohort model enables students to enter into the business world as leaders in their respective fields. The Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise MBA empowers and supports student’s passion to make a difference.  The Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise MBA is a full-time, on-campus, 41-credit, 16-month program. By 2020, the GSSE MBA will have graduated 325 students, many of whom will be actively engaged in organizations addressing global challenges.
 
“The experiential learning allows our students to really get it, and to analyze things differently.  Our goal is to change people’s perspectives from one of crisis to one of opportunity, and then to what that means from a business perspective.  We want students to be able to answer the question: ‘Strategically, how do you get ahead of the curve?’”  - Tom Dean, CSU College of Business professor

 “The Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise (GSSE) MBA is honored to receive the MBA Roundtable Innovator Award. From its inception, GSSE set out to demonstrate that business can be used as a force for environmental and social change. We are proud that our program emphasizes experiential learning, applied curriculum, and learning from diverse stakeholder networks. All over the world, our alumni make a demonstrable impact in their communities, work to improve social and sustainable challenges, and are influencing the field of responsible business.   The program has constantly innovated to enable students to create ventures that are pivotal in solving some of the world’s most complex challenges. We look forward to bringing the next iteration of our program to life through the Impact MBA, which will include two tracks: one focusing on social enterprise (our traditional GSSE track), and one focusing on corporate sustainability.” - Shelby Sack, Impact MBA Program Manager

 

2019 Innovator Award Announcement  (L to R)Michael Koenig - Chair, MBA Roundtable/Associate Dean for Innovation Initiatives & Executive Director of Executive Education, Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University; Shelby Sack, Impact MBA Program Manager, Colorado State University; Paul Mallette, Associate Dean for Academic Programs, College of Business, Colorado State University; Phil Miller -  Finalist Judge/Assistant Dean for MBA & MS Programs, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota; Michael Smith, Finalist Judge/Senior Vice President, General Manager & Executive Innovation Officer, Worldstrides Isa Custom Programs (Photo Credit:  MSU Broad College of Business)


2019 Innovator Award Announcement - Attendees sending their congratulations to the Asia School of Business