The document discusses the future of business schools and online education. It describes four eras in the history of business schools and outlines challenges they face in prestige, entrepreneurship, and stakeholder relationships. Additionally, it analyzes different models of online learning like MOOCs, SPOCs, xMOOCs, and cMOOCs, noting that physical presence will still be important for networking and developing life skills.

1. A school is “a building that has four 3 walls. ..with tomorrow inside”:
Toward the reinvention of the business school
Prof. Dr. Andreas Kaplan, MPA
Rector, ESCP Europe Business School Berlin
kaplan@escpeurope.eu

2. • Toward the reinvention of the
business school
• Key challenges and opportunities
for business schools
• Special focus on online / digital
distance learning and education
Agenda
2Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

3. Toward the reinvention of the business school
Kaplan Andreas (2018) “A School is a Building that Has 4 Walls - with Tomorrow Inside”:
Toward the Reinvention of the Business School, Business Horizons.

4. 4
Four eras of business schools
Definition:
Business schools are educational institutions that specialize in teaching
courses and programs related to business and/or management
History:
• 1st era (1819 - 1945): Creation of the initial institutions dedicated to business education driven
by the rising demand for a new type of business professional (i.e., the manager)
• 2nd era (1945 - 2000): Business schools aimed to become more scientific, with the objective of
establishing business administration and management as stand-alone disciplines
• 3rd era (2000 - today): Period of globalization, defined by the rising importance of accreditation
bodies such as AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS and the emergence of international rankings
• 4th era (future): Era characterized by digitization (MOOCs, SPOCs, Artificial Intelligence),
decreased in public funding, increased weight placed on ethical decision making, …
Kaplan Andreas (2018) “A School is a Building that Has 4 Walls - with Tomorrow Inside”:
Toward the Reinvention of the Business School, Business Horizons.
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

5. 5
Four criteria to classify business schools:
Culture - Compass - Capital - Content
Culture
Independent of their actual (physical) location, business schools can be classified
according to whether they follow the European or the US model
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin
Kaplan Andreas (2018) “A School is a Building that Has 4 Walls - with Tomorrow Inside”:
Toward the Reinvention of the Business School, Business Horizons.
Compass
Business schools can be classified along a continuum, with international/ global schools
on one end and regional/ local schools on the other
Capital
Business schools can either be publicly (state) funded or privately funded, for example
through endowments or tuition fees
Content
Business school can be classified according to whether a school considers teaching or
research to be its primary focus

6. 6
Four Cs to define & classify business
schools
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin
Kaplan Andreas (2018) “A School is a Building that Has 4 Walls - with Tomorrow Inside”:
Toward the Reinvention of the Business School, Business Horizons.
Criterion Continuum
Culture
Europe US
(e.g., CEIBS, ESCP Europe) (e.g., INSEAD, Kellogg)
Compass
Global Local
(e.g., INSEAD) (e.g., Debrecen Business School)
Capital
Private Public
(e.g., Kozminski University, WHU) (e.g., HKUST, UCLA)
Content
Research Teaching
(e.g., HEC, Wharton) (e.g., EBS; Plymouth)

7. 7
4 T-A-S-Ks for reinventing business schools
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin
AS SE TS
Alumni & Students
Services &
Equipment
Teachers &
Scholars
T
From Tower to
Twittersphere
Selection takes ability
to serve as brand
ambassadors and value
in rankings and
accreditations into
account
Importance of branding
and communication,
architecture and having
the “right” image
Research topics chosen,
in part, for their PR
potential; higher
importance of “star”
teachers & researchers
Culture: European and
US schools equally
ready
A
From Auditorium to
Anti- Café
Evolution from passive
consumers of
knowledge to active co-
producers of course
content
Need for flexible
layouts to enable group
work and interactivity;
Importance of online
courses
Knowledge
transmission moved to
online sphere;
classroom time used for
highly interactive
teaching
Compass: Global
schools likely to be
more ready than local
schools
S
From Stakeholder
to Shareholder
Shift from students to
customers and future
donors, resulting in
higher customer/
student centricity
Shift from bureaucracy
and administration to
becoming a concierge-
like service-provider
Faculty becomes one of
several stakeholder
groups to be managed,
creating need for
compromise
Capital: Private schools
likely to be more ready
than public schools
K
From Knowledge to
Know-how
Selection based on soft
skills in addition to
intellectual
achievements (grades)
Importance of expert
career service that
provides professional
advice and job offers to
students based on skills
and personality traits
Evolution of faculty
from knowledge
professionals to
coaches and facilitators
in a transversal and
interdisciplinary setting
Content: Schools who
balance teaching and
research quality more
ready than research-
only schools
Kaplan Andreas (2018) “A School is a Building that Has 4 Walls - with Tomorrow Inside”:
Toward the Reinvention of the Business School, Business Horizons.

8. 8
Implementation will depend on strong buy-in
Successful implementation of a new type of business school
will only be possible
if there exists a buy-in by most, if not all, members of faculty and staff.
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin
Kaplan Andreas (2018) “A School is a Building that Has 4 Walls - with Tomorrow Inside”:
Toward the Reinvention of the Business School, Business Horizons.

9. Key challenges and opportunities of business schools

10. 10
Key challenges:
The 3 E‘s for Education
Core challenge 1:
Enhance HE institutions’ prestige and market share
in a consolidating global educational market.
Core challenge 2:
Embrace a deeper entrepreneurial mindset,
with corresponding modus operandi and decision-making approaches.
Core challenge 3:
Expand links, interactions, and value co-creation with key stakeholders.
Pucciarelli F., Andreas Kaplan (2016) Competition and Strategy in Higher Education:
Managing Complexity and Uncertainty, Business Horizons, 59(3), 311-320.
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

11. 11
Strengths
• Essential source for a society‘s talent and
innovativeness
- Institutionalized public service with a societal mission
- Important provider of knowledge and innovation
• National driver and global ambassadors
- HE as domestic resource, engine of growth and
economic recovery
- International expansion and global knowledge
dissemination
Pucciarelli F., Andreas Kaplan (2016) Competition and Strategy in Higher Education:
Managing Complexity and Uncertainty, Business Horizons, 59(3), 311-320.
Decrypting higher education:
A SWOT analysis
Weaknesses
• Substantial delay in entrance of business practices
- Tradition of being a public service financed and
protected by the State
- Partial resistance of influential faculty
• Low responsiveness to changes in corporate world
- Little adaptation of programs and curricula to recruiters‘
needs and job expectations
- Myopic publish-or-perish research strategies leading to
purely academic publications without consideration of
other stakeholders
Opportunities
• Fast-evolving HE environment through ICT
- Development of new markets, potential productivity
gains, and branding possibilities
- Advancement of both general knowledge and network
society
• Rapid transformation encouraged by socio-
demographics
- Millennials seeking augmented educational experience
- Growing and changing student population
Threats
• Continuous decrease in public funding
- Necessity for external fundraising and increased self-
financing
- Need for marketization of HE, potentially lowering
academic standards and quality
• Increasingly competitive environment
- Domestic deregulation leading to new market entrants
- Gobalization broadening competition to an
international scale
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

12. 12
1. Enhance prestige and market share
Core challenge 1:
Enhance HE institutions’ prestige and market share
in a consolidating global educational market.
• Guarantee resources for sustaining growth
• Additional performance metrics to measure universities’ excellence, and ultimately
enable them to access resources for future development; Market will assess which
universities deserve to be part of the top leagues and rankings
• More advanced stage of private fundraising, leveraging university reputation to
become preferred partner of choice of key stakeholders (notably alumni, but also
students, professors, corporations, etc.) and new forms of collaboration between the
university and the rest of the world
Pucciarelli F., Andreas Kaplan (2016) Competition and Strategy in Higher Education:
Managing Complexity and Uncertainty, Business Horizons, 59(3), 311-320.
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

13. 13
1. Enhance prestige and market share
ALUMNI ARE KEY
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

14. 14
2. Embrace entrepreneurship & innovation
Core challenge 2:
Embrace a deeper entrepreneurial mindset,
with corresponding modus operandi and decision-making approaches.
• Entrepreneurial leadership at all levels of HE institutions
• Defined and formalized mission and strategy able to guide an entrepreneurial
approach at all levels of HE’s institution
• Pivotal role of academic-managers in contributing to HE institutions’ quality and
reputation and participating actively in management and decision making
• Increased autonomy and accountability permit more control over resources and
freedom to choose investment strategies. Management of HE has to encompass more
complex and urgent business decisions (e.g., the ICT infrastructure)
Pucciarelli F., Andreas Kaplan (2016) Competition and Strategy in Higher Education:
Managing Complexity and Uncertainty, Business Horizons, 59(3), 311-320.
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

15. 15
2. Embrace entrepreneurship & innovation
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

16. 16
3. Expand links and value co-creation
Core challenge 3:
Expand links, interactions, and value co-creation with key stakeholders.
• Increased connections, interactions, and value co-creation with a larger set of key
stakeholders
• Learn to navigate the new technology-oriented and multimedia environment, with HE
institutions supporting academics as they acquire necessary skills
• Deeper integration of Web 2.0 and networking in research
• New design of learning processes and infrastructures, aiming at co-learning through
highly interactive and responsive pedagogies
• Dialogue and participative communication, leveraging new media (and in particular
Web 2.0 and social media) to address HE’s different audiences with customized
messages
Pucciarelli F., Andreas Kaplan (2016) Competition and Strategy in Higher Education:
Managing Complexity and Uncertainty, Business Horizons, 59(3), 311-320.
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

17. 17
3. Expand links and value co-creation
ALUMNI ARE KEY AGAIN
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

18. Special focus on distance learning and education

19. Classifying online distance learning:
Time dependency & Number of particpants
19
Classification of online distance learning
applications according to two dimensions: the
number of participants (unlimited/limited)
and the degree of time dependency
(asynchronous/synchronous)
Number of participants
Unlimited Limited
Time dependency
Asynchronous
MOOC
(Massive Open
Online Course)
SPOC
(Small Private
Online Course)
Synchronous
SMOC
(Synchronous Massive
Online Course)
SSOC
(Synchronous Private
Online Course)
Kaplan Andreas, Haenlein Michael (2016) Higher Education and the Digital Revolution:
About MOOCs, SPOCs, Social Media and the Cookie Monster, Business Horizons, 59(4), 441-450.
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

20. Defining MOOCs, SPOCS, SMOCs, &
SSOCs:
Four groups of online distance education
20
Kaplan Andreas, Haenlein Michael (2016) Higher Education and the Digital Revolution:
About MOOCs, SPOCs, Social Media and the Cookie Monster, Business Horizons, 59(4), 441-450.
• MOOC (Massive Open Online Course): Open-access online course (i.e., without specific
participation restrictions) that allows for unlimited (massive) participation.
• SPOC (Small Private Online Course): Online course that only offers a limited number of
places and therefore requires some form of formal enrollment.
• SMOC (Synchronous Massive Online Course): Open-access online course that allows
for unlimited participation but requires students to be ‘present’ at the same time
(synchronously).
• SSOC (Synchronous Private Online Course): Online course that only offers a limited
number of places and requires students to be ‘present’ at the same time
(synchronously).
• Distance education: Providing education to students who are separated by distance
and in which the pedagogical material is planned and prepared by educational
institutions.
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

21. Describing xMOOCs vs. cMOOCs:
Passive learners vs. Active contributors
21
• xMOOCs: MOOCs based on traditional lecture formats (inspired by Harvard
University, which used the prefix ‘x’ to indicate (offline) courses in the university’s
course catalogue for which online versions were available).
• cMOOCs: MOOCs where social media applications constitute a central part. Social
media allow students to create pedagogical materials (via blog entries, tweets,
podcasts, and the like) that can subsequently be commented on and further
enhanced by other participants.
Kaplan Andreas, Haenlein Michael (2016) Higher Education and the Digital Revolution:
About MOOCs, SPOCs, Social Media and the Cookie Monster, Business Horizons, 59(4), 441-450.
xMOOC cMOOC
Professor
Instructor,
who designs a standardized course for everyone
Facilitator,
who animates an individual learning process
Participants Passive learners Active contributors
Pedagogy
Predetermined content, based on a formal
curriculum, using lecture style and evaluation
Collaboratively developed content without a formal
curriculum, in seminar style without evaluations
Pattern
Structured with regular sessions
over a fixed time period
Unstructured based on continuous learning
Platform Centralization of content in one place Decentralization of content across network
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

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MOOCs & further types of distance learning
most likely not to replace physical presence
To sell a concept where location
and differences in local contexts
additionally is of academic
importance might be highly
valued in the future
“Within 50 years there will be only
10 institutions of higher learning
left in the world”
Sebastian Thrun – Cofounder Udacity
But:
• Physical presence might be necessary to go
the extra mile
• Networking often best happens after class
and not during
• Life skills than only knowledge + know-how
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

23. 23
MOOCs will make it essential for business
schools to be an expert in a specific area
To be an expert in a certain field will become more and more
important in the future of MOOCs.
• Universities and schools will produce MOOCs where they have a real legitimacy
• Students world-wide will choose the expert‘s MOOC to learn in a specific field
• A single business school hardly can be expert in everything
• Local / regional players will arise (languages & different teaching approaches)
Examples:
• ESCP Europe -> European / cross-cultural manager
• Harvard University -> Lawyers
• Wharton School -> Investment bankers
Kaplan Andreas, Haenlein Michael (2016) Higher Education and the Digital Revolution:
About MOOCs, SPOCs, Social Media and the Cookie Monster, Business Horizons, 59(4), 441-450.
Andreas Kaplan – Rector ESCP Europe Berlin

24. 24
Further readings...
• Kaplan Andreas (2018) “A School is a Building that Has 4 Walls - with Tomorrow Inside”: Toward the
Reinvention of the Business School, Business Horizons.
• Kaplan Andreas (2018) Academia Goes Social Media, MOOC, SPOC, SMOC, and SSOC: The Digital
Transformation of Higher Education Institutions and Universities, in Bikramjit Rishi and Subir
Bandyopadhyay (eds.), Contemporary Issues in Social Media Marketing, Routledge.
• Kaplan Andreas (2018) Toward a Theory of European Business Culture: The Case of Management
Education at the ESCP Europe Business School, in Suder Gabriele, Riviere Monica, Lindeque Johan
(eds.), The Routledge Companion to European Business, Routledge.
• Pucciarelli Francesca, Kaplan Andreas (2018) Le Università Europee oggi: sfide e nuove strategie,
Economia & Management.
• Kaplan Andreas, Haenlein Michael (2016) Higher Education and the Digital Revolution: About MOOCs,
SPOCs, Social Media and the Cookie Monster, Business Horizons, 59(4), 441-450.
• Pucciarelli Francesca, Kaplan Andreas (2016) Competition and Strategy in Higher Education: Managing
Complexity and Uncertainty, Business Horizons, 59(3), 311-320.
• Kaplan Andreas (2015) European business and management (Vol. I - IV) – Four-volume reference work,
Sage Publications Ltd., London.
• Kaplan Andreas (2014) European Management and European Business Schools: Insights from the
History of Business Schools, European Management Journal, 32(4), 529-534.
• Kaplan Andreas (2014) Social Media and Viral Marketing at ESCP Europe, the World's First Business
School (est. 1819), European Case Clearing House, Case 514-058-1.
• Kaplan Andreas (2009) Virtual worlds and business schools: The case of INSEAD, in Wankel C., Kingsley
J., Higher education in virtual worlds: Teaching and learning in second life, Emerald Group Publishing,
83-100.
Andreas Kaplan – Rektor ESCP Europe Berlin