Africa’s top-notch
business school, University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business (GSB) is
collaborating with one of Canada's top business schools, the Rotman School of
Management, to offer new Postgraduate Diploma in Management Practice
specialising in Innovation Leadership. The programme begins in December 2012
and runs until December 2013.
According to the Director of the
GSB, Professor Walter Baets, both schools are aiming to approach innovations
from a fresh angle.
Innovation is a much sought after
skill in leaders, but training in the area is severely lacking, says Baets.
"For the first time, two top
schools are coming together to combine two different perspectives on tackling
innovation, with expertise from both schools being used to build and teach on
the programme," Beats said.
"The course is premised on the
notion that the world is a holistic entity and you have to treat it as such.
Can business leaders innovate, not technologically, but in our business models?
Can we, for instance, design from the bottom of the pyramid, not just the top?
Questions such as this are crucial for the survival and sustainability of
companies," says Baets.
The 12-month programme will feature
both school heads - the Dean of the Rotman School of Management, Professor
Roger Martin and Beats- teaching core principles.
The programme consists of four
modules, each bringing different perspectives to bear on the topic. The modules
are spaced over eight months, with a six-week inter-modular period during which
a work assignment and position paper will be set to take participants' learning
and reflection to deeper levels.
Rotman brings its expertise to two
modules: integrative thinking and business design, and the GSB bring its
experience in systems thinking and organisational learning, all of which come
together into one comprehensive programme.
"We thought it would be
interesting to bring these different aspects together, and then ask
participants to reflect on their own decision-making processes - to bring their
own personal ways of tackling these problems into the course," Jennifer
Riel, Director of Content and Communications at Rotman, and lecturer on the
programme, says.
"Wicked problems are the
complex social and developmental business problems that change as you work
through them. To begin to solve these, one has to apply new ways of
thinking," Riel posits.
In a related development, GSB will
be showcasing its leading business programmes including the Masters in Business
Administration at the Meikles Hotel in Harare, Zimbabwe; giving business
leaders and entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe the opportunity to see what the business
school is offering.
The GSB MBA is the only programme in
Africa ranked in the Financial Times' Top 100 Global MBAs. It has also received
acclaim for the international scope of its curriculum, which nonetheless
retains a distinctive orientation to the business context of Africa.
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