In an exciting new regular series, we’re going to look deeper at the local research innovations bringing us closer to the big, weird and buzzy future of business.
Are widely accessible large language models going to cause a collective atrophy in the broader population’s writing ability, or serve as an augmenting power-up? Is the work-from-home revolution a lasting and life-changing shift in how we do business, or will it become just another footnote in our pandemic-era social histories? And is treating inflation as a purely fiscal concern the basis of prudent policy, or a short-sighted underestimation of its potentially longer-lasting social costs?
We’re living through a period of rapid and destabilising change, and trying to make sense of a set of very unusual circumstances essentially on the fly. And as the scenarios above imply, not too many of the questions posed by this era come with easy answers. In Business as Unusual, a brand new Spinoff editorial series created in partnership with the University of Auckland Business School, we’ll seek to provide guidance, offer clarifying frameworks and provoke new kōrero around this strange new reality, using the faculty’s world-leading research as the basis.
Susan Watson, the dean of the Business School, says the partnership will help to showcase not just the work of the business school itself, but the stories of alumni and researchers who are doing world-class mahi.
“Students are attracted to studying business because they realise that it is a way that you can create value from ideas that should make the world a better place. And we want students to come in for those reasons, and produce graduates who think like that.
“For the last few decades it’s been believed that the role of business is to maximise profit for the shareholders or the owners of the business, and they don’t have to worry about any impact that they might have on the world… But there’s been a pretty fundamental shift in that more recently. Now it’s believed that actually the externalities or harm that business causes aren’t something that should be ignored by those businesses. This idea of ‘business for good,’ that the primary purpose of business should be creating value in a way that is good for the world.”
In a series of in-depth-but-intelligible explainers, we’ll look at the real-world context of some of the most exciting, innovative and perspective-shifting work coming out of Auckland, putting it in terms that’ll not only make it clear, they’ll make it genuinely exciting. And most importantly, we’ll demonstrate how that work doesn’t happen in an academic vacuum – rather it’s work which has real, meaningful implications for business both in Aotearoa and across te ao whānui.
Watson thinks the last few years have had an enormous impact on businesses around the globe – and how consumers interact with them – so she’s ensuring the business school is helping students to meet these rapidly shifting needs.
“You learn the fundamentals of content-based skills, but there’s a lot of other skills that people learn in business degrees. Like working in teams and being exposed to new technologies. Even now the technology we have like ChatGPT and AI won’t be the height of technology in 10 years. You can’t produce students who will know about the technology of the future, but we can prepare students so that they’re future-ready and can cope with shifts and changes. The study of business prepares you for the future by starting people with the understanding that the future is unknown.”
Throughout the partnership we’ll also be taking regular looks at major happenings within the Business School itself, in a series of features offering deep insight into an organisation moving and changing through turbulent times – and setting an enormously high academic standard in the process.
The first of our BAU explainers will drop next week, both here on The Spinoff and across our social channels, with the full series rolling out regularly over the course of this year. Keep an eye and an ear out for more, and get in touch with The University of Auckland whenever you’re ready to become a part of an organisation that’s truly shaping the future of business.
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