An autumn Virtual Experience Day showcased the expertise, programmes and initiatives of Cambridge Judge Business School for a global online audience.
The expertise, programmes and initiatives of Cambridge Judge Business School were on display at a Virtual Experience Day on 15 October that showcased the School’s many facets.
Held online due to the coronavirus pandemic, the event attracted a global audience to discuss business and societal themes such as leadership, entrepreneurship and finance.
The virtual audience also heard from leaders of Cambridge Judge programmes and centres such as the Cambridge MBA, Cambridge Executive MBA, Master of Finance, Master of Accounting, MSt in Social Innovation, MSt in Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Centre, MPhil programmes and Executive Education.
Attendees on the day were able to experience a virtual walkthrough of our buildings, workspaces and facilities across the Business School’s campus.
A centrepiece of the event included presentations and a live discussion with three Cambridge Judge faculty representing very different areas of study at the Business School:
- Digital Business with Dr Stella Pachidi, University Lecturer in Information Systems.
- Entrepreneurship with Dr Jeremy Hutchison-Krupat, University Senior Lecturer in Innovation & Operations Management.
- Accounting and Finance with Professor Alan Jagolinzer, Professor of Financial Accounting.
Stella said: “Digital platforms, AI, Big Data and IoT are not just buzzwords – they have been fundamentally transforming our traditional understandings of business and management; they require management to approach the strategy of their organisations differently.
“You cannot simply hire people with technical skills and expect them to solve everything,” she added. “They need to have an understanding of the problems and issues of the business.”
“Entrepreneurship is something that is a common ground throughout Cambridge Judge”, Jeremy explained. “Every single subject group has people who are involved in entrepreneurship research and teaching, and this is really something special.”
He added that the key skill in today’s economy is the ability to integrate technical aspects with the broader concept of a product or service. “You can build the best pump, the best software, the best hardware, but if you don’t have an idea to communicate the value proposition it’s not there.”
Alan commented: “When I teach my students, one of the things that we talk about right out of the gate is that financial accounting is a public policy initiative. I think it’s incredibly important that we frame it in that way, because most of the time when we teach accounting it’s very technical and it also only focuses on the financial shareholders of an enterprise.
“There is a gap in our field with respect to training of leadership,” he said. “We tend to focus on technical training, we don’t focus enough on leadership and innovation, yet the entire profession is undergoing massive amounts of transition both because of COVID-19 and because we need to modify how we do audits and we also need to expand into things such as social and environmental reporting.”