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Best-selling author Steven Levitt and MacArthur Genius award winner Kevin Murphy were among speakers who welcomed students to the Executive MBA Program at Chicago GSB this summer. Students from all three of the program’s permanent campuses—Chicago, London, and Singapore—gathered in Chicago in July for “Kick-off Week,” a full schedule of networking, classes, seminars, and activities.
Levitt, Alvin H. Baum Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago and author of the New York Times bestseller Freakonomics, regaled the students with cases from his research. One example illustrated why Chicago emphasizes the importance of hard data for all kinds of decision-making.
Levitt described a big electronics chain that does print advertising every week with a newspaper flyer, and television advertising just during the winter holidays. Executives believe they’re getting a significantly better ROI from T.V. than print ads, he said, but pointed out that since the T.V. ads are on when sales are spiking anyway, it was hard to determine a direct effect.
During a welcome luncheon in the Rothman Winter Garden at the Hyde Park Center, Murphy, George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, described the “Chicago approach” and fielded questions from students. Dean Edward Snyder reinforced the benefits of the GSB’s approach to business education: “When there is no case in point, no applicable formula or apparent right answer, how do Chicago grads feel on those days? Confident.”
For this year’s record group of 270 executives from 40 countries, Kick-off Week was an exhilarating initiation into the legendary GSB culture. “Your mind is blown wide open by the intense course work and the different perspectives,” says Jennifer Boss, a senior VP in investment research at Heitman LLC in Chicago.
During the entire week, students were reminded that Chicago GSB’s Executive MBA is the only truly global program in the marketplace. One break-out group from a management class included six people—three men and three women—from Bangladesh, England, France, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. While students were learning from one another, they were also laying the groundwork for lifelong global networks.
Associate Dean of Executive MBA Programs Bill Kooser brought up a topic that most people in the audience probably hadn’t thought about for a while: grades. “It’s tough to get an A in the GSB,” Kooser admitted. “But once you’re finished, no one is going to care about your GPA. They will care, however, when you say you have an Executive MBA from Chicago.”
