Business Schools and Innovation - Focus on Leadership Development - Essay Example

Paper Paper Business Schools and Innovation: Focus on Leadership Development Introduction Leadership is the ultimate art and science of influencing others into doing what they do not want to do initially. The true leader will always have a vision up his or her sleeve, and that is the defining difference between the manager and leader. However, the business schools are killing the sense of creativity in their students by making them too much methodological in nature, as a consequence, they spend too much time in planning, and they eventually miss the deadlines that portrays them as bad professionals. The students at business schools need to have training in the field of action leadership because they have developed the habit of planning, and they intend to build a perfect one. However, they have to learn that they cannot have a perfect plan (Honig, 265). They have to keep trying in order to succeed in the life of business. The secret of effectiveness in any field lies within one’s ability to keep trying until he or she meets success. The timid cannot be a leader or a manager for the sake of argument because he or she has to call the shots, and without confidence they cannot do their jobs. SWOT Analysis Following is the detailed SWOT analysis of the educational system that cannot develop leadership skills in the management graduates: - Strengths The educational system has the ability to educate the students with internationally recognized literature, and therefore, they can work in the globalized setting The students have the theoretical training that they can apply in order to create effective businesses in the future The teachers are foreign qualified, and they have the tendency to integrate cultural realities into the business practices The specialized studies have been producing the employees for specified organizational departments in the recent years The leadership studies have come to limelight in latest times, and it will overcome deficiencies in the managerial educational system The sense of inadequacies is developing in the management sciences study groups and they are bringing their practices in line with the industrial ones as well. Weaknesses Lack of practical learning and teaching The students find the relevant studies boring, and they fail to connect their learning to practical world of business The teachers do not let the students try new things and they have to follow set standards of academic nature The students have to be creative in their practical lives, but their ability to innovate gets suppressed by the educational system Opportunities The schools have forge partnerships with industrial sector in order to introduce sense of practicalized learning in the students Threats The competitors might be working to develop corporate friendships with the companies that can help them in terms of gaining market share The students have the option to choose other fields over managerial sciences in the near future Innovation at the Apple The company named as Apple became the status symbol of innovation in recent years, and the secret lied in the culture of the company. The late CEO of the organization, Steve Jobs introduced the flatter organizational structure for the first in the era of tall organizations with the setup of command and control. The featured corporate leader always believed in the power of innovation, and he struggled thoroughly in order to construct the organization that valued innovative thinking. The company innovated at a product level by introducing newness at an organizational one first. The company brought second order change, and the first order followed the regime on its own. The innovation at an organizational level gave the employees freedom to think creatively and the managers at the company stayed available for their employees so that they can share their thoughts in a free environment (Young and Simon, 168). The company stated openly that it considers its human resources as the most vital assets of all. The company focused on development of an urge to become better in the employees, and it paid off the Apple in the long run, but the chain of innovation broke recently because the leadership changed, and they tried to undo the development of Jobs that they do not understand and comprehend. Strategic Issues at Apple The new leadership changed the organization, and destroyed it beyond recognition, and as a result, the turnover rates grew in all operational units throughout the world. The innovational competencies grew weaker and weaker with the passage of time. The companies such as Google and Microsoft took the lead by following the same recipe that failing organization applied once in the past. The critics may not agree with the intellectual stand of this paper because they might consider the company one of the significant profit generators in the present. However, the sales volumes are dropping and the company is failing to come up with successful new products, and that means that the company is going to face serious problems in strategic terms. The concept of teamwork remained a defining attribute of the company as well, but with the company’s operational leadership gone, it is finding that hard to seek strategic focus in the current times. The company is not doing well in terms of strategic outlook after the demise of Steve Jobs. The problem is present in the strategic department of the company because Steve’s replacement is a methodologist, and he was an intuitive leader, and therefore, he had the ability to take fast decisions, and he was also able to take complex realities into account before making decisions. The prevalent leadership waits too long to commit resources, and they miss the train because of that reason. The developments in the global tech market are dynamic in nature, Google has intuitive leaders at the top, they apply their ability to outgun and outnumber the past leader, the companies are forming partnerships and ventures in order to gain strategic advantage, and Apple is left alone in the jungle of technological services and products makers. The company has to revert to its original setting in order to seek success in the market for the second time. All the leaders have to abandon the tries of transforming Apple into what it is not destined to be in the first place so the Applers have to do what they are trained to do (Honig, 270). The innovator cannot follow the market trends, and he or she has to lead the way in order to do his or her job. The leaders of the company are the biggest hurdles in the process of innovation that remained a prominent factor at the company. Conclusion This paper had a purpose of highlighting the weaknesses of educational system of business schools, and this work had discussed Apple’s success story and the subject matter of this piece covered the section that talked about how Apple created success by following the unique practices in the field of business in the era of Steve Jobs. However, the company lost the taste of innovation because the leaders did not have commitment to Apple’s traditional ways and methods of doing things. The organization is repeatedly suggested to reinstate the older version of culture in its ranks because that philosophy was working fine, and there was no point in bringing the change in such a rapid pace. The personality of Steve Jobs inspired many workers, and once he was gone then, the employees found it difficult to motivate themselves, and start quitting when the organizational changes commenced to emerge. Works Cited Honig, Benson. "Entrepreneurship Education: Toward a Model of Contingency-Based Business Planning." Academy of Management Learning and Education 3. 3 (2004): 258-273. Online. Young, Jeffery S and Simon, William L. iCon Steve Jobs The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business . New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2005. Read More