A school is “a building that has four walls…with tomorrow inside”: Toward the reinvention of the business school

Business schools, defined as educational institutions that specialize in teaching courses and programs related to business and/or management, are facing major challenges. These challenges stem from a number of major shifts in the business education landscape, including the rising importance of rankings and accreditations, the increased weight placed on ethical decision making, the ongoing debate on rigor vs. relevance in research, the digital revolution, and the significant decrease in public funding. In fact, they are so fundamental that the coming decade is likely to represent a new era in the history of business education, the fourth since the concept of the business school was created in 1819 with the establishment of ESCP Europe. The purpose of this article is to outline these main changes (TASK: T—from tower to Twittersphere, A—from auditorium to anti-café, S—from stakeholder to shareholder, K—from knowledge to know-how) and to discuss how they impact the different AS-SE-TS of a business school (alumni & students, staff & equipment, teachers & scholars). The article ends with a proposed classification of schools along four corners (culture, compass, capital, and content) and a discussion of which types of schools are best suited to adapt to these changes.