>> Welcome, my name is Nick Rambo, and I'm a recruiter here at the Krannert School of Management. And I'm joined this morning by David Hummels, who is the dean of the Krannert School here at Purdue. We're thrilled to be able to sit down with him and talk about the state of things here at Purdue and at Krannert.

So David, good morning.
>> Good morning, Nick. It's fun to be here with you.
>> Thanks, so I wanted to kick things off talking about you.
>> Okay.
>> Hopefully, that's a subject that you're well versed in, and you are dean now, but you have not always been dean, you started here at Purdue in the classroom.

So tell me about who you are, what you know, what you did here at Purdue.
>> Sounds good. Yeah, so I started my career at the Chicago Booth School, and then came to Krannert in 2000 on faculty and international economics. And I've been sort of teaching and doing research in that area, a lot of stuff on the effects of offshoring, thinking about infrastructure and how it affects the economic development.

Did that very happily for about 20 years, then had an opportunity to step into the role as dean of the Krannert School.
>> So did you wake up one day and decide, I wanna be dean or was it a more natural process?
>> Well, I think it was a situation where an opportunity presented itself.

And I've always been a subscriber to the idea that when great opportunities come along, you don't think twice, you go with it and you see what you can make of it. And it has been an extraordinary experience in a lot of ways.
>> Excellent, well, tell me, what's the best part of the job, what do you enjoy most?


>> Well, I think if you're the sort of person who aspires to have impact in the world, there are few jobs in academia that are better than being dean. We have considerable resources at our disposal to invest in great ideas, in great people, in programmatic innovation. And you have a lot of freedom to make decisions about what you think is right for your students and your faculty and your programs.

As an example of this, we have long recognized that there's a significant problem with the advancement of women in the corporate workforce, and rather than decrying that situation, we decided to invest in solving it. And as a dean, you have the discretion to do that, and so we have a new center for women in management, where we are investing significantly in research and programs around solving that problem.


>> And that actually came out of a visit to Washington, correct?
>> That's right, yes, I was invited by the White House to come and meet and talk about how business schools have an important responsibility to solve this problem. And it got us thinking about the kinds of things we were already doing and how we could take that to the next level.

And then you get alumni who also recognize this is a serious problem, and they themselves invest in solving it, and so it's been a great coming together around an important issue.
>> This was back in 2015, correct?
>> That's right.
>> And so what did that process look like internally?

You came back from that meeting in Washington, and?
>> Well, so I think it's a couple things. The first is, in any organization you have to understand your capabilities. What kind of assets do you currently have that you can bring together? A lot of times in a university or a college, you have assets that you might not necessarily be aware of.

You have people who are working on related problems, who care about the problem. You also need to do a sort of inventory of what kind of alumni assets and corporate assets that you can call on. And so you sort of bring that together, and my style is to allow the people who are going to do the work to help shape the vision for how it will look.

And so we had some very committed, very smart people who helped us shape the program. A big piece of that, for example was, we run an annual research to practice conference, and we bring some leading human resource scholars from around the country together with HR practitioners from some of the best companies in the world.

And in working together, they sort of identify what are best practices, what are some things we haven't yet overcome. And there's a lot of magic in that combination.
>> So I mean, it's always fun to talk about magic, it's always fun to talk about driving change and big new ideas.

What's the worst part?
>> Well, I would say I-
>> Or what's the biggest challenge, is a better way to say that.
>> Yeah, no, it's okay to say the worst part. I think I've really come to realize the tradeoff between having authority and responsibility on the one hand and what that means for a loss of autonomy.

Now, that may seem like a contradictory idea, it seems like if you're in charge, you have the autonomy to do whatever you want but in fact, the more people you lead, the more people you are responsible to. And that may look like having a day full of meetings as you're trying to be responsive to needs.

It might look like taking phone calls late at night about an HR issue or an opportunity, and so I don't get into the classroom as much as I'd like. And I don't work on cutting edge research ideas as much as I used to, and my day is pretty heavily programmed.

And so there's that kind of loss of autonomy that comes with it, and I think that this is sort of important principle for students who want to lead organizations. Power and influence is great, but it comes with some downsides in terms of determining how you're gonna spend your day.


>> Well, that's, I think, valuable and insight and actually provides a nice opportunity for our first talking point.
>> Yup.
>> We're talking about the MBA, about being adaptable. And obviously, as an international economist, I'm sure that it's easier for you to identify some different trends than the average person would when you look at the evolution of the MBA market, right?


>> Mm-hm.
>> So currently we're seeing a variety of influences on the market. Can you share with us a little bit about your take on that?
>> Yeah, the first thing that I would say is, I think degrees like the MBA are more important than they ever were, and will continue to grow only more important.

Why is that? We have seen very clearly in the world the importance of automation, intelligent agents, global outsourcing of capabilities. And what that all points in the direction of is, if an executive or if a person is capable of doing only one thing, it's much easier to replace them.

The people who are particularly valuable in organizations are the ones who bundle together a set of skills and a set of capabilities that are mutually reinforcing. And so an MBA, that's exactly what it is, it's saying that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. I'll use me as an example.

All these years getting to be the best economist that I could and one of the major deficits I had in stepping into the dean role was a lack of experience in organizational behavior and human resources. And I've come to realize how critically important that skill is for a leader.

Alongside strategy, alongside some of these other pieces. So an MBA is all about bundling these capabilities in a way that makes a leader more productive.
>> So if we understand that the MBA is more valuable than it ever has been, but if we look at the market, the trends that are happening, growth is kind of flat domestically.

There's certain international trends that are changing where international MBA seekers are going for an MBA. So obviously we've had to evolve here at Krannert. Business school has to evolve. So talk us through a little bit about how Krannert is really a driver of change, of innovation.
>> Well, I think the first thing you have to recognize is that there are a lot of programs out there offering an undifferentiated MBA.

And I think there's probably some diminishing returns to the sheer number of look-alike programs out there. So for us to be successful in that market, and for us to leverage the unique assets we have on the Purdue campus, we have to really ask ourselves, what are we capable of doing Doing better than anybody else.

And our answer to that often focuses on the extraordinary science, engineering, and technology capabilities on this campus. So we have designed a program and we have created a series of out-of-classroom opportunities that enable students to learn about and experience what it means to work at the intersection of technology and business.


>> Well, I think, as you look at Krannert's position within, as you said, one of the preeminent STEM schools in the country, that affords us a variety of opportunities. You mentioned our Research to Practice conference. Obviously, as you think about a lot of the tech innovation that happens here, that puts Krannert, and specifically Krannert's students, in a really fortunate opportunity as they look forward as far as now I have a MBA and what am I gonna do with it?

So talk us through some of the unique things that we're doing here at Purdue to really allow our MBAs to thrive in such an ecosystem here.
>> Yep. So the first thing I would say is that, we aspire to attract students who want to lead technology companies. And I think about technology companies as being broader than Google and Tesla, and Amazon, and Apple and so on.

I think about technology companies as really any company that wants to be successful going forward, they're going to have to master the use of technology in their domain, the use of data in their domain. And so for us, for us to train students who can be successful in that context, it means a couple of very specific things.

The first is that we attract faculty who have trained at the intersections of technology and business. Many of them have degrees in engineering in addition to degrees in management. The second thing is, we offer joint programs with engineering so a new thing that we are launching is a program where students can, in two years, get a Master's degree in engineering, along with an MBA.

So we think that's gonna be a pretty exciting opportunity in terms of the composition of our student body and the kinds of courses that we provide for them. The third thing that I think is one of the more exciting things that's happening is the work in technology commercialization at Purdue.

So a number of years ago, the Purdue administration completely rewrote the rules around intellectual property making it much easier for faculty and grad students who come up with world-beating ideas to capitalize and be rewarded. For that intellectual property and we started an institute called The Foundry which is really designed to assist that technology commercialization piece.

The role that credit plays in that is that we have faculty-led student teams who work in hand-in-hand with these new start-ups and that might mean market discovery, might mean pricing strategies or go to market or licensing kinds of opportunities and. So really every aspect of business is something that this new technology startups have to better understand.

We have great scientists and engineers on this campus. But they don't understand the rudiments of business in the way our MBA students do. So for students who take part in it, I think it does two things. You aren't studying this idea about technology in business in the abstract or on decades-old cases or something.

You're learning it by taking companies to market. And then some of those students will do short-run consulting projects with those companies Others will actually go on to lead them in C-Suite roles. So that's been pretty exciting to see. Also part of that and part of our alumni engagement is we're starting to see more and more of our highly successful alumni, especially those in private equity who are coming back because they see tremendous investment opportunities here on campus and they work very closely with the students as well.

So we have something like 280 million dollars in startup funds that have flowed in here just in the last couple of years. And so that's a fun playground for students who think technology commercialization is something they wanna learn about and experience.
>> You mentioned a lot of things there but I think the easiest thing to point to is some of the accolades we've already received, right?

When you look at Purdue as producer of start-up talent, we rank in the top ten when you look at universities that don't have a medical school. As far as technology transfer, we're far and away number one. So we have had tremendous success in that arena. So much so that the university has decided to really doubled down.

And it's not a double down it's more significant than that. But to put quite a bit of funding and thought behind our new innovation district. Talk about that in really the role that you see Krannert taking in that engagement.
>> The heart of the idea behind the innovation district is that a modern university is going to be most successful when it has developed close partnerships with leading companies.

And so the innovation district is a public private partnership base. Where companies who need access to leading talent will come setup operations, engage in research, think about the transition from the lab to the market. So we'll have a lot of the best companies in the world working here on campus.

And in all cases when you talk to the executives who are behind this process, they have in mind. Not just getting access to the science, but getting access to business thinking that helps them translate ideas to market. So seeing that really start cooking has been pretty exciting for us.

We have a number of deals that are in the works right now that will be I think pretty eye-opening for folks.
>> At this point I want to transition into our next point which is about the collaborative nature of Purdue. People ask me all the time, what makes Krannert different than these other big programs, right?

And as you see a migration toward these larger programs. Obviously they fit becomes very important.
>> No, I think that's absolutely right. So some people are very comfortable being one of 4. Hundred people in a cohort, and if that's what makes you happy, I think that's great. Our specialty is really on finding opportunities for every student, and making them feel really part of, what we call the Krannert family.

When you talk to alumni, this is one of the things that they emphasize the most, that, there was a real family feeling about the place, a real sense of belonging. A real feeling that they, as an individual, not as a number but as an individual mattered to the school, to the success of the school.

And I think that that shows up in the way that you're treated by faculty and staff It shows up in a way that you're valued because it's not a convey belt running through here, we try to make an experience that's meaningful and well suited to individual who comes through it.


>> Something you've talked about is being committed to the success of every student, so at every phase of that, be it from the recruiting process through the admissions process, they're timing the program and interacting with the Krannert Professional Development Center. There certainly is that focus on the individual.

When you think about the culture in a more broad way, really we have more to offer than just personalization, right. We are truly a global classroom.
>> No, that's right. Don't think about Purdue as sitting in a city in Indiana. We are really citizens of the world here at Perdue and at Krannert.

What that means specifically is we have students from all over the place. And they bring to the table unique cultural perspectives, unique preparation, unique insights about how business is done in different parts of the world. Now One of the things that's become very clear in the research on creative thinking and problem solving is the more diverse backgrounds you can bring to the table, the better the solutions are.

You get five people who are trained identically, and who think identically, you're gonna get the same answer. Whereas, if you bring five people from widely different backgrounds, you can come at things in completely different ways. One of this ways we see this is when we put together case competitions in data dives.

Their executives come here and judge these competitions. When we are more successful at bringing in students from diverse functional backgrounds, from diverse country backgrounds, they are more likely to come up with solutions. That even the executives who work these problems day in and day out have never thought of or never even contemplated.

It's pretty fun to watch that happen. And I think a great diversity of student backgrounds is key to making that occur. The reality is that the modern business executive is going to lead diverse global teams, at least if they're in a successful company they are. And there's no time like the present to start learning what that means.

People from around the world, they not only have different ideas and ways of thinking, but they have different ways of operating as a group. And learning how to function successfully in that environment I think prepare students in a way that you wouldn't see in a more homogeneous environment


>> Well, and that homogeneous environment I think is an interesting point, just because here at Krannert, we have students from more than 20 different countries, right? So daily I see students from Nigeria, Australia, China, Brazil, Columbia, Honduras, just all these fascinating cultural experiences coming together here at Purdue.

So when our students are in these teams, really being able to work through problems, as a team, it certainly adds a lot of value to their experience here. But it's not just here, I mean, the whole point of you getting the MBA step and next step. So what have you heard, I mean, as the dean, I'm sure that you're plugged in for a lot of these.

You mentioned Google and Amazon, and Tesla and Apple. It goes beyond that, of course. But what are you hearing from the employer, the people who are hiring our students about how prepared they are to meet such challenges?
>> Well I think that one of the hallmarks of a Krannert education is that we emphasize rigor, we emphasize preparation, we emphasize hard work.

And you can see that when you look at recruiter surveys of how well prepared students are for the marketplace. We ranked very well in that respect. But leaving aside survey data, nothing is more exciting to me than talking to a recruiter from a great company. Who, having taken a chance on a student, then reports back three or six months later, I can't believe how effective this person has been in the role.

They're really just doing great things for us. And when I talk to some of our alumni who've been out longer periods of time, they'll say I was hired into this rotation. Along with students from Harvard and Chicago and Stanford, and all the leading business schools around the world.

I absolutely was able to go toe-to-toe with them, because my preparation here was great.
>> I think that one of the things, again ,that we talk about as far as preparing our students is that focus on data, right? Throughout today's conversation, we've talked about data quite a bit.

And I think that you have some unique insights on how employers demand the ability to work with data. So talk us through some of those experiences, as far as our unique emphasis on analytics, how we're preparing graduates to be successful.
>> You bet. A key piece of this idea that every successful company in the future will be a technology company comes from the idea that data will be ubiquitous in driving competitive.

Not just sort of static data set sitting on a server somewhere, but the use of remote sensing, the use of intelligent agents. The IoT more generally, I think, the Internet of Things. We just barely scratched the surface of what we're capable of doing there. And so for us, I think there are some unique opportunities that students can have here that they won't have many other places.

And if you think specifically about the Internet of Things, that's relevant anytime you wanna build something or grow something or move something. That's what we do in the Midwest. We build, we grow, we move. And the companies who want to develop capabilities are all over the place here.

Krannert will be playing a really big role in a massive regional economic development program. Which is designed to get advanced sensing techniques into employers all over the region. And we'll play a very big role in making that happen. So part of it is we sit on this campus with amazing science technology assets, with amazing data science assets.

And our programmatic strengths there go hand in glove in preparing students. But it's more than just we'll teach you the techniques and the tools for working with data. We'll teach you how to drive business decisions using that data. And we'll have an opportunity to practice on real companies who need to solve these problems as a matter of life or death.

So that's a great environment to learn.
>> Well I love that you're talking about using data to drive business decisions, cuz that's ultimately the ideal outcome, right? And going back to part of the conversation we had earlier, giving our students the opportunity to go and do that in real time is huge.

So how do you see all of that connecting? We've talked a lot about the collaboration, we've talked about the various centers. But ultimately, how do you see students being able to gain those experiences while they're here?
>> Sure, we've created a series of research centers which are best thought of as a kind of triangle.

So at one tip, there's research, a second is corporate partners. A third is programmatic engagement. One of the great things about the new focus on business analytics is that most companies, maybe it's not too bold to say all companies. Are still struggling to figure out how they can use data to be as effective and profitable as possible.

Increasingly are turning to academic experts to help them think through the technical aspects of the problem, and the implementation aspects of the problem. So they come to us, and they say we've got these problems that we need to solve. We need some of the world's best thinkers, the kind of people that we have on faculty here at Purdue.

And at Krannert, we need some of the world's best thinkers to help us think through those problems. Those problems then become a key part of our programs. Both direct adoption in terms of classroom settings, as well as consulting projects that we work on with students. And then finally, that translates back into placement success.

When companies get ready to hire students, they want folks who have been working on the kinds of problems that they are wrestling with on a day to day basis. And they know how good the students are at doing it, because they've seen them through internships, through consulting projects, through classroom exposure.

They've seen those students working on their problems, and they know the students are ready to hit it out of the park once they show up. So that becomes a nicely self-reinforcing ecosystem. Companies supply us with problems, and the raw data, and the raw experimental opportunities that they need to work on.

We supply them with research insights and access to talent.
>> Well, I love that you're talking about the outcomes, right? Cuz again, the purpose of getting higher education for many is to go take that next step in their career. Which ultimately brings us back to the idea of value, and that's probably our wrap up today.

You've talked about the long term value of an MBA, never being more valuable than it is right now. But I know that one of our university initiatives has been to provide higher education to the highest proven value. So talk to us how here at Krannert, we are reinforcing that idea.


>> The first piece is we do everything we can to make an education here affordable, keeping tuition rates low, offering strong stipend support. But low tuition doesn't matter unless the work you do here translates to a great job opportunity. So doing more and more to connect with employers through a variety of different programs to ensure student success on the backend.

And I think the best evidence of this is where we stand on calculations on return on investment. We're consistently among the highest rated programs in the country in ROI. And if you think about schooling as a human capital investment, you'd wanna know what you're getting for it. And so the fact that we rate so highly in that respect, I think, is important.


>> Excellent, well, thanks so much for your time today, David, and we appreciate you sitting down with us. And on behalf of everyone here at the Krannert School of Management, I look forward to talking with you again.
>> Thanks so much, Nick.