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A few years ago, the faculty at the Eli Broad College of Business decided that traditional MBA education - while substantive, robust, and very applicable to preparing the 21st Century business professional – just didn’t seem like enough. Professors wondered, when students were getting into the professional spaces, how did they adapt? How did they adjust to market trends? How did they find ways to disrupt their environment? At the same time, there was a lot of work being done in art and other creative spaces related to how one can think outside of the metaphorical box. So, Broad College faculty decided that they needed to have a collision between what was happening in the design and thinking world, and the business world. What you see now at the Broad College is the manifestation of that. When Broad Spartans think about creativity and innovation, it means taking everything one learns in traditional classrooms, and applying it in new environments in unique and interesting ways to tackle real-world problems, according to Wayne Hutchison, director of the Full-Time MBA program and academic services at the Broad College. A centerpiece of that is the Broad College “Extreme Green” series, which takes a creative problem solving methodology with an overlay of a traditional business education. Students are asked to challenge their conventional thinking and in some ways go back to their childhood, when imagining and dreaming and doing were parts of everyday life. Hutchison said the Broad College wants to bring those creative pieces to the puzzle, and at the same time have students work with partners in the real world to develop and offer solutions to be used in today’s economy, and not just after their courses of study have concluded. For example, “Extreme Green” acts as an internal consultancy team for General Motors, where GM gives us a problem, and we operate as if we worked inside their organization. The program has worked with Hills Brothers Coffee to find a way to revitalize the brand and tap into the Millennial market. Students have created technology-based applications and logistical-based delivery services in the food services market. The diversity of these ideas is constrained only by the imagination of Broad College students, and Hutchison said that every year they continually surprise him with the ideas they bring about.
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