Rethinking the MBA

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Stanford Graduate Schoolof Business

Customization and Large-Scale Change

IN FALL 2007, the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) adopted a new curriculum that it heralded as a “revolutionary change in management education.”¹ The curriculum was the school’s most far-reaching change in thirty years, emphasizing customization, general management, and leadership development, and featured faculty advising and student coaching. Students entering the school’s two-year MBA program would now start off not with a quarter of highly analytical core courses but with a set of integrative Management Perspectives, followed by Management Foundations—courses that focused on specific areas and were offered in three or more varieties at different levels ...