"This is a school where mission matters.

"What has changed over the past year, as we’ve implemented our new integrated MBA curriculum, is the clarity with which we have developed a vision of what the mission, 'educating leaders for business and society,' actually means in practice.

"The curriculum places a tremendous emphasis on integration and connection, so that our students actually have a much more complete understanding of the way in which management and leadership challenges unfold in organizations and how they, themselves, are going to add value to those organizations.

"This integrated approach requires more discipline on the part of the students, and it also affords them the opportunity to be more creative. One of the things that was a real revelation for me this year was how much the traditional MBA curriculum actually suppresses creativity. Learning becomes a rote operation–just taking facts from a case and putting them into a particular framework.

"In the coming year, we’re going to augment the curriculum by providing even more tools to enhance both creative and critical thinking. In addition, we’re incorporating the same interdisciplinary perspective into many of our elective offerings, continuing to encourage and foster these essential attributes of creativity and discipline in our students.

"Whether you’re talking about the curriculum, or the diverse backgrounds and aspirations of our student body, or the faculty, or the way in which this school is connected
to the larger Yale University, there’s a set of drivers of a new way of thinking about management and leadership. And all those things together drive this combination of creativity and discipline that our graduates use to solve the hard problems that matter. That’s what we mean by 'educating leaders for business and society.'"

—Joel M. Podolny, Dean