商學院也要“以用戶爲中心”

The term “user-centricity” may not sound exciting. But in an increasingly competitive business education market, schools can use the concept to distinguish themselves.

“以用戶爲中心”也許聽起來不怎麼令人振奮。但在競爭日益激烈的商業教育市場，商學院可以利用這個概念實現差異化。

What is user-centricity? Many believe it is about putting users at the centre of a company’s process, but it is actually the opposite. The idea is to consider the user’s needs first, and the process second.

什麼是“以用戶爲中心”？很多人以爲，就是把用戶置於企業流程的中心，但事實恰恰相反。其構想是先考慮用戶的需求，再考慮流程。

For business schools, this means designing courses that can be adapted to the students’ needs — what to learn, how to learn it.

對商學院來說，這意味着設計能夠適應學員需求的課程——學什麼和怎麼學。

Schools and professors cannot decide what those needs are: we can no longer have a top-down — and condescending — approach to teaching business.

商學院和教授不能決定這些需求是什麼：我們不能再採取自上而下——和居高臨下——的教學方式了。

But we cannot simply rely on the students to identify what they need either. By asking students, we may be surprised by their conservative answers. As Henry Ford is supposed to have said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

但我們也不能僅僅依靠學員來確定他們的需求。如果問學員，他們給出的保守答案可能會讓我們驚訝。就像亨利?福特(Henry Ford)在這種情況下應該會說的：“當初如果我問人們想要什麼，他們會說想要更快的馬。”

Students now expect to actively participate in designing their own courses. We need to find a balance between what students want, and what experts think they need.

現在學員可以預期積極參與課程設計。在學員們想要的與專家們認爲他們所需要的之間，我們需要找到平衡。

Many business schools are providing experiential teaching, enabling students to “live” situations that are as close as possible to real-life work experiences. Soft skills, which are often those that students most want to develop, are trickier to teach.

很多商學院提供體驗式教學，使學生能夠身臨其境地體驗儘可能貼近真實的工作情境。軟技能（往往也是學員最希望培養的技能）教授起來較爲困難。

For instance, when dealing with big data, soft skills (or “consulting skills” such as being able to communicate clearly and being convincing) make the difference between a technical report and useful, actionable results.

比如，在處理大數據時，軟技能（即“諮詢技能”，比如能夠清楚地溝通，還有令人信服）將決定是提供一份平鋪直敘的技術性報告，還是給出有用、可操作的結果。

A “user-centric” approach to teaching those skills might involve placing the students in a real-life situation in which they have to present their results and recommendations to managers or executives.

採取“以用戶爲中心”的方式教授這類技能，可能涉及讓學員處於真實情境中，必須向經理或者高管提交結果和建議。

At Essec for example, business analytics classes, which include consulting skills, integrate projects based on real-life sets of data. Partner companies provide data and business problems to solve: the students are required to analyse the data and come up with a solution.

比如，在巴黎高等經濟商業學院(Essec)，包含諮詢技能的商業分析課融合了基於現實世界數據集的項目。合作企業提供數據和待解決的商業難題：學員需要分析數據，然後拿出解決方案。

They deliver a presentation to the top management and are assessed on both the methodological aspects (hard skills) and the presentation structure and quality (soft skills).

他們向高級管理層做演示，並在方法（硬技能）以及演示結構和質量（軟技能）兩方面得到評估。

The accuracy of technical analyses is the fundamental basis of reliable work. However, if it is not convincing, it will not achieve the real objective: transforming the company. Both hard skills and soft skills are a means to an end, which is to improve the company’s ability to achieve its mission.

技術分析的準確性是可靠工作的根本基礎。然而，如果不具說服力，就無法實現真正的目標——轉變企業。硬技能和軟技能都是實現目標的手段，目標是提高企業履行使命的能力。

Experts — in this case business school professors — must help students understand, and provide them with, all the skills required to act in a real life situation.

專家（在這種情況下是商學院教授）必須幫助學員理解——並向他們傳授——應對實際情境所需的一切技能。