An opinion piece by Alessandra Poggiani

Back in the 1990s when I was Head of Communications for WWF International, most of my time was spent on planes, touring the Mediterranean coasts to meet my staff in countries like Tunisia, Spain, France and Turkey. While sounding glamorous, in reality it was tiresome and inconvenient having to travel every time we needed to meet.

Alessandra Poggiani is a visiting lecturer at Imperial College Business School

Email was around, but I was only able to read messages when I was physically at my computer in the office, meaning that there were long periods while travelling when I couldn’t access them. Today, businesses have been transformed with the introduction of mobile devices and videoconferencing technologies. Not only can we hold meetings with colleagues all around the world from the comfort of our own offices, but when we do travel, we can continually monitor and respond to emails on our smartphones wherever and whenever we want to.

Indeed, iPads, smartphones and tablets are now a staple in many boardrooms across the world. From front-line sales forces to top executives, many are choosing these products over laptops as they offer a light, portable means of accessing information and presenting to clients. Apple says that 93 percent of Fortune 500 companies are deploying or testing iPads to add the devices to their line-up of tools.

In addition, there is an emerging trend of using web-based portals and hubs in order to enhance communication between colleagues, manage information and boost productivity, begging the question of how relevant email will be in the next few years. For example, many of the top global companies such as Cisco, Nationwide, AstraZeneca, Alcatel-Lucent are using web platforms such as Yammer. These provide employees with a private, secure web space to connect, work and exchange information, avoiding altogether the use of emails and paper documents.

Business schools have a duty to immerse their students in this environment from day one. In this era of intense competition and fast-changing business scenarios, students need to be aware of all the available tools and platforms, and be fully practised and prepared to take advantage of the new digital landscape when they enter their professional career.

Social media is a key factor. For students, this is already familiar territory. Many do not even check their mailboxes anymore, preferring instead to exchange information via Facebook and other social networks. By incorporating these into our teaching and for project working, we can ensure regular communication and engagement with our students, and get them practised in using and thinking about social media as a powerful business tool that enables them to capture a vast amount of informal but valuable information from the communities around them.

Used in this way, students can start to consider how businesses might best use social media to capture information from their customer base. For example, Ford has evolved their approach from simply asking its customers about their experience, to inviting them to share their ideas for designing new models and innovations to improve their existing range. By doing this, Ford can legitimately claim that they produce cars ‘validated’ by their customers.

In response to this changing landscape, we at Imperial College Business School, have run a pilot scheme on the MSc Strategic Marketing programme, providing all students with an iPad and redesigning all programme material, communications and management to make full use of the applications and scope of the device. The results were very positive and we are now looking to extend the iPad scheme to our other programmes from October 2012.

MSc Strategic Marketing

business school

Learning was taken beyond the barriers of the classroom, with students continually creating content via downloads, annotations, editing and note sharing applications and accessing faster and better feedback from their lecturers. By providing a digital focus and combining it with topical courses, we were able to get students to think beyond theory and work together as any professional creative marketing team would. This was put into practise with a project for the Met Office, as part of the Digital & Interactive Marketing module led by Dr Steven Moxey. Students were tasked with marketing a web-based platform for environmental data. They were immediately able to get to grips with a new and complex idea that had previously been hard to explain, and in a short time, were able to use their knowledge and experience of digital services and social media to come up with innovative ideas to grow the community and social aspects of the platform. The work impressed executives so much that the Met Office are now considering how to incorporate these ideas in the next phase of the project.

Essentially, the digital age is about open communication. By bringing this into the heart of teaching, we can also enhance the student experience, allowing for information and knowledge to flow more freely. This helps students interact more effectively with each other and their lecturers, and crucially, learn more as a result.

At the rapid pace that businesses are now moving and changing, future business leaders need to hit the ground running. By giving students the opportunity to embrace all the digital age has to offer, we can fully prepare them for the business world of today.

Alessandra Poggiani, visiting lecturer, Digital Economy, Imperial College Business School