Announcing The Hub at Columbia Business School
We are pleased to announce the official launch of The Hub, Columbia Business School’s new think tank focused on today’s most critical challenges. The Hub’s founding is premised on the belief that solving the most vexing questions requires the collaboration of scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. By facilitating dialogue and debate among academia, industry, government, non-profits, and the broader public, The Hub will equip business leaders with the tools necessary to rise to these challenges and bring about positive change.
Our focus for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 academic years will be on Business and Society, selected because of the important role that the business world, in general, and business schools, in particular, play in society. We believe that the current societal climate necessitates timely attention and action and that there is an immense opportunity for businesses and policymakers to make a meaningful difference.
Following a bottom-up process of seeking input from faculty interested in participating in and contributing to The Hub, we have chosen three initiatives that fall under the umbrella of Business and Society.
Future of Capitalism
What is capitalism and what should it look like moving forward? How do we ensure that people are not left behind? Dean Emeritus and Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics Glenn Hubbard will explore the roles for business and government in a modern capitalist economy. Through this initiative, business professionals, philanthropic leaders, academics, and journalists will convene to consider whether traditional cultural and economic factors supporting innovation and capitalism are still the right ones.
Business, AI, and Democracy (BAID)
Democracy is widely believed to be necessary for the sustainability of markets and market reforms that encourage investment and innovation. Surprisingly then, as political polling shows, democracies are living in a moment of crisis. Business is not isolated from these trends.
Led by Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Professor of Leadership and Ethics Bruce Kogut, in collaboration with CBS faculty, including Professors Ann Bartel, Gita Johar, Andrea Prat, Andrey Simonov, and external members like Professor Mario Small and Provost and Professor Sergei Guriev, BAID will conduct academic-quality studies and advocacy to stimulate public debate and exchange ideas for strengthening democracies.
Think Bigger Innovations
S.T. Lee Professor of Business Sheena Iyengar, in collaboration with Professor Shiva Rajgopal, will run, as part of this initiative, The Think Bigger Summit, an annual (or bi-annual) forum. Innovators across various industries will engage with global organizations, corporate board members, private equity leadership, and selected academics to showcase their innovations, explain the processes behind them, discuss setbacks and challenges, and highlight their routes to success. Each forum will offer an overview of the different problems that business leaders have encountered and showcase their creative solutions to these challenges.
We hope you'll take a moment to learn more about The Hub and join us for our events and programming throughout the year.