Oxford: Saïd Business School's MBAs go online to tackle the world’s biggest problems

How can we care for the ageing global population and who is going to pay? How will we feed a population estimated to grow to nine billion people by 2050? Faced with the depletion of fossil fuels and the challenges of climate change, how can we build a more sustainable future for the planet? 

These are some of the biggest global challenges facing policymakers and businesses, and a new way of tackling them has been launched by Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford.

GOTO (Global Opportunities, Threats: Oxford) is a web platform that brings together Oxford academics, MBA and EMBA students and alumni, to form an action-oriented community focused on solving problems on this scale.

Its central feature is a dynamic multimedia platform hosting videos from experts and practitioners, infographics, images, curated content and real-time online debate which is blended with in-person learning through tutorial groups and events to generate ideas, high-level content and action plans for the big problems facing the world.

"The whole point about these long-horizon complex challenges is that they can’t be addressed by traditional processes," said dean Professor Peter Tufano, who initiated the programme. ‘GOTO has been designed to connect Oxford academics engaged in world-class research with students and alumni, who will lead organisations in this uncertain future. We are combining Oxford’s deep tradition of rigorous inquiry with the action orientation of our business community. We unite the broader University community using an online, interactive platform in order to bring together the collective power of Oxford to bear on these challenges.’

GOTO was launched to the 2012/13 MBA and EMBA classes and is an integral part of the programme. Blending curated content from the online platform and working with tutorial groups, students are expected to produce a series of papers that look at the practical implications of some of the world’s major issues. An iterative process, these papers are critiqued by other students and revised before being shared on the GOTO site arranged by topic.

Students conclude by developing comprehensive action plans for review and implementation by practitioners and policymakers. During the academic year 2012/13 GOTO is focused on the business and policy issues created by the long-term trend towards global ageing and changing demographics; identifying the global pinch points, how patterns of consumption will change within societies, looking at where shifts in population will impact most upon the built and natural environments, how healthcare systems will cope and how this future will be paid for. Oxford’s Institute of Population Ageing, led by Professor Sarah Harper, employs the primary content experts for this module. In 2013/14 the topic will be Big Data, followed by the scarcity of resources the following year, and these modules will be developed in collaboration with experts from other departments across the University.

In its first year, participation is limited to MBA and EMBA students at Oxford and members of Oxford Business Alumni. However, as the programme develops, Saïd Business School hopes to expand it to include students and alumni of Oxford and other leading universities to facilitate an even richer and global collaborative community.