University at Buffalo School of Management

leaders will be far removed from the technical capability of the people they seek to influence. And as long as behavior is at the root of our challenges, there will always be a need for effective leaders — and there will be a need to teach those people how to bring out the best in the people they're responsible for. Iyer: When people think of management, they tend to think about areas like accounting, finance or operations that have a lot of rules. But those rules are incomplete. They give you room to improvise and adapt — the jazz around the symphony, if you will. And it's in this improvi- sation and adaptation where the creative and ethical chal- lenges come in. Gold: AI will make a lot of the technical things tradi- tionally absorbed by business leaders a lot easier, but what won't come easily is individual judgment. Not everyone can take inputs, create a judgment based on those inputs, and make a decision that gets the machinery moving. Iyer: Leaders need to frame their thinking around learning the capability of their people. And then, within that capability, dream up all the things you could possibly do, and from all those things, choose to do a particular thing. The future requires the intervention of leaders to change the trajectory. Gold: People have really been hamstrung about what comes next based on what's happened prior. The leap we're being forced to make because of how fast things are moving in areas like space tourism, climate change and AI. If you don't think ahead of that wave as to what capabilities we want to create, hone or develop, you're going to be one step behind. It's going to be the challenge of education and busi- ness to teach people how to condition themselves to leap- frog beyond the wave to understand what's possible based on all the change around us. Iyer: The future is what you can imagine. It's in your mind's eye, and then you work toward making it happen. Historically, the word imagination has not been associated with business. But I wish it were, because businesses help get us products we didn't have five or 10 years ago. As long as we can tap into the human imagination, the passion for your job, there's a very different outcome that can happen. And a hundred years from now, we'll be talking about the same thing but in a different context. Maybe we'll have flying cars then, but we'll still be trying to tap into the enthusiasm and passion of all the people working in organizations. Gold: And then, if we do this the right way, when we're flying around in cars, someone is thinking about the next set of capabilities that are just within reach. School of Management student and faculty perspectives on the next 100 years of business and business school education We will see business school graduates who represent a dramatic demographic and experiential diversity shift that will change the world in the coming years. I'm excited to say that the future will give us a reminder that no matter who you are, what you look like or where you're from, you can make a difference with enough dedication, teamwork and love for yourself and your global community. Will Gorman, MBA '24 _______________________________________________ The emergence of artificial intelligence will have the biggest impact on organizations in the years to come. Future work teams will integrate AI as a teammate along- side humans, enabling them to leverage AI's capabilities to enhance collaboration and performance across such domains as search and rescue, disaster relief, military applications and health care. Vincent Rice, PhD '26 _______________________________________________ Business schools can thrive, but the context of what we call business will broaden. Our current curriculum focuses on examples primarily from the consumer market for goods and services, but in the future, upstream industries such as agriculture and energy will gain more recognition in management education. We also might not recognize some of the metrics being taught to measure perfor- mance, as success will no longer be defined by perpetual growth, but rather some measure of thriving. Natalie Simpson Professor and Chair of Operations Management and Strategy Associate Dean for Graduate Programs _______________________________________________ More than ever, employees don't want to feel like a cog in the machine. Over the next 100 years, I expect organiza- tions will increasingly respond to this sentiment by treat- ing employees as whole people who want to matter and contribute at work — and also flourish in their personal lives. Danielle Tussing Assistant Professor of Organization and Human Resources FORWARD THINKING Autumn 2023 Buffalo Business 23

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