By José Ángel de la Paz

While it is still quite difficult to know when the post-COVID-19 era will begin, many industries are already preparing, even setting initiatives into motion, for this new future, according to Ignacio de la Vega.

“A very clear example of this is seen in universities and business schools around the world, which now operate entirely online,” said the dean of EGADE Business School and the Undergraduate Business School at Tecnológico de Monterrey.

Various deans of international business schools reflected on the implications of the “new normal” in education in the webinar “Leadership and Learning for a Post-COVID-19 World. What's Changing, Why and How,” as part of EGADE Business School's series:  “Rising to the Challenge: Leadership in the Face of COVID-19”.

“As business schools, we must adapt and find the right combination of tools and methodologies that support the education of each of our students. The technologies we are using now will be part of our toolkit in the years to come,” said David Bach, Dean of Executive Programs at Yale School of Management.

Pablo Martin de Holan, dean of HEC Paris in Qatar, pointed out that major catastrophes, such as the one we are experiencing today, accelerate the processes of transformation, but even when we try to think about the “new normal”, we still do not know what that will be like since we cannot predict the future.

“Education was already becoming more and more technological. The funny thing is that many technologies (before COVID-19) were already available but we were not using them. I can't make any promises, but I see an acceleration in the use of these tools, and it will be hard to go back,” he said.

For his part, Dominique Turpin, Dean of External Relations at IMD, noted that a major lesson of the pandemic is just how difficult it is to predict the future.

“Any business person or business school needs to be prepared for any kind of scenario,” he said.

YOU CAN WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE