As social ideas and realities continue to shift, it is essential that education keeps pace, in both content and delivery.   For management educators, this means ongoing reflection and innovation on the nature and purposes of business education.   MGSM and Be Learning share a passion for stimulating such discussions, creating real and genuine dialogue between practitioners and educators.

For the past three years we have been partnering in a number of action research projects in large corporations in Sydney and Melbourne. Our partnership has flourished through the complimentary focus: of MGSM on reflective practice and intellectual rigour; and of Be Learning on the emotional reality and practical application of learning and development.

Throughout 2010 MGSM and Be Learning are inviting all those who share our passion for innovation to join us in this reflection and dialogue. Each of the discussion forums that encompass “Business Education for Life in the 21st Century” are designed to stimulate interest and ideas, provoking genuine thought and reflection.

Forum Goals:

• expand what we do and how we currently think through collective inquiry;
• form a new synergy between all those passionate and responsible for business education;
• build an on line community to facilitate this network and the sharing of information;
• develop active research projects to experiment, reflect and go beyond what we know.

Over the course of 2010 we will be holding a number of 2 hour events for a variety of target audiences – spanning operational, strategic and delivery focus areas. The focus of these discussions will be to acknowledge current issues and uncover the questions we need to be asking to move forward. The content and agenda will be driven largely by the group, with the ability to continue the conversation online via an on line group/ community on LinkedIn – Business Education Research Forum.

Once the series of kickoff events are completed across the different key areas – there will be the opportunity in September to bring all the different target audiences together in a one day Open Space* session. This forum will provide the community with a great opportunity to discuss, debate and reflect on the issues and opportunities at hand and uncover a way forward.

The driving force behind the Forum is a research based, forward looking view of how we can collectively redefine and explore Business Education for Life in the 21^st Century. Welcome to the community and we look forward to working with you!

*Open space – a group process in which you’ll become each other’s teachers, leaders and advisors as you explore issues and determine solutions to address the challenges of improving business education.  Open Space has been run in over 100 countries, over 100,000 times across a diverse range of organisations across a wide range of organisations for diverse objectives including strategic direction setting, envisioning future, conflict resolution, moral building, organisational transformation, ideas generation.