Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Speaker 1: with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Our next guest is a technology and healthcare futurist. Served
Speaker 3: in the US National Security Council, State Department, and Senate
Speaker 3: Form Relations Committee, and with the United Nations in Cambodia.
Speaker 3: Most recently, he or more recently, I should say, he
Speaker 3: has been exploring and explaining the world of genetic engineering.
Speaker 3: We are talking about Jamie Metzel. He's the author of
Speaker 3: Hacking Darwin Genetic Engineering in the Future of Humanity. For
Speaker 3: other books he has also written. He was a member
Speaker 3: of the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Committee on Human
Speaker 3: Genome Editing. We want to get to it because he
Speaker 3: is with us. He's Senior Fellow at the Atlanta Council,
Speaker 3: founder and chair of the nonprofit One Shared World. His
Speaker 3: new book out is called super Convergence, How the genetics,
Speaker 3: biotech and AI revolutions will transform our lives, world and
Speaker 3: work work World. Jamie is in New York City and
Speaker 3: the book is out Tuesday. Forgive me, Jamie, I'm kind
Speaker 3: of rushing to get to you because I want to
Speaker 3: talk to you.
Speaker 4: How are you. I'm great, Carol, great to hear your voice.
Speaker 2: We've been at this together for many years, so it's
Speaker 2: great to be together again.
Speaker 3: Well, what do you think about that journey and what
Speaker 3: you are kind of focusing on at this point and
Speaker 3: really tackling some really big areas and kind of putting
Speaker 3: them together, and the importance of kind of thinking about
Speaker 3: them together, and I mean genetics, biotech and AI.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this book, in many ways, it's the culmination kind
Speaker 2: of my entire life, and I'm trying to ask the
Speaker 2: question is what do we do and how do we
Speaker 2: manage these two most fundamental transformations of our lives? And
Speaker 2: those two transformations are this is the moment, after three
Speaker 2: point eight billion years of life on Earth, that our
Speaker 2: one species has developed these two transformational superpowers, and that's
Speaker 2: we are creating novel intelligence and have developed the capacity
Speaker 2: to recast all of life, including our own.
Speaker 4: And the one question.
Speaker 2: That's going to determine whether our species thrives in the
Speaker 2: future or doesn't is whether we can use these new
Speaker 2: godlike superpowers wisely. And again, Carol, you mentioned my last book,
Speaker 2: Hacking Darwin, was all about the future of human genetic engineering,
Speaker 2: and then I was, as you and I have discussed,
Speaker 2: deeply involved in the issues of pandemic origins. I was
Speaker 2: a member of the World Health Organization Expert Committee on
Speaker 2: Human Genome Mediting after the first Crisper babies were born.
Speaker 2: And so I definitely am deeply involved in the science
Speaker 2: of what these intersecting AI genetics and biotechnology revolutions mean,
Speaker 2: and then the applications healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, data.
Speaker 4: Storage, and lots of other things. But then the question is, well,
Speaker 4: how do we do it?
Speaker 2: And so one is we need to be very cognizant
Speaker 2: of the dangers, which are very real, and then we say,
Speaker 2: what's the path forward, how do we do this wisely?
Speaker 2: And what are the building blocks of getting to the
Speaker 2: place where we want to be, Because if we get
Speaker 2: this right, we can have much better healthcare, more abundant
Speaker 2: foods for everybody around the world, and all kinds of
Speaker 2: wonderful things. And we get it wrong, we can get
Speaker 2: sin bio pandemics, we can crash ecosystems, we can undermine
Speaker 2: our very humanity.
Speaker 4: And that's why I've written a book for everyone.
Speaker 2: I want people to take this book to the beach
Speaker 2: and be comfortable and having fun reading it on the beach.
Speaker 2: They go, that was a really easy read, but I
Speaker 2: actually learned a lot and it sparked a lot of
Speaker 2: meaningful conversations.
Speaker 3: I have to say that I have been watching though
Speaker 3: a video you did where you talked about the book.
Speaker 3: You're in San Jose, California. You're competing in an ultra marathon.
Speaker 3: It's raining, there's lots of mud. We're actually showing it
Speaker 3: for our viewers right now. You talk about your hands
Speaker 3: getting numb, you're sniffling because it's cold, it's raining.
Speaker 5: Are you walking and running? Jamie, to clarify, here looks like.
Speaker 2: It looks like I say, I am so honored that
Speaker 2: you are sharing this with your viewers. So, for those
Speaker 2: of you who don't do ultra marathons, ultra marathons are hard.
Speaker 4: Ultra marathon is a race longer than a marathon.
Speaker 2: The ones that I do are fifty kilometer thirty thirty
Speaker 2: two mile races, and I do mountain trail runs. And
Speaker 2: I was in San Jose speaking at sin Bio Beta,
Speaker 2: which is the big synthetic biology conference that my friend
Speaker 2: John Cumbers runs.
Speaker 4: And I thought, oh, this is going to be easy.
Speaker 4: Famous last words.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to go the day before the conference
Speaker 2: and I'll run this race San Jose.
Speaker 4: The weather's perfect. How big could the hills be?
Speaker 2: So it turns out the hills were pretty big, and
Speaker 2: it turned out they had this uncharacteristic freezing like rainy,
Speaker 2: slushy storm. And it was like you, I'm so much
Speaker 2: older than you guys, but you know what a three
Speaker 2: hour tour means when you know this is going to
Speaker 2: be easy, like a three It was a three hour
Speaker 2: tour and so and then I knew that I had
Speaker 2: somebody had asked me to record a video about the book.
Speaker 2: And I was walking up this hill at mile like
Speaker 2: thirty and it was kind of this straight up you know,
Speaker 2: I'm what can I do to record? It's like, you're
Speaker 2: insane at those moments. I'm going to record a.
Speaker 4: Record a video about this book. That seems like a
Speaker 4: good idea.
Speaker 3: So I didn't well, I was thinking about watching it,
Speaker 3: and I was like, I feel, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: when you're out in nature, you said times for me,
Speaker 3: my brain opens up. I think differently, maybe more clearly,
Speaker 3: about some of the big ideas and trends and innovations. Disruptions,
Speaker 3: whatever the heck you want to call them, that are
Speaker 3: coming at us big time. How do you cross nature
Speaker 3: with some of these dynamic trends that are coming us
Speaker 3: that will clearly test kind of natural evolutionary theory that
Speaker 3: is dominated for so long.
Speaker 2: This is why you're such a great journalist, Carroll, to
Speaker 2: make such a smooth transition as that one.
Speaker 4: And what I'll say is the things that we.
Speaker 2: Call nature aren't natural. If you go to Whole Foods
Speaker 2: and go to the fruits and vegetables section, you would
Speaker 2: be hard pressed to find a fruit or a vegetable
Speaker 2: that twenty thousand years ago existed in anything like its
Speaker 2: current form.
Speaker 4: It almost doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: Maybe there's one or two things if you like, when
Speaker 2: I was out hiking in San Jose, it seemed like
Speaker 2: nature because there were a lot of trees. But nay,
Speaker 2: if we mean by nature what it was like before
Speaker 2: humans changed everything, Like, no one went hiking just for
Speaker 2: fun because the saber toothed hiker will eat you if
Speaker 2: you do that. And so the thing that we call
Speaker 2: nature is just the world that our ancestors managed and manipulated,
Speaker 2: like you're your dog, that your dog didn't exist fifty
Speaker 2: thousand years ago, in this ing, in this format, none
Speaker 2: of them exactly.
Speaker 4: And so what and even if.
Speaker 2: You are the most indigenous farmer in the highlands of Peru,
Speaker 2: make it make growing keen waw from ancient varieties of seeds,
Speaker 2: you are a radical biotechnologist. Much more the difference between
Speaker 2: the precursors to our domesticated crops and our current non
Speaker 2: GMO corn and our current GMO corn. The difference between
Speaker 2: the precursors and corn is way more than the minuscule
Speaker 2: difference between current corn. And so the starting point for
Speaker 2: this has to be the choice that we are making
Speaker 2: as a species is not natural ursus unnatural. It's how
Speaker 2: do we interact with the living world that we have
Speaker 2: been managing and manipulating for thousands of years and do
Speaker 2: so in the smartest, most economical, safest, most sustainable way
Speaker 2: to achieve the things that we want to achieve.
Speaker 4: And what are those things?
Speaker 2: Well, we don't want to die of terrible cancer. We
Speaker 2: want to have gene therapy. So somebody who's born with
Speaker 2: something like sickle cell disease rather than living a life
Speaker 2: of excruciating pain and then dying prematurely and live a
Speaker 2: normal life.
Speaker 4: We want to grow more.
Speaker 2: Crops on less land to feed more people.
Speaker 5: So, Jamie, my question for you is, after doing the
Speaker 5: research and reporting for this book and your other books,
Speaker 5: how do you live your life differently? What do you
Speaker 5: eat that's different? What do you do that's different than
Speaker 5: you used to do now that you found all this
Speaker 5: through research?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, it's funny people ask me this
Speaker 2: a lot because I'm deeply involved in the world of,
Speaker 2: for example, the science of human life extension.
Speaker 4: And everyone says, oh, you must.
Speaker 2: Be taking the NAD plus boosters and med foremen, and
Speaker 2: you must be like doing like the thing where they
Speaker 2: cut open the old and young mice and sew them together.
Speaker 4: You must be.
Speaker 2: Doing that with I don't know who, or your girlfriend
Speaker 2: or something, and I don't do any of that.
Speaker 4: What I do is a few things.
Speaker 2: One just in terms of my personal life. I exercise
Speaker 2: an hour a day and eat healthy and do all
Speaker 2: those blue zone things that everybody knows you're supposed to
Speaker 2: do and are hard to do. Certainly in my healthcare
Speaker 2: I try to get ahead of the curve because I
Speaker 2: write about the future of healthcare in the book, and
Speaker 2: where we're going is from our current world of healthcare
Speaker 2: based on population averages. You have a headache and you
Speaker 2: go to CVS and you pick up a tile and
Speaker 2: all to our new world of healthcare precision or personalized
Speaker 2: health care based on each person's individual biology.
Speaker 4: Because you know a small.
Speaker 2: Percentage of people who take a tile and I will
Speaker 2: have a terrible adverse reaction and could even die. And
Speaker 2: so better to know you're one of those people before
Speaker 2: you take the tile. And that's true for cancer therapies.
Speaker 4: And all of that.
Speaker 2: So in that process, we're gaining a lot of information
Speaker 2: about systems biology, so the complexity of human biology.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: And then that's the next shift in our healthcare, which
Speaker 2: is from precision to predictive and preventive, where with all
Speaker 2: of this data and the formula for all of this
Speaker 2: stuff is the more high quality data you have, the
Speaker 2: more computing power, stronger algorithms, the more we're going to
Speaker 2: be able to decipher actionable patterns. That's going to change
Speaker 2: healthcare and industry and agriculture and everything.
Speaker 3: Amen, Hey, listen, do not go anywhere. Jamie's going to
Speaker 3: stay with us. Jamie Metzil we're talking with about his
Speaker 3: new book Super Convergence, How the genetics, biotech and AI
Speaker 3: revolutions will transform our lives, work, and world, including a
Speaker 3: chapter on what possibly could go wrong. So we're going
Speaker 3: to get into that. That's coming up next. I want
Speaker 3: to get back to Jamie Metzil, Senior Fellow at the
Speaker 3: Atlanta Council, founder and chair of the nonprofit on Shared World.
Speaker 3: We are talking about his new book out on Tuesday,
Speaker 3: Super Convergence, How the genetics, biotech and AI revolutions will
Speaker 3: transform our lives, work, and world. He is still with
Speaker 3: us here in New York City. Hey, Jamie, one thing
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask you. The way the book starts,
Speaker 3: you have two quotes, but you say this is from
Speaker 3: Stuart Brand. We are as gods and might as well
Speaker 3: get good at it.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 3: What's the message there? It feels pretty powerful.
Speaker 2: For millennia, our ancestor is imagined these all powerful gods.
Speaker 2: They could create new stuff, they could recast life, they
Speaker 2: could grant people's wishes to live extra life. They could
Speaker 2: transform the world around them. We can now do all
Speaker 2: of those things. So we are in many ways not
Speaker 2: and always amaze. We are the all powerful gods that
Speaker 2: we have imagined in our past, and just like we've
Speaker 2: imagined those gods can build and destroy, we can build
Speaker 2: and destroy. And so now we have these superpowers and
Speaker 2: the question is are we going to use them to
Speaker 2: build to make a better future for us individually, for
Speaker 2: our companies, for our countries, and for our world, and
Speaker 2: do it in really practical ways, or are we just
Speaker 2: going to not do what needs to be to not
Speaker 2: create the right frameworks and governance and values and accountability
Speaker 2: and all the things that are required to make sure
Speaker 2: this story has as happy of a process, because there's
Speaker 2: no ending process as possible. If we don't do those things,
Speaker 2: we're really going to be in trouble.
Speaker 4: And that's why I've written the book.
Speaker 2: That's why I'm so passionate about bringing everybody into this conversation,
Speaker 2: because it's in the early when you're doing anything, starting
Speaker 2: a company, that's when you need to say, hey, here's
Speaker 2: what we stand for, here are our values right, and
Speaker 2: then everything gets built on that. If we don't have
Speaker 2: a conversation of what we're trying to achieve, who we are,
Speaker 2: and what are the core values that are going to
Speaker 2: guide us, If we make this a conversation just about
Speaker 2: the technology itself, we're going to wind up in a
Speaker 2: very unfamiliar and most likely scary place.
Speaker 3: I have to say, I'm already scared because I question
Speaker 3: the moral values and ethics that I feel like people
Speaker 3: have really lost. I want to ask you, genetics, biotech, AI,
Speaker 3: what worries you the most that we could get wrong?
Speaker 3: And there is a chapter about what could go wrong
Speaker 3: in general, and that's.
Speaker 2: What I'll say, in general and then specific. There is
Speaker 2: a reason why anxiety has been preserved by evolution. Anxiety
Speaker 2: is actually a really healthy emotion for us and for
Speaker 2: every animal, because we're afraid of things, and that is
Speaker 2: what inspires us to say, Hey, this terrible thing could happen.
Speaker 2: I could be eaten by some horrible animal. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to start planning so that that doesn't happen. And
Speaker 2: so these fears that we have, I mean, there's some
Speaker 2: people who are just such techno optimists.
Speaker 4: They say, just do nothing in the future is going
Speaker 4: to be great. That is not true.
Speaker 2: Bad things could happen. We need to be honest now
Speaker 2: about what they are. A few of them that I
Speaker 2: highlight in the book. One, as I mentioned I was
Speaker 2: a member of the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Committee
Speaker 2: on Human Genome and doctor Tendros, the director of the
Speaker 2: who created that after the world's first crisper babies were
Speaker 2: born in China in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4: That was a terrible violation.
Speaker 2: If we just say, hey, let's just do whatever willy
Speaker 2: nilly human experimentation, we're going to wind up with more
Speaker 2: Nuremberg trials and those kinds of violations. We have the
Speaker 2: capacity to use gene drives, which is basically we weaponize
Speaker 2: We put a little molecular scissors almost into the sex
Speaker 2: cells that pass between animals, and we could use it
Speaker 2: to wipe out mallarial mosquitoes, and that would be great.
Speaker 4: We could save a million lives per year.
Speaker 2: But we don't know how these full ecosystems work, and
Speaker 2: if we're not careful, we could also crash whole ecosystems.
Speaker 2: Not because we're trying to do harm, because we're trying
Speaker 2: to do good. And as you and I have talked
Speaker 2: about this before, Carol, but I've been in the middle
Speaker 2: for the last almost four and a half years of
Speaker 2: this debate about COVID nineteen origins, and it's my view
Speaker 2: that the preponderance of the available evidence suggests a research
Speaker 2: related origin in Wuhan. And it's very likely that these
Speaker 2: Chinese scientists who weren't trying to create bioweapons, but were
Speaker 2: most likely trying to create a pan coronavirus vaccine and
Speaker 2: had an accident and didn't realize what had happened, and
Speaker 2: then things got worse and worse. So it's not just
Speaker 2: that we're going to have doctor evil doing bad stuff.
Speaker 2: It could be that well intentioned people, people who are
Speaker 2: trying to prevent terrible diseases, or to stop malarial mosquitos,
Speaker 2: or all sorts of things. And that's why, again and again,
Speaker 2: I keep going back to values.
Speaker 4: Right, it's establishing the north star? Where are we heading?
Speaker 3: That makes us think about TIM and I talk a
Speaker 3: lot about AI.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, Jamie, my question for you is where could
Speaker 5: AI go wrong? And where what are the indications and
Speaker 5: now about the direction that it's moving in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this is it's such an important question. It's
Speaker 4: the same question as we speak today.
Speaker 2: Pope Francis has gone from Rome to Pulia for the
Speaker 2: G seven summit, and the reason he's gone is to
Speaker 2: participate in the conversation about about f and the future
Speaker 2: of AI. So AI, like all of these technologies can
Speaker 2: be used for good or for ill, and we're seeing
Speaker 2: both of those things right now. We're seeing AI being
Speaker 2: applied in healthcare settings and agriculture and all these other
Speaker 2: areas in companies, and it's helping solve real problems in
Speaker 2: very practical ways. And we're seeing deep fakes, manipulations, all
Speaker 2: kinds of problems with AI.
Speaker 4: And these are just the early days.
Speaker 2: And right now, when people think about AI, most people think,
Speaker 2: oh AI equals chat GPT, like I'm going to go
Speaker 2: to this website and then I'm gonna do AI. But
Speaker 2: if I were to ask you, guys, how did electricity
Speaker 2: influence your life today, It's an unanswerable question because electricity
Speaker 2: it's in your alarm clock, it's in your house, it's
Speaker 2: in your air conditioning, it's in the microphone, it's in
Speaker 2: our clothes, it's in our haircuts. It's just electricity is
Speaker 2: part of everything that we do. And these technologies are
Speaker 2: going to be part of everything that we do, part
Speaker 2: of our accounting systems, our interacting systems, how we interact
Speaker 2: with the world, how everything is made right. And that's
Speaker 2: why we need to think systemically and systematically about about
Speaker 2: these these technologies, and there are some of these people
Speaker 2: who say, oh, just no regulation, government, get out of
Speaker 2: the way.
Speaker 4: That's the last thing we need.
Speaker 2: We need wise governance and wise regulation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything, Well, my dad say everything in moderation. I
Speaker 3: know everybody's dad says that or mom says that, but
Speaker 3: it's also everything. Like you gotta have some oversight of
Speaker 3: all this stuff. Jamie, good luck, so much fun to
Speaker 3: catch up with you again. Thank you so much for
Speaker 3: finding time for us once again here at Bloomberg. Jamie,
Speaker 3: take care you well.
Speaker 5: Good luck also in the future ultra marathons.
Speaker 3: I know he's pretty impressive. I love I highly recommend
Speaker 3: you check out that YouTube video because he really does
Speaker 3: go through so much of the book and like I said,
Speaker 3: it's raining, there's mud. Jimmie is, of course, senior fellow
Speaker 3: at the Atlanta Council, founder chair of the nonprofit One
Speaker 3: Shared World. Check out his new book super Convergence, How
Speaker 3: the genetics, biotech and AI revolutions will transform our lives
Speaker 3: work in World WI.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 1: global business, finance and tech news as it happenss Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 5: It is Bloomberg Business Week. Well we talk about alts
Speaker 5: a lot, alternative investing. What about so called alternative MBAs?
Speaker 5: You want to say again, it's been.
Speaker 3: One of those days.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: As Bloomberg Business Week contributor Rob Mandelbaum wrote in a
Speaker 3: recent story for Bloomberg Business Week, development of alternative and
Speaker 3: online NBA programs are infod today as traditional business schools
Speaker 3: simultaneously grow more expensive and less popular. I kind of
Speaker 3: get this story in a big way.
Speaker 5: One company offering such a program is the corporate training
Speaker 5: firm Ability, which has a comprehensive business skills course that
Speaker 5: stylized as a twelve week MBA. The program is built
Speaker 5: around simulations of real life business and management decision making.
Speaker 5: We've got with us. The CEO of Ability, Beyond, Bill Hart,
Speaker 5: is here in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker's studio along with
Speaker 5: Dimitro Cassanids, who is Bloomberg News Senior editor. The editor
Speaker 5: on the piece that I just read from. By the way,
Speaker 5: from Bloomberg BusinessWeek contributor Rob Mandelbaum, who wrote about this
Speaker 5: you and I do want to start with you because
Speaker 5: you got your MBA at Harvard Business School, Like, let's
Speaker 5: be honest, there's that's like the epitome of the NBA.
Speaker 5: It doesn't get any more like traditional MBA than Harvard
Speaker 5: Business School. But you're also quick to point out that
Speaker 5: your program isn't supposed to replace a traditional MBA.
Speaker 4: Who's it for?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it is not supposed to replace Harvard Business School.
Speaker 6: In fact, I should I should say that I got
Speaker 6: the best ROI out of Harvard Business School. Has met
Speaker 6: my wife there, so I have fun memory.
Speaker 5: He said that one is good.
Speaker 6: Yes, I have fun memories of my two year But
Speaker 6: the truth is there are in the US right now
Speaker 6: one hundred and fifty thousand new MBAs every year and
Speaker 6: over a million new management positions. So close to ninety
Speaker 6: percent of new managers never set foot in a MBA
Speaker 6: in the Hollard Halls of Harvard or other NBA schools,
Speaker 6: and so there's this huge gap of people that have
Speaker 6: an undergraduate degree in history and biology but are moving
Speaker 6: into corporate jobs and need to understand what an income statement,
Speaker 6: what a balance she looks like as they become a
Speaker 6: leader of people. They need to understand how to manage others,
Speaker 6: they need to understand how to collaborate and cross functional projects.
Speaker 6: And so there's this need where ninety percent of the
Speaker 6: people moving into these leadership roles don't have the time,
Speaker 6: don't have the energy to again through your career perhaps
Speaker 6: or the money exactly. Demeter, I want to.
Speaker 3: Bring you into it that you follow you cover you,
Speaker 3: you know, report out and work with the team to
Speaker 3: like cover everything in anything when it comes to NBA
Speaker 3: programs around the world. When this came across your when
Speaker 3: you're talking to Rob, what is it that you wanted
Speaker 3: to know about in kind of what is going on
Speaker 3: and what do you want to ask our guests?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean the first question was what are you
Speaker 7: intending to do because you're calling it the twelve week MBA,
Speaker 7: But beyond that, it was really to get a better
Speaker 7: sense of what can you reasonably teach in that period
Speaker 7: of time and how can you do it? They're doing it,
Speaker 7: you know, largely online. You know, what are we going
Speaker 7: to see in the way of these programs, because I
Speaker 7: think there is It's not just the number of positions
Speaker 7: that jorn mentions, there's the interest and the desire to
Speaker 7: move into those positions because of the potential that they
Speaker 7: offer for earnings and more. And yet business schools are
Speaker 7: incredibly expensive, right, so you know what, what can you
Speaker 7: actually train for in the way that you're training and
Speaker 7: is that really going to make a difference when they
Speaker 7: land in that job? Is it actually going to serve them?
Speaker 6: Great question? And the truth is in twelve weeks, it's
Speaker 6: also not just twelve week it's part it's part time,
Speaker 6: and it's virtual. So it is a very short certificate program.
Speaker 6: It's not a full MBA, of course, it's it is
Speaker 6: not meant to be. The truth is though, that most
Speaker 6: people don't need all of the things that you learn
Speaker 6: in a two year program in business. This is not
Speaker 6: like law school or medical school, where you don't want
Speaker 6: a lawyer, you don't want a doctor operating on you
Speaker 6: without a full degree. It is very clear that there
Speaker 6: are a lot of business leaders that are extremely successful
Speaker 6: without ever having had an MBA. So unlike those other
Speaker 6: professional certificates, there isn't necessarily the need to learn two
Speaker 6: years worth of study. And so for many people who
Speaker 6: don't have the luxury of going back to an MBA,
Speaker 6: there's an alternative to.
Speaker 3: Build a one demetor said that, are these people that
Speaker 3: aren't going to be CEO but are going to be
Speaker 3: other type of managers? Like who is this for?
Speaker 6: It's for anyone that is moving into leadership roles in
Speaker 6: companies or is planning to move into leadership roles over
Speaker 6: the next five ten years.
Speaker 3: Or is it like an executive you know program, like
Speaker 3: you know, I remember Columbia, like working at Columbia, and
Speaker 3: like that was a big part that they would bring
Speaker 3: people in from companies who did I can't remember how
Speaker 3: long it was a few weeks or a few I
Speaker 3: don't know, like a one summer, yeah, like every friday,
Speaker 3: you know, once a month kind of thing. So is
Speaker 3: it like that.
Speaker 6: It's like that, but it's not for executives, right, So
Speaker 6: the executive MBAs are very expensive. They're twenty thousand and
Speaker 6: thirty thousand dollars. Sometimes this program is two thousand dollars,
Speaker 6: So it's a it's the price of a conference that
Speaker 6: someone can go to. So it's meant for people that
Speaker 6: are not at the executive's level level, at the executive
Speaker 6: level yet, but that are thinking about maybe becoming a
Speaker 6: team manager or are starting to manage others starting to
Speaker 6: get into leadership roles where understanding and income statement, balance
Speaker 6: sheet is becoming more important.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: I do want to know about the content of the
Speaker 5: courses because one thing that I found so interesting about
Speaker 5: Rob's piece Bjorn, is the gamification here and the idea
Speaker 5: that you're sort of competing with other folks and AI
Speaker 5: is kind of the backdrop here. Explain what the coursework
Speaker 5: is because it's it's not necessarily what you'd find in
Speaker 5: quote unquote traditional business school.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I think that's the other disruption that I
Speaker 6: think is happening now. So in the in the twelve
Speaker 6: week NBA, there are no lectures, there are no power points,
Speaker 6: there is no e learning. In those twelve weeks, you're
Speaker 6: actually in a simulated environment where you become CEO of
Speaker 6: a company. You have to compete with others and virtual teams,
Speaker 6: and it's super fun, super engaging and allows you to
Speaker 6: see business from different vantage points. You know, from the
Speaker 6: vantage point CEO, vantage point of VP of sales operations,
Speaker 6: and learn by doing, learn by making mistakes and then
Speaker 6: having a facilitator who comes in and points out what
Speaker 6: mistakes were made. As the teams competed with each other.
Speaker 5: Facilitator being another person or is this like another part
Speaker 5: of AI.
Speaker 6: No, there's actually real these These are not AI facilitators.
Speaker 6: It's actually real facilities. We actually have a lot of
Speaker 6: business school professors as well as retired executives that teach
Speaker 6: in the curricular.
Speaker 7: But everything is all entirely online and remote. I mean,
Speaker 7: what do you are they missing something by not having
Speaker 7: that sort of in person human element.
Speaker 4: I mean even.
Speaker 7: Schools today that have had very successful online programs, they're
Speaker 7: trying to find a way to incorporate something where the
Speaker 7: people are coming together. There's something that comes from being
Speaker 7: live and in personal with either some of your classmates
Speaker 7: or your instructors. So what do you think about we.
Speaker 3: Have a corporate culture that certainly safe to say our
Speaker 3: boss like, that's part of what we do. We run
Speaker 3: into one another from different departments. That is such a
Speaker 3: big part of what we do here.
Speaker 6: You know, it's a fantastic question. And we actually started
Speaker 6: the twelve week MBA as an in person program, and
Speaker 6: then when the pandemic hit, we didn't have a choice
Speaker 6: of moving online, but was really interesting and fascinating. This fall,
Speaker 6: we're actually moving part of it back into the classroom.
Speaker 6: So we're going to have a capstone experience that people
Speaker 6: can fly into based in Austin, Texas. So it's going
Speaker 6: to be an Austin at least the first one. But
Speaker 6: we're going to actually slightly modify the curriculum from an
Speaker 6: all online curriculum to have at least one weekend where
Speaker 6: people get together and have that in person experience.
Speaker 7: And that was based on was it feedback, I mean again,
Speaker 7: a feeling that there's something that they're missing out on
Speaker 7: when they're not in person, and there's an aspect of
Speaker 7: this education that really does you need to connect with people?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think so much of education is social. It's
Speaker 6: a difference between knowledge transfer and education is actually that
Speaker 6: social environment. And there's some of it that you can
Speaker 6: recreate online and I think we've done a pretty good
Speaker 6: job creating some of these virtual simulations and competitions, but
Speaker 6: there's something that is so important about this human element
Speaker 6: when you're in person, when you're at the bar after
Speaker 6: the competition and you can debrief with your peer, and
Speaker 6: so we want to bring that back.
Speaker 5: Quick question, Biorn. We have about a minute left here,
Speaker 5: thirty seconds left. Are you seeing the AI part of this,
Speaker 5: the simulation part. Are you starting to see that being
Speaker 5: incorporated in this quote unquote traditional MBAs in business school
Speaker 5: some of it?
Speaker 6: So traditional schools are a little bit slower to adapt
Speaker 6: some of these new technologies. Universities teach AI, but they're
Speaker 6: actually not incorporating a lot of AI into their curriculum.
Speaker 6: And we have in our simulations AI characters now that
Speaker 6: you have to interact with that also give you feedback.
Speaker 6: It's all controlled also by the facilitator, so there's always
Speaker 6: a human there. But AI is part of this part
Speaker 6: of the educational experience.
Speaker 3: Ten seconds. Will you accept anybody who applies or will
Speaker 3: you say, well, maybe this isn't a program for you.
Speaker 6: We do have an application process and there are people
Speaker 6: that we say this is not for you. We want
Speaker 6: to make we want to make sure that when people
Speaker 6: come to us they get something out of the curriculum.
Speaker 6: But we're not Harvard Business School, so we don't have
Speaker 6: you know, we we don't have criteria like you know,
Speaker 6: you don't have to have, for example, even an undergraduate degree.
Speaker 4: We'll take the GMATS or take the gap.
Speaker 3: Thanks to be Yard, Bill Hard, CEO of ABILITY and
Speaker 3: Dimitri cassaniis who is Bloomberg News Senior editor