Inside the Office
Last week the Duke I&E faculty helped kick off the school year for the new daytime MBA class at Fuqua with a three-hour workshop. The workshop started by helping students identify meaningful problems, and, by the end, dozens of teams had working prototypes built with AI coding tools that they pitched to the entire group. In other words, it was a very active and “hands-on” lesson, which is typical for how most of us like to teach.
However, before we started, I was chatting with one of the new students and asked how the program was treating her so far.
“Great,” she said. “It’s been fun and easy because the real classes haven’t started yet.”
Obviously I wasn’t going to let that go. “What do you mean, the ‘real classes?’” I asked.
She laughed and tried to walk it back, but clearly she’d meant the kind of stuff most people imagine when picturing business school… lectures, spreadsheets, cases, exams. I shrugged and said, “Maybe this will be an opportunity to widen your definition of what learning looks like.”
For the next three hours, the room was a loud, chaotic mess as people were discovering — some for the first time — just how powerful AI coding tools are (as well as their many shortcomings). It was, in other words, a good entrepreneurship class where students got to experience a bit of the the startup spirit.
Afterwards, while Amy (my co-facilitator) and I were debriefing the session, the same student I’d been chatting with before class, found me again. “I owe you an apology,” she said. “You were right — I learned a ton. I guess I do need to rethink what a real class looks like.”
I loved hearing her say that. Partly, of course, because being right is always fun. But mostly, one of the underrated perks of my job is surprising students in a way that excites their academic curiosity. In this case, the student was having her expectations around learning reshaped in realtime, which is amazing to see.
We’re trained to think of learning as a transfer. The person at the front of the room knows something, explains it, and everyone else in the room writes it down, memorizes it, and regurgitates it.
To be fair, for lots of material, that approach to learning can work. But it’s not a great way to learn entrepreneurship. I can spend weeks explaining customer discovery, and describing product-market fit, and teaching people how to test assumptions. None of it is as effective as spending 45 minutes actually trying any of it.
To be clear, I’m not saying every class should turn into an elaborate build-a-thing, or that lectures and spreadsheets aren’t “real learning.” I’m just pointing out that learning comes in more shapes than we usually give it credit for — particularly the kind of learning that doesn’t look and feel like “school.”
-Aaron
Worth Your Time
I’m cheating a little this week by recommending two pieces instead of one. They are Eugene Wei’s “Status as a Service” and “Seeing Like an Algorithm.”
I was just recommending them to a group of CMOs I’m teaching this week, and they seemed worth sharing with all of you, too.
Yes, both pieces are long and dense. Also, parts of them are slightly dated because social media platforms evolve so quickly. However, if you want to understand why social platforms behave the way they do (and specifically how algorithms shape user experiences), these are still two of the best deep dives I know.
I find I actually remember the information best from the kind of learning that doesn’t look and feel like school.
I really appreciate this post. I wish I knew how I learned earlier in life. It's not how most people learn in a classroom. And what you presented is exactly what works for me. Because of that, how I lead my teams varies. (I also ask everyone how they learn and how they take in information so I can adapt to them).