[MUSIC]
And I wanted to start, first of
all, just by welcoming you and
thanking you all for being here.
We've missed a bunch of years of
reunions over the last couple of
years and it is so
nice to have you all here in person
and get you out on the campus.
It really is just fantastic,
I can't tell you how great it feels
to have you all here.
We had, maybe two weeks ago,
we had the admitted students here
in Simex.
So we had admitted student weekend.
And so when the admitted students
were here, I told them this story,
I'll tell
you the story in a minute.
But seeing you all here,
everyone milling
around the thousand people or 2,000
people who are here this week,
it was making me think about this.
So when the admissions were here,
I told them the story about, well,
the story is actually about
President Biden.
So, two years ago, when President
Biden became president, I joined
his council of advisors on science
and technology, and it's this group
of sort of 30 scientists, and I'm
the token economist in this group.
They barely tolerate me as
a scientist, but that's okay,
they're nice to me.
And the first time that we meet
with the president,
give them advice on technology and
science for the country and
what the president could do.
So, the first time we met, he told
this story about President Xi of
China.
And it turns out it's his favorite
story, he tells it to everyone.
But I love this story.
So the story goes as follows.
He basically, this is years ago
when he was the vice president
of the United States, he was at
a meeting with President Xi, who
was not yet the president of China,
and they went for a walk.
Okay, so they go out for this walk
and they're walking along and
President Xi turns to, not yet
President Xi,
turns to President Biden he says,
what one word describes America?
And Biden looks back at him and
he says, possibility.
So, first of all,
I love that story.
And when the admitted students were
here, I said, the reason I love
that story, first of all, it's
a great word for America, but it's
an even better word for Stanford.
Because what one word would
describe a place like this is
exactly the same word.
Possibly everything about being at
Stanford is all about expanding,
opening up people's apertures,
expanding their sense of what they
could accomplish in the world,
expanding the set of people they
know of the ideas they're exposed
to, of pushing out
the frontiers in different ways.
And of course, when you have
the admitted students here,
you think about the cornerstone of
our campus, and some of you were
actually here before this campus
was built, but if you haven't,
but- >> [LAUGH] >> And
it's gotten better.
So, we've really upgraded
the facilities, but
if you walk around you see
the cornerstone of the campus.
The corner stone of campus is
actually about the same theme.
So if you haven't seen it you
should go out and walk,
when you leave here go and walk,
it's just in the corner there.
It's designed by Peter Wagner, did
the flip wall and the adverb wall.
And the question of the campus says
that the campus and the school, he
wrote the line on the cornerstone.
It says that the school
is dedicated to the things that
haven't happened yet and the people
who are about to dream them up.
So it's all about possibility.
And what's really nice about having
a reunion, now for you it's
really nice because you get to come
back and you get to renew your
connections with each other and
catch up with people you haven't
seen in one year, five years, or
ten years, or however long it's
been, and you get to renew your
connections to the school.
But for us it's really nice to
renew the connections, but
also to see what you've all gone
out and done, and
the amazing things that you've
all achieved out in the world.
And the ways that you're realizing
all the possibilities,
hopefully, that were opened up for
you while you were at the GSB.
So, it really is special for us to
have you back on campus reunions.
We take a lot of pleasure
from it and
thank you for being here and for
everything you do for the school.
Let me say a couple things just
about the GSB and
how things are going.
So I'll just mention two things.
So one, I was trying to tell you a
little bit about kind of the basic,
I always think as dean, you have
basically two responsibilities.
What one responsibility, and
the most important one is the core
programs of the school, the faculty
and the students and the other is
sort of thinking what's next.
And the core mission of the school,
actually the job of the dean
is a very easy one, you go out and
you get great students and
you get great faculty and
you get out of their way.
And the school continues to be
really successful in getting
wonderful students to come.
We have students on campus now from
probably 65 countries, maybe even
more from all around the country,
from all different sectors.
They're amazing.
They're maybe even more amazing
than you were when you were
students.
>> [APPLAUSE] >> I mean,
they're really a spectacular set of
people that we get here.
We feel lucky to have the students
that we have on campus.
And we've had a, great success
in recruiting students, we probably
have 90% of the students we
admit these days come to the GSB,
we're really fortunate in that way.
One difference for at least for
the classes that are 20 years,
is that students are coming
a little bit later to the GSB,
probably with about five years
of work experience.
Now that's changed a little bit, so
they're a little older,
a little more experienced.
That's been a sort
of change in MBA education.
The experience with COVID was
a really interesting one for us.
The class of 2022 lived it for
at least the first year of their
experience.
I actually think it's one of the
best things that happened in MBA
education, to have that experience,
because it was a reminder of
sort of where the value is created
in management education.
That if you looked back maybe five
years ago and
you thought about what business
schools were thinking,
a lot of them were thinking that,
were asking a question of was
there a future of kind of
residential to your MBA education.
I actually think COVID,
in many ways, at least for
me answered that question because
it reminded all of us, particularly
the coming out of COVID period.
That's how much of the value of
being at a place like Stanford
is just all of the serendipitous
interactions and
connections that happen between,
since the bumping into people
the mix of people on the campus,
the students talking to students,
talking to faculty,
meeting alumni who come back.
Everything you get today when
you're out there on town square and
walking around.
So it kind of renewed,
affirmed what we do here as being
really spectacular.
The school is actually
having really also great
success with faculty.
We've been quite successful
in hiring new faculty.
I'll give you a statistic
that we're sort of in intense
competition between our faculty,
recruiting faculty, and
our admissions team
recruiting admissions.
In the last five or
six years we've hired about, we've
tried to hire about 40 faculty, and
we've successfully recruited about
87% of them,
which 50% would be incredible.
And our faculty have almost 100%
hit rate with the faculty
they recruited, it just gives you
a sense of how much people want to
come to Stanford.
I think one of the really, so
let me just say.
So I think the core of the school
is doing really well,
we feel very fortunate.
I think we have a lot of gratitude
coming out of the pandemic.
Let me say two things that we're
doing right now that I'm excited
about.
So, the first is thinking
about some of the, I mean,
we're going through, to my mind,
one of the most rapid periods of
change in business in many years.
Changes in technology,
changes in geopolitics, changes in
management and leadership,
changes in organizations, the way
that societal issues are impinging
on business, questions about sort
of the whole nature of capitalism.
That is a really interesting time
to be at a business school when
there's all that change going on.
So, one of the main things that
we've been thinking about at
the school over the last few years
is, just how do we stay ahead
of all of that change in the world?
It's Stanford, we should be
at the forefront of those changes.
We should be helping to define what
the future looks like.
And we've been doing
that in a whole number of ways.
This year,
we've done a lot around climate and
sustainability.
Stanford started a whole
new school,
The Doerr School of Sustainability.
We've had a tremendous partnership
with them.
We've run conferences, we've had
new classes, we had six of our
faculty take joint appointments.
We have 70 students in the MBA
program doing joint degrees with
the Doerr School.
We've just started a new climate
entrepreneurship program that's
open to the entire university that
just launched last quarter.
So that's been really exciting.
We're going to do the same thing
next year around artificial
intelligence, which I'm sure
everyone is thinking about, we're
thinking about it all the time.
That's been a huge thing to come
along this year.
And I'm really excited about that
Stanford's made a big investment in
creating a new institute for
artificial investment,
The Human-Centered Artificial
Intelligence Institute, HAI,
Stanford High, and so we'll do that
in partnership with them.
And we're trying to do all those
things in a way that really brings
out all of the talent and
excitement and enthusiasm of
the students along with all of
the great thinking of the faculty.
And I'm super excited about those
initiatives.
I mentioned one other thing that
we're going to do next year that
I'm also excited about, which is.
One of the great things that's
happened at Stanford in the last 20
years and some of you were here 20
years ago is the campus has become
much more connected.
When I came to join the Stanford
faculty, that was in 2000, so
it was 23 years ago and
I was a student before that.
The campus I was in certainly was
kind of siloed,
the GSB was actually quite siloed
from the rest of the university.
And there's been a change over
time.
One of the great things that's
happened at the university
is the barriers between the schools
have come down in
a really wonderful way.
Our students now,
20% of our students now are doing
joint degrees while they're here
for the MBA program.
And many of those are going out and
taking classes while they're in
the university.
Next year we're going to do
an experiment where we try
to reciprocate.
We're going to offer about eight
classes for
Stanford undergraduates, which
will be quite an interesting thing.
And we told the faculty when we
were doing this, that we wouldn't
just design an undergraduate
business curriculum, it'd be kind
of boring and not that exciting for
them to teach and
we're not sure it would add a lot
of value to Stanford.
But what we thought would be
exciting is if we just told them to
teach anything they wanted to
Stanford undergraduates
with a theme.
And the theme would be that we
wanted them to show undergraduates
at Stanford, how do you take ideas
into practice?
We're pretty good at that at
the Business School.
And maybe expose them
to a little capitalism too,
that would also be a good side
thing as long as they were taking
classes at the business school.
And so we're going to do that next
year, we've got about eight classes
that faculty have proposed and
we're going to run that as
an experiment for three years and
see how it goes and
what that might turn into.
And I think it'll be great.
We won't mix the MBAs and
MSX students in with
the undergraduates, I think we have
one class that will do that but
we'll keep them separate.
But we may have some of
these new classes that get
offered as one section for MBAs and
one section for students from
across the university.
So, hopefully,
some of that innovation is going to
percolate back to the MBA program.
So let me stop there because I
want to make sure I have time to
have this discussion with Jeff and
I'll just, we'll do questions when
we get to the end of the clip.
But just to reiterate how great it
is to have you here.
Just before I came in here,
I was in a meeting with an alum
from actually from Saudi Arabia.
He's actually not a GSB alum, he's
a Stanford engineering alum and
he came in to see me and
he said to me, he said,
first he said, I should have gone
to the business school.
I really wish I'd gone
to the business school, my brother
went to the business school.
And he said, you know what the best
thing about the business school is?
And I said, I don't know,
tell me what the best
thing about the business school is.
And he said, the best thing
about the business school is
you have the best alumni.
And I said, what do you mean
we have the best alumni?
And he said, you have the best
alumni because we,
he said, we constantly, he said,
I always I'm meeting these students
who have applied to the GSB,
they're coming on a global study
trip, and they reach out to me and
they reach out to the other alumni.
And he said, the amazing thing
with business school is, every time
they reach out to an alum, the alum
picks up the phone and calls them
back or sends an email exchange.
He said other places are not
like that, that is an amazing thing
about the GSB.
So, thank you all for doing that,
for distinguishing us in that way,
that's a great thing.
>> [APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]