Five years ago, when I became dean of Nottingham University Business School, the inclination among many of my students to view me as a dinosaur was not only painfully manifest, but entirely understandable. After all, the vast majority of undergraduates are in their late teens, whereas I am, well, comfortably past that particular milestone.

5年前，当我出任诺丁汉商学院(Nottingham University Business School)的院长时，很多学生都明明白白地倾向于把我视为老古董，这让我很郁闷，但我也完全可以理解。毕竟，绝大部分的大学生都还踩着青春期的尾巴，而我，好吧，已毫无疑问度过了这一时期。

What is much more obvious to me now, as I hand over the reins to my successor, is the speed at which we all risk becoming “out of date”. Each of us might continue to contribute very effectively, yet the truth is that most of us soon find ourselves, to some extent, removed from the cutting edge of technology and development.

如今，当我把院长的重任交给我的继任者时，在我看来明显得多的是，我们所有人加速面临“过时”的风险。我们每个人或许非常高效地继续做着贡献，但事实是，我们中大多数人很快发现，自己或多或少地脱离了科技和发展的前沿。

As someone whose research has long focused on innovation and creative problem-solving, I consider this one of the most perturbing issues I encountered during my deanship. I also believe it is one that deans have a duty to address. It is a concern pertinent to business schools everywhere, because it is illustrative of a worrying acceleration in the uncertainty of students’ future requirements.

作为长期专注于研究创新和创造性解决问题的人，我认为这是我担任院长期间遇到的最令人焦虑的问题之一。我认为这也是院长们有义务解决的问题。这与世界各地的商学院息息相关，因为它表明未来对学生要求的不确定性也在令人担忧地加速增长。

I had responsibility for around 2,000 students in the UK, as well as oversight of another 3,200 within the business schools at the University of Nottingham’s campuses in China and Malaysia. Steering the curriculum so that it would best meet their needs in terms of content and delivery was among the most important elements of my remit.

我曾对英国大约2000名学生负有责任，还对诺丁汉大学中国和马来西亚校区商学院里的另外3200名学生负有监督义务。从整体上把握课程设置，使之可以最好地满足学生在教学内容和教学效果方面的需求，是我工作职责中极为重要的一部分。

As I increasingly came to appreciate, this is no easy task for any dean. A major hurdle – and I know from attending conferences that the successes and shortcomings with which I became familiar are shared by deans the world over – is the disconnect between one’s own experiences and the environment that students are preparing to face.

正如我在工作中逐渐领会的，这对任何一位院长来说都非易事。主要的障碍是院长的个人阅历与学生将要面对的环境脱节，而通过参加各种会议，我了解到，我在工作中逐渐熟悉的种种成功和不足，也是世界各地的商学院院长们都会遇到的。

This detachment exists even where the rise to deanship, unlike my own, has been meteoric. The pace of transformation is nowadays so rapid, so relentless, that the struggle to remain genuinely relevant to the “real world” is constant. Even many students may find that by their mid-twenties they are slightly distanced from the new actualities confronting teenagers. Dinosaurs are getting younger.

即便一位院长很快就升到了这一位置（不像我是花了很长时间），这种脱节也会存在。如今的转型步伐如此之快、如此之残酷，以至于真正与“真实世界”保持联系成为一场持久战。甚至很多学生也可能发现，到25岁左右，他们已经与青少年面对的新现实稍有脱节。老古董越来越年轻了。

How do business schools guard against this threat? Needless to say, complacency is not an option. A dean’s most significant contribution to the cause may well be to demonstrate that a truly meaningful culture of change, adaptation and improvement – as opposed to mere rhetoric – must start at the top and be all-encompassing.

商学院的守护者如何防范这种威胁？不用说，故步自封肯定是不行的。院长对这份事业最重要的贡献，很可能就是用行动（而不只是言语）证明，真正有意义的崇尚改变、适应和改善的文化，必须从领导层做起、把所有人和事都包括进来。

Alternative perspectives are vital in this regard. Although, I felt authoritative confidence should be a crucial component of my leadership, I surrounded myself with a close team whose members were sufficiently self-assured and curious to provide me – and each other – with much-needed reality checks.

就这点而言，不同的视角至关重要。尽管我当时觉得，作为领导的自信应该是构成我领导力的关键组成部分，但我让一个团队紧密包围在自己身边，团队的成员有充分的自信和好奇心，可以让我——以及我们彼此——提供亟需的现实检验。

Similarly, the advice, perceptions and outlooks of those from beyond academia can be of enormous worth. In some ways this is the very essence of creative problem-solving: the acknowledgment that answers lurk everywhere. The chances are that every one of us, even if unwittingly, has dealt with a difficulty by redefining it in more expansive terms, discovering an analogous instance where it has been overcome and tailoring the solution to suit our circumstances. There is much to be said for shifting from the specific to the general and back again.

同样，学术界以外人士的建议、看法和设想也可以非常有价值。在某些方面，这就是创造性解决问题的实质所在——承认答案可能来自任何地方。我们每个人在处理难题时，即便是无意的，也很可能先对它进行更普遍的界定，发现曾经解决过的类似问题，然后据此制定适用于眼下情况的解决方案。从特殊到普遍、再从普遍到特殊，这其中有太多值得大书特书的道理。

It is also essential that academics continue to teach. It is not uncommon for senior staff to feel their research eminence somehow absolves them of this commitment, at least as far as undergraduate teaching is concerned. Some have lost confidence in their own abilities; others have forgotten the huge value of such work. The more you isolate yourself from the student population, the likelier you are to be seen as a dinosaur.

学校继续授业解惑也是至关重要的。高级教职工感觉，他们在研究上的成功某种程度上使他们免除了这种职责（至少在本科教学方面），这并不罕见。一些人对自己的教学能力失去信心；还有些人忘记了教学工作的巨大价值。你跟学生距离越远，你就越可能被视为老古董。

Perhaps above all, though, business schools would do well to remember the power of radical innovation. I have long believed this, even when I was confined to weighing in with supposedly wise words from the safety of the sidelines, and half a decade on a loftier perch has only reinforced my opinion. I have been able to see much more clearly how business schools serve their students and their stakeholders. I can only conclude that the vast potential afforded by radical innovation remains greatly unexplored and underexploited.

不过，或许商学院最好牢记根本性创新的力量。长期以来，我一直相信这一点，即便在我还限于只能作为旁观者、安全地提出理应明智的建议时就是如此，而5年来身居高位反而强化了我的观点。我可以更透彻地理解商学院如何服务于其学生及其股东。我只能得出一个结论：根本性创新带来的巨大潜能，在很大程度上尚未被发掘和充分利用。

The fact is that the university sector as a whole is stuck in a rut of incrementalism. Multidisciplinary collaborations – not the neatly aligned alliances that proliferate today but imaginative unions that might substantially add to our epistemic base and reshape our overall approach – represent a route out of that rut. Business schools too easily overlook how strongly placed they are to take a lead in championing the radical over the risk-averse.

事实上，整个大学仍然陷于老一套的渐进主义之中。多学科合作可以带领我们跳出窠臼——并非如今大量出现的那种整齐划一的合作，而是可能从实质上扩充我们的知识基础、并重塑我们整体方法的那种具有想象力的联合。商学院太容易忽视它们有多么好的条件去带头支持冒险（而非规避风险）了。

Of course, most of us will still become dinosaurs eventually. Such a fate is to some degree inescapable in a world of ceaseless change, irrespective of age, experience and attitude. But accepting the near-inevitable bestowing of personal Jurassic status is one thing; openly inviting mass extinction is quite another.

当然，我们多数人最终仍将成为老古董。在不断改变的世界里，无论你的年龄几何、阅历多少和态度怎样，在一定程度上都难逃这样的命运。但是，接受几乎不可避免的老古董封号是一回事，公然地静待被整体淘汰则完全是另一回事。