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INANCIALTIMES MONDAY APRIL29 2013 11

The beautiful gameInvesting in a football club suchas Manchester United, whichboasts Patrice Evra as oneof its top players,is an attractiveproposition. But clubvaluations can be wildlyoptimistic. Tom Markham,a PhD student at HenleyBusiness School at theUniversity of Reading,has come up with asystem to determine aclubs real value.www.ft.com/bized-video

BUSINESS EDUCATION

The business of education

25%

By Paul Kirkham

Producing MBA graduates who aimhigh and are committed to makinga difference is a key function of anybusiness school. But businessschools need to guard against the

temptation to produce what mightbe described as heroes.

Today we live in an age of cease-less transition, one in which inno-vation and entrepreneurship theabil it y t o adapt and adju st should have infinitely more valuethan a supposedly heroic attituderooted in fixed goals and short-termreward.

Of cour se i t i s i mpor tant t oacknowledge that aspiring businessleaders may well wish to cast them-selves as heroes, and businessschools should not suppress thistendency as it is not without posi-tive qualities. But schools shouldclearly define the limits of the epicapproach and their principle aimshould be to prepare their studentsfor the real world.

It is vital that schools acknowl-edge and teach that students arebetter served if they are encouragedto see themselves not as heroesin an epic but as actors in a largerstory that requires them to interactwith a multiplicity of possibilities.

The writer is a researcher in thefield of entrepreneurial creativity

at Nottingham University BusinessSchoolJoin the debate online:

www.ft.com/soapbox

Prepare forthe real world

Soapbox

Did you know . . .On average leading companies allocateapproximately 25 per cent of their learning anddevelopment budgets to executive coursesdelivered by business schools, according to arecent Financial Times poll. Of 120 companiesthat completed the survey, one in six spendhalf or more of their L&D budget on executiveeducation.The FT Executive Education rankings 2013 willbe published on Monday May 13.

When David Goldenbergwas a consultant for aBelgian company and asuspicious CV landed on

is desk it took him nearly four dayso find out that it was fraudulent.

The guy seemed to be too goodn paper, but I knew there wasomething fishy with the CV.

Tracking down the universitymentioned on the fake CV took time

nd money. Often universities canteply immediately to a companysequest. They are busy, they haveepartments to run, he says.But this is a problem for

ompanies as their employees needo make endless calls and waste

working days to find out whetherhe credentials of a potentialandidate are genuine.

It was then that Mr Goldenberg

ealised there was an attractiveusiness opportunity in front of him.I thought, I wonder how manyther HR departments must go

through this problem . . . Im sure wecan come up with a faster digitalsolution rather than using alaborious human procedure.

He decided to quit his job andpartnered with Pierre-David Dewaele,a fellow Belgian manager, to set upCV Trust and create Smart Diploma.

What is Smart Diploma?Smart Diploma is a standardised,digital, secure system to grant,ensure, monitor and protect peoplescredentials in other words a digitalacademic passport. Several businessschools including IMD, Insead andMIT Sloan have already signed upfor Smart Diploma.

How does it make life easier?Smart Diploma provides schools witha digital means of awarding theirstudents their degree certificates.This allows the schools to protecttheir brand the institutions namescannot be used improperly. It alsohelps schools cut costs as credentialscan be granted in a click.

Smart Diploma also providesinstitutions with an easy way of

remaining in contact with theiralumni. Using survey tools withinSmart Diploma schools canencourage their alumni to update

their professional profile in exchangefor the Smart Diploma service.

But whats in it for alumni?In exchange for answering a fewquestions every year from theiruniversity, alumni receive a digitalacademic passport that they canuse to promote their academicbackground to recruiters, job sitesand social networks. There isalso an automatic certifiedtranslation of their credentials inany language, useful forinternational jobseekers.

Why should business be interested?When recruiters see that a certificatehas the Smart Diploma trade mark

they will know that the CV isgenuine. They will not have to calluniversities to double-checkcredentials, saving time and money.

How does it work?Smart Diploma gives institutions aplatform to help them designtemplates for diplomas, certificationletters, transcripts, etc. Once theseare designed, schools then grant thecredentials to their graduates, whomust activate the diploma. Graduatesthen upload their diplomas on socialnetwork sites and send them torecruiters. Prospective employersclick on the Smart Diploma linktaking them to a secure onlineenvironment where the credentialscan be verified as genuine.

But isnt it easy to copy the SmartDiploma or hack the system?No. Each Smart Diploma is uniqueand contains a built-in securitycomponent that can be verified ina single click. It would require asophisticated hacker to break intothe highly encrypted system.Although the risk of forgery cannever be eradicated, it is much

lower than the risk of having astudent either forging a paperdiploma or buying a fake diplomaonline, which is so common today.

A smarter way todiscover the fishy,the fraudulentand the forged

A digital academicpassport will benefittudents, universities and

companies, writesJames Fontanella-Khan

David Goldenberg (left) and Pierre-David Dewaele Wiktor Dabkowski

resherspectiveigning up forn EMBA an

MBA forworking

xecutives isemanding for

he student. Classesnd assignmentseed to be balanced

offshoot of thehacking group

Anonymous. For adefinition of this andthousands more

words selected byFinancial Timeseditors, visitlexicon/ft.com

LulzSecAn internationalhacking group that hasclaimed responsibilityfor infiltrating andshutting down the CIAwebsite. It is an

longside professional working commitments.But what about the other side of the story?

ne EMBA blogger asked her employer to tellwhat he felt she had learned.www.ft.com/mba-blog