In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen - HIGHLIGHTS: Lars Strannegård

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi everybody, tune into this short version of the podcast, which we do every Friday. For the long version, tune in on Wednesdays. Hi everybody, I'm Nicolai Tangin, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund. And today we have a very, very special guest. Lars Strandegård is a Dean of Stockholm School of Economics, which is one of the finest business schools in Europe. And Lars, you have revolutionized the Stockholm School of Economics and we are going to talk about that today. So warm welcome. Thanks so much. Great to be here.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Now, one of the big things you have done is really to introduce culture and learnings about culture into the school. Why is culture important in business education? Because when we say culture, we mean arts, we mean literature, and also music. But basically the idea behind that is to open up your senses, to contextualize, to make you see the world from new perspectives. And it's actually, you know, many business school students believe that they know how the world functions

Starting point is 00:01:03 and how it operates. And you think they don't? Well, I think they're there to learn, right? So I think it's a good idea to expose them to things that they don't really understand, where they start asking themselves questions, where you actually sort of widen the blinders that we all have, not just students. And art can actually serve as a sort of intellectual and emotional itching powder to make you understand the world in another way and also increase your humbleness. You become more humble if you see things that you don't understand and learn to live with

Starting point is 00:01:34 it. What does culture do to the learning environment and the ability to learn and absorb? Well, I think it sort of increases the knowledge intensity. If you, it's kind of simple. If you are in a, if you sit in a bunker, it's not inspiring. And if you are in an environment that sort of awakens your feelings, also your perception and your attention, it makes it sort of interesting. And art can also, I mean, it communicates to you, not just cognitively, but also emotionally.

Starting point is 00:02:12 So thereby, I think there are sort of more trajectories or sort of roads open to learning. And creativity, what does it do? It's kind of a leading question because I agree with your view here, but what do you, just to spell it out, what do you think it does to creativity? What does it do? It's kind of a leading question because I agree with your view here, but what do you, just to spell it out, what do you think it does to creativity? I think it of course enhances your creativity. Yeah. And why is that? Because creativity is basically all about combining things that are usually well known, but in new ways. So if you sort of open the free ways that you have in your brain and in your connections to others,

Starting point is 00:02:49 it's more probable that you come up with new things. It's sort of, if you just walk on the track that you've always been walking on, you won't come up with new ideas. But if you are exposed to and sort of urged to see the world in new ways, it creates something new. In German, or in German language, you split between Ausbildung and Bildung. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:03:14 I'm not sure we have a good word for it in Scandinavian language. Yeah, we do actually. In Scandinavian, we do. We have utbildning and bildning. But English does not have it. have utbildning and bildning, but English does not have it. Right. And you basically educate the leaders of tomorrow. Why is it important for future leaders to have Bildung? Bildung is that which is left after you've forgotten what you've learned. So that means that what you've forgotten, what you've learned, I mean, we all do that. We forget lots of things, right?

Starting point is 00:03:42 What years things happened, et cetera. But what's left is an approach to the world and a stance to the world and a way that you approach it. So it's sort of a position more than a goal. So- And the stuff that you are doing, how does that make Bildung better? Well, it does because what we do is to try to, we have an educational mission that we abbreviate as free, F-R-E-E, and the F stands for fact and science based approach, completely key

Starting point is 00:04:12 in this world, right? Especially in the age of generative AI, when truths are not what they used to be because they can now be fabricated and you cannot believe your eyes or your ears anymore. So we're living in some kind of ontological crisis where you don't know that what you see actually exists. So practicing that, your fact and science-based mindset is key. And then the R stands for reflective and self-aware. So sort of asking yourself, where does this piece of data come from?

Starting point is 00:04:42 Who benefits from this? And where do my attitudes, my opinions, and even my feelings come from? Are they my own or are they produced by somebody else and then internalized by me so I think they're my own? Important things to do, right? And then the first D stands for empathetic and culturally literate.

Starting point is 00:05:02 And that's sort of why we use the art in order to create this or enhance your empathy and culturally literate. And that's sort of why we use the arts in order to create this or enhance your empathy and your cultural literacy. And then the final E stands for entrepreneurial and responsible, which means that you actually do something, you have agency. So this abbreviation free, that is our definition of Bildnum. So if you have that approach, if you go into the world, being fact-based, reflective, empathetic, and entrepreneurial, it's sort of a vaccination to getting stuck in mental models and theories that used to be true, but perhaps no longer are. So thereby, it's sort of an approach to ensure some kind of lifelong learning. And that's exactly what you need in this world that's changing so quickly.

Starting point is 00:05:48 And everything you thought was true just a week or two ago has proven not to be. So you have to be able to shift your mindset to not sort of get stuck in the models that you used to operate by. What do you think are the traits that you are seeing in great leaders? Do you spend time observing? Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, absolutely. And when you abstract it down, what do they have in common? Why are they why are the best ones very good?

Starting point is 00:06:15 Well, I think it's I mean, if you were really condensing it to a couple of terms, I would say authenticity. I mean, that you actually believe that what they're saying is what they think. And that's not the same thing as not lying, not a benefit, right? But actually being authentic in what you want to do. And that people feel that this is that it matters to you, that you're not playing a game that you're not sort of politically correct, whatever that means. But sort of politically correct, whatever that means,

Starting point is 00:06:48 but sort of that it's your true self speaking and being there. I think that's absolutely key. I also think, I mean, being able to create a sense of meaning, to make people understand and feel that they're part of something that's greater than themselves. You wrote a book called Kunskaps som tjänst and you there talk about the importance of hiring people who do not have a business background.

Starting point is 00:07:13 And indeed, in my previous life, I worked with historians and people who had studied theology and all these kinds of things. And they were the best investors and the best financial brains I've seen. So should one actually study business? In the book I say that you should study business, but that's not enough. You have to sort of open your mind as well, right? I mean, I love the business school that I'm heading, of course, and I think the subjects we need are extremely important because they are ways of understanding the world.

Starting point is 00:07:53 But it's all about, again, really sort of expanding the blinders that we have to, to, I mean, every type of education, it's specialized, right? So it's a bit like watching the sky through a straw. And you need to have many straws nowadays in order to understand the world that we're living in. How will AI change education? Or already? How does it already change it? It already has, I mean, in every way. But fundamentally, I mean, we know that cognitively, you know, the artificial intelligence actually outperforms us quite a bit. And artificial intelligence actually outperforms us quite a bit. And so it really changes. And all over the world, university or educators

Starting point is 00:08:32 are now trying to understand and think hard about how do we actually secure learning? Can we do the same type of tests that we used to do? Can we do take-home exams? Do we need to pull out the plug and not let them use their computers? Should we only do handwriting? Should we only do oral exams, et cetera?

Starting point is 00:08:55 But it's kind of futile all this because fundamentally, I mean, generative AI and AI is here to stay. Our students don't even use Google anymore, right? They use generative AI and AI is here to stay. Our students don't even use Google anymore, right? They use generative AI. And I think it poses much more fundamental questions that are about knowledge in itself. So what is the university to do

Starting point is 00:09:19 when it's got a student for three years or sometimes even five years? What should you learn? What is the purpose of it all? And what should you learn? I think fundamentally it's about the division of labor between machines and human beings because machines are great at being machines. You know, we can't beat them in being machines, but they are not human

Starting point is 00:09:44 and they can't beat us in being machines, but they are not human and they can't beat us in being human because they are art. It's artificial intelligence, it's not human intelligence. So I think educational institutions should really help students to develop their human intelligence. And in that is of course included to understand how AI operates and be sort of able to interact with AI, but then also developing your human skills. your sense making, your understanding of the world, your contextualization capabilities, your language skills, all these things that, you know, AI is doing, but not doing to the same extent. So it's basically trying to be, how do we become, you know, even better humans

Starting point is 00:10:44 as the machines are becoming better at what they're doing?

In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen - HIGHLIGHTS: Lars Strannegård

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