Futurizing DBA Curriculum: A Class in Kazakhstan

Abstract

This essay aims to share with the community of practice an approach for incorporating and embedding Futures and scenarios into business school curriculum as part of strategy development practice with a view to strike a balance between scientific rigour and practical relevance of management education. Through the conduct of a 3-day Foresight for Strategy Development workshop curated for as an intensive course for a cohort of DBA students at the Narxoz Business School, Almaty, Kazakhstan, the author describes the step-by-step process of building scenarios and shares some of the learning outcomes from the workshop. The 3-day workshop was designed with two objectives; that is, to teach the basic skills of futures thinking by introducing futures studies, and to incorporate the five stages of scenario development process as part of strategic planning practice. While students learned the reasons for and the process of embedding scenarios as a planning tool, and were able to apply theory to practice in classroom exercises, this cohort of DBA students found it quite challenging to have a proper grasp of Futures concepts and methodologies. They were overwhelmed by the amount of contents they have to process within the space of a 3-day intensive workshop. This feedback was not peculiar to this cohort of students and it was a common lament received from the various workshops conducted in different countries including Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, Bahrain and Oman. This was particularly true with those in the developing economies where futures studies is relatively a new discipline. This experience tells us there is an opportunity to fill this void by introducing and embedding futures studies and scenarios as part of the planning and strategy development in Management courses in Kazakhstan.