Professor Ian Fenwick is currently Director of the Sasin School of Management and a Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar at Schulich School of Business, Toronto, who specialises in digital marketing, brand creation and development, as well as idea generation.

Throughout his career, Prof. Fenwick has seamlessly bridged the gap between academia and practice. We are delighted to share his invaluable insights and expertise with BSIS, offering EFMD Global Network Blog readers a unique perspective on his exceptional journey.

Can you please introduce yourself and share your background in the realm of business education?

After a PhD at the London School of Business, I taught at business schools in several countries: Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Portugal, the UK, and the US. I taught in one of the first MBA programmes in China at Nankai University in 1985, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Then I was lucky enough to get into digital marketing before most people did: I co-authored a pioneering book about the sea change that marketing was undergoing, leading to a fair number of visiting teaching positions. For the last 24 years, I’ve been based in Thailand, first as an advisor and visiting professor of marketing, then as a deputy director, and now as director at Sasin School of Management.

How many BSIS visits have you completed thus far, and could you highlight some memorable experiences or insights gained during these visits? To respect the confidentiality agreement, please do not use specific names or information to reveal the school’s identity.

I’ve been involved in three BSIS visits to date and, of course, received two visits at Sasin, where we are the first BSIS recipient in Southeast Asia. Each has been a unique experience. Most memorable are the many times I’ve heard of the excellent, impactful work being done—mentioned almost casually—by schools and by individual faculty.

The greatest impact often seems to be mentioned almost in passing. Most seem very unaware of the impact they are really having. It’s always interesting to take the visiting assessors’ perspective and see how schools excel in their impact in some areas and almost ignore impact in others. Issues that are the focus of considerable research efforts in some schools are all but ignored in their teaching or operations. And vice versa, areas where the school excels in student operations and inclusion simply don’t figure in research.

How has being involved with BSIS influenced your perspective on business education and institutional development?

Any prolonged exposure to BSIS sharpens one’s appreciation of what schools (and one’s own school) could be/should be doing. As someone trained in my early career in econometrics and applied psychometrics—very much publish or perish—the realisation that business schools could be doing much more was a gradual awakening. Business schools can most certainly have a massive impact well outside of journals and classrooms. We can provide some pivotal insights to help people build their businesses and positively change society.

Could you tell us about your school’s decision to undertake BSIS assessment?

What can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time! We have many faculty and admin staff who are really interested in impact and motivated to raise impact as a vital KPI for Sasin. Impact is an area where we believe—and I think we have shown—that we are punching above our weight. We saw the BSIS process as encouraging faculty and staff to recall and recount their many motivating and interesting impact stories. And it has worked out well for us. The BSIS continues to raise the profile of impact within Sasin and to provide a much-needed platform to recount and recognise the many impactful activities in which we engage.

What were the key objectives behind your schools’ participation in the BSIS process?

Partly differentiation—to stand apart from other schools and to be the first in this region to achieve BSIS. I’m a marketer, and I know the power of being first! Partly to reward and recognise people whose impact was not being recognised. There’s a tendency to count and celebrate FT50 publications, scrutinise teaching evaluations, and reward the teacher of the year but to neglect the total impact of the school: the outcomes that extend well beyond research and teaching outputs.

We also wanted to mitigate the image of business schools as fat cats that care only about themselves. And, of course, we wanted to gain ideas and input from the BSIS assessors, who are able to position best practices from other schools in ways that are particularly relevant and applicable to the school they are assessing.

How has your school and/or institution benefited from engaging with the BSIS framework and assessment?

Very definitely, in addition to all the items mentioned above, we’ve raised the impact of impact within the school! BSIS is something that everyone can understand and get behind. Faculty qualifications and academic publications are quite remote from most people’s experience—remote from students and remote from admin staff. Documenting how people have been helped, how societal ventures have thrived, and how inclusion has advanced: these are things to which we can all relate and lend a hand.

What specific initiatives or projects have you been involved in that align with the mission of the Business School Impact System, promoting societal development through leadership and practice?

I first came to Asia in 1985 to teach at Nankai University, which has one of the pioneering business education programs in China. CIDA funded this program, at least in part. This three-month teaching stint really opened my eyes to Asia’s immense potential and the role of business education in realising that potential. I had not really considered the impact of education previously.

Subsequently, I was invited to participate in a CIDA-funded Institutional Linkage Program (ILP) between the Canadian school where I then worked and Chulalongkorn University (where I have worked for the last 20 years!). When the leader of this project assumed a deanship, I took over the ILP. This program was designed to help Thai business schools develop their entrepreneurship programs with a special emphasis on practical success and outcomes. This led me to very direct contact with entrepreneurs and the start of an understanding of what business schools could do in a practical, impactful way.

It also led me into entrepreneurial ventures of my own and an understanding that the barriers we may see to action are very often self-imposed and imagined. Impact starts with simply realising that we can have an impact, which is often much greater than we imagine. Like that quote, which seems to be attributed to almost everyone you can imagine: “If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.”

As an expert in the field, what do you believe are the most pressing issues facing society today, and how are you addressing them through your work?

The most pressing issues facing society are, by definition, diverse and complex. They span environmental, social, economic, and technological challenges. The most challenging issue, I believe, is climate change. The impacts of climate change are already readily apparent in the everyday lives of almost everyone on the planet. It seems that things will inevitably get worse before they can possibly get better.

If we are to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, if we are to pursue any useful level of sustainability, we need to transform our lives and our businesses. Business schools are uniquely well-positioned to ensure that sustainability and business transformation are at the top of the agendas of today’s and tomorrow’s business leaders. Business schools urgently need to integrate sustainability throughout their curricula. The days when sustainability could be relegated to teaching future leaders how to manage businesses in a way that is environmentally responsible and sustainable. At Sasin, we encapsulate our positioning as:

“inspire.connect.transform for a better, smarter, sustainable world.” This positioning is well-known to all at Sasin—it’s literally engraved on the walls—and woven through our curriculum. We frame the need for transformation aimed at sustainability as part of the entrepreneurial mindset that must drive all business.

How do you measure the impact of your work on society, and what indicators do you find most valuable in assessing your contributions?

We are reorganising our management of stakeholder relations at Sasin. While our traditional emphasis on alumni relations is important and will continue, stakeholders include wider groups that also deserve attention. We are working on a comprehensive approach to stakeholders, including a focus on outcomes, relevant metrics, and KPIs. Impact measurement is an important topic for the school.

How do you ensure that your work has a lasting impact beyond your immediate sphere of influence, and what strategies do you employ to scale your efforts for a broader reach?

Through the need to have the 3 S’s:

• Solid foundations – only by building solid foundations—embedding leadership and social responsibility into our core curricula and institutional values—will we ensure the impact is profound and far-reaching

• Scalable solutions –start with scalability and flexibility in mind. Create programs and support initiatives that can be replicated and adapted by others. We want people to take away our ideas and make them their own. Of course, we need to make sure that the Sasin branding, the Sasin-ness, is intrinsic and is retained. That’s part of the solid foundations. Not only will this amplify our immediate impact, it will also facilitate broader societal change.

• Systematic approach –we build systematic approaches to our core activities: our teaching, our research, and our community engagement. We also appreciate the vital need for effective, dramatic communication with our wide range of stakeholders. No matter how much we strive, a key part of impact lies in forceful, repeated, and attractive communication. This is the TikTok world: if it’s not in bite-sized, accessible videos, it didn’t really happen, and it won’t have real impact!

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