WELLESLEY

AS THE YEAR draws to a close, we find ourselves in a global economy where many of the long-held fundamentals for doing business are no longer valid.

For the past 25 years, the basic models taught at business schools were predicated on three key assumptions — easy access to credit, cheap energy and an abundant supply of skilled labor at low cost. Each of these assumptions is now in a state of flux.

At the same time, the global credit crisis and its disastrous aftermath have erased the long-held assurance that market mechanisms always return the economy to some measure of coherence.

For business schools, the challenges of realigning their curricula with the realities of today’s marketplace have never been greater. Twenty years ago, when I chaired the process of renewing the Harvard Business School curriculum, I believed that the half life of what passes for content in a business school was 10 years at most. Today it is far less.

So, what should business schools teach the next generation of business leaders?

First, as former General Electric Chairman Jack Welch advises, for much of our curriculum we should throw away our textbooks and “teach today.” We need to be thoughtful observers and interpreters of our surroundings and, in Welch’s words, “see the world as it is, not as it ought to be.” How can we purport to prepare students for their futures in managerial careers without developing an appreciation of the failures embedded in today’s economic and social realities?

If we are to teach issues as they are — not as they ought to be or used to be — we need to address the narrowness of the traditional business-school curriculum.

There is often a huge disconnect between the way problems are organized in the classroom and the way they actually occur in the world. Courses are typically organized by function, but managers must grapple with problems that rarely can be defined by a single function. So, not only is content without context less important, it is the integration of that content around problems and opportunities that prepares students for real-world decision-making.

Students need to be able to learn in an environment where the overwhelming number of assumptions they are working under will change at a rapid pace. That is the role of entrepreneurial learning: teaching students to be resourceful in making and identifying opportunities wherever they might exist and to be able to mobilize resources to create economic value from these opportunities.

And, it is no longer just economic value that matters. Business schools have an obligation beyond helping our students to build better businesses. We must educate them to build a better world. As Tom Friedman noted in his latest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, if we are going to make progress on problems like global warming and poverty, “we will need new tools, new infrastructure, new ways of thinking and new ways of collaborating with others” — the very kinds of tools and experiences that a relevant business-school education can provide.

Finally, since we know we are in a world that will continue to evolve and change, business schools should build their curricula on a foundation of critical thought and timeless skills for lifelong learning, which have become substantially more important. In fact, what most people call graduation, and academics know as commencement, is really more about the latter — that we are beginning a process of systematic lifelong learning to cope with a world that is changing at a rate much faster than anyone could ever have anticipated.

Looking ahead, we are going to see fundamental restructuring in our economy, in our essential industries, and in higher education — and all of those restructurings will provide business schools with an enormous opportunity to play a leadership role in defining what comes next.

Leonard A. Schlesinger is president of Babson College. His previous job was as vice chairman and chief operating officer of Limited Brands.