8 — Ahead of the Curve
Introduction — 9
The Lee Kong Chian School of Business (LKCSB) is the
founding school of Singapore Management University (SMU),
and is now in its 17
th
year. With nearly 4,000 students, the
business school remains the largest school at SMU and also
its flagship programme. It is the youngest business school
to be featured in the Financial Times Global Top 50 for the
quality of its teaching programmes. It is also the youngest to
appear in the Global Top 50 for research productivity of its
faculty in the University of Texas (UT) Dallas rankings. For
a school founded in the new millennium, LKCSB has done
phenomenally well!
Our goal is to be Asia’s Best – by serving its students,
alumni and the broader stakeholder community that supports
it. This is our first ever annual review, and we thought it’s
about time that we did more to feature the accomplishments
of our students, faculty and staff, corporate, university and
public sector partners, and our growing alumni supporters.
ASIA’S BUSINESS SCHOOL
The bedrock of any successful business school is the high quality
education and the transformational opportunities it provides.
This year, we reaffirmed our educational standards with reac-
creditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools
of Business (AACSB) and European Quality Improvement
System (EQUIS) for another five years. Their assessments of
our education process and delivery should make us proud. Both
accrediting bodies renewed us with no conditions attached, and
endorsed us for a strong faculty and innovative teaching and
learning. More importantly, they confirmed our strategy and the
steps we need to take to be the Best Asian Business School.
Simply stated, to be the best we need to make three fun-
damental changes. First, we need to fully embrace our Asian
identity and to develop teaching and research content that
is uniquely Asian. We need to become experts on Asia and
ASEAN business so that we can become the thought leaders
in this region and be sought after by our corporate, policy,
and university partners. Our students will become known for
having a deeper understanding of Asia and ASEAN business
while benefitting from their global perspective.
Second, we need to develop research with impact,
where the questions we ask have relevance for business in
Singapore and the world, and to work with businesses and
policymakers in co-developing these research agendas. Our
research outputs are the best they have ever been – we are
now ranked 40
th
in the world for quality research outputs
and 1
st
in Singapore (2016 UT Dallas Global Rankings).
The next stage of our transformation is to channel that
research creativity and enterprise to solve important issues
for the region.
Third, we need to become even better at delivering a
transformational student experience through new content,
global immersion, blended learning environments, curricular
flexibility, and career opportunities. The skills and capabili-
ties required of new graduates are changing, and we have to
adapt to ensure that our students graduate with the capabili-
ties needed for success today and well into the future.
GLOBAL REPUTATION
While building a great business school, we are also working
hard to enhance our global reputation. In this review, you
will see exemplars of our research and teaching that have
garnered global awards.
Our postgraduate business programmes are among the
best in the world. Our Master of Science in Wealth Man-
agement programme was ranked third in the world and
first in Asia in the Financial Times (FT) Global Masters
in Finance Post-experience Ranking 2016. Our Master of
Science in Applied Finance programme was ranked fourth
among Asian business schools in the FT Global Masters in
Finance Pre-experience Ranking 2016. No other Singapor-
ean institution made the cut. According to the Financial
Times, we were also the first school to feature in both the
pre-experience and post-experience rankings, and we were
the highest-positioned new entrant.
Our Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA)
programme has done exceptionally well. We are ranked 32
nd
globally in the FT Executive MBA Ranking 2016, up four
places from 36
th
position the year before. This is the second
WELL UNDERWAY: OUR JOURNEY TO
BECOMING ASIA’S BEST BUSINESS SCHOOL
