Elite Business Education Now Include Neuroscience & Meditation

Neuroscience “will play a huge role in the future of business education,” says Michael Platt, a Wharton professor.  

Business education of the future will not be limited to accounting, strategy and finance.  The future includes heart-rate monitors, meditation and new courses that help students improve productivity, influence decision-making and handle stress. 

MIT’s Sloan School of Management has offered “Neuroscience for Leadership Course” since 2014. “Demand is growing because business leaders who are ahead of the curve know that emotion can impact their performance,” says Yoshie Tomozumi Nakamura, Columbia’s director of organizational learning and research.

Thomas Bonfiglio, a regional director with American Medical Response in New York found good results after taking the MIT course by introducing meditation into the workplace. “We have a lot of aggressive, alpha-type personalities,” he says. “It was often difficult to get the group to work together.” But after introducing meditation, they worked more quickly and effectively, Mr. Bonfiglio says.

When NYU introduced Mindfulness in Business program, hundreds of MBA students participated and at least 15 faculty and staff members attended various programs.   Following the program, students told them they were made more self-aware, more focused, and better able to recognize and understand their own thoughts and emotions. Many felt that it made them better leaders, and expressed the need for continuing the programming. 

A graduate school in Japan, called Shizenkan, is re-orienting their approach to teach innovation-oriented management. Courses will be taught in both Japanese and English, and will include meditation and other spiritual practices.  Anil Sachdev, the founder Delhi's School of Inspired Leadership in India, or SOIL, said "to [foster] inspired leaders with character, competence, enthusiasm and social responsibility, we need to transform higher education." They are following the direction of the Japanese school to incorporate more experience-based learning to include meditation and ethics to address the trend they view in America that lacks corporate responsibility and has issues with fraud.  

Jeremy Hunter, from Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University outside Los Angeles, believes meditation should be at the center of business schools' teaching. He argues that improving the workplace and productivity is about improving the quality of attention. "To me, it's fundamental to how work gets done these days," he said. "Basically, that's what work is, attention."

Committing to a daily practice of meditation is a simple method that will improve attention, allow one to be more self-aware, handle stress with less turmoil, as well as improve productivity.  

Daily practice is key.  The most important thing is to find a practice that you will do every day.  Many of the teachers of Ascension tried many techniques before trying the Art of Ascension.  One reason we like it, is because it is easy to use and can be used anywhere.  After all the other things I tried, I knew that this is one I could and would use daily.

​Jyoti

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