As reported here last month, Joel Podolny has left his post as dean of the Yale School of Management (SOM) to head up Apple’s own university program. According to a report in Apple Insider, the new program, which will kick off early next year, may serve as an internal MBA program of sorts. Tapping a business school dean to head it would seem to make perfect sense.
Quoting an unnamed source claiming to be familiar with the matter, Apple Insider reports that Apple University is “intended broadly as an HR type function for developing leadership and other required skills and knowledge within the organization” and will fold in Apple’s existing learning and development organization.
Apple is not the first large company to establish an internal MBA program, the report continues. Pixar, a company founded by Apple Chariman and CEO Steve Jobs and later sold to Disney, developed a similar program for employee education and training.
“Obviously Steve Jobs knows about this concept,” a former Pixar intern told Apple Insider. “I wonder if he finally decided to tie together and probably expand a lot of separate parts of employee enrichment at Apple much like they have at Pixar under the University banner with a dean,” the intern continued.
Creating a connection between the new school and Apple’s existing iTunes University, which peddles educational content to the public, could “be a case study for selling the concept if it is used extensively internally,” Apple Insider speculates.
# posted by Clear Admit @ 6:35 pm in General, MBA News, School: Yale