Changing Lives, Organizations and the World: Dean Jon Levin, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Grit & Growth

Meet Jon Levin, dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, economics professor, and eternal optimist. Hear his thoughts on the business world, innovation in emerging economies, the role of big tech, and how the GSB is preparing students to meet the challenges of the global economy — from climate change to inequality.

Jon Levin grew up in an academic family, but he never imagined he’d be leading one of the most prestigious business schools in the country. An economics professor by training with degrees from Stanford, Oxford, and MIT, he became dean of the Graduate School of Business in 2016. From this unique vantage point and with his researcher mindset, he believes that businesses have both a significant opportunity to develop and deploy technology to improve people's lives as well as a responsibility to mitigate its potential harm.

“If you look at the history of the last 150 years, it's the most extraordinary period in human history with standards of living doubling every 30 years, every generation,” Levin explains. “Today you look at the pace of change in innovation and it's happening everywhere in the world. The opportunity for businesses, for business leaders, to help use that technology in ways that will continue to double and increase people's standards of living is extraordinary.”

Levin also believes that emerging economies with digital infrastructures in place have opportunities to leapfrog the developed world by going straight to the consumers and their cell phones without having to overcome existing institutions and infrastructure. Levin says, “If you think about areas like finance or education, you don't have all of the legacy businesses in emerging markets, and so there’s an opportunity to go in and provide services to people that just go straight to digital.”

It's no surprise that Dean Levin is a huge proponent of getting an MBA based on his fundamental belief that business can be a force for good in the world and the school’s mission to instill students with a broader sense of responsibility to society beyond just doing well in their careers. “An MBA program is just the most amazing thing to do because you get all these different skills that enable you to be successful in many things,” says Levin says. “It's like having 20 jobs in two years, you get to see what it would be like to be an operator, an entrepreneur, an investor, to work in a nonprofit, to go into a social venture, to work on energy, real estate, every industry you see all of that.”

Listen to Dean Levin’s perspectives on the future of business and business education, both on the Stanford campus and around the world with programs like Stanford Seed.

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