What Business Schools Can Learn from Their Professional School Peers
Practitioner-Centered Strategies for Bridging the Relevance Gap
Subscribers to this Substack already understand the need for business school faculty to ground their research in practice. Universities, accreditation bodies, and society at large are demanding evidence that scholarship not only advances theory but improves real-world outcomes. Yet many business schools continue to face a "relevance gap," struggling to bridge rigorous academic research with practical managerial impact.
Fortunately, other professional schools—such as medicine, law, education, engineering, and architecture—have successful models of co-producing knowledge with practitioners. Their experiences can offer insights for business schools aiming to close this gap.
The Professional School Advantage
Professional schools recognize that their legitimacy and impact depend upon engaging deeply and directly with practitioners. Physicians work in teaching hospitals; lawyers collaborate with clients in clinical programs; architects co-create with communities through design studios. These structures aren't incidental—they're fundamental. They ensure faculty remain attuned to real-world challenges and produce research immediately applicable to professional practice.
This practitioner-centered approach stands in sharp contrast to many academic disciplines—including economics, sociology, and frequently business schools themselves—that experience "physics envy," aspiring to emulate the quantitative rigor and theoretical elegance of the hard sciences, often at the expense of direct practical relevance and practitioner engagement.
Consider medicine’s "teaching hospital" model. At institutions like the Mayo Clinic, clinicians and researchers work seamlessly with professionals and patients. Faculty identify urgent clinical problems through patient interactions, then pursue research to solve them. The resulting breakthroughs not only generate prestigious academic publications but lead directly to improved patient care.
Law schools offer a similar example. Clinical programs at Georgetown Law immerse faculty and students in real legal cases, directly influencing policy and precedent. Faculty scholarship, informed by ongoing casework, translates immediately into tangible legal reforms and policy impact.
These professional school approaches demonstrate that when academia and practice co-create, both benefit. Research gains relevance and immediacy, while practice gains innovative solutions and insights.
Examples in Business Schools
Of course, some business schools are already exploring more practitioner-centered approaches, though such efforts remain peripheral rather than central to research activities.
While not a traditional business school, MIT’s Media Lab provides a consortium model in which corporate members actively co-create research agendas and projects alongside faculty. Stanford Graduate School of Business’s SEED initiative, though primarily focused on teaching and entrepreneurship training rather than research, serves entrepreneurs in underserved communities in emerging markets. Similarly, Harvard Business School’s FIELD method emphasizes student learning through business partnerships; however, its primary focus remains pedagogical rather than research-driven.
These initial explorations of professional school-like models highlight that deeper, systematic practitioner engagement at the core of business school research remains underdeveloped.
What Can Business Schools Do?
Models from other professional schools can help business schools regain relevance. Consider these strategies inspired by our professional school peers:
1. Industry Residencies
Inspired by medicine’s teaching hospitals, business schools could establish formal partnerships—"industry residencies"—that function as real-world labs. Faculty and students embed themselves in organizations or associations to identify strategic issues, creating opportunities for research that is both rigorous and immediately applicable.
2. Research-Practice Partnerships (RPPs)
Like education schools’ longstanding partnerships with school districts, business schools could form structured, ongoing collaborations with business associations or government agencies. These partnerships could generate both scholarly articles and practical tools or interventions designed explicitly for managerial implementation.
3. Adopt a Dual Dissemination Model
Professional schools routinely publish in both scholarly and practitioner channels. Business schools can likewise support faculty in translating research findings into accessible practitioner articles, ensuring that ideas reach those who can act on them.
4. Provide Incentives
To encourage faculty engagement, business schools can expand what counts as scholarly impact. Tenure criteria could value practitioner-focused outputs, such as case studies, policy briefs, and high-impact articles aimed at practitioners, rewarding professors who actively contribute to managerial and societal progress.
5. Faculty Development in Practice-Based Research
Other professional schools invest in training faculty to work effectively with practitioners. Medical and law schools, for example, offer workshops on clinical research methods and case-based scholarship. Business schools could follow suit by delivering faculty development programs that teach techniques for integrating practitioner insights into academic inquiry. This kind of workshop is an easy way to introduce faculty to practitioner-centered approaches and often serves as a springboard for further development efforts. I have found myself increasingly invited by business school deans to lead sessions like these, an encouraging sign that interest in building these capabilities is gaining momentum.
Moving Forward
As societal pressures and accreditation requirements (AACSB, EFMD, Responsible Research in Business & Management) increasingly emphasize real-world impact, bridging the relevance gap becomes less optional and more essential.
Business faculty have an opportunity to play a leading role in this shift. By emulating strategies from other professional schools, they can reconnect scholarship with practice, enhance their personal and institutional authority, and ensure that business research genuinely matters.
If you’re exploring how to bridge the gap in your own institution—or have successfully implemented such approaches—we'd love to hear from you. As always, your insights, experiences, and feedback are warmly invited.