Integrating Industry into Business School Education

There is pressure on Business Schools to offer value to multiple stakeholders, including students, employers and society. To this end, Business Schools need to undertake and combine three key activities: 1) research, 2) teaching theory, and 3) experiential learning (Hubbard 2019). Creating links between academia and industry is one method to facilitate this process (Hardaway et al. 2016). Though the benefits of academic/industry collaboration are well accepted, operationalising such partnerships can be problematic. This research seeks to establish guidelines and best practice to enhance the likelihood of success. As part of the MSc in Design and Development of Digital Business, a mix of industry and community representatives were invited to engage with students. This paper will discuss how external stakeholders were integrated into the masters program. Our main discussion will be focused on the insights we gained from using outside stakeholders to help provide information systems students with experiential learning.