AI adds depth to management education, moving it from square to cube
Hardly a day goes by without artificial intelligence entering the debate on the future of business and work. A debate that cuts across every dimension, from production processes to management, and spans all ages and professional paths. Behind this discussion, there are always two questions, with two distinct yet deeply intertwined faces: content and the relevance of the role. Is the content of what I do still adequate? Is it current, capable of making an impact? Or is my role itself destined to be replaced by artificial intelligence?
These are legitimate questions, but what AI requires of us is to increase human intelligence. Not only in doing, but in watching and understanding. In governing, rather than merely enduring, the power that artificial intelligence makes available. At the same time, AI also risks becoming a convenient shortcut. A justification for cutting costs, chasing short-term efficiencies, and aligning with the mainstream without an authentic vision. These, too, are side effects of an epochal transformation, and to some extent, they are understandable in a phase of structural change.
In this context, Europe—often seen as a follower—can turn some of its weaknesses into strengths. Its complexity, administrative rigidity, and stronger labor protections than those found in the Anglo-Saxon world are traditionally viewed as constraints, but today they can become strategic levers. Greater rigidity in workforce reductions, for example, can encourage more serious and structured investment in people. Andrea Pignataro recently observed that Europe’s regulatory fragmentation may constitute a barrier to entry for the major global AI players. But that barrier becomes an advantage only on one condition: genuinely and decisively investing in processes that cannot remain slogans: upskilling and reskilling. Updating and transforming people’s stock of skills so they are able to evolve through change.
This is where education comes into play as a critical infrastructure. An education system that unleashes its full potential only when it is fueled by research, that is, by the ability to generate content that evolves along with reality. But what does education mean today? And how can it be an effective tool for upskilling and reskilling? It must move from a two-dimensional phenomenon to a three-dimensional reality.
The most advanced management education—executive education—has already faced an initial challenge: building a vertical dimension, that of disciplinary skills. Marketing, finance, operations. It then integrated this dimension with a second, horizontal one: the ability to break down silos and build a holistic, cross-cutting vision typical of strategy, leadership, and organization. Today, however, a two-dimensional vision is no longer enough.
Technology introduces and imposes a third dimension. It transforms the skills matrix into a cube. In this new depth, artificial intelligence adds power and analytical capacity, but it requires a new ability: synthesis. A synthesis that is, ultimately, the very essence of management.
This is where the challenge for a school of management lies. Not stopping at the two traditional dimensions. Not yielding to the simplification of the equation “AI = efficiency = fewer people,” but building depth. A depth in which human resources do not chase artificial ones, but precede them. And guide them.
Old Europe, with its slowness and its rigidities, may yet surprise us. Precisely because it cannot automatically replace the human with the artificial, it may be compelled—and therefore encouraged—to be more creative. But this requires one condition: that human capital be willing to question itself, to evolve, to become even more intelligent. In this scenario, education and content change in nature.
They are no longer “square.” They are cubic.
