The term “user-centricity” may not sound exciting. But in an increasingly competitive business education market, schools can use the concept to distinguish themselves.

“以用户为中心”也许听起来不怎么令人振奋。但在竞争日益激烈的商业教育市场，商学院可以利用这个概念实现差异化。

What is user-centricity? Many believe it is about putting users at the centre of a company’s process, but it is actually the opposite. The idea is to consider the user’s needs first, and the process second.

什么是“以用户为中心”？很多人以为，就是把用户置于企业流程的中心，但事实恰恰相反。其构想是先考虑用户的需求，再考虑流程。

For business schools, this means designing courses that can be adapted to the students’ needs — what to learn, how to learn it.

对商学院来说，这意味着设计能够适应学员需求的课程——学什么和怎么学。

Schools and professors cannot decide what those needs are: we can no longer have a top-down — and condescending¹ — approach to teaching business.

商学院和教授不能决定这些需求是什么：我们不能再采取自上而下——和居高临下——的教学方式了。

But we cannot simply rely on the students to identify what they need either. By asking students, we may be surprised by their conservative answers. As Henry Ford² is supposed to have said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

但我们也不能仅仅依靠学员来确定他们的需求。如果问学员，他们给出的保守答案可能会让我们惊讶。就像亨利?福特(Henry Ford)在这种情况下应该会说的：“当初如果我问人们想要什么，他们会说想要更快的马。”

Students now expect to actively³ participate in designing their own courses. We need to find a balance between what students want, and what experts think they need.

现在学员可以预期积极参与课程设计。在学员们想要的与专家们认为他们所需要的之间，我们需要找到平衡。

Many business schools are providing experiential teaching, enabling students to “live” situations that are as close as possible to real-life work experiences. Soft skills, which are often those that students most want to develop, are trickier⁴ to teach.

很多商学院提供体验式教学，使学生能够身临其境地体验尽可能贴近真实的工作情境。软技能（往往也是学员最希望培养的技能）教授起来较为困难。

For instance, when dealing⁵ with big data, soft skills (or “consulting skills” such as being able to communicate clearly and being convincing) make the difference between a technical report and useful, actionable results.

比如，在处理大数据时，软技能（即“咨询技能”，比如能够清楚地沟通，还有令人信服）将决定是提供一份平铺直叙的技术性报告，还是给出有用、可操作的结果。

A “user-centric” approach to teaching those skills might involve placing the students in a real-life situation in which they have to present their results and recommendations to managers or executives.

采取“以用户为中心”的方式教授这类技能，可能涉及让学员处于真实情境中，必须向经理或者高管提交结果和建议。

At Essec for example, business analytics classes, which include consulting skills, integrate projects based on real-life sets of data. Partner companies provide data and business problems to solve: the students are required to analyse the data and come up with a solution.

比如，在巴黎高等经济商业学院(Essec)，包含咨询技能的商业分析课融合了基于现实世界数据集的项目。合作企业提供数据和待解决的商业难题：学员需要分析数据，然后拿出解决方案。

They deliver a presentation to the top management and are assessed on both the methodological aspects (hard skills) and the presentation structure and quality (soft skills).

他们向高级管理层做演示，并在方法（硬技能）以及演示结构和质量（软技能）两方面得到评估。

The accuracy of technical analyses is the fundamental basis of reliable work. However, if it is not convincing, it will not achieve the real objective: transforming the company. Both hard skills and soft skills are a means to an end, which is to improve the company’s ability to achieve its mission.

技术分析的准确性是可靠工作的根本基础。然而，如果不具说服力，就无法实现真正的目标——转变企业。硬技能和软技能都是实现目标的手段，目标是提高企业履行使命的能力。

Experts — in this case business school professors — must help students understand, and provide them with, all the skills required to act in a real life situation.

专家（在这种情况下是商学院教授）必须帮助学员理解——并向他们传授——应对实际情境所需的一切技能。