COVID-19 and Business: Practical Insights from Columbia Business School

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve been working to collect and share relevant resources with you. This time, we’d like to introduce you to COVID-19 Ideas and Insights from Columbia Business School, one of the top business schools in the world. Along with an extremely competitive MBA program, the school offers non-degree programs for executives through Columbia Business School Executive Education. 

Located in the heart of New York City, Columbia Business School is only too aware of the impact of COVID-19. Alongside moving classes online for the semester, faculty have also been sharing their expert insights through a series of webinars covering leadership in times of crisis, COVID-19’s impact on the global economy and various industries and sectors, and more.

Read on to find out more about the exclusive conversations that have taken place so far and decide which you want to start with!

Hitendra Wadhwa, Columbia Business School professor of Professional Practice, shares his research on Inner Mastery and Outer Impact in this 1.5-hour webinar. Get insights and actionable tips on conquering your inner struggles during this challenging time and bring power, perspective, and possibilities to your role and responsibilities.

COVID-19 has been the catalyst for a drastic shift to remote work for many companies. Tim Campos, 2011 Columbia Business School graduate and CEO of the calendar app Woven, discusses the short-term and potential long-term effects of this shift and shares some ways that employers can preserve company culture as their workforce goes remote. 

We’ve all heard reports of decreased pollution and returning wildlife as a result of the global economic slowdown caused by COVID-19. However, the long-term net impact of the pandemic puts current efforts to address the climate crisis in question. In this one-hour webinar,  Columbia University experts Jason Bordoff and Bruce Usher discuss climate finance and policy in the COVID-19 era.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused leaders worldwide to shift from business as usual to focusing on saving their businesses from going under in an incredibly short period of time. In this 45-minute webinar, Todd Jick, senior lecturer in discipline in business management, speaks on organizational change and explores how to deliver a message to employees and what leaders can do to support remaining employees who may be feeling survivor’s guilt after layoffs.

In this one-hour webinar, Dean Emeritus Glenn Hubbard discusses the US government's response to the economic downturn caused by COVID-19 with Neil Irwin '08, senior economics correspondent at The New York Times and senior advisor to the Initiative for Economic Policy.

Healthcare experts Carri Chan, associate professor of Business; Awi Federgruen, the Charles E. Exley Professor of Management and chair of the Decision, Risk, and Operations Division; and Joel Park, MD, MS, FACEP, and assistant professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, discuss ways to improve hospital management, best tactics for resource allocation, and the drastic systemic changes occurring amidst the COVID-19 health crisis during this one-hour webinar.

What should leaders focus on to make the greatest positive impact for the people they lead and those that depend on them during the COVID-19 crisis? This curated, one-hour set of videos draws on material from crisis leadership sessions in CBS’s MBA, EMBA, and Executive Education programs to identify four leadership best practices that will make the biggest difference right now.

In this one-hour webinar, Professor Tano Santos, the David L. and Elsie M. Dodd Professor of Finance, discusses whether or not the stock market’s drastic reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak was justified, provides a historical perspective and analysis on market behavior during the 1918 flu outbreak, and offers strategies for building a portfolio during an economic downturn.

We hope you found a topic to interest you here. If you want more, be sure to check back with Columbia Business School as they plan to continue producing more webinars throughout the crisis. You can find them all here, under webinars and presentations.