Alumni have made their way through the school. We will hear from the ceo of ab invev, the owner of the Golden State Warriors, and the incoming ceo of nike, and they will talk about their experience here and also what they are seeing in the world of business. Carol so much here from stanford, plus, back at headquarters back in new york, this week it was all about the year ahead summit, a 360 degree view of the most urgent topics facing every executive in the coming year. Jason we sat down with the Providence Equity ceo, and the ceo of macys and coceo jim coulter, and also i should mention an alum of the school. Carol first lets get to stanford graduate dean on taking the number one spot on the best School Rankings for the second year in a row. It is a testament to the fantastic students and faculty and staff and alumni we have here and i could not be happier to be the Top Business School this year. Jason the students will be Milling Around here very shortly. What is on their minds right now . It is a topsyturvy corporate world and as they prepared to get into the next stage of their career, what are they worried about . They are arriving at a time of great change in business, technology, society, and globalization, and those things are all on their mind. They are thinking about what job am i going to get how my career , is going to evolve, and that is what they are here for, to get exposed to all sorts of opportunities, ideas, and people and to develop the skills to get them forward in their careers. Jason thinking about where we are in Silicon Valley, this time there is a lot of talk in washington about Silicon Valley. Its role in society. How do you square all of that being the face of Silicon Valley in many ways . That is a great question. When i came here, washington just seemed it could not have been further away from Silicon Valley, it was irrelevant. We are loading things and trying to make the world a better place, and it doesnt feel that way right now. It feels Like Washington and Silicon Valley has come much closer together. Theres more talk about regulation and theres going to be more regulation. The impact of Silicon Valley on government and democracy is enormous, and we are right in the middle of that. It is an important responsibility for stanford to be in the middle of that discussion, and we are trying to do that. Jason one of the interesting things about a Business Education is for a long time, it was a fairly straightforward investment, you paid tens of thousands of dollars and then you got out on the other end and got paid very well. It seems more complicated now, and maybe even some existential questions why am i getting an mba . How do you make the case for stanford with the students, you got to make the case that you are better than some of the harvards and whartons of the world. All of what you said is still true, there are still great economic schools. I think what has changed is the students have evolved. Its a much broader set of students. We had students just like we always did, but we have a student in the firstyear class who was a central banker in yemen, a dentist from nigeria, a woman who was an olympic medalist. You put all those people in the mix together that is part of the magic of the place. Then, they go on to approximately the same richness of careers. That has changed. The sense the mba can prepare you for anything, all different walks of life. I think that is really fundamental to what we are trying to do. Carol we turned out to a notable alum from the graduate school of business. Jason he graduated from here in 1989 and now best known as the owner of the Golden State Warriors who was also pretty successful venture capitalist back in the day. Its just not about what is in the books. Its about a lot of other things and there are so many issues that one has to be aware of to be a ceo, if that is your goal, or to be in business. It is a very International World now. You cant just think domestically, as we all know. It affects the business i am in right now. I think you really have to have an experience where you get exposure to all of those issues. I think this is what stanford does. It is very good at doing that. Jason when you think about this place, Silicon Valley and stanford, so Many Companies have been born of this, private companies. We seem to be in a moment where private valuations, what do you make of this moment where people are trying to decide what something is worth and there is some disagreement out there . Clearly, private valuations are very high and there are some structural issues, with respect to the giant funds that have been raised and the prices they have been willing to pay for some of these startups or laterstage startups. I think that the Public Markets and private ones have to figure this out. This is no different than what has gone on in the past. We have had times where private valuations have gotten to be what some people believe are too high, and they have to sort of make do. I think it will all work itself out. Jason we have to talk about basketball. I think you have to see people who look at you and say, thats what i want to be when i grow up. I want to own a basketball team. Not easy. What do you make of the season so far . There have been some twists and turns. Every Single Player on our roster last year is either gone or injured at this particular moment. It will improve. I like to tell my guys that i am always positive, and i do believe there are Silver Linings and everything. This, in particular, will allow us to develop younger players. They will get a lot of time and they will get better and we got some really good ones. So from the standpoint of basketball, i think our fans understand it. They will be with us and we will wind up being better. Sorry, nba, we will be better when this is all over. Jason let me ask you about china and everything that happened with the nba over there. What happens next in china . It is a sensitive subject. I dont think it is something that all of us here, even the players and myself, and fully explain for understand. I think it will work its way out. I think it is like everything else. I think we will get back to where we were before. Thats the optimistic point of view. Carol i want to push a little bit. What is the responsibility of Corporate Leaders like yourself with what is going on with hong kong . I think it is complicated. We have a business to run. Our job is not really at its most primary, to look at what is going on there from a political standpoint. Or to make decisions about that. Jason coming up, more from the best Business School special edition from stanford. We will talk with the faculty driving the program at the number one Business School in the United States. Carol we are talking to faculty and talking about some notable alums, like the incoming nike ceo and the ceo of ab invev. Lots to come. This is Bloomberg Businessweek. Jason welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. I am jason kelly. Carol i am carol massar. Join us every day on the radio starting at 2 00 p. M. Wall street time. You can also catch up on our daily show by checking out our podcast at apple and at bloomberg. Com. Jason you can also find us online and through our mobile app. Carol lets get back to our special from stanford. Jason here is our explainer, all about the annual results. Carol they are celebrating in palo alto where stanford is ranked the number one Business School for the second year in a row. The school tallied top scores for entrepreneurship and compensation. The runner up is dartmouth, moving 17 spots due to improved scores for networking and learning. The next three, harvard, university of chicago and university of virginia. Bloomberg compiled these rankings from survey responses from students, alumni and recruiters. We also used job placement data rates. There were a number of surprises. Big names dont always translate into the best education. William mary was ranked top for learning, followed by virginia and texas at dallas. When it comes to networking, dartmouth was first, but ucla was runner up. For entrepreneurship, maryland, utah and mississippi all finished in the top seven. Jason carol, a lot of companies can through trace their roots back to Business Schools. We are here just to the left of us, the Knight Management Center is here on the graduate school campus. The nike founder wrote a paper while he was here earning his mba. That became the basis for the Sports Apparel company. Carol i love that story. There incoming ceo is alsos part of the stanford alumni network. I was blessed enough to be there between 1984 and 1986, and it was really the most formative experience i had that has set me up for not just my career, but to be honest, my overall life over the last 30 years. I distinctly remember many of my professors as well as my classmates, and what stanford really grounded me in was this notion of leadership. It was a phrase i first heard at stanford. It resonated with me. A former dean of stanford, that is where the phrase came from. If i would say there is one foundational, guiding principle for the last 35 years since then, its been a real inspiration and attraction towards this notion of servant leadership. Jason Silicon Valley is certainly developed and developing, a far cry from where it is now. Why did you go west . I knew i wanted to go to stanford. As a senior in college in 1982, it was known for teamwork. It was known for working with and through others. That was attractive to me. I played sports my whole life. I loved team sports. I hadnt been in business, but i knew a Team Approach was what i wanted to do. That was the reputation they had. I had never lived in california, so i came with the agreement that i was going to stanford in 1984. When i came out, i was not disappointed. Carol having been so entrenched with several companies here, what do you make of some of the scrutiny about some of the big tech players . My perspective is this, soon to be moving to portland, the important part is honest dialogue. We dont duck the issues. Its not that technology was good and now it is bad, that is not it at all. The reality is technology has had a profound impact on the world, that it is, net, net, and fundamentally positive. It is also true that there can be consequences that are very real. We have to be able to acknowledge those and then engage in what is often messy dialogue where reasonable people can have different perspectives and see if we can get civil dialogue the issues and the remedies, or policies, or frameworks that can help us begin to address some of these issues. It will take time, these are not simple issues. What does not work is the politicians labeling tech as the bad guys. I dont buy it. In the same way, you cant be Tech Companies and say government and regulation is bad. I dont buy that either. The reality is, this will be the hard work of dialogue. Jason we have to talk about your new job. As you said, youre moving to portland to become the ceo of nike. You served on the board there. Why take this job now . Why take this full circle, as you say, with your history and now working for the company . I have always deeply resonated with their purpose, which is bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. Asterisk around athlete. If you have a body, you are an athlete. To me thats around human potential. It speaks to each person on the planet around the potential they have within them. And sport is a very powerful institution in the world right now. A lot of other institutions are falling down, polarizing. Government or politics. Sport is something that brings people together. It brings people together on a level Playing Field within and across countries. So the purpose of nike and the role and impact it can have in the world is just something that i have always admired deeply. It has always spoken to me. Carol story in the magazine this week Business Schools have long trained their students to maximize shareholder value. Increasingly though, students really want to master the skills that are needed to lead businesses committed to social missions. Jason well, thats right. It was a big topic while we were here. Here is stanford seniorassociate dean on social entrepreneurship. Our students have changed a lot over the past few years. Our students have come of age in a very different era than certainly i did. And certainly many of our past students did. They have come of age on College Campuses where their undergraduate professors and peers are talking about issues of diversity, about equity and inclusion, corporate social responsibility. So they come to us as learners who have already and exposed to some of these pressing issues. They come to us hoping that we will give them answers and that we will be able to train them to become better leaders. Carol i have got to say, i do wonder about what the students think about, because i feel like Global Corporations are talking about the importance of diversity for so many infant different reasons. I am curious, do students think the corporate world is doing enough . Theres so much conversation, and some of the numbers are getting better, but i think there could be more improvement. I think that is kind of mixed. I tend to be an optimist, and i sort of tend to point to the real wins we see, but i believe in transparency and in making sure that companies are able to tell us what they are doing so we can do better. I think our students really come to us believing that they can make positive change in the world and that they want to make positive change. Jason coming up, more from prominent alumni, including the 2018 commencement speaker. He is also the ceo of ab invev. Carol and jim coulter from the year ahead summit, straight from bloomberg headquarters. This is Bloomberg Businessweek. Jason welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek, i am jason kelly. Carol and im carol massar. You can listen to us on the radio. Jason am 960 here in the bay area, in london on dab digital and through the Bloomberg Business app. Carol back to our special broadcast at the Stanford Graduate School of business, Bloomberg Businessweek releasing its annual best business School Rankings this week, and for the second straight year, stanford is number one. Jason we are here with the ceo of ab invev. His story of getting here is pretty amazing. I started researching and back then businessweek had a ranking of Business Schools and stanford was number one. Carol you actually looked at the magazine . Yeah, yeah. That was our bible. One. The ranking. I said i was going to apply to schools, but stanford for sure is number one. They were number one through the 80s and 90s, and i was accepted, and then i had to fight for scholarship because my parents did not have the kind of money to send me to school. Then i went to stanford Business School and it changed my life. Carol you have got to talk about the financing to get there. Long story short, there was a businessman in brazil with a boutique investment bank, one of the top guys today in the world of business. I knew that he had a bank that would give loans to some of the employees that were pursuing an mba abroad. I was not one of them, i worked for shell oil. But because i was the brazilian accepted at stanford that year i decided to make my case and he decided to pay for my first year, out of his own pocket. So i went to stanford because of him, and it was interesting because he asked three things of me when i went. He said, first, keep in touch, before you can accept any fulltime job offer when you are done with stanford, talk to me first. No obligation to work for me. And help someone if you can in the future. Pay it forward. So that was it. Carol that was part of the education. Talk about your experience at stanford, what you got out of it. For me, it transformed the way i view the world. It was very international, so a very open to the world even in those days. It was also a place where i learned talents. I was surrounded by the best people in the world pretty much at that age group that kind of orientation to business. And i had to up my game. I used to be the top student, always top of my class and when i went to stanford, i was not at the top of my class. I had to work harder. But i got from stanford is it is about first who, then what. I learned that talented people, one guy is worth 10 very good people, but it is hard to find. When you look at stanford in the valley, Silicon Valley, that is a mirror image of each other. Stanford is open minded and is always embraced ideas. Other places look at ideas as threats. Things are moving, stanford embraces it and they say there is an opportunity. They are open minded. They attracted people of the same kind of mindset and i think the valley is a true reflection of stanford, and stanford gets also retro things from the valley as well. Jason lets talk about your consumer a little bit. It is an interesting time to say the least. You have a global view. Lets go straight to china, where big business for us. Jason it is a huge business, yet there are concerns about the Chinese Consumer rig