Current Strategic Plan

Our differentiators

Over the course of its 47-year history, the DeGroote School of Business has developed a reputation for launching innovative new programs, establishing areas of research and teaching excellence, and building interdisciplinary research, teaching and degree partnerships. The School has now undergone a year-long process of broad stakeholder consultation to determine how it can build on these traditional strengths and develop new areas of differentiation. DeGroote is determined to raise both its national and its global profile in the face of ever-increasing market competition.

DeGroote’s ambition to be consistently recognized as a top tier business school in Canada will continue to rest largely on the quality of its core management programs at the BCom, MBA and PhD levels. DeGroote must ensure its core programs remain relevant to the needs of current and future students and employers through ongoing innovation and continuous improvement, and continue to be interdisciplinary and evidence-based whenever possible; this is what makes us distinct.

DeGroote’s vision of enhancing its global profile will require developing new areas of focus that will serve both a specific market need and leverage the unique capabilities of the Business School in collaboration with McMaster University and a broader community of stakeholders; this is what will make us stand apart.

For the 2015-2020 strategic plan to succeed, DeGroote will need to focus on strengthening core programs and activities as well as embracing new differentiators, specifically:

• Creating innovative concentration programs;
• Further integrating research, teaching, and community activities with impact;
• Continuously improving on research discoveries, influence and visibility;
• Committing to building and fostering a DeGroote values-driven culture that engages all faculty, staff and students and promotes interdisciplinary thinking and evidence-based decision-making.

The Plan to Get There

We will accomplish our mission and vision by:

• ensuring all of our programs and courses create an innovative learning experience that equips our students with the new knowledge and skills needed to become leaders within and outside the university;
• ensuring our activities are valued by the impact they make on the economic and social wellbeing of the many communities we serve;
• building and maintaining a culture that engages faculty, staff and students in collegial and respectful exchanges, bold and creative interdisciplinary thinking, generation and application of evidence-based knowledge, continuous quality improvement, and institutional reputation-building.

Our success will be measured by our ability to excel in and across each of these interconnected areas.