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New Support for Integrative Thinking at Rotman School of Management

Toronto, November 28, 2007 -- One of Canada’s leading supporters of business education has donated $10- million to the University of Toronto’s Joseph L. Rotman School of Management. The gift by Marcel Desautels, president and CEO of the Canadian Credit Management Foundation, will support the ongoing initiatives of the Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking, bringing his total gifts to the Rotman School to a remarkable $31 million. His earlier donations founded the Desautels Centre and supported student scholarships.

The gift will help the Rotman School further develop the Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking by hiring additional faculty and staff, pursuing curriculum development in all the Rotman School’s undergraduate, graduate and executive programs, and supporting research projects, conferences, and other events based on Integrative Thinking. It will also support the construction of an additional new building for the Rotman School. The project, which has received $50 million in funding from the Province of Ontario, is scheduled to open in 2011. The Desautels Centre will be housed in the new building.

“We are honoured that Marcel has continued to support the vision we have for the future of business education. We have made significant progress since his initial gift in 2000,” says Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School. “From our first meeting, he understood the ideas and concepts of Integrative Thinking and, as an astute entrepreneur, he also understands how Integrative Thinking can benefit business.”

The Desautels Centre has quickly gained an international reputation through its work on researching, understanding and teaching Integrative Thinking. Integrative thinkers build models rather than choose between them. Their models include consideration of numerous variables — customers, employees, competitors, capabilities, cost structures, industry evolution, and regulatory environment — not just a subset of the above. Their models capture the complicated, multi-faceted and multidirectional causal relationships between the key variables in any problem. Integrative thinkers consider the problem as a whole, rather than breaking it down and farming out the parts. Finally, they creatively resolve tensions without making costly trade-offs, turning challenges into opportunities.

“The world of business education has been fundamentally changed for the better by the emergence of Integrative Thinking,” says Desautels. “I am delighted with the progress that the Rotman School has made under the leadership of Roger Martin and Desautels Centre Director Mihnea Moldoveanu.”

The remarkable gift was announced today during the Toronto book launch for The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking by Roger Martin. Published by Harvard Business School Press, the book takes a practitioner’s look at great Integrative Thinkers in the worlds of business, the arts, and social sectors and provides insight on how readers can also become integrative thinkers themselves. Much of the original research was based on presentations by speakers in the Rotman Integrative Thinking Seminar Series, which has brought more than forty of the world’s leading integrative thinkers to the Rotman School.

Since the initial gift from Marcel Desautels in 2000, the Rotman School has redeveloped the curriculum for its Two-Year and Three-Year MBA programs, adding required and elective courses to the curriculum. Integrative Thinking modules have also been added to the Rotman School’s Executive MBA and Omnium Global Executive MBA programs and to the school’s executive programs. Additional details on Integrative Thinking at the Rotman School are available online at http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/integrativethinking .

The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto is redesigning business education for the 21st century with a curriculum based on Integrative Thinking™. Located in the world’s most diverse city, the Rotman School fosters a new way to think that enables the design of creative business solutions. The School is currently raising $200 million to ensure Canada has the world-class business school it deserves. For more information, visit http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca.