Selections Interview with John Byrne, Senior Writer at Business Week

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Selections: Are you concerned about the proliferation of rankings by various publications?
Byrne: Yes. I am concerned for a number of reasons. The first one is the more that there are, that sort of dilutes your own uniqueness and your own attempt to differentiate yourself—the magazine—in a very competitive marketplace. I don’t necessarily take the view that everyone jumping on the bandwagon is a form of flattery. I worry about it, because I think it allows the schools to just pick and choose whomever they get the best ranking from and then dilute the impact of a ranking or a couple of rankings and therefore weaken this marketplace that has been created by them. The more that there are, the less influential any one of them can be.

The second thing I worry about is this: When I first developed this stuff at Business Week, there was a strategic vision that I had for the magazine. I thought that the future generation of leadership would come from MBA schools, and I thought that if we could give them information that would help them to make one of the most important decisions in their lives, that is going to be very good for Business Week, because we are going to introduce them to the magazine at an age where we want to do that, and maybe if we’re lucky, we may be able to keep them. And as a result of all of the data collection we have done, we have—well we could always do better—but I think we have really made a concerted effort to cover business schools in a way that no one else has. If you go onto Business Week online, the data is extensive. It is unbelievable how much stuff we have on there. It is just incredible. No one even comes close, in terms of Q&As with deans and placement directors, admissions directors. Everything imaginable to help those two constituents I mentioned again and again. Even in the magazine, the rankings are an annual occurrence, because we do MBA rankings one year and executive education rankings the next. But all throughout the year, we are trying to do as many stories on management education as we possibly can. I think the goal is to have at least one story every two or three months in the magazine. That is to say that, number one, we believe this is important for us, and we believe it is important for business, and there is a great amount of interest in this stuff. We want this to be a so-called franchise for us. We want this to be a differentiator for us. That is another reason why I worry about everyone else jumping on the bandwagon—because that also erodes our ability to differentiate our magazine and the online site, because the more you have, the less unique you become.

Selections: What do you think the future holds for Business Week’s business school rankings?
Byrne: I think every time we do them, we re-examine what we’re doing. We try to make them deeper, bigger, smarter. We try to learn from all of the mistakes that inevitably get made. So, we are constantly changing everything here, too. I don’t know what can happen. We’ll get better data than we’ve ever had. We’ll scour it more closely than we ever had. We’ll get stories and ideas from that data that will have impact. And we just won’t let go of it, I don’t think.

Selections: So you don’t think the rankings are going anywhere?
Byrne: I don’t think they are going to die. If anything, I think they will be expanded to a greater universe of schools. And it is conceivable that while we’ve only ranked graduate programs, maybe we should be ranking undergraduate business programs, as well. That could be an area where we could make a big expansion. As well as internationally.

What I want to convey—because this is the absolute truth—is, I thought of this not because, “Oh, golly gee, maybe Business Week could sell a few more magazines.” I thought of this because it was a hell of a good idea and I was remarkably passionate about it. And I still am passionate about it. It is something I love and care about a lot. And we do have a great responsibility here, because it does have an impact, and that is why we do it. Okay. We do it because I sat around on the floor stuffing envelopes 13, 14 years ago. We do it because even today, I have a hand in doing it and helping it along and trying to rethink it every time we do it, and trying to make it better. And we do it because, damn, I think it helps people. I really do. Whatever the negative impact is that results from the survey, it is far outweighed by the positives.

I’m very passionate about this. If you were here right now you would see me pacing around my office with my arms flailing.

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