Another line on my c.v.: Associate Fellow, Saïd Business School, Oxford University

I don't think this was a very well-kept secret, but now it's official: in addition to my day job, and my work on the end of cyberspace book, I'm now officially an Associate Fellow at the Saïd Business School at Oxford University. It's a two-year appointment, which runs through the spring of 2010 (through Hilary Term, for those of you keeping track across the pond). I don't teach any courses, but I do work with students, and am on call to do things with SBS groups visiting Silicon Valley.

via flickr

The appointment was initially approved in March, but they only got me up on the Web site this week. Such is the pace of things there. (And as one friend said, "My god, your picture on the SBS website is so Californian!" It was taken in the garden of Howard Rheingold's house. You don't get more California than that.)

I've still got my affiliation with Stanford, and thank heavens for that: having access to the Stanford library has been critical to my continued viability as a thinker. But I've got a couple executive MBAs I'm working with at Oxford, and have had a good time collaborating with people at the James Martin Institute. And in the last few years I've been to more conferences there than Stanford.

Strange to have closer intellectual ties to a university in England than to one three miles away, but such is life these days. Or my life, anyway.

Needless to say, this is a real thrill. Not because it represents some prospective return to academia, but because it's an interesting hybrid position. SBS is one of several business schools that are real intellectual hot-houses these days. Some of the best B-schools are no longer places that just train people to crank out exotic formulas or spout jargon, but are seriously thinking about what it will mean to do business in this century. Oxford the added virtue of having the James Martin Institute, which in the next few years will-- if it has any sense at all-- become the global epicenter for serious futures work. So this is a good time to get connected to this little world.

I've already promised several people that I won't start speaking like a character out of P. G. Wodehouse, as tempting as that would be.

[To the tune of Drew Barrymore & Hugh Grant, "Way Back Into Love [Demo Version]," from the album "Music & Lyrics".]

Technorati Tags: academia, Oxford University, postacademic

Comments

[Alex H.]

Congratulations!

Just a skip away from Superdon...