[00:00:02 – 00:00:11] Nitin Bajaj

Hey, everyone. Welcome to The Industry Show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj. And joining me today is Dean Henrik Cronqvist. Henrik, welcome on the show.

[00:00:12 – 00:00:16] Henrik Cronqvist

Thank you so much for having me today. Yeah, I’m excited to be here with you.

[00:00:17 – 00:00:20] Nitin Bajaj

Pleasure is all ours. Let’s start with the big question. Who is Henrik?

[00:00:22 – 00:01:19] Henrik Cronqvist

That’s a good question. I grew up in a small town in Sweden, and, I was the first one in my family to go to college. And I studied hard, and, I went to all not only did I go to college, I studied hard and went all the way to my PhD in America. I came over to do my PhD at University of Chicago. I became an academic. I became a professor. I was teaching. I was doing research. And then ultimately, after accumulating a lot of experience and publishing a lot of papers in different journals, I became an academic leader and now a dean. So, I would say, I’m, I’m, someone that comes from pretty, simple and humble circumstances and, who just, enjoyed learning about the world. I’m a curious guy, that made a career out of that curiosity and and will continue to do that in the future as well.

[00:01:19 – 00:01:55] Nitin Bajaj

Well, first off, congratulations on your journey so far. You know, it’s it’s not easy to make so many of those transitions coming in as an immigrant into a foreign country, that to a pretty competitive one. So congratulations. And also thank you for doing what you do in helping shape many careers, and helping many other international students that come into this country. So let’s talk about that a little bit. Tell us more about, Chapman and specifically about the Arguell School of Business that, you lead as the dean.

[00:01:55 – 00:03:45] Henrik Cronqvist

Absolutely. So we are in Southern California, just South of Los Angeles. So think ten minutes from Disneyland, 20 Minutes from beautiful Newport Beach. That’s our geographical, location. And so we’re close to Hollywood and entertainment industry. And, we have about 2,000 students. Most of them are undergraduate students, so probably about 1,700. We graduate about 400 to 500 undergraduate students, every year. We also have, master’s programs, so graduate programs, MBA programs. We have a couple of different specialized master’s programs, one in accounting, one in real estate, and a brand new one that we’re launching this, fall actually in business analytics. So, we pay a lot of attention to a couple of different areas Nitin, higher education, one being the entertainment industry, because again, we’re close to, to Hollywood, not only film and media, but also sports, e sports and gaming. And, particularly on the business side, all of those different companies, they have big business operations. We have an entrepreneurship center that I’m really proud of and what we’re doing there. Get a lot of students that are coming to us that are entrepreneurially spirited, and they want to build their own startup, their own business, and we try to support them as well. You know, we are Nitin, we stand for personalized education. What does that mean? Well, we have pretty small classes at Chapman. So 20 to 35 students is a normal class at our school. So you get to learn to know the professor. And a lot of our students that I meet with, they are alumni, maybe twenty years after college. They still think back very fondly, at their time in college. And some of them still stay in touch with the professors, that were teaching here at the time.

[00:03:46 – 00:04:14] Nitin Bajaj

That is fascinating. And I love the spread of different, courses you offer. That’s very representative of, the demographic that we have here in Southern California. So very cool. Now, you know, you could have done many different things. You’re curious, you’re fairly accomplished, have a wonderful background and education. Why choose this as a profession?

[00:04:15 – 00:06:07] Henrik Cronqvist

You know, that’s a that’s a good question. I think it goes back to the importance of, mentorship and the people that have influence on you in life. And when I did my master’s back home in Sweden, I did that under a professor that was very influential on me, is, subsequently passed away, but he had, started to do his PhD himself in America. And then he went back home to Sweden to complete it there. And he became one of my teachers. So I was doing my master’s thesis, which can be a big undertaking, one of the first really big projects in someone’s life as a student. And And this particular professor was really influential on me. And he, put me on a different path because I thought back then when I was around 20 early twenties, I want to become an investment banker. I want to go to London. I want to make a lot of money, and all of that kind of stuff that I was dreaming of. But then he somehow had an influence on me, and he made me think about an academic career. I don’t come from an academic family. So to me, it’s not clear what exactly that is, what that was. And so he put me on that pathway, introduced me to a couple of different people. And I said to myself, oh, that’s so interesting. Oh, you can make a career out of this. And that set me up for this particular pathway. At the time, I was primarily interested in doing research, discover new things, new phenomena. I’m a curious guy. And that was what was, initially, influential on me. But then, after that, I realized that an academic career is a lot more. It’s about, teaching. It’s about building the relationship with the with the students, helping people out, mentor people, making them successful that goes beyond yourself. And there’s something attractive about that that I really, enjoyed and it resonated with me.

[00:06:07 – 00:06:38] Nitin Bajaj

Fascinating. I’m glad that you had that, motivation and inspiration, and you’re now paying it forward and helping several thousand students a year with that. So really appreciate you being you. Now I would love to ask you, given the scale of, exposure you have, given the myriad things that you have to get involved with. What’s the one big challenge you would like to call out that you’re facing?

[00:06:38 – 00:07:56] Henrik Cronqvist

Oh, there’s, I’m sure that there’s many in any line of work. There’s a lot of challenges, but you try to, you know, think about them as, as as good challenges. And, you know, I I tend to say to my team, hey, we, we have a problem. It’s a good problem, but it’s still a problem. And that’s how I try to approach things in general. Right now, one of the things that we have, we are developing this program, that is an intersection of business and entertainment. And it’s quite popular. It’s currently a minor at our school. It’s joint with our film school, which is very famous. It’s a top five in the country. And we’ve developed this new program. And a lot of students, they want to get into this program, but we cannot get everyone into the program because we don’t have enough resources for that. We don’t have enough capacity. Well, that’s a good problem to have. Well, it’s still a problem. And so how do we make sure that we can get more capacity, more seats, we can service more students? Because after all, it’s their educational dream. And I was lucky in my life myself to be able to attain my educational dream. And I want to do that for as many students as possible. So that will be an example of one of the, of the challenges that I’m working on right at this very moment.

[00:07:57 – 00:08:06] Nitin Bajaj

On the flip side of challenges come opportunities, and I would love for you to share that most exciting opportunity that’s ahead of you right now.

[00:08:07 – 00:09:46] Henrik Cronqvist

Oh, that’s a very good question as well. I think, we have in in higher education right now, we are, of course, affected by AI, and analytics and, big data and machine learning and chat GPT and all of that kind of stuff. And being a curious person myself, and I’m not an I’m not a tech person per se. I I I’m a poor programmer. I’m certainly not a computer scientist, but I do follow tech, pretty closely and applications and what you can do with technology. And, that goes way back to the nineteen eighties when my, my family were able to have a a PC at home. I’ve always followed technology quite closely. And and I think a lot of people right now for good reasons are a little bit scared about what does all of this AI revolution, what does this mean? What does it mean for them? What does it mean for society? And, I I like to believe that this is, you know, exciting. And if you look back in, in the in the in the history, there has been those periods with, those new technologies. And and we don’t know because we were not around how scary that was. I’m sure that was very scary as well. I like, that we, like the idea that we embrace technology and innovation. And that’s something that I’m really excited about, what all of this new technology will mean for higher education. And, what will be the new role, in this, Nitin, environment for universities and for business schools. So I’m really excited about that.

[00:09:47 – 00:10:20] Nitin Bajaj

Yeah. And, sometimes that excitement comes with a little bit of trepidation, with at least some of the population. So now as we look forward, I would love to pause and reflect and ask you to share two moments from your personal and professional career. One, where things did not work out had as you had expected, and there was failure. There were lessons, that came out of it. And another instance where things exceeded your own expectations and became a success beyond your imagination.

[00:10:21 – 00:12:56] Henrik Cronqvist

Right. I okay. Let’s start with, the, the side with not so successful, I guess, the opportunities for improve and, you know, learning from from the past. And I think, you know, one of the most difficult things that any of us can do, whether that is in business or in any organization, is to, recruit and hire people. It’s incredibly difficult. And, and I think that that there that’s an area that I think we can always, improve and we learn from some of the mistakes that we have made in the in the past when it comes to building a, high performance team. And so I’m I’m, confident that I made a number of different mistakes in that domain that I hopefully have learned from. And, it’s also it’s also shows that how important it is, how important the task is when it comes to, you know, building, pulling together a team that is has different perspectives, different views. And, and and that’s an area that I think many of us, myself included, we can, you know, we can improve. When it comes to some of the some of the success stories, I’m sure that, you know, if I look back, there’s many things that I have accomplished, that, you know, I’m I’m really proud of. I guess, just, being able to have an impact, on, on other students that are maybe in the similar situation that I was Bajaj when when I was learning about what it is like to, to go to to college. That’s really meaningful for me, being, you know, first gen, myself going to college and feeling a little bit outside, compared to to others. There’s fewer, first gens now than when I went to college. And then also just making that leap, having that faith to I moved to America to go to school before I had even visited this country. So I got on the plane and, you know, left Europe and came over here. And I I am proud of of of myself having the, opportunity to do that, which I worked hard for. And also having taking that leap of faith and say, I think that this will be great for me. So, let’s get on that plane and, move, across the Atlantic Ocean and and restart my life as, of course, as a young person. But I would say that that’s something that I’m proud of, and I guess there’s a success story in there as well.

[00:12:56 – 00:13:35] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm. Yeah. Having made that journey myself, I know there’s a lot of nerves involved. There’s a lot of decision making that has to happen. And especially when we are doing that at a younger age and, in many cases against the vision will of our relatives and our parents, that can be an easy decision to make. So congratulations again on having made that journey and and a successful one at that. Now I’d love to ask you to share, one, what do you do for fun? And two, if you have a book or a podcast that is a favorite and you would like to share that with us.

[00:13:36 – 00:17:17] Henrik Cronqvist

Oh, definitely. Nitin, how much time do we have? You know? The list here is very long, probably much longer than my list of success stories. Right? If we start with what do I’d like to do for fun? So I think, I, I I do my exercise, which is good both for the mind and for the heart and other parts of the body as well. I’m a long distance runner, so which is incredibly boring for a lot of people. And, but for me and other fellow runners, it’s exciting. It’s, I don’t know. It’s the adrenaline, that you get by doing a long run. Can I make it? Especially if you start to talk half marathon, full marathon, incredibly difficult to do. So I like that challenge. It’s also a good way for me to relax, actually. And so that’s one thing that I enjoy doing. I I, I’m big into the arts, everything that comes to arts, and, so particularly modern art. Contemporary art is something that I enjoy. I think I’ve been to every single modern art museum in the Los Angeles area in California, at least once and in many cases, many times. LACMA in in Los Angeles is a great place. I was just there for the, current, digital media exhibition, which is a lot of fun. So that’s something else that I, I enjoy. Of course, being with friends and family is something that you can never have enough of. And so that’s certainly something that is, is great as well. Hey. You also asked about the books. So I would say two two that I’m actually reading right now. One is called Co Intelligence. It’s by, Ethan Molick. He’s a professor at Wharton, and it’s about co intelligence. And it has a subtitle as well, which I forgot, but it’s basically a book about AI. And, a lot of it is about how AI will impact education, higher education, which is my field. And, professor Molik is a fantastic scholar. He’s a great book writer, and I’m really enjoying his book, right now. Another one that I, am, moving through at this time, actually the audio version is, Never Split the Difference, which is Chris Voss’s book. And I had actually never had a chance to read it before. And then I got a chance to go to the World Economic Forum in Davos this winter, and I had an opportunity to meet with and speak in the same session as Chris Voss. And, of course, I became a fan immediately. And so that’s one, book that, I’m going through right now as well. I think negotiation there’s many things in life that is actually about negotiation, not just big business deals, but many other things, smaller or bigger ones in the personal life, in the professional life as well that involves negotiation. So I think that we can up our skills. I’m a big pod podcast fan. And, one that I’m currently listening to is called In Good Company. Mhmm. And the host is the, CEO of the Norwegian Oil Fund. So Norway, they have a lot of oil. They put a lot of the money into an oil fund, the sovereign wealth fund. And the CEO of this fund, is the, is the host of this podcast, in good company. And he has a chance to interview some really remarkable world leaders on the big stage. And I enjoyed them. I enjoyed, enjoy his style of, asking questions. I enjoy listening to those, top thought leaders that he’s bringing on board. So I can I can recommend all of those books and the podcast as well?

[00:17:18 – 00:17:30] Nitin Bajaj

Well, thank you for sharing those recommendations. And, now onto my favorite part of the show. We call it the one line life lessons. Henrik, I would love for you to share your life lessons with us.

[00:17:31 – 00:17:38] Henrik Cronqvist

Alright. So how we’re gonna do this, Nitin? I’m gonna say the, the life lessons, one by one instead of the that’s the idea?

[00:17:38 – 00:17:39] Nitin Bajaj

That is the idea.

[00:17:39 – 00:20:23] Henrik Cronqvist

I did put some, thought into it. And, I think the the first one would be something along the lines of be innovative, take some risks. And it, I think it’s, emphasizes both the innovation and the risk taking, which is something that I’ve done in a little bit of a of a dose of that myself, in the in the professional, domain, doing research project and exploring new things. So, be innovative, take some risks. I think that would be one of them. Another one would be explore the world and embrace cultural differences. I think a lot of the challenges in the world is because we don’t understand each other well enough And we tend to focus on the differences between different cultures and people, which of course is exciting that we’re not all the same. And, we should embrace that, those differences and learn from them and say, oh, I guess I learned something new. And that’s one of the advantages of having been an academic in my entire career. I’ve been to so many countries, probably more than a hundred different countries I’ve visited. And I’ve been around many international people and learned so much from from them. The next one, I think, would be embrace lifelong learning. Well, I have to say that I’m a professor after all, and I think we should always, you know, learn more. I try to take, probably at the moment about forty five minutes to one hour of every day to do something related to AI. As you can tell, that’s really on top of my mind as it is with many other leaders right now. So embrace lifelong learning. I think that’s something that is super important as well. I think another one would be life has ups and downs, so keep going. That may not be a very, deep insight, but, it’s been like that for me. Life has ups and downs, but keep going, both up up the hill. It’s it’s it can be tough in the marathon, up the hill. But, hey, after the hill goes up, then generally, you know, you’re, going downwards and you have a beautiful view, in front of you. So I would say that that would be another one. And maybe last but not least, I would say, success isn’t just about making money. It’s about having an impact. And I think for many of us that are in academia, the the it’s also it’s not just about making the big bucks, which of course is helpful, but, it’s also about having an impact on other people, on organizations, on, on the lives of, and the dreams of our students. So that is something that is important to me as well.

[00:20:24 – 00:20:43] Nitin Bajaj

Henrik, thank you so much for sharing your journey, your story, and your life lessons. But most importantly for being you and being a huge part of the community and, especially for international students and for students in general. Really appreciate it.

[00:20:43 – 00:20:49] Henrik Cronqvist

I really appreciate as well-being, on the, on the show. And thank you so much for having me.

[00:20:49 – 00:20:50] Nitin Bajaj

Thank you.