On 19-20 June, LUSM Dean He Wensheng and MBA Director Zhang Ruoyong were invited to attend “Facing New Development and Building New Landscape: 2021 New Business Studies Development and Program Construction Seminar”. The seminar was organized by School of Business Administration and MBA School of Zhejiang Gongshang University, National MBA Education Steering Committee, Renmin Business School and Silk-Road Entrepreneurship Education Network and was supported by Management World. The event was held online and offline. More than 30 famous educators, deans of management and business schools and well-known scholars were invited to speak. Focusing on topics such as new business education, program construction and business case studies, the seminar explored frontier ideas and new development patterns.

The meeting was co-chaired by Jin Yanghua, vice president of Zhejiang Gongshang University, Zhang Kangzhi, School of Public Administration of Zhejiang Gongshang University, and Ma Tieju, dean of Business School of East China University of Science and Technology. At the opening ceremony, prof. Su Weihua, vice president of Zhejiang Gongshang University, Chen Xianchun, vice chairman of Zhejiang Federation of Social Science Circles, Yu Rongjian, dean of School of Business Administration, Zhejiang Gongshang University and Mao Jiye, Dean of Renmin Business School delivered speech respectively. They pointed out that with the combined impact of the global economic and political restructuring and the COVID-19 crisis, the era of digital economy in China has been fully opened, and the development and program construction of business studies is facing multiple challenges and new opportunities. After that, Prof. Xi Youmin from Xi 'an Jiaotong University, Prof. Yu Jianxing from Zhejiang Gongshang University, Prof. Wang Zhongming from Zhejiang University, Prof. Chen Jin from Tsinghua University, and Prof. Jin Yanghua from Zhejiang Gongshang University made keynote speeches on the topics of "New Business Studies: Where and How? ", “The Connotations and Construction Path of New Liberal Arts", "Program and Curriculum Construction for High-quality Development", "Prospects of Postmodern Business Education", and "Demand-oriented Development of Business Administration".

At the sub-forum on the construction of new business programs, Dean He Wensheng delivered a speech on "Responding to the Challenges of the Digital Age: Reform and Innovation of Business Education". He shared his idea from the connotation of the digital age, the challenge for the traditional business education, and reform and innovation path for business education. First, Dean He directly showed the development, current situation and trend of digital economy through a set of authoritative data, and pointed out that digital technology will become the biggest variable that influences and changes the business and enterprise ecology. Then, he analyzed the challenges faced by traditional business education in the digital era, including the fragmentation of educational resources, the single polarization of knowledge generation, the rise of new business schools, the homogeneity of curriculum system and knowledge transfer and the disjunction with business practice. In order to meet these challenges, He believes that it is necessary to establish the digital development strategy, promote the application of digital technology, enable the traditional teaching mode, reconstruct the digital organization, shape the digital leadership and other ways to ensure the realization of business education reform and innovation in the digital era. He finally concluded that the digital economy era opened a new stage of development of human society, business education from the traditional model to digital transformation has become an irreversible major trend. The only choice facing the future is for business schools to take the initiative to embrace and adapt to digitalization, and to transform and enhance the brand influence of business education programs with digital thinking.