Monday’s Headlines: Geeky Business Exec Wannabes Welcome

If Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates serve as a model for the future of business in the United States, business schools would be wise to court and nurture the class nerd – the science and math wiz with a knack for the boardroom. According to a Businessweek story, that is exactly what top B-schools are doing.

Stanford Graduate School of Business offers joint classes and programs with the university’s engineering school. Cornell Center for Technology Enterprise & Commercialization is an incubator for business students and alumni to establish companies based on the school’s science and engineering research.

Purdue’s Krannert School of Management has partnered with E.M. Lyon in France and China’s Zhejiang University in Hangzhou with the goal to combine both business thinking and technical development into the embryotic stages of new ideas. The head of E.M. Lyon told the magazine:

“New businesses used to have to move through a distinct series of growth steps—garage, local, national, and international. Now, thanks to the communications revolution, they can leapfrog these stages and go global more or less straightaway, but in doing so they can face a whole new set of problems and challenges. The program plugs them into an international network of contacts, prepares them for dealing with contrasting cultures, and exposes them to the different ways that business is conducted around the globe.”

Other News:

In the wake of the trading scandal, JPMorgan Chase will replace three top traders including Ina Drew. [Reuters]

A 2007 Fortune story about how Jamie Dimon got to the top. [Fortune]

College grads with actuarial science degrees have a nonexistent unemployment rate. [CNN Money]

China is considering a new way for foreign pension funds to invest in its capital markets. [WSJ]

Deutsche Bank: Guggenheim is interested in only a small part of its asset management business; it ended talks on three of the division's units. [Dow Jones]

Widespread trading practices are creating headaches for regulators. [NY Times]

Ally’s Residential Capital filed for bankruptcy. [Financial Times]

Opinion on Wall Street: “You get away with what you can and try to weasel out when you get caught.” [NY Times]