Evolving Human Capital

William Osborne, ’00: 00:05
Human capital is the total sum of the experience, knowledge, skills, and insights that you can bring to bear in both your professional life and your personal life.

Robert Wardop, ’96: 00:18
Human capital is a fundable notion. It's actually about the individual, and as a result of that, human capital value can either be enhanced or it can deteriorate.

Vesna Petronic-Rosic, ’18: 00:29
I am in a field that encompasses many different professional degrees, from physicians, to scientists, to economists, to physicists. Each one of those groups benefits from the human capital that is available to us.

Diane Long, ’18: 00:48
If I were to put it really simply, I think that without human capital, you do not have an organization, because it's the people who help you accomplish things.

Robert Wardop, ’96: 01:35
The decision to pivot my career, and the decisions I made about effectively, in human capital terms, what was I prepared to invest? What did I need to invest, in order to succeed in making that pivot? It was kind of fundamental to my decision-making. I was in the inaugural Executive MBA class here in Europe, which started in Barcelona in 1994, but that two-year experience really ignited an interest in learning that I had, that was latent, frankly, I didn't know I had. And I came out of that with, I think, with a capacity to intellectually explore curiosities, which is very much kind of a Chicago ethos.

Diane Long, ’18: 02:20
When I reflect on the last two years of being in this program, one of the things that's been commented about me in the workplace, is how my entire mind-set has shifted in discussions. So I ask a lot more questions. I'm constantly challenging the assumptions that people make about things. So I do feel, in a sense, I've altered my way of working to be always about learning.

William Osborne, ’00: 02:51
One of the things that I think is important for us going forward, is that we have to provide people challenges earlier in their careers. I sort of grew up in the auto industry. Back at that time, your career didn't even start until about 40. Everything was preparation up until that time. We simply don't have that kind of time to develop people. The challenges we face are now, today. And so, what we have found is that it's very important in order to retain top talent, is to give them broad and direct responsibility a lot earlier in their careers.

Diane Long, ’18: 03:29
Asia is an emerging market, so I think how that applies to human capital then, is people need to react very quickly. They're extremely focused on results, and achieving that and beating out the competitor, or they just fail. And so with that in mind, they say, "We don't have time to develop people," and so you have to figure out how to incorporate that into their day-to-day activities.

William Osborne, ’00: 04:02
One of the things that is important to understand about the whole topic of human capital, it's not just yours, it's what you have access to. We were having some problems in our supply chain operations, and the fact that I had access to the Booth network allowed me to bring in one of the experts, who basically illuminated the problem and gave us some very good recommendations on how to solve it.

Vesna Petronic-Rosic, ’18: 04:33
Human capital is something that is continually evolving, that can always be enriched. And my purpose is to learn and to evolve, and to help others enrich their own potential. And I love what I do. I want those working with me to have that same feeling.