Boston Questrom Business School to Launch New Institute

• Boston University is launching a new institute to look at the impact businesses have on society.
• The Ravi K. Mehrotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society at the Questrom School of Business will study research and create a public business sentiment index to gauge public feeling about businesses.
• The institute will also play a role in developing undergraduate curriculum.
• Questrom School Dean Susan Fournier said the institute hopes to "build upon, benefit from, and inform the current cultural moment in which business is increasingly scrutinized and the benefits of business in and for society are hotly debated."

A new institute at the Boston University (BU) Questrom School of Business is set to explore the impact that businesses have on society.

The new Ravi K. Mehrotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society at Questrom will "help students, industry leaders, regulators, and the broader public understand and appreciate the role business and markets do, can, and should play in creating lasting prosperity, advancing societal goals, and solving global challenges," according to a press release.

The institute is named after Mehrotra, who contributed the largest gift of the $51 million in total donations that the institute has raised so far, according to the release.

Mehrotra, the founder and executive chairman of British sustainability-focused private equity and venture capital asset management firm Foresight Group, said Questrom's location in a global tech hub like Boston, coupled with its resources and innovative curriculum, make it the ideal home for the new institute.

"An institute dedicated to exploring the intersections of business, markets, and society plays a pivotal role in bridging gaps in understanding and collaboration between these crucial domains, fostering a more informed, ethical, and sustainable approach to commerce and economics, Mehrotra told BU Today, the university's news website.

Questrom School Dean Susan Fournier called the new institute's launch "well-timed."

"The institute is intended to build upon, benefit from, and inform the current cultural moment in which business is increasingly scrutinized and the benefits of business in and for society are hotly debated," Fournier said in the press release. "The how of the Institute is as important as the what. We will apply the powers of rigorous and balanced scholarly research, the fundamental principles of free and open speech, and our belief in data to advance our understanding and practice of the complex, thorny process of value creation through business."

In addition to research, the new institute will host public conversations around capitalism's future, create a business sentiment index to gauge the public's feelings about businesses in a similar way to the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index, and will also play a role in shaping undergraduate curriculum.

Top business schools have increasingly looked to understand businesses' impact on society in recent years.

Officials at the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management announced a new "complexity institute" last year with the aim of bringing together data and artificial intelligence to "improve understanding of how the success of organizations, regions and nations build from their deep and rich interconnections."

Like Boston University's new Mehrotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society, the institute at Northwestern was funded by a private gift — totaling $25 million from the Ryan Family Foundation.