Professor Andy Adcroft

National Teaching Fellow 2015 Professor Andy Adcroft is responsible for the design and development of the Business Schools programmes at all levels and his work focuses on the creation of innovative ways to engage students and embed business practice in the curriculum. This work is built on the view that people learn best when they work things out for themselves. People taking responsibility for their learning is hugely important because university is a place where people come to learn rather than just to be taught. Learning only happens when you participate. Spectators don t learn half as well as participants. This has resulted in innovative approaches to programme and module delivery involving executive playfulness, the creation of an undergraduate choir and the biggest ever University experiment in spaced learning. Over the past 20 years, Andy has written and published in a variety of fields from his early work on Henry Ford and historical dimensions of management practice, to more recent work on competition in higher education, strategic change and organisational resilience. Currently his main research interest lies in the management and development of talented people with an emphasis on how organisations can work to get the best out of their Generation Y employees. Universities should be open spaces, accessible to everyone and in delivering this Andy does stand-up comedy and made his Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2013. His comedy is derived from his academic work and performance is important in Andys teaching; his latest comedy, and his newest module, explores the relationship between disruptive technology, social media and business start-ups. Andy is the co-Editor of Management Decision, one of the longest running scholarly management journals in the world.