After my Google B-school Ranking, I realized there are other quantitative ways of looking at business school rankings using the Internet. I joined Twitter recently, so I naturally wanted to see how popular I am. The results of doing the same ranking for b-school influence surprised me.
Klout is the gold standard Twitter ranking system that looks at 25 variables in three categories (size of the engaged audience, audience influence level, whether content spurs action) and boils them down into a single Klout score. It also provides a classification for the style of influence that is similar to a personality test, but also like a Gartner Magic Quadrant (upper left means casually sharing a lot, lower right means creating a lot to a focused audience, upper right is Celebrity: both creating and sharing to a broad audience).
Without further ado, the results: (rankings/classifications as of March 5, scores change daily)
Wharton is on top and stands out as one of two "Thought Leaders" on the b-school list. The "Thought Leader" classification is in the upper-right quadrant of the Classification, meaning that it has a broad audience, it participates, it is consistent, and gives opinion on content. If Wharton's influence is broad rather than specialized, it's interesting that it doesn't fall into "Taste Marker" (more thought leadership) or "Pundit" (more opinionated) categories.
Kellogg beats out Harvard Business School for the #2 spot, bringing a smile to my purple-painted face. Kellogg, along with the other schools with Klout >50, is classified as a Specialist. Specialists have a more focused audience than the "Thought Leader", and it is more consistent of a tweeter. At the same time, Specialists are more "listeners" than "participators", which puts them in the lower-right quadrant, but their opinions are "second to none." This makes sense for business schools to be focused on the specific topic of business.
It's also interesting to see IESE (#3-t) beat its European rivals LBS (#9) and INSEAD (#14) so handily. While IESE's audience is smaller than LBS', Klout scores show that its tweets are acted upon more frequently and by a more influential network than both. If you've got many interesting things to say, on the Internet it doesn't matter who says it.
Klout's lower-left classification of "Explorer" is a nice way of saying "try harder" to Sloan, LBS, Darden, and INSEAD. It's also surprising to see Chicago Booth down in that quadrant. (My twitter falls into this category too.) Is it just my imagination, or do these schools seem to have a less sociable reputation that is reflected in their influence?
Tuck stands out as the only "Feeder" (upper left quadrant), meaning that they aren't creating new content but instead passing along interesting content to an interested (but not diverse) audience. My suggestion to Tuck marketing folks: post more groundbreaking research on business topics.
Stern, your marketing team should really be using the freely available tools to set quantitative goals.
Probably the most shameful ranking is that of INSEAD. It has a large number of followers and it is influenced by HarvardBiz, but it is still just an "Explorer" at the bottom of the ranking. Apparently, its tweets are not that interesting, nor is its audience highly influential online.
Klout analyses the "Influencer of" and "Influenced by" elements and there are some interesting data points there:
Klout is the gold standard Twitter ranking system that looks at 25 variables in three categories (size of the engaged audience, audience influence level, whether content spurs action) and boils them down into a single Klout score. It also provides a classification for the style of influence that is similar to a personality test, but also like a Gartner Magic Quadrant (upper left means casually sharing a lot, lower right means creating a lot to a focused audience, upper right is Celebrity: both creating and sharing to a broad audience).
Without further ado, the results: (rankings/classifications as of March 5, scores change daily)
| Rank | School | Score | Classification |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wharton | Thought Leader | |
| 2 | Kellogg | Specialist | |
| 3 | HBS | Specialist | |
| 3 | IESE | Specialist | |
| 5 | Stanford GSB | Specialist | |
| 5 | Berkeley/Haas | Specialist | |
| 7 | Columbia GSB | Thought Leader | |
| 8 | MIT/Sloan | Explorer | |
| 9 | Fuqua | Specialist | |
| 9 | LBS | Explorer | |
| 11 | Darden | Specialist | |
| 12 | Tuck | Feeder | |
| 13 | Chicago Booth | Explorer | |
| 14 | INSEAD | Explorer | |
| 15 | Stern | Not on Klout | |
| One special mention... | |||
| Harvard Business Review | Taste Maker | ||
Wharton is on top and stands out as one of two "Thought Leaders" on the b-school list. The "Thought Leader" classification is in the upper-right quadrant of the Classification, meaning that it has a broad audience, it participates, it is consistent, and gives opinion on content. If Wharton's influence is broad rather than specialized, it's interesting that it doesn't fall into "Taste Marker" (more thought leadership) or "Pundit" (more opinionated) categories.
Kellogg beats out Harvard Business School for the #2 spot, bringing a smile to my purple-painted face. Kellogg, along with the other schools with Klout >50, is classified as a Specialist. Specialists have a more focused audience than the "Thought Leader", and it is more consistent of a tweeter. At the same time, Specialists are more "listeners" than "participators", which puts them in the lower-right quadrant, but their opinions are "second to none." This makes sense for business schools to be focused on the specific topic of business.
It's also interesting to see IESE (#3-t) beat its European rivals LBS (#9) and INSEAD (#14) so handily. While IESE's audience is smaller than LBS', Klout scores show that its tweets are acted upon more frequently and by a more influential network than both. If you've got many interesting things to say, on the Internet it doesn't matter who says it.
Klout's lower-left classification of "Explorer" is a nice way of saying "try harder" to Sloan, LBS, Darden, and INSEAD. It's also surprising to see Chicago Booth down in that quadrant. (My twitter falls into this category too.) Is it just my imagination, or do these schools seem to have a less sociable reputation that is reflected in their influence?
Tuck stands out as the only "Feeder" (upper left quadrant), meaning that they aren't creating new content but instead passing along interesting content to an interested (but not diverse) audience. My suggestion to Tuck marketing folks: post more groundbreaking research on business topics.
Stern, your marketing team should really be using the freely available tools to set quantitative goals.
Probably the most shameful ranking is that of INSEAD. It has a large number of followers and it is influenced by HarvardBiz, but it is still just an "Explorer" at the bottom of the ranking. Apparently, its tweets are not that interesting, nor is its audience highly influential online.
Klout analyses the "Influencer of" and "Influenced by" elements and there are some interesting data points there:
- Stanford shows a strong news relationship because it is influenced by The Huffington Post and Breaking News, and it influences AP and The Economist Business Education.
- Haas is influenced by relatively low Kout scorers (<40), whereas most schools have influencers of Klout >80. This could be an indicator of a less Klout-y network, but also of different thinking.
- Sloan's influencers are, frankly, boring: Barack Obama, TechCrunch, Mashable, NY Times, and Twitter -- twitter users that have huge, broad followings. But it is reassuring to see the technology streak of MIT reflected there.
- Darden and Columbia are influencers of each other, which I can't explain. Perhaps the east-coast connection? Perhaps due to Columbia's "Thought Leader" category?
