Jay Light, the dean of Harvard Business School, is calling for business school education to swing back toward the center: “We lived through an enormous extended period of financial good times, and people became less focused on risks and risk management and more focused on making money.”

Christoph Bangert for The New York Times

We needed better risk management over the last 5 years, but now that we’re on the downside of the cycle the need for innovation and risk-taking is at a premium. It’s time to grow new businesses and new products not preserve a diluted balance sheet.

Daniel Gross noted today in Slate.com that the “zeitgeist has spun 180 degrees” and adds: “For the economy to recover and thrive… business must once again be willing to roll the dice.” 

Some of the greatest entrepreneurial ventures have been founded in recessionary economies. As Wired Magazine put it in December 2008, “When the economy is in turmoil, the time is ripe for ambitious innovation.”

FG Ghadar and Al Vicere will have much to say on these topics in the next few months.