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Business school is a silly exercise?
Deepak Chopra, left, a holistic health expert and author, speaks to students during a three-day course at Columbia Business School. PHOTO: CLAUDIO PAPAPIETRO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In a classroom at Columbia Business School on a recent afternoon, roughly 65 students sat in silent meditation, eyes closed, their smartphones and laptops stashed out of sight.
At the front of the class, Deepak Chopra encouraged them to direct their analytical skills inward.
“Bring your awareness into your heart,” he instructed. “Ask, ‘who am I?’ ”
Intro to Accounting, it was not. Mr. Chopra’s course, Just Capital & Cause-Driven Marketing, invokes Hindu goddesses, features a band of urban yogis and asks students to diagram their “soul profile.” With guest lectures from chief executives and storytelling exercises, the three-day seminar aims to teach M.B.A.s how to design and market ventures that both make money and do good somehow.
Making money is something that Mr. Chopra, an author of 84 books who is worth an estimated $80 million, knows something about. The affable spiritual guide to Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga and Arianna Huffington, among others, believes that capitalism can be a vehicle for good.
Companies like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley have invited him to teach employees about mindfulness or counsel executives and clients on using meditation to become better leaders. Mr. Chopra charges a speaking fee of at least $75,000—though he sometimes lectures for free—and was paid about $9,000 at Columbia for the recent course. He claims to have never looked at a bank statement. (His wife and his accountant attend to those details, he said.)
In the classroom, Mr. Chopra—dressed in acid-wash jeans, sparkly eyeglasses and a looping, crimson scarf that unraveled as he spoke—favors acronyms, PowerPoint decks with rainbow font and phrases like “slip into your inner being.”
Co-taught with entrepreneur Sharad Devarajan, the recent class focused on a success story: JUST Capital, a nonprofit index of corporate behavior backed by billionaire philanthropist Paul Tudor Jones that launched last year. The idea for the index was suggested by a student during a class in 2013 and for Mr. Chopra demonstrates that profit and purpose can coexist.
“My hope is that these kids can create businesses that can satisfy both needs—satisfy the activist investor, give you a good bang for your buck, a good return—and yet be cause-driven,” Mr. Chopra said in an interview. He is on the board of JUST Capital.
Now in its fifth year, the annual three-day course in January is among a number of socially minded courses and seminars appearing in the catalogs of business schools world-wide. The offerings are in response to growing demand from applicants interested in social causes, said Laura Freedman, lead M.B.A. admissions consultant at Access Education. Mr. Chopra also teaches a course on leadership at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, for executives.
Yet Mr. Chopra’s celebrity is the lure for many students—plus the chance to encounter famous friends like Mr. Tudor Jones and Lauren Bush Lauren, the presidential niece and chief of nonprofit FEED Projects. The course has a substantial waitlist each year, according to Columbia.
“Deepak has this sage aura to him, and I thought I could absorb some of that,” said Andrew Asnes, an executive M.B.A. student who took the course this year.
Mr. Chopra often ventured out of the realm of business and into the personal during a recent class. He drew a triangle on the blackboard with a circle inscribed in the center to illustrate the elements of a meaningful life, labeling the points of the triangle “health,” “wealth” and “love,” and the central circle, “purpose.” Students dutifully copied down the diagram.
During a session on storytelling, he invited students to come to the front of the class to recount a defining moment in their lives—for Mr. Asnes, a former dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company, it was his big break, when he took the stage as an understudy for an injured dancer.
Accounting or statistics can be gleaned from a textbook, but “being able to challenge yourself from a personal-growth perspective is much harder to do on your own,” said Gabby Slome, an M.B.A. and entrepreneur.
Mr. Chopra (who is 69 “but biologically 35”) shared that he meditates two hours daily and rarely knows his schedule more than a day or two in advance—a way, he says, to reduce anxiety and stay present. For students at the start of their careers and without Mr. Chopra’s staff to handle logistics, the message was somewhat vexing.
“How can we accomplish that at this stage?” said the 29-year-old Ms. Slome.
He also advised students to ditch the “old school” model of philanthropy—amassing wealth first, then giving back, in the style of Bill Gates or Mr. Tudor Jones—and bake social cause into their enterprises from the outset. He cites snack maker KIND LLC and eyeglasses retailer Warby Parker as examples of social enterprises that haven’t sacrificed purpose for profit.
A good number of Columbia M.B.A.s will likely follow the “old school” model, at least out of school. About 37% of last year’s class landed jobs in financial services, though more students arrive at the school with an interest in bringing “social well being into the DNA of their business organizations,” said Michael Malone, associate dean for M.B.A. and executive M.B.A. programs.
The class culminated with teams of students pitching their startup ideas, which ranged from an all-natural pet food to a low-cost computer for use in schools. Afterward, students lined up to pose for photos with Mr. Chopra.
“I would love to follow him around,” said Ms. Slome, who works full-time on her own venture and recently started meditating. “I’d love to be a fly on the wall of his life for a couple days.”
Write to Lindsay Gellman at Lindsay.Gellman@wsj.com
