The associate dean of one of Europe’s top schools, HEC Paris, Bernard Garrette, describes students as falling into two distinct career categories – ”hunters” and “explorers.”

The hunters have things fully mapped before they arrive on campus, single-mindedly pursuing a career in investment banking or strategy consulting. They are quick to network in their chosen field, arrange interviews with target firms for their internships or field work, and use the MBA to build the knowledge and competence that will serve them straight out of school.

The explorers on the other hand have enough self-awareness to recognize their talents and potential, but are using the business school experience to consider various career paths, imagine entrepreneurial pursuits, and try their hand at a wide range of classes and activities.

With a 16-month program, Garrette estimates that HEC Paris has more explorers than hunters, and gives the example of Minneapolis-based graduate Katherine Ainsworth, who prior to her MBA in Paris was working in ad sales at the Hollywood Reporter. Tired of the corporate ladder, and keen to embrace a different culture, Ainsworth used her studies to develop a jewelry business that now, two years after she finished school, attracts a global client base. Along the way she picked up a financial toolbox, used input from fellow students to develop new communication channels, and got the inside story on luxury brand management direct from the chief executive officer of Givenchy, part of the LVMH group.

Ainsworth has come away from the MBA experience doing the job she dreamed might be possible, though perhaps not the job she expected to do. A poster child for the explorers.

So my message this week goes out to the hunters. Business school has the power to completely transform the career expectations of individuals, even those who thought they knew exactly what they wanted to do. Hunting for a job at McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, or Google is an understandable goal, but the MBA is a golden opportunity to explore other options, and to learn if your calling lies elsewhere. And, in increasingly unpredictable job markets, even if you are set on a particular discipline or sector, having a Plan B is a good idea.

Perhaps one of the best things you can take with you to business school is an open mind.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with product diversification. Where would Apple’s (AAPL) share price be if the company had not moved into the phone business? And hindsight will be 20-20 to evaluate Google’s (GOOG)move into eyewear with Google Glass. As for specialization, the music industry could use all the business help it can get to compete with illegal downloads and dwindling revenue.

But wasn’t the MBA intended as a generalist business degree, whether for someone looking to switch jobs or move further ahead in their current career? The dazzling array of electives available to students in the latter part of the program meant that there were always plenty of opportunities to focus on finance, marketing, or operations management—traditional business skills applicable to almost any industry.

As Jackie Wilbur, executive director of master’s programs at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, points out in a Bloomberg Businessweek article, “The specialized program is great, as long as everyone is clear what the career trajectory is.” If your heart is set on working in luxury goods, real estate, or energy management, the specialized business degree could be the perfect springboard, despite the latent risk of finding yourself pigeonholed when an industry downturn forces you to look outside your chosen sector.

But maybe the future of specialization lies with pre-experience master’s programs for recent college graduates rather than with the MBA itself. The 2012 Applications Trends Survey by the Graduate Management Admission Council reports that the majority of such programs have enjoyed their fifth straight year of robust growth, with more than three-quarters of applicants considerably younger than their MBA counterparts. A discussion with Patrice Houdayer, vice president of graduate programs at France’s EM Lyon Business School, helped to explain some of the appeal, for both students and recruiters alike.

The school offers specialized master’s degrees in areas such as sports and outdoor industry management, and luxury management and marketing. “Companies that operate within these highly competitive, international environments need managers who can adapt their knowledge to the particular nuances of their markets,” Houdayer says. “The expansion of the leisure and luxury sectors into Asia challenges their core brand strategies, whether that’s for a hotel chain, a fashion house, or a manufacturer of sports gear. So recruiters are looking for talented graduates who have worked or studied in different regions of the world to help them better understand customer expectations and cultural norms.”

In the case of the sports and outdoor industry, the school has partnered with leading brands such as Salomon, North Face (VFC), and Rip Curl to design the course. Students learn the fundamentals of management at E.M. Lyon, then move to the French Alps for five months of specialization and internships (and presumably a little bit of skiing or rock climbing for good measure) before completing the course at the school’s Shanghai campus. The MSc in Luxury Management follows a similar structure, partnering with the likes of Cartier (CFR), LVMH (MC), and Jaeger Le Coultre. Recent students worked with Hermès (RMS) on the strategy to bring its Chinese luxury brand Shang Xia back to Europe.

I have to admit the whole thing would have sounded very tempting when I was coming out of college, though if we go that far back, Chairman Mao would have still been running China, and Sir Edmund Hillary was conquering Everest in old army gear, let alone Gore-Tex! That business schools and recruiters collaborate together makes a lot of sense to me, and developing highly relevant course content and an enviable industry network sounds very attractive for today’s job market.

And there’s one other potential benefit of the specialized master’s for companies looking to build their pipeline of talent. More than half (52 percent) of applicants to master’s programs are women. Maybe they can follow the lead of Lady Gaga and Beyoncé to turn the music industry around.

But as with fashion, times change. LVMH and rival luxury and retail group PPR are now considered among the most attractive employers for MBA graduates, as they increasingly look for more hands-on alternatives to jobs in finance and consulting. With fashion houses expanding into lucrative markets in Asia and Latin America, and building an online presence that requires fresh thinking to market their brands, business schools are reporting a marked increase in fashion and retail jobs.

So how can a business education help make sense of a sector whose seasonal collections typically lose money, and a workforce of models who are high maintenance at best? At Courrèges, the French fashion house whose futuristic collections of the early 60s sent shockwaves through the industry, new owners Jacques Bungert and Frédéric Torloting are applying some of the lessons learned at business school to rethink the way to profitability and market share. They studied together at the entrepreneurially minded EM Lyon, and spent several years running their own video production company before sharing the top job at the French office of advertising agency Young and Rubicam.

“The time at EM Lyon gave us a rigorous background in business thinking and managerial know-how that has served us well to run our own business,” they say. “You build the confidence to look at challenges as a source of opportunity, rather than as a stumbling block.” In the case of Courrèges, the pair are looking to revitalise a brand that was the talk of the town when it introduced the mini-skirt to haute couture in 1964 (though supporters of Mary Quant would argue otherwise).

Gone are the expensive spring and autumn fashion shows and big-name designers, and in their place an emphasis on timeless designs from a creative team. They are also focusing resources on the online shopping experience, with followup phone calls and community-building on social media rather than outlets in airports. It appears to be working, with demand from Asia and the launch of a sportswear line for men pushing the company back into the black.

The shift to e-commerce and an ability to measure results on the internet plays well to the analytical side of an MBA education. Though Vivek Agarwal had worked for Citibank on mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas industry, he used his time during the MBA at the IESE Business School in Barcelona to write a business plan for an online start-up to introduce Indian fashion to the UK. His courses ultimately convinced him to focus on the high end of the designer market, and the launch last year of his company, Strand of Silk. “My years in banking combined with the MBA gave me the discipline to evaluate companies, identify where the cash flow was coming from, and really helped with writing the business plan,” he says.

The MBA also gave him credibility when it came to convincing Indian designers to work with him. “It was clear to them that I was not just doing this as a hobby, but had a serious business background to give the venture a real chance of success.” The fact that Agarwal had studied with classmates from more than 50 countries also gave him an insight into how people make buying decisions based on culture and background. “The multicultural learning environment was invaluable, and brought a lot of structure and insight to our marketing approach. The use of the case-study method at business school means that you are constantly sharing perspectives. We are trying to establish a high-end product with an unknown company, so understanding different behaviours is key.”

The loyalty of gentlemen to their Savile Row tailor was initially a barrier to entry for Patrick Grant when he bought Norton & Sons eight years ago. Sitting in the student lounge at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, he had come across an ad in the Businesses for Sale section of the Financial Times. With a long-held passion for craftsmanship and clothing, the former engineer saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to move away from the power and telecoms industry and to revive a struggling bespoke tailor that had been established in 1821 and had made suits for US presidents and European royals.

“When I first visited the shop they were down to one tailor and one part-time cutter. Where previously they were turning out 2,000 suits a year, they were now down to fewer than 100,” he says. With no background in fashion, but buoyed by a background in manufacturing and keen to apply what he’d learned at business school, Grant set about raising money from the bank and restoring the firm to health.

“It didn’t need an MBA to see that the business had lost its focus. Beyond the small amount of tailoring, the firm was also selling guns and offering sporting tours to Africa. I knew we needed to do one thing and do it well, so we went back to hand tailoring. I cherished our small-scale craftsmanship rather than hiding it, and was proud to source everything we did here in Britain.”

Grant sought advice from his professors about writing a coherent business plan and canvassed the opinions of his Executive MBA classmates to better understand his customers. But beyond certain technical skills that have proved useful for managing cash flow and determining company strategy, he feels that his time at business school was the opportunity to spend time thinking rather than just doing. “The MBA was not about teaching you things, but teaching you how to think. Being able to sit down and really think about your business gives you much needed clarity and pays enormous dividends.”

He has also developed a sense of self-belief. “We’ve got a good plan in place, and I’d like to think we’re executing it well. If you don’t have the confidence in yourself you tend to chop and change.” With nine tailors now on board, and exporting to a client base across Europe, North America and Asia, it looks like a new generation of gentlemen agrees.

According to the school, the new MBAs of 2012 are now enjoying median base salaries of $125,000, and three-quarters have also received signing bonuses of $20,000. A fifth of the class also benefits from what is guardedly referred to as “other guaranteed compensation” of more than $25,000. And some new graduates are doing substantially better. One joining a private equity firm, for example, had nailed a base starting salary of $200,000, and all this in a class where the average length of work experience was less than four years.

Nice work if you can get it and, of course, I wish the new batch of Harvard MBAs all the best in their new careers. But in sustaining this idea of top business schools producing a very highly paid elite with relatively little real-world experience, are we not perhaps storing up trouble for the future and an almost inevitable repeat of the economic armageddon of 2009?

The leading academic who is seen as the bête noire of business education in some circles, professor Henry Mintzberg at McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management, certainly seems to think so. Famous (or infamous) for his assertion in the 2004 book Managers Not MBAs that the proliferation of B-school-trained MBAs is “a menace to society,” one of the professor’s main tenets appears to be that Harvard graduates and many of their counterparts from other top schools are simply too short on front-line experience to genuinely benefit from the type of studies they undertake.

Mintzberg has therefore been instrumental in creating what commentator Don Guttenplan, writing in the New York Times, has described as “the anti-MBA.” Instituted in 1996, the International Masters Program in Practical Management, or IMPM, is a 16-month course which runs modules in Canada, Brazil, China, India, and the U.K., and one of its key differentiators from a classic MBA program is its student body. Instead of recruiting candidates in their 20s or early 30s, the IMPM stipulates that you should already have at least a decade’s worth of management experience. The approach is to eschew a focus on the functions of business, such as accounting and marketing, as well as the traditional case study. Instead the program aims to draw on what participants have learned during their decade-plus in the corporate trenches to develop a more reflective and effective management mind-set. Business school, Mintzberg maintains, should be seen as much more than a route to the biggest pay check. “It’s not about getting a better job,” Mintzberg told me. “It’s about doing a better job.”

Creating a generation of business leaders who are more interested in the quality of what they do than how much they are paid to do it is obviously a laudable aim. Given that a Harvard MBA, including all the bells and whistles, currently costs $168,000 (and those at Columbia or Wharton about $10,000 more), however, don’t expect any focus on financial reward to drop off the radar at such schools anytime soon. While money may not buy us happiness, Miss J, it certainly helps to pay off the stomach-churning level of debt that certain graduates will face.

What do successful women have in common? You think I’m going to tell you that they have magical multi-tasking skills, motivational genius, or maybe just a really great spouse. But the number one thing that successful women business leaders have in common is that they don’t let the persistent underrepresentation of women in business deter them from taking a place at the table.

Today, women occupy just 4% of CEO spots at Fortune 500 companies, and fewer than one in five corporate board seats is held by a woman. The pipeline is improving—in recent years, the percentage of MBA students who are female finally broke a third, and 2 schools – Harvard and Wharton – are close to achieving gender parity. But we still have a long way to go.

As the scientist and inventor Robert Jarvik once said, “Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them.” Our conversations with C-level executives at companies all over the world have suggested a few other traits that distinguish today’s top women in business:

1.    Know thyself. Trite? Maybe. True? Always. From finding the right initial career opportunity to identifying ways to continuously improve your performance, women leaders tell us that insight and self-knowledge are key. Not sure how to cultivate self-awareness? A Cosmo quiz or today’s horoscope won’t get you where you want to go; find a mentor, and learn to ask for and accept honest feedback.

 2.    Don’t be afraid to take a career off-ramp, but know where the on-ramp is, too. Successful women business leaders have often figured out how to make the puzzle pieces of life fit together. Childbearing and child rearing affect women more than men and the reality is that becoming a parent can interrupt a career. But today, when we have the first pregnant CEO of a Fortune 500 company to look up to (Marissa Mayer at Yahoo!), working moms (and dads!) no longer have to pretend that work is their only priority in life.  Find out in advance what your employer is willing to do to make it work for you, and know how to get off, and back on, the career superhighway.

 3.    Get help. It’s not fashionable to admit it, but getting the help you need, whether that’s a full-time nanny or just someone to clean your apartment can save your sanity (“We don’t judge; we just clean” advertises one firm on thumbtack.com, a local service provider site that can be a career girl’s best friend). One senior executive in the financial sector recently admitted to us that for years, she didn’t net a penny from her full-time job because all her earnings went to childcare—but she estimated that, over the course of a 30-year career, those zero-sum years have paid off exponentially by keeping her career on track.

 4.    Culture trumps strategy. Again and again, we hear from top executives that building a successful career depends on finding the right fit, and that means finding a culture that works for you. The job title, job description, and even the salary can take a back seat to the kind of opportunity that unfolds when you join an organization that matches your values and your passions. Go with your gut.

 5.    Don’t wait to be tapped on the shoulder. This is your career we’re talking about, not a junior high school dance. Research shows over and over again that, too often, women wait to be recognized rather than being proactive in seeking out recognition for their accomplishments. Successful women in business find appropriate ways to summarize their achievements and take credit for their performance.

6.    Build a network, just don’t call it that. All of the senior leaders we talk to emphasize this point: your network is everything, in terms of long-term career development. The term “networking” smacks of good ol’ boys and smoky backrooms, but as diversity in business improves, “networking” is no longer a dirty word. It just means building relationships with colleagues with whom you have something in common—giving, as well as asking for, input and advice from a community of colleagues you cultivate over time.

7.    Learn to negotiate. Susan Fleming Cabrera, a friend of Forté and researcher at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell, has found that women simply do not negotiate as often or as effectively as men, due to a complex mix of socialization, stereotypes, and bias. Top women business leaders know better than to leave something on the table. They also know that negotiation skills show up in your paycheck: Cabrera cites research demonstrating that only 7% of MBA women asked for more money during salary negotiations, while 57% of men asked the same. The result of that disparity? Starting salaries of the male MBA grads were 7.6% higher.

8.    Don’t plan ahead. Successful executives advise over and over that the best career moves they ever made were the ones they could never have foreseen. What does that mean? Stay nimble, have flexible expectations, and don’t try to map your life decades in advance only to find that you’ve foreclosed opportunity.

9.    Get an MBA.  Many successful executives say that the MBA was a game changer for them.  They gained skills and a network that put them on an entirely different track.  As one recent MBA put it “In just 2 years, I got the credentials, confidence and respect that I might have never received just staying in my job. Now, with my MBA, I’m off to the races.”

10. Here’s a bonus: Men might take note, not one single tip gleaned from top women in business above applies exclusively to women. What’s good for the bottle is good for the can. In other words, when the workplace is truly free of the gender stereotypes that negatively impact career satisfaction, then we will truly have evolved in the direction of equality.

***

If you are interested in getting an MBA, you can attend a Forté Forum in your city.  These events, held across the country provide an intimate and informal opportunity to connect with admissions representatives from top North American and EU business schools, get terrific advice, and ask all your questions about the MBA admissions process.

For more details, click here.

Although Olympic medalists often seem more interested in getting in front of TV cameras than in front of business school professors, a number of high-profile winners have seen the wisdom of making the move from the podium to the classroom. Basketball gold, Shaquille O’Neal, for example, followed up his success with an MBA from the University of Phoenix. Silver medal fencer, Keeth Smart, also took the MBA route, this time at Columbia Business School, to build a career in banking. In Canada, the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University is currently home to the country’s gold medal skier, Jennifer Heil. And in the U.K., silver medal-winning runner Kriss Akabusi has just signed up to take an Executive MBA at Ashridge Business School this fall.

While successful athletes aren’t exactly a dime a dozen on business school campuses, many of the leading thinkers in sport and athletics appear to believe some form of organized transition from the stadium to the world of business might be more than just a good idea. “Most spend their lives immersed in what’s going to happen in the immediate future, that all-important next game or event,” says Damian Hopley, who runs one of the U.K.’s top sporting groups, the Rugby Players Association. “But eventually, even for the greatest, the cycle is going to come to an end. And while they all seem to want to go on to coaching or some sort of commentary role in the media, there are simply not enough roles of these types to go round.”

The challenge, of course is how you go from being top of the world to, well, just another student and potentially surrounded by people who know much more about business and how to execute it than you do.

“It’s certainly very challenging to go right back to the beginning after achieving so much in sport, almost back to childhood, which was the last time I was learning completely new skills,” says Desautels’ Heil. “All the time I was skiing I had a very narrow focus—to be the best in the world and with just 30 seconds to achieve it. But now I’ve got the opportunity to step back, explore new things, and figure out where I want to go next. And that’s a lot of fun.”

But if, like me, your best time for running around the track would place you squarely at the back of the village sports day field (or in the case a downhill ski run, squarely on my backside), the Olympics provides another inspiration for substituting case studies for circuit training. The unsung heroes of the Games are all those behind-the-scenes coaches who combine many of the skills that business schools look to develop in their students—people management skills to identify and motivate talent, financial skills to handle budgets, marketing and negotiation skills for sponsorship deals, and data analysis to assess performance and analyze the competition.

So perhaps we should also be looking for inspiration from the people who got the star athletes to the pinnacle of sport in the first place. Bolt’s agent, Ricky Simms, for example, might have spent his formative years as a promising 800- and 1,500-meter runner, but he can hardly have regretted his decision to go back to school and then set up the sports management company, PACE, which handles not only Bolt but also the 10,000-meter gold medal winner Mo Farah. And Dave Brailsford, the man behind the U.K.’s Bradley Wiggins, Chris Hoy, Laura Trott, and the rest of the most successful Olympic cycling team in modern history, has those magical three letters, MBA, after his name.

Swifter, higher, stronger? Try smarter, sharper, richer.

Back in 2001 when Steve Jobs led a group of journalists into the first Apple store, in a Virginia shopping mall, analysts were quick to predict the failure of this move toward what looked like conventional retail. They argued that sales made per square foot by a cheerful but nonaggressive sales team would disappoint.

Ron Johnson and Millard Drexler, with their MBAs from Harvard Business School and Boston University, respectively, were champions of the glass staircase, bean bag, and Genius Bar shopping experience that has allowed Apple to more than prove its critics wrong. The company now ranks first among U.S. retailers in terms of sales per unit area, with 2011 revenue of $473,000 for each of those cheerful employees.

According to a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers last year, retail is behind 1 in every 4 jobs in the U.S. But for every Apple success story, there are countless other businesses that are being driven to the wall. Best Buy and Barnes & Noble are among the many examples of chain stores that are hemorrhaging market share to online retailers, and the most optimistic five-year forecast is for flat revenues and declining margins.

Some might therefore ask why Amazon.com, the root cause of much of the pain felt in shopping malls across the country, is looking to open its first retail store in Seattle in the coming months. But as Apple has demonstrated, every industry goes through a period of rebirth, and retail is a classic example in the early 21st century.

So perhaps with jobs in retail now offering a wide range of opportunities for graduating MBAs to make their mark, it is no surprise that companies like these, as well as Nike, Target, and Gap, are among the most sought-after employers for U.S. B-school students.

“There is a prominent role in retail for general managers and entrepreneurs who can be both creative and analytical,” explains Matt Kaness, a 2002 Darden MBA and executive director at Urban Outfitters. “The trend toward e-commerce is the enabler, and the use of technology to analyze so much data fits neatly with an MBA training and skill set.”

Kaness also thinks the case study method that features so prominently at Darden was the building block for the position he now enjoys. “My MBA propelled me to have the career that I have. The focus on team-based learning through rigorous case study was very helpful for being both entrepreneurial and pragmatic. I still draw on that muscle memory.”

Whatever is happening in general retail, there is no doubt that one area in particular, the luxury sector, seems to thrive despite any economic downturn. Tiffany, for example, second only to Apple in terms of sales per unit area in the U.S., shows that you can charge a fortune for breakfast, provided you throw in a few shiny gems as well. Consequently, MBAs are queuing up to join major brands like LVMH, Prada, and Porsche.

Of course, working in the luxury sector is not an easy option and certainly not simply a case of using the lessons you learned in Marketing 101. Professor Jean-Noël Kapferer, who teaches courses in the luxury major offered as part of the executive MBA program at HEC Paris, and is the author of industry bible Luxury Strategy, explains that defining a luxury strategy requires more than opening the door for clients as they enter a store. “Luxury is a serious sector with its own rules and its own managerial principles. There are many things to unlearn, because classic marketing doesn’t work in luxury. You can kill a brand, like Ford killed Jaguar.”

Despite all the Cassandras keen to consign the retail sector to the scrap heap, it is not dying—it’s developing, potentially into something more exciting and innovative than we’ve seen before. What business schools like HEC Paris, Darden, and others have the potential to deliver is a package of skills in finance, marketing, HR, and technology—the four props of every successful retail venture—that increasingly makes retail a natural fit for ambitious MBA graduates.

“The trend for the recently graduated class is extremely positive”, reports Katja Boytler, associate director of career services at Fontainebleau and Singapore-based INSEAD. “We’ve had a very successful on-campus recruitment campaign, continuing the turnaround that began in 2010.” In addition to record job placement and an overall mean salary of €87,400 (14% higher than the year before), the school also saw emerging markets continue to grow their stake in the MBA employment market. Boytler says 25% of its graduates ended up in one of 13 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, “while in Latin America, Brazil’s appetite for talent seemed insatiable”.

At the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai, 94.2% of the graduating class had a job within three months of graduation, which for Yvonne Li, MBA director of admissions and career services, reflects the country’s economic growth. “We have a huge demand for talent, so most of our students stay here. Last year we received 1,589 job offers for our 184 graduates, and because of the diversity of their backgrounds, they have career opportunities in a wide range of industries.”

The jobs market of 2012 looks like being a very different animal to its counterpart before the financial crisis. While the consulting industry is looking as strong as ever, the other traditional MBA career path – towards financial services – is under great strain. But since banks in Western economies have put the brakes on their hiring, business school students have been relieved to see a much wider range of opportunities on offer in technology and new media, energy, manufacturing, consumer and luxury goods.

“A fog has descended across Wall Street,” explains Jack Oakes, assistant dean for career development at the University of Virginia’s Darden School, “so it is great to see industrial firms like Boeing and 3M raising their game and increasing their MBA hiring, as well as hi-tech firms like Facebook and Amazon.” Oakes acknowledges that plenty of students will still look to land a job in financial services, particularly when the markets bounce back. “But banks will face stiffer competition for top talent from industry, who are doing a much better job of marketing themselves.”

Even though the overall jobs outlook is improving, business schools still point out that it is a tough and competitive market. “The key thing for students to remember is that they really need to have the right mindset when they go about their job search,” says Marieke Steffens, director of careers at Nyenrode Business University in the Netherlands. “They need to be focused and know exactly who they are and what they are offering employers.”

This view is shared by INSEAD’s Boytler. “Self-awareness, flexibility and perseverance are key, particularly for career changers, because companies tend to place safer bets on previous experience or market knowledge,” she says. “If you are intent on changing function, location and sector of activity, you will have to cope with a lot of change. So we ask our students to think hard more about what will be the first stepping stone.”

For those who really want to embrace change, and mindful of the competitive recruitment landscape, an increasing number of MBAs are looking at entepreneurial options after business school. “We are seeing more Nyenrode graduates being hired by start-ups in new economies such as the mobile apps business,” says Steffens, “or they are starting their own businesses, often through our business incubator.”

To help students in their job searches, business schools are devoting more resources to personal development skills, providing advice on companies that are hiring (and how they are hiring), encouraging the more effective use of social media tools and organising career treks to Silicon Valley and the recruitment hotspots of Latin America, the Gulf states and Asia. “We used to tell people to go west in search of opportunity”, says Oakes. “But today we add that they shouldn’t stop in California.”