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(Matt's story published on Economist.com, March 2010)

Followers of English football obsess about the problem of the so-called “big four” clubs. For the past two decades Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool have all but monopolised the main domestic trophies and qualification into the lucrative Champions League. Perpetual success has given them the financial clout to hoover up talent from any club aspiring to join the clique, leading many to decry English football as a closed shop.

Now European business schools are beginning to get jittery about their own “big two”. Despite signs that the hitherto inexorable growth in MBA applications is beginning to slow, this year the two biggest names in the European market have made significant increases in the size of their student intake. One, London Business School, admitted 400 students to its latest full-time MBA programme, a rise of more than 25% on the previous year. The other, INSEAD, which has campuses in France and Singapore, is increasing its intake to 980 students—up from 937 last year. Insiders have suggested that the school might eventually aim for a figure of around 1,200, although the school itself maintains it is unlikely to go above 1,000.

At whose expense are they expanding? What appears to be happening is that, as the job market for MBAs remains tough, more students are turning to schools with a worldwide reputation. Thus it seems to be the schools one rung down—those hoping one day to join the global elite—which are eyeing application numbers nervously, worried about the impact that huge classes at LBS and INSEAD will have on their already pressured programmes. Few schools will talk openly about such concerns, but privately some admit to being fearful of becoming business education’s version of Portsmouth FC, the first club in England’s Premier League to be forced into administration.

Not everyone is panicking yet, however. A few ambitious schools remain bullish about their application numbers. So what are they doing to counter the drift towards the “safe” brands? There is no single answer; each has found its own way of standing apart from the crowd.

Vlerick Leuven Gent, in Belgium, for example, puts faith in its roots in industry, which give it access to a wider range of possible recruiters than those establishment schools that have largely become conveyor belts to investment banks or consultancies. ESADE, a Spanish school, trumpets a flexible MBA, which allows students to study for 12, 15 or 18 months. EMLYON in France, meanwhile, relies on a focus on entrepreneurialism that gives graduates the possibility of opting out of the job hunt altogether. And the University of Cambridge’s Judge school has the allure of the Cambridge name and its 800-year history.

If there is one unifying factor among these schools it is that they have succeeded in communicating what sets them apart. The lesson seems to be that a school without a mega-brand needs to think hard about its target market and how to appeal to it. In other words, market segmentation, targeting and communication—the elements of a basic marketing class, in fact. And if a business school cannot put that into action for itself, perhaps it should not be trying to teach it to anyone else.