At first glance, Bob Bruner might appear to be a traditional US business school dean. He is smartly dressed, bespectacled and affable, with degrees from Harvard and Yale under his belt. He has a penchant for research into corporate finance, with around 300 case studies to his name. He is also dean of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, where the neoclassical Jeffersonian-style buildings mean this is perhaps the only business school in the world where students can congregate under cut-glass chandeliers and beside Chippendale balustrades. But it only takes a short conve...