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ESADE Business School’s alliance with Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business

For today’s manager or entrepreneur being international is not enough, the challenge lies in being global, understanding each region’s socio-economic situation and how they interrelate. ESADE’s Director General, Eugenia Bieto, appointed in September last year, highlighted the move from International to Global as the school’s key strategy under her mandate. She noted that intensification of activities in the US, Brazil and India was key to this move.  The alliance with Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business will become the cornerstone of ESADE’s activities in the US.

Highly attuned to developing successful managers, the agreement brings together two world-class institutions. Eugenia Bieto said, “We have achieved a strategic alliance with a high level of complementarity between the institutions, allowing us to combine Georgetown’s global, interdisciplinary training with ESADE’s entrepreneurial spirit and expertise in social innovation, meeting the needs of international managers of today and tomorrow.”

The two schools, along with Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, have been running the Georgetown-ESADE Global Executive MBA for the last three years. They now have strengthened their ties and will continue train managers with new international programs that will offer similar global content and formats. They also will share best practices in the areas of international training, strategy, and research.

The Global Management Research Initiative Center

As one of the first steps of the new alliance, ESADE and Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business jointly will create the Global Management Research Initiative Center (GMRI). This center will synthesise new knowledge in the areas of globalisation and the role of the company in international development, particularly focusing on new the business models emerging around the world.

Alfons Sauquet, Dean of ESADE Business School, assures us that faced with a return to economic growth through an increasingly global economy, “it is imperative for managers to understand the different voices that influence global change in order to make the right strategic decisions. To achieve this it is vital to understand the context we are moving in and know how different markets react depending on the part of the world they are in.”

The GMRI will become a shared research center including professors from ESADE and from Georgetown, who together will try to better the understanding of the challenges faced by global companies. The center will be headed up by ESADE’s Associate Director General and Business Policy Professor, Xavier Mendoza, expert in business internationalization strategies.

Exchange of Best Practices

One of the many opportunities afforded by this new alliance is the sharing of best practices in management education. This point is particularly crucial, according to ESADE’s Dean Sauquet, in the areas of International Relations and Geopolitics, which are highly valued by participants and often overlooked by business schools. With Georgetown’s world renowned Walsh School of Foreign Service and ESADE’s increased focus on these areas, with the appointment of Javier Solana and creation of the ESADE Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics last year, the schools are in a unique position to develop best practices in this aspect of business education.

Another area of increased collaboration will be in the exchange of students and professors between the two institutions. The agreement also covers the appointment of McDonough School of Business’s Dean, George Daly, to ESADE’s International Advisory Board. A committee comprising leaders of key multinationals and respected academics from around the world who advise ESADE on its international competitive strategy and debate the most important strategic options to be faced by the organization.

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