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ESADE Moves up 3 places in the Economist MBA Ranking

Consolidating its place in the top 20, ESADE’s MBA has been ranked 17^th in the world and 5^th in Europe by the Economist today. Based on information given by the school and on alumni surveys, the ranking analyses different aspects of the MBA programme such as career progression, educational experience (faculty, diversity, peer group, etc), potential to network and salary increase. ESADE was ranked in the top ten for jobs found through the careers service, student diversity and increase in salary.

The school starts working on MBA students’ career development paths from their very first day on campus, with much of the MBA induction week involving giving students the tools to decide where they want to be post MBA and help them get there. Twice a year ESADE holds on-campus career fairs, such as the MBA Career Forum to be held later this month where companies a diverse array of sectors come searching for ESADE’s top MBA talent.

ESADE has also been looking at new ways to get the best career opportunities for students, working closely with them, not just on an individual basis, but with the student clubs and other initiatives. One such initiative is the student-organised Innovation Summit, where companies will challenge MBA’s to brainstorm and ideate solutions for their real-life business issues, as well as presenting some of the biggest issues around innovation in their sectors.

ESADE’s flexible 12, 15 or 18-month full-time MBA draws participants from 56 different countries, 81% of whom are from outside of Spain, who together speak 20 different languages and have an average of 5.6 years of work experience. The school has seen an increase in applications since the launch of the new format two years ago, in part due to the attractiveness of flexible format in uncertain times.

Gloria Batllori, Executive Director of the ESADE MBA said, “We are delighted to have moved up the Economist ranking again this year, it reflects some of the hard work of the team in meeting the needs of participants and recruiters, in addition to our highly proactive approach to career services.”

You can find the full ranking information here: http://www.economist.com/whichmba/full-time-mba-ranking

ESADE MBA’s hold expert panel on the future of mobile technology

The increasingly complex world of mobile technology has been steadily moving away from a way to simply make a phone call when you’re way from home towards a web 2.0 platform with an infinite number of applications and functions. This convergence has lead business of many different types becoming key players in the sector, making it one of the most difficult to get to grips with.

ESADE MBA students keen to take advantage of telecoms experts visiting Barcelona for the Mobile World conference took the initiative to organize a panel on the future of mobile technology with four experts in different fields of mobile technology. Gordon Rawling, Senior Director Regional Marketing at Oracle, an infrastructure provider to the mobile industry; Branden Claisse, Director of Business Development and Media Sales at Mojiva, Inc. a mobile media network for advertisers and publishers; Hassan Kabbani, CEO at Mobinil, an Egyptian mobile operator; and Hamilton Sekino, Partner at Nauta Capital, an investor in wireless space entrepreneurs, made up the panel. With each of the guests representing a different area of mobile technology and a different country, it made for an interesting overview of the sector.

Moderated by ESADE professor Jonathan Wareham, the informal panel got straight on to grappling with the somewhat illusive future of mobile technology. Each of the panelists agreed that there is a great need to develop new business models, particularly so that as Rawling put it “money goes to actual service providers, not over-the-top providers.” Kabbani further developed this advocating a need to “protect the ecosystem and get money to all those contributing to the value chain, making investment in infrastructure worthwhile for the operators, thus ensuring the service is available for all.”

This is particularly important when it comes to the issue of guaranteeing that there is sufficient bandwidth to support the increase in users and usage. As Rawling asked, “Why would an operator invest money into infrastructure which other companies will get revenue from?” Nevertheless while the sector mulls over a solution for this, as Sekino noted there are a number of cost-efficient ways operators can make their services more agile: 1) Operators can work to have handsets to automatically offload to Wifi networks where available, 2) they can create a system of prioritization based a) on user value or b) the type of application used. Where these are dynamic and able to adapt to changes in use, they may help operators meet users’ needs for the time being however, investment in infrastructure and innovation will still be needed.

In any event, he panelists highlighted that innovation is essential to move forward in many ways, such as driving down cost, making the most of revenue models and well as developing new uses. Kabbani noted we can no longer talk about a geographical concentration of innovation since interesting technology and ideas are being developed in emerging markets where people are less hindered by expectations and face different realities. As an example of this, Sekino cited M-PESA a mobile payment system launched by Vodafone and Safaricom in Kenya, which changed the lives of many Kenyans who could not afford bank accounts, and has since been rolled out in a number of other countries. Kabbani highlighted that a similar thing has happened in Egypt where despite only 10% of the population holding a bank account, there are already around 60 million credit and credit transfer operations via mobile per month.

The panelists agreed that future volume will come from emerging markets but that for this to work local approaches are required. Clays highlighted that advertising systems like his with global reach but a hyper-local approach will be able to harness the potential of the different markets. While Rawling called for companies to look at what they are trying to sell and where they are trying to sell it, “use the world as a laboratory to find out what people want” he suggested. Services too, need to adapt to the realities of different markets, as Kabbani pointed out, Egyptian customers do not take kindly to discovering their new phone is fully equipped with maps of Europe but offers none of their home country.

In terms of applications and devices, the panel underscored that the proliferation of the I-Phone and Android make it easier for developers to work on aps to meet the many different needs of consumers around the world. As an example of a new use for mobile technology, Sekino discussed the sales force automation technology used by Avon in Brazil to enable their sales girls to place orders, check inventory, etc. via simple mobile devices that each rep can easily afford and in most cases already has. “Mobile technology is really changing people’s lives for the better” he stated. Another example of this is its potential application in healthcare, where technology is being developed enable a Smartphone to read a user’s pulse and blood pressure and send the results straight through to their doctor. Along these lines, Kabbani underscored the need to keep developing services on a local level to keep creating value and make it available to all.

As far as devices themselves are concerned, perhaps unsurprisingly, no-one on the panel wished to speculate on what they might look like in five years time. Rawling noted that we are likely to see a change in the way we interact with devices, they will soon know where we are and be able to offer us value-added services based on this information, he suggested. While Kabbani noted that we are likely to see a proliferation in the different types of devices which connected to mobile networks. He cited the example of a 3G enabled picture frame to which a loving son, for example, could send a picture taken on his phone directly to his mother’s mantle piece.

Organized by ESADE MBA students through the Technology, Entrepreneurship, Media and Marketing clubs, the event is an example of excellent participant initiative to attempt to better understand a sector so changeable that it is hard to get a grasp on from the classroom.  “What could be called a ‘semi formal jam session on mobile computing’ was a great success” said Professor Wareham, “We look forward to supporting similar events on campus in the future.”

ESADE Business School is the best place in Europe to study Marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility within the MBA, according to the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking Published this week. The school was ranked number 5 in the world for Marketing, number 7 for corporate Social Responsibility and number 19 worldwide. As a top twenty school, ESADE is positioned among other leading Asian, American and European business schools.

Committed to Corporate Social Responsibility since its foundation over 50 years ago, ESADE boosts an extremely active Social Innovation Institute that organises some twenty focused events throughout the year and involves a large number of the school’s professors. CSR themes are woven through many of the core MBA courses and students can choose to broach them further through elective courses. In Marketing, MBA students follow two core courses and have 11 electives related to marketing to choose from. ESADE has a large Marketing Management Department as well as a Brand Centre which aside from producing research, organises the annual Brand Centre Awards for new innovative brands in Spain.

The ranking also places the ESADE MBA in second place overall in Career Progress, which measures participants’ evolution in professional status other the 3 years following graduation. “Our training in soft skills is key reason our graduates do so well in this part of the ranking” states Gloria Batllori, Director of ESADE’s MBA, “We focus on ensuring our MBA’s know how to manage complexity and are able to rise to the challenge of a changing environment. They are used to working in international teams, discovering the strength of each person and coming up with strategies to make the most of them. Recruiters often remark on the fact that ESADE MBA’s are used to a collegiate environment, not ‘every man for himself’ approach adopted by other schools. This means that our graduates often progress quicker up the ranks of the companies they join, since they act in the best interests of the company.”

With 87% of this year’s ESADE MBA class is from outside of Spain a fact reflected in the school’s rank in terms of international mobility post MBA (7^th worldwide). Hailing from some 47 countries and having fulfilled the school’s “Global Mindset” admission requirement (generally implying that they have had significant exposure to cultures other than their own) participants arrive in Barcelona with a pretty good idea of what life outside their own country is like. “In the one or two years they are with us at ESADE these ideas are contrasted, honed and applied to business through contact with their international cohort and professors as well as exchanges, study trips and summer internships” explains Batllori, “by the time they graduate most are keen to put their international management skills to the best practice, even if this means moving to a new country.”

If you would like to see the full ranking click here

Global paper The Financial Times publishes its “ranking of rankings”

ESADE Business School has moved up three positions to place eighth in the Financial Times European Business School ranking published today. An amalgamation of the programme-focused rankings published by the FT throughout the year (MBA, EMBA, MSc and Executive Education) this ranking of rankings is intended to give an overview of the business schools as a whole.

ESADE took part in all the Financial Times rankings concerned, with the exception of the EMBA ranking, the school moved up in all those it was rated in. In the MBA ranking, ESADE holds seventh place in Europe, in MSc’s, eighth, in Open Executive Education Programmes, ninth and in Custom Executive Education Programmes, fifth. The school’s steady improvement in the rankings reflects its commitment to excellence in all its programmes and particularly its rapid response and ability to adapt to changes in the needs of participants, client companies and recruiters.

This year saw ESADE launch the world’s first flexible MBA, which students can choose to study in 12, 16 or 18 months depending on their specific needs. The ESADE MBA class of 2010/11, with 87% of its participants from outside of Spain, hailing from some 45 countries, is also the most international it has ever been.

The school’s MSc programmes are enjoying the extra room for growth derived from their move to ESADE’s purpose-built San Cugat Campus, just outside Barcelona. International students from all over the world are attracted to the Master in International Management, Master in Marketing Management and the new Master in Finance.

In the area Open Executive Education programmes, last month ESADE launched a new Advanced Management Programme (AMP) offered in Madrid and Barcelona with an intensive module at Wharton, while the school’s Program for Management Development (PMD) – offered in Spain (Barcelona and Madrid), Argentina (Buenos Aires and Cordova) Uruguay (Montevideo) and Brazil (Curativa and Campinas) – continues to be popular along with the ESADE-St Gallen Programme for Leadership Development (PLD) (with modules in St. Gallen, Munich, Berlin and Barcelona).

ESADE’s custom programmes, imparted on clients’ premises or at ESADE’s Madrid, Barcelona and Buenos Aires campuses, as well at partner schools in other parts of the world, were rated particularly highly by the FT, reflecting the excellent levels of client satisfaction with the programmes. ESADE is heavily involved in corporate universities as well and organises a an annual forum on developments in this area. Clients of custom programmes include Telefonica, Bunge, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Intermon Oxfam, IBM, Kpmg, Wagonlit, and Deutsche Bank, among others.

“With the opening of the ESADE San Cugat Campus and the neighbouring open innovation centre, ESADECREAPOLIS, the hiring of a number of new international professors and a plethora of great developments at a programme level, 2009 has been a busy yet rewarding year for ESADE, we are pleased that the ranking reflects this” states Alfons Sauquet, Dean of ESADE Business School.

To see the full ranking click here

To read the interview with ESADE Dean Alfons Sauquet published in the Financial Times today click here

ESADECREAPOLIS, an international centre for Open and Cross Innovation set up by ESADE Business School and other partners, was inaugurated this afternoon by the Spanish Minister of Science and Innovation, and the Catalan Counsellor for Innovation, University and Enterprise.

The innovation park is the first of its kind to be created by an international business school and already houses over 50 companies, including BBVA, Roca, Laboratorios Esteve and FlowLab, all of whom share the common objective of getting results out of Open and Cross innovation. This innovation process is open to its environment, involves interaction with very different companies and considers elements beyond the company itself, such as suppliers, clients or the community.

Belonging to a wide range of sectors and of very different sizes, the representatives from the ESADECREAPOLIS resident companies get together for regular guided innovation and best practice sessions, round tables, and other activities. The crossover of ideas and sharing of experience in such sessions generates the kind of more disruptive, creative ideas, necessary for business development in today’s changeable global environment.

Companies housed in ESADECREAPOLIS’ Googlesque building not only attend specific workshops, but also network informally thanks to the building’s design features specifically thought out to promote socialization and knowledge exchange between the different companies. The state-of-the-art building includes many different environments intended to assist in the creative process such as Coffee Brain Corners, Open & Cross Innovation rooms, Focus Group rooms, open balconies and communal gardens and play areas.

The project also hopes to leverage the synergies between the business school and ESADECREAPOLIS‘ innovative residents. The purpose-built 20,000m² park is strategically located on ESADE’s new San Cugat campus allowing residents easy access to ESADE’s innovation experts, research centres and Executive Education programmes. Similarly, ESADE students and professors will benefit from having the opportunity to watch innovation at work close at hand.

The Financial Times Global Masters in Management ranking published earlier this week highlights two masters delivered at ESADE as top programmes worldwide. The CEMS masters in International Management, taught in collaboration with a number of other leading business schools, was ranked number one in the world for the first time. Similarly ESADE’s own Masters in International Management was ranked ninth.

CEMS is a global alliance of 25 business schools, set up to meet the needs of companies in search of young professionals with outstanding business education, an international mindset and experience gained within a multilingual and multicultural setting. ESADE is the only business school in Spain to form part of this network which offers students the chance to study in two different countries and undertake work experience in a third during their 17 month programme.

Both programmes are taught on ESADE’s new purpose-built campus in San Cugat, just outside Barcelona, where the school also offers pre-experience masters in Finance and Marketing Management.

The positive results in the FT ranking “underline the success of ESADE’s international strategy launched at the start of the 1970s” stated Carlo Gallucci, Professor of Marketing and Executive Director of ESADE’s University Programmes. The English-language so called “Bologna Masters” at ESADE are truly global programmes. Non-Spanish students make up 90% of the total and come from over 40 different countries. Even when it comes to the Spanish students, more than half graduated from universities abroad.

The calibre of the faculty is another key factor in the programme’s success. “We’ve been recruiting professors only from the international market for many years now”, vouched Gallucci, “That’s why the ESADE faculty comprises many different nationalities; there is a true cosmopolitan feel on campus”.

This FT ranking places a high emphasis on the level of student satisfaction with the ESADE Careers Service and considers the service as one of the three most efficient among the 50 business schools listed. As for course participants, they positively evaluate post-course professional development, the programme’s global focus and the international experience they actively acquire.

To see the full ranking click here

To read ESADE MSC Admissions Director, Cristina Olibarria’s comments in the Financial Times click here

ESADE Business School climbs the rankings yet again, this time in the Annual Executive Education ranking carried out by the Financial Times on Open and Custom programmes. Reflecting the school’s commitment to further developing their offerings in this area, ESADE has moved up 6 places in open programmes and 17 places in custom programmes.

In custom programs, ESADE broke into the top ten for the first time, ranking 8^th in the world, (5^th in Europe), while the school’s open programmes were ranked 26^th worldwide (8^th in Europe). Overall the ESADE was ranked number 20 in the world for Executive Education as a whole. ESADE’s custom programmes, which are imparted on clients’ premises or at ESADE’s Madrid, Barcelona and Buenos Aires campuses, as well at partner schools in other parts of the world, are those designed specifically to meet clients’ needs. Clients include Telefonica, Bunge, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Intermon Oxfam, IBM, Kpmg, Wagonlit, and Deutsche Bank, among others.

Open programmes are those aimed at companies who wish to invest in specific individuals, giving them new management tools and exposing them to interaction with participants from other companies and sectors. ESADE’s Program for Management Development (PMD) (offered in Barcelona, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Cordova (Argentina) and Curativa (Brazil)), their Senior Executive Programme (SEP) (offered in Barcelona and Madrid) and their new Programme for Leadership Development (PLD) (with modules in St. Gallen, Munich, Berlin and Barcelona) are the schools key offerings in this area.

The structure of the FT Executive ranking is such that 80% for the final score depends on client satisfaction. ESADE’s Executive Education team are particularly good at working with clients, listening to their needs and treating them as partners in the design of the programmes, it was no surprise then that our clients particularly highlighted the school’s excellence in the ‘Preparation’ criteria. This considers, “the level of interaction, the extent to which purchasers’ ideas were integrated; and the effectiveness of the business school in integrating its latest research into the programme”. ESADE’s custom programme clients also highlighted the school’s excellence in teaching materials and in offering programmes overseas.

In open programmes, clients’ were particularly impressed with ESADE’s work with partner schools (a criteria based on the quality of programmes taught with other schools). ESADE is well accustomed to working with other leading schools from across the globe, in all units of the business school (Executive Education, MBA’s, MSc’s, Undergraduate degrees…). Highlights of this year have been the launch of the Global Executive MBA (with Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and their McDonough School of Business); the Program for Leadership Development with the University of St. Gallen), CSR: Strategic Integration and Competitiveness CSR: Stategic Integration and Competitivness (with Stanford Graduate School of Business) and Beyond Pretty with The Art Center College of Design). Clients also gave high marks to the follow-up ESADE offers after the completion of the programmes, the school’s facilities, its international location (“programmes run outside the schools’ base country and region”).

“We are delighted to be ranked as one of the top ten providers of custom programmes,” stated Jaume Hugas, ESADE’s Director of Executive Education. “The Executive Education team has worked hard at exceeding clients’ expectations, listening to their ideas, and combining them with ESADE’s experience in designing and teaching programmes, to come up with proposals that fit their needs perfectly. Our work with corporate universities, for example, has been particularly ground-breaking. Where other schools are merely dipping their toes in the water, ESADE partnering with corporate universities, creating spaces for them to share experiences and taking the lead in finding the best ways to work together.”

To see the rankings in full, for custom click here for open click here

To read the FT article on Corporate Universities featuring comments from ESADE’s Dean, Alfons Sauquet, click here.