Santiago Iniguez - Dean IE Business School

Europe’s Education Hubs

I always enjoy discussing about strategic views on the management education industry. Yesterday I met Matt Symmonds, an expert in higher education and partner of Nunzio Quacquarelli, another prominent analyst in the field. They both run QS, a communication and information services company on higher education which has played a key role in the past decade, particularly in Europe’s management education. I have repeatedly mentioned in previous posts that the implementation of the Bologna Process in Europe, and more generally the globalisation of higher education, requires abundant information in order to make education offerings transparent and comparable by the market. Companies like QS pay a relevant service to students and the market through the provision of information.

Part of our conversation was on whether location is an important factor why students choose a particular business school –indeed, it is- and whether the post-Bologna European landscape will be characterised by the existence of distinctive education hubs, i.e., cities or larger areas that become references for their academic excellence or that concentrate an important portion of educational suppliers. In other global industries, hubs operate an important role and operate as poles of attraction for companies of a given industry and related businesses, as some respected academics like Michael Porter (see his book "On Competition", Harvard Business Review, Amazon) have demonstrated. Think, for example, of Silicon Valley as a hub for e-business start-ups, or Milan as a hub for the fashion industry. If management education evolves in a similar way to other global industries, it could be expectable that education hubs would appear and would stand out on the map of European higher education. Interestingly, the US management education market has some clear educational hubs, the Boston area or Chicago being two of the frequently mentioned ones.

Evidence of the "hubisation" of management education is the fact that some analysts cite some particular cities as centres that host a critical number of leading business schools. The Financial Times, for example, listed New York, Chicago, London and Madrid as hubs of executive education institutions in an article some years ago, and The Wall Street Journal has pointed out how some cities in Europe –notably London, Madrid or Paris- host an important number of highly ranked business schools.

What will be the key factors for the creation of management education hubs? The list would certainly include elements such as business concentration, number and quality of education institutions, cultural aspects –e.g., the hosting city’s cultural life, the relevance of the native language spoken, leisure, sport facilities- cost of life and weather. However, the viability of these hubs will be also dependent on the initiative of many different stakeholders, notably local or regional governments, as well as other external factors, such as infrastructure, communications, security, quality of life and the like. City rankings will probably play a relevant function here.

I wonder if you agree with this vision. If you do, which cities or areas will, in your opinion, become Europe’s education hubs in the future?

Tags(clickable): Symmonds, Quacquarelli

Africa and what business schools can do

In her splendid novel "Les Belles Images", Simone de Beauvoir the great café-philosopher and novelist of 20th Century Europe, describes a situation which could be transferable to present days. The protagonist, a conscientious mother, wonders why her daughter is worried about some inevitable evils that exist in the world but occur far from home –hunger, epidemics, natural disasters- and cause devastating effects among huge numbers of poor people of the third world, although these problems can not be solved solely by one person (if they can be solved at all). This impotence of the single individual to solve a given evil produces a natural, defensive reaction in many humans. People like "belle images" –beautiful images- and are not prepared to be constantly exposed to the image of horror or suffering. The natural reaction of the mother is, then, to change the TV channel or the subject in order to avoid the exposure of her beloved daughter to the cruellest aspects of life. The extreme version of the "belle image" syndrome is just to avoid talking or showing pictures of some particular disaster. I am sure you identify the syndrome I am talking about.

The El Pais newspaper mentioned yesterday that 435 illegal immigrants were able to reach the coasts of the Canary Islands. This episode is just part of a series published daily in the papers since the good weather conditions of late spring have prompted the marine crossing of "cayucos" –poor, small boats- crowded with immigrants who leave Africa’s Atlantic coast for the Canary Islands, the closest European territory. Indeed, one of those images hard to behold. The unprecedented scale of immigrant arrivals of the past weeks has driven Spain and other nine European countries of the European Union to increase the resources devoted to guard the sea frontiers between Europe and Africa, including patrol boats, satellites and controlling aircraft. Many people wonder, however, whether the actions taken will prevent the flow of boats in the coming weeks. Interestingly, the avalanche of illegal immigrants has driven the Spanish government to open diplomatic relations with many Northwestern African countries in an effort to stop illegal exodus at its origin. Illegal immigration is indeed a new facet of globalisation that is amplifying the meaning of neighbouring countries beyond the mere sharing of a joint border.

However, preserving the inviolability of frontiers is not enough nor is the best way to avoid illegal immigration. Incidentally, let me recommend an interesting article on the phenomenon of immigration in the US that I read some years ago in the New York Review of Books. It is a good summary of the findings of different research pieces on the topic of immigration, useful to avoid a superficial, unsound and demagogic view of this human drama.

How can business schools contribute to solve this serious, complex, humanitarian problem? Let me suggest three different ways that can be further developed in subsequent posts here:

1) Helping the process of creating more business schools in Africa, in order to increase the number of competent managers who can create wealth and value for their societies. Yesterday, the Financial Times published a piece of news on the African Association of Business Schools, a new network that we should welcome and support. Some months ago, Guy Pfeffermann of Businessweek also emphasized the need of more business schools in Africa, and referring to The Report of the Commission for Africa, presented by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and approved by the G8 last year, noted that it "rightly flags management weakness in nearly every sector: water, health, transportation, and education. Yet nowhere does the report mention the need to strengthen local management schools".

2) Encouraging our students to learn more about Africa in management programmes. The best ally of evil is ignorance. Here, the promotion of social entrepreneurship at business schools can have very interesting results.

3) Increasing scholarship schemes for African students.

Education is probably the most effective way to cope with most problems of humanity. Let’s think creatively and implement effective plans.

Tags(clickable): Africa, Immigration, Pfeffermann, New York Review

Response to Mr. Edelstein: We, The Market

In a previous comment of this blog, Mr. Richard Edelstein makes very interesting and balanced remarks about the Bologna Process and about the future of management education in Europe. He implicitly advocates for a consensual and participative approach as regards the implementation of the Bologna Accord, something not only desirable but even necessary for the viability of the whole process, but that has occurred only partially to date. The only official platform for the participation of education stakeholders is the Bologna Follow-up Group (BFUG), a body not sufficiently representative of the groups affected by reforms in higher education. Indeed, education is a social activity where many diverse and socially active stakeholders meet –professors, university administrators and staff, students, employers, industry associations, just to mention some-  and whose opinions should be taken into account. At the same time, it is well known how difficult is to conduct a process with so many parties and achieve effective results on time. 

In particular, I would like to address two ideas that come to me when reading Mr. Edelstein’s comment, although I believe he plausibly describes the current situation.

The first one is encapsulated in his reference to education as “a domain where national culture and identity are promulgated and insured for future generations”.  I would like to disagree with the whole idea of what is generally expressed by “national culture”. “Nations” and “nationalities” are legal and political constructs, not entities in themselves. Talking about “nations”, and consequently about “natural culture”, as if they were real things, like a person, is a sort of metaphysical recreation that has resulted in very bad historical experiences. We live in times when defenders of extreme nationalism spur the use of a plethora of supposed entities to a supposed “national reality”: “national spirit”, “national values” and the like. I have been always very sceptical about the use of ideas associated to the concept “nation”. I hope you will not get me wrong. I love my country and I respect diversity –regional, linguistic, etc.- but I mistrust the abuse of the expression “nation” in politics for demagogic purposes.

Getting back to Mr. Edelstein’s tenet, I believe that the community values to which he refers are probably acquired in the first stages of education. University is not a place to instil “national values” into students. Fortunately, university students are mature enough to recognise propaganda. In any case, the Bologna Process is about autonomy, liberty and opening universities to competition and I am sure that it will promote the study of regional dialects and history of particular nations. This is the consequence of globalisation: it promotes convergence but at the same time enhances cultural differences.

Mr. Edelstein further states that education is a “public good” –again, a legal construct. I would add that is also a constitutional right since in most European countries the state has a role in controlling the quality of degrees with official recognition and the duty to guaranteeing education, at least until a certain stage. However, I do not see any conflict between accepting this state role and at the same leaving room for autonomy and private education. We need to learn from the American system, where there is a very lively coexistence between private and public universities –the first ones leading the rankings. Let the market work. Universities in Europe have not competed for a very long time and competition is healthy for the quality of education. After all, the market is the sum of all of us, the market is the people, it is “we”, isn’t it?

At the Sumaq Summit in Atlanta

"My philosophy is that good business is the best antidote for bad politics". This quote is taken from the discourse by Mr. Sony Purdue, Governor of Georgia, at the opening session of Sumaq Summit 06 this morning in Atlanta. This summit is a unique annual event that gathers managers and academics from the Americas organised by the Sumaq Alliance, a consortium that comprises the seven champion business schools of Latin America along with IE-Instituto de Empresa Business School.

The idea behind the Governor’s quote is that people continue trading and doing business despite that the relations between their governments may be cold or inexistent, an idea that comes at a time when international relations with some Latin American countries are being put to the test. The spread of populism, with the consolidation of President Chaves in Venezuela and this year’s election of President Morales in Bolivia, have made political analysts wonder whether other neighbouring countries will follow the same path. In particular Peru, where the second round of voting for the presidency takes place in a weeks time and one of the two candidates has a similar “caudillo” profile. At the same time, current populist presidents in Latin America –with the exception of Cuba- have been elected democratically and consequently deserve respect and consideration, regardless if they don’t adjust to a given western pattern of correct statesmanship: what is proper in terms of manners, discourse or ideas. However, the international community should not be worried as what concerns leaders, populist as they may be, and their governments fulfilling international law and UN conventions. We may like or dislike them but we have to live with them. They may be rivals of their western counterparts but “there is no rivalry that should last for more than 100 years” –says a Spanish proverb, meaning that pragmatism prevails in politics over personal feelings- and evidence of this is today’s news that the US is restoring relations with Libya. (See CNN)

The debate about the relations between the North and the South has become particularly heated today in the US, after President’s Bush decision to send thousands of troops to the southern border with Mexico in an effort to stop illegal immigration, just one day before addressing the nation tonight on the controversial Immigration Bill.

I also read another piece of news related to illegal immigration, this time challenging the authorities in Spain, and that hundreds of small boats crammed with illegal immigrants are crossing the waters between Africa and the Canary Islands, in a desperate effort to reach territory of the European Union.

These episodes probably arouse the solidarity of any human being and I wonder if business schools could play a role in trying to give solutions to the complex problem of illegal immigration. Any ideas are very welcome in this respect.

The Sumaq Summit this year has 385 participants and has attracted over 450,000 US $ in contributions from corporations and institutions based in Atlanta. It has become a “classic” in its genre, the only executive education conference in the US organised by a non-US business school, and Governor Purdue expressed this morning his support for the fourth Sumaq Summit to take place in 2007. Thanks to all the Atlanta Community for their support.

Tags(clickable): Immigration, Bush

The Human Intensity of On-Line Education

I am fascinated by the effects that high quality on-line education can have on its participants. This week I attended some sessions of the “integration days” of our Global Communities MBA, a programme that runs almost entirely on-line. “Integration days”, the only face-to-face part of the programme, aims at gathering participants with other members of the IE community -alumni, corporate clients, recruiters and the like- at different cities across the Globe. This week the Integration days took place in Madrid.

I was first amazed at the intensity of the relationships between programme participants, many of who have only been in contact on-line in the past three months. Amazingly, it seemed as if they knew each other for a long time. Indeed, the experience at my school is that our on-line offerings generate a much deeper interaction between participants, fostering true and long-lasting relationships, and even –although it may sound counterintuitive – a strong sense of identity with the school. Actually, last term’s student questionnaires indicated that on-line and blended programmes enjoy the highest degree of satisfaction among participants.

I was particularly interested in the feedback from programme participants about what distinctive skills they feel they are developing, as compared to the skills fostered by traditional classroom methodologies. One of the participants referred to the diplomatic skills that are enhanced by on-line exchange. When people address each other verbally, they use body language, gestures as well as tone and other sensitive mechanisms to modulate the message. However, in written communication what you read is what you sense. Consequently, it is desirable to avoid any undesired faux-pas that may cause an unwanted negative reaction in the reader. Effective written communication, among persons belonging to diverse cultures and expressing themselves in non-native “working English”, has to be neutral, amiable and respectful.

The second interesting finding is that on-line education fosters solidarity among participants, since they all have to contribute and they have to work in different timeframes. Students who take a face-to-face class can just sit and listen without doing anything else –of course, this attitude is not recommendable. However, if a student taking an on-line course does not take an active role it shows and affects the quality of the class discussion, since groups are composed of less people and the methodology requires a dynamic dialogue. The difference in timeframes –we have students from Hawaii to Shanghai, covering all continents- make some participants work with their team peers in the early hours of the morning, an effort that their classmates recognise and that helps cohesion and commitment.

There is a lot to study about the pros and cons of on-line education and I am talking here about top quality offerings, about the best possible replica of conventional classroom methodologies, and not about massive distributed learning. It seems that on-line education may help its participants become not only good managers but also better people.

University Conference in Venice

“Nowadays, the very noble city of the Venetians is the only home of liberty, peace and justice, the only refuge of the good people, the only harbour where the ships of those willing to live well and safely arrive”, wrote Petrarch in a letter dated 1364, at the dawn of European Renaissance. In our times, the “Serenissima” has turned into the destination mainly of tourists, not necessarily looking for the same things as their predecessors.

I am lucky to be in Venice, but not as a tourist this time though. This morning, on my way to San Giorgio Island, I looked like an oddball in my suit surrounded by hundreds of early morning tourists. I am attending the 2nd Workshop on the Process of Reform of University Systems, organised by AIESM, an extremely interesting conference gathering academics who research on university issues. It was a splendid opportunity to learn more about the views of academics and university officers on the Bologna Accord. Naturally, the venue was very seductive too and I would like to thank Professor Carmelo Mazza for his kind invitation.

I was honoured to speak at the opening panel of the conference, on the future of higher education in Europe, moderated by Anthony Hopwood, Dean of the Said Business School, and having Mr. Umberto Paolucci, Senior Chairman of Microsoft Europe, as co-panellist. My presentation focused on the analysis of two following main propositions. First, the management education industry is changing in terms of its business model, not just in terms of cycle or phase. Second, the implementation of the Bologna Process requires, more fundamentally than the harmonisation of higher education systems, comparable information and transparency of university offerings and the creation of financial schemes to foster cross-border mobility of students. You are probably familiarised with these propositions since I have dealt with them earlier in this blog (see Categories section on the left of this blog in "Bologna Process").

My presentation provoked some criticisms at the Q&A turn, the part of conferences that I enjoy most. In sum, my ideas were seen by some attendees to be too liberal, too market-oriented to be applicable to universities. I replied that universities, and business schools, should feel committed to many different stakeholders, not only academia, including their students, business, society, benefactors and many other incumbent agents. In fact, the Bologna Process is about opening up universities to the world and making them more competitive, isn’t it? The idea of universities competing among themselves –for the good- sometimes raises suspicions among academics –few, I hope- who believe that the academic status quo should be preserved and that non-competitive universities are an endangered species that should be protected. I am afraid I do not agree with this. The fact is that universities have not competed for seven hundred years and many academics fear rivalry to attract the best students and professors, capital and other resources.   

I was also asked to express my view on what is “the” function of universities. I believe that this question should be reformulated unless we want to embark in a metaphysical debate. There is a wide typology of universities. Should we formulate the same strategic mission or function for universities as different as the Open University or the University of Oxford? There is no panacea when discussing the function of universities. Indeed, it is desirable that the Bologna Process promotes the autonomy and the diversity of educational institutions.

Challenging Conventional Wisdom

Today’s edition of the New York Times tells that “he treated economics as an aspect of society and culture rather than an arcane discipline of numbers”. The reference is to John Kenneth Galbraith a maestro that died last Saturday after a long, intense and honorable life. Galbraith, one of the most popular and prolific economists of the past century, held his professorship in Economics at Harvard University, not without criticisms. He was considered an iconoclast and a dissident from the academic mainstream, something that probably cost him not being awarded the Nobel Price in Economics.

Galbraith’s life could be contemplated with awe and interest. He was able to bridge academia and the real world, combining positions at the university, in politics and diplomacy. Indeed, he made his life a real work of art. Some years ago I had the opportunity of meeting him briefly at a private party in Cambridge, Mass. and was impressed at his eloquence and kindness. He was that sort of person who aroused reverence from his interlocutors.

Some years ago I read “A Tenured Professor”, one of Galbraith’s fiction works, a fable that tells the story of Mr Marvin, a professor in a Massachusetts-like college of the 80’s who gets tenure early in his career following a grey research on a bizarre area –mathematical paradigms in an approach to refrigerator pricing, indeed, an irony about the irrelevance of some research projects at university- but who subsequently develops a stock forecasting model that makes him and his family enormously rich. The forecasting model is supposedly based on several assumptions about people’s greed, euphoria and dementia, mirroring the Gotham of Reaganite years. With their earned fortune, the Marvins decide to implement a liberal agenda, creating peace chairs at different universities, promoting companies that employ women executives and the like. Was Galbraith having in mind some model, like Soros, or was he telling about his own unachieved dreams?

Academia needs more mavericks like Galbraith. There is a shortage of bridges that connect theory and practice, thought and action, academic and executive excellence.

Tags(clickable): Galbraith, New York Times

Can Managerial Virtues Be Developed in Maturity?

Education can and should be a personal transformation process. Some people sustain that it is not possible to learn or develop basic traits of character after a certain age. This view is based on an outmoded Freudian theory according to which the basic features of personality are acquired and fixed before reaching adolescence –another extreme conception goes further and states that they are formed at mother’s womb. However, many contemporary education theorists and psychologists accept that many skills and traits can be learnt and developed in maturity if the necessary attitudes are cultivated. An example of this current is explored in “Can Ethics Be Taught?”, a very interesting book by several Harvard Business School scholars that deals with the question of whether ethics can be taught and learnt at business school by young managers and responds in the positive. Indeed, at business schools we work on the premise that junior and senior managers can not only update their knowledge on the latest business tools but also perfect their skills and further shape their personality –hopefully for the better- through education.

In this same spirit, Francisco Marin commented earlier in this blog about the importance of cultivating a series of virtues while studying an Executive MBA programme and he specifically mentions curiosity, humility and common sense as basic for good management. I agree with him. In particular, curiosity –in its best possible meaning- is concomitant to wisdom and a necessary virtue for the advancement of knowledge and even for achieving self-fulfilment and happiness.

Virtues are character traits valued as being good or, in other words, operative good habits. They are not innate, but rather achieved by constant exercise. It is never late to start practising or perfect these good habits and management education can be a transforming experience in this way. How can business school professors help their students cultivate these virtues or competencies? This question is related to a previous comment made by Der Chao Chen in this blog. To answer this question, the best analogy I find is taken from sculptor. Michelangelo, the great artist, believed that the job of the sculptor is to free the forms that were already inside the stone. The job of professors could be interpreted in a similar way: i.e.freeing a students potential.

Tags(clickable): Freud, Michelangelo, Harvard, Harvard Business School