Santiago Iniguez - Dean IE Business School

Academic Asepsis

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767-1835), founder of the eponymous Berlin-based University, is generally considered as one of the fathers of modern University and his ideas have inspired most higher education institutions in Europe and the Americas. One of the salient features of his legacy was the development of a sciences taxonomy and the consequent organisation of university departments according to a set of knowledge areas and disciplines. The main aim behind this major effort was to advance the progress of knowledge through the specialisation of academics. Since the compendium of human knowledge was, and still is, so vast, it was virtually impossible for academics to effectively develop research unless they focused on a given field of knowledge and dealt with their scientific peers.

The specialisation of academic knowledge and the consolidation of independent disciplines also resulted in the development of multiple degrees, according to the subjects studied by graduates at university. This changed the pattern existing before, when most university graduates shared a similar generalist degree, following common curricula, and most applied knowledge was learnt while practicing the profession.

Undoubtedly, the specialisation of academic knowledge and the generation of research through university departments have produced an unprecedented progress across the sciences, the humanities and the arts in the past two centuries. However, different factors affecting higher education in the last decades, including globalisation and the impact of new technologies, have led some analysts –particularly in management education- to point out at some of the negative consequences of the division and compartmentalization of knowledge. One of the more extended criticisms is encapsulated in the called “silos syndrome”, according to which university departments have become like silos where its academic members are detached from reality, partly because they are sharply separated from scholars from other disciplines. Putting it bluntly, finance professors only relate to other finance professors, they only attend finance congresses and only publish in finance journals, which are –obviously- read by their finance colleagues; of course, they are authorised to teach and research only in their field of specialisation, i.e. finance.

A further problem derived from this syndrome is what I refer sometimes to as “academic asepsis”: only those academics with the right pedigree and who belong to an identifiable academic group –sometimes called “school”- have the legitimacy of producing valuable research in their own field of knowledge. They are the authoritative sources of knowledge. Parvenus, such as practitioners lacking the conventional academic credentials, or those belonging to different disciplines, should be left out of the club, in order to guarantee the quality of the knowledge generated or taught.

Certainly, I am drawing a caricature of what reality actually is and, I believe, even at very compartmentalized universities academics understand the value of interdisciplinary initiatives such as co-teaching or co-publishing by different area professors. However, department-driven universities face the challenge of articulating an integrated vision of the world to their stakeholders, mainly their students, and of avoiding a narrow and irrelevant concept of research.

Do we need a 21st Century Von Humboldt?

Kangaroos to Ancient Greece: how IE sees the world

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"Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño is among Europe ’s most thoughtful and outspoken deans and a strong suporter of EFMD". INTERVIEW BY George Bickerstaffe (compiler and editor of Which MBA?)

IE has expanded rapidly in recent years, particularly in the number of faculty it has hired. Has that been a difficult process?

The job of business school faculty nowadays is very demanding. They need to combine both a solid research background with very good teaching and communication skills, and they must also be very knowledgeable about business and management practices.

So as well as what used to be called “gurus” – those able to frame brilliant and original ideas – what we now need are faculty who can combine many different abilities and skills. I call them “kangaroos” – people who can jump from one thing to another. They need to jump from academia to business, from business back to a classroom – and to be excellent in all those different facets. And these “kangaroos” are very scarce in the market and the leading business schools all find themselves competing for them.

In addition, PhD programmes do not always prepare their graduates to be able to cope with these challenges. They come out of PhD programmes with a very solid research background, very good research skills but most of the time they lack communication and teaching skills and they can be very distant from the real business world.

Does that mean you have to have your own faculty development programme?

Yes. We run a faculty development programme every year and that has three different tracks. We run a series of seminars on teaching methodology, which includes how to teach using the case method, how to improve your communication skills in class and generally how to improve the formats used in the classroom.

A second series of seminars relates to executive education. Given that the sort of relationships that professors have to develop in executive education programmes are very special they need to understand the real problems that executives and managers face. To
a large extent the professor becomes more of a coach, an advisor, rather than a teacher.

Another track is how to deal with the other stakeholders – such as the media and publishers for example – and especially how to translate the research they develop into an understandable language for the general public.

The main arena now for diffusing knowledge is the Internet. You cannot use the same language in these channels that is used in academic journals. You have to translate your ideas into a language that reaches a wider audience. The concept of authority in knowledge is changing. The authority and legitimacy of an idea is no longer given by, for example, a particular journal or an academic conference but rather by whether it gains acceptance and recognition by the wider Internet audience....

A Gathering of Deans - Video Business Week - Dean Santiago Iniguez

A Gathering of Deans

Dean Iniguez, Instituto de Empresa

May 29 - Dean Santiago Iniguez talks about the Bologna Accord, incorporating the humanities into B-school education, and a meeting in London this summer between top American and EU deans.

View with Windows Media/Flash

Original page of Business Week.

Advertising awards

It was brought to my attention recently about "REAL LIFE MARKETING vs. PHOTOSHOP MARKETING", an innovative video of the Dove marketing team. This same video, last month, won a Silver award ("Evolution" section) at the Clio Awards. As you can see the jury was very international.

Furthermore, I would like to draw your attention to the upcoming Cannes Liones 2007, (54th International Advertising festival). (Categories and past winners)

The Age of Real-time Information

You may have read about the historical episode, which happened at the time of the Battle of Waterloo (18th June 1815), that contributed decisively to build up Rothschild Family’s financial empire. Rothschild had offices in different European capitals and acted as lender to important individuals and institutions, including the British Crown in its efforts to beat Napoleon. They had a potent information network, composed of messengers, carrier pigeons and regional offices, which earned them the reputation of being first with the news. When their informers reported "the scoop" of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, Rothschild agents in London started to sell stocks, acting as if the French had won. Many other brokers, unaware of the British victory, replicated Rothschild’s initiative, causing the crash of stock prices. Shortly before news about the victory reached London, Rothschild started to buy stocks. As a result, the family amassed a huge fortune.

This episode epitomises the economic value of scoops and being first with the news. In the early 19th century, the elapsed time between the occurrence of events and their reporting could be many hours or even days. Nowadays, it may take just seconds. Perhaps a defining moment in the realisation (at least mine) of the power of blogs took place recently when Engadget (no.1 blog according to Technorati) inaccurately reported an Apple product-release delay causing Apple, in six minutes, to lose 4 billion dollars in stock market capitalisation. As you can see from Apple Inc price chart, (Zoom "1m") it quickly recovered.

Futhermore the web and multiple complementary devices, such as instant text messaging and “Twitter”, (Update: the personal view of the head of Ogilvy PR Interactive Marketing Team´s view of it (see his interesting comment to this post)) have amplified the sources of information and anyone can virtually report about events as they attend them, even providing live pictures or video (e.g. "London Bombing Pictures Mark New Role for Camera Phones"). In addition, the channels of distribution have become massive, cheap and universally accessible. We live in the age of real time information, conditions that changes the way managers understand business and the time and forms of decision making processes.

For example, how much time do you take to respond to an e-mail or a text message? When ordinary mail was the prevalent channel of business communication it took days or weeks to get answers to letters. Facsimile machines reduced response time to hours. Today, agile managers answer text messages in minutes. Moreover, courtesy demands that light messages are answered on the same day and that messages that require elaborated responses take no more than two days –unless they are urgent. My golden rule is that e-mails should be answered, at most, on the same week. In order to comply with this I regularly dedicate the needed time over weekends to get updated.

In an interesting post published in Harvard Business Online Tammy Erickson explains that the “use of technology is heavily centered in Gen Y today. About half of Y’s surveyed say they sent or received a text message over the phone within the past day, approximately double the proportion of those in Gen X. It’s something that will, however, grow in use and eventually enter the world of business”. I am sure you have heard mentions of the "Blackberry withdrawal", felt by "Crackberries" when they cannot access their email. There is even TwitterBerry,  used to write those previously mentioned Twitter updates on a Blackberry.

I am intrigued about further developments of instant messaging devices. For example, how can mobile telephones, which are truly ubiquitous, (and especially Wifi-enabled ones) be used effectively as an education tool?

Today, Google releases new off-line web apps capability

Here is an initiative from Google that might usher in a new wave of offline web applications.

Linus Upson, engineering director at Google said: "It's been a long time since the web has gained new fundamental capabilities. I think it's been about 10 years".

ZDnet description of the release:  (ZDnet blogger "Game has changed") "Google engineers have enabled what internet surfers for years have yearned for — web applications that work offline."

The search giant on Wednesday launched Google Gears, a browser plug-in that will let people run web applications when they're connected to the internet or not.

The company released the source code for the Google Gears software in conjunction with Google Developer Day (Today), a day-long conference in 10 locations.

The goal of Google Gears is to create a single, standardised way to add offline capabilities to web applications, said Linus..."

Financial Times: "Google moves to take on Microsoft"
Techcrunch: "Google Gears Lets Developers Take Apps Offline"
GigaOM: "Google goes offline on purpose"