Archivo de Junio/2006

El dinamismo y nuevo impulso de las Business Schools
Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño. Decano. IE Business School
Junio 2006
Las escuelas de negocios están inmersas en la transformación más rápida de su historia. Un nuevo impulso marcado por la globalización, las nuevas tecnologías y el Acuerdo de Bolonia.
Las escuelas de negocios son, probablemente, el segmento más dinámico de la educación superior y, actualmente, experimentan la transformación más rápida de su historia. Algunas de las tendencias más destacables para 2006 en el terreno de la formación en dirección de empresas son, por ejemplo, que la competencia entre distintas escuelas de negocios aumentará como consecuencia del proceso de globalización del sector y de la entrada de nuevos jugadores. El factor más relevante que impulsa esta globalización es el aumento de alumnos que quieren estudiar en el extranjero. Número que crecerá exponencialmente.
El MBA volverá a entrar en una espiral de crecimiento y las escuelas de negocio tendrán una oferta más diferenciada.
Dos instrumentos claves para promover la movilidad transfronteriza de estudiantes son la mejora de la información sobre la oferta internacional y el desarrollo de instrumentos de financiación –becas y créditos al estudio-. Para el año 2010 se espera que el número de alumnos que estudien carreras universitarias fuera de sus países exceda los 5,8 millones, según el Institute of Internacional Education.

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Picking your time – The advantage of work experience before the MBA
By TopMBA.com
Published: June 22, 2006
While a number of business schools in India and across the Asia Pacific region will still accept students straight after their first degree, a growing proportion of top MBA programmes around the world insist on a significant level of hands-on experience in the workplace.
Melbourne Business School, Australia and Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management, USA, for example, look for a minimum of two years professional experience. IE Business School, Spain and Cass Business School, UK, specify three years, while at Ashridge, UK, the minimum specification is five years previous work experience.
One of the main reasons schools now insist on this level of experience, is the expressed preference of recruiters for individuals who can ‘hit the ground running’, as soon as they graduate from an MBA programme. According to the latest TopMBA.com research from the organisers of the QS World MBA Tour, which surveyed more than 500 employers in more than 30 countries, over 50% of potential employees of MBAs look for candidates with at least a year’s prior work experience. Only around 8% of organisations are willing to look at individuals who have clocked up less than a year’s experience before embarking on their MBA studies.
However, this pressure from recruiters is only part of the reason behind the drive for experienced students. Sandeep Gupta worked for major companies such as Cadbury Schweppes and Siemens before studying at Cranfield School of Management, UK. He believes prior work experience plays a key part in getting the most out of the MBA experience: “Sitting in the classroom, during a case study discussion, it’s easy to identify with the characters involved because, more often than not, you can see a similarity between what you have experienced in the past and what the case study depicts.” He continues, “However, since you are now sitting outside the workplace, you can see the situation with a more neutral perspective and can identify who could have done what to produce a different outcome. There’s also an element of glamour and awe associated with words such as ‘vision’, ‘strategy’ and the like, which are used liberally on an MBA programme. These words have little meaning unless you can fit them into the bigger picture. And the only way you can do that is through prior practical experience.”
Sandeep Gupta’s view is shared by another Indian MBA, Rajesh Kothari, who studied at IESE, Spain after six years working in the financial services sector at home. “I found my work experience was invaluable to me on the programme. Making a real contribution to classes is extremely important – this most certainly isn’t the sort of study where you just politely sit and listen. When you want to make a point in class it definitely helps if you can draw upon previous experience and if you don’t have it, it really shows. The case study approach offers a very practical form of learning and the ability to draw upon six years in the workplace was a major bonus.”
Source: www.TopMBA.com

Picking your time – The advantage of work experience before the MBA
By TopMBA.com
Published: June 22, 2006
While a number of business schools in India and across the Asia Pacific region will still accept students straight after their first degree, a growing proportion of top MBA programmes around the world insist on a significant level of hands-on experience in the workplace.
Melbourne Business School, Australia and Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management, USA, for example, look for a minimum of two years professional experience. IE Business School, Spain and Cass Business School, UK, specify three years, while at Ashridge, UK, the minimum specification is five years previous work experience.
One of the main reasons schools now insist on this level of experience, is the expressed preference of recruiters for individuals who can ‘hit the ground running’, as soon as they graduate from an MBA programme. According to the latest TopMBA.com research from the organisers of the QS World MBA Tour, which surveyed more than 500 employers in more than 30 countries, over 50% of potential employees of MBAs look for candidates with at least a year’s prior work experience. Only around 8% of organisations are willing to look at individuals who have clocked up less than a year’s experience before embarking on their MBA studies.
However, this pressure from recruiters is only part of the reason behind the drive for experienced students. Sandeep Gupta worked for major companies such as Cadbury Schweppes and Siemens before studying at Cranfield School of Management, UK. He believes prior work experience plays a key part in getting the most out of the MBA experience: “Sitting in the classroom, during a case study discussion, it’s easy to identify with the characters involved because, more often than not, you can see a similarity between what you have experienced in the past and what the case study depicts.” He continues, “However, since you are now sitting outside the workplace, you can see the situation with a more neutral perspective and can identify who could have done what to produce a different outcome. There’s also an element of glamour and awe associated with words such as ‘vision’, ‘strategy’ and the like, which are used liberally on an MBA programme. These words have little meaning unless you can fit them into the bigger picture. And the only way you can do that is through prior practical experience.”
Sandeep Gupta’s view is shared by another Indian MBA, Rajesh Kothari, who studied at IESE, Spain after six years working in the financial services sector at home. “I found my work experience was invaluable to me on the programme. Making a real contribution to classes is extremely important – this most certainly isn’t the sort of study where you just politely sit and listen. When you want to make a point in class it definitely helps if you can draw upon previous experience and if you don’t have it, it really shows. The case study approach offers a very practical form of learning and the ability to draw upon six years in the workplace was a major bonus.”
Source: www.TopMBA.com

In a marketplace where even the smallest organisation can conduct business on an international stage, the MBA has rapidly become one of very few universally recognised qualifications. But how are these three prized letters helping to make workplace diversity a reality in the new global economy?
As the first rule of warfare is to know your enemy, so the first rule of business is to know your customer. Easy enough perhaps when your customer lives around the corner and looks and sounds just like you. Somewhat more difficult when they speak another language, come from a totally different cultural background and live on the other side of the world. Welcome to business in the age of the internet.
For many organisations the key to this simultaneous challenge and opportunity has been almost blindingly simple – the development of genuinely diverse workforces that mirror the customer base and consequently understand its increasingly diverse needs, aims and requirements. Take, for example, the case of (…) the pharmaceuticals giant, Eli Lilly, According to the company’s Rafael Fernandez, “We’re acutely aware that we need to reflect the diversity of our customer base in our own staffing in terms of colour, culture, age and gender. And, for a company like us that operates in 146 countries around the world, it’s particularly important to reflect, not just domestic diversity, but diversity on a global scale.”
While commitment to workplace diversity may have originally been a US-based initiative, it is now starting to spread worldwide. Deutsche Post World Net, for example, has been working on the issue since 1995 and now has its own in-house director of diversity, Susanna Nezmeskal, while another company with German roots, Siemens, has introduced diversity training into its management development programmes.
Not surprisingly, major business schools have enthusiastically spread their net to produce the MBAs who will lead this diverse workforce into a bright new business future. (…) The alumni association of Spain’s IE-Instituto de Empresa, for example, has members in 85 countries. And the strategy of broadening the student base certainly appears to be paying off. “We specifically target schools with a high proportion of international students,” says Rafael Fernandez, “to ensure we are drawing not just from a local but from an international pool of MBAs.”

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El Instituto de Empresa reunió a 400 expertos y académicos en la III Edición del Sumaq Summit que se celebró los pasados 15 y 16 de mayo en Atlanta (Georgia, EE.UU.).
En esta ocasión, la cumbre se centró en debatir las mejores prácticas internacionales de Marketing y Logística en Latinoamérica. El acto contó con el apoyo y colaboración del Estado de Georgia, y de empresas como Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines o CNN en español, entre otras.
El Sumaq Summit tiene una periodicidad anual y constituye la mejor oportunidad para analizar en profundidad el mundo de los negocios de América Latina. El programa de la cumbre se estructuró en 2 días con dos paneles: Marketing y Logística. Y se analizaron, entre otros temas, la internacionalización de las firmas de Marketing en Latinoamérica; las estrategias de éxito del Marketing y de la distribución; los medios de Comunicación en Latinoamérica o la marca en Latinoamérica y cómo posicionarse en ese mercado.
Entre los ponentes, participaron ejecutivos como Hugo Bethlem, director Compreben/Sendas, Grupo Pao de Açucar, Brazil, (mayor distribuidor de Brasil); Marcelo Ciano, general manager, ARCOR, Argentina (competencia de Chupa Chups, es el mayor productor mundial de caramelos del mundo); Christopher Crommet, senior vicepresident and general manager CNN en Español o Jaime de Andrés Pacheco, director de gestión de Marca de Telefónica, entre otros.
En cuanto al modulo de Logística, los expertos analizaron temas como la visión y la evolución de la logística en Latinoamérica; las estrategias de éxito de los operadores logísticos; la evaluación e integración de la cadena de suministro y los aspectos claves de supply chain management en Latinoamérica son algunos de los temas que se debatirán en este Congreso. Y participaron ponentes como Jesús Lopez, el vicepresidente de Logística de CEMEX, México; Edward Jardine, presidente de la región andina de Procter & Gamble; Omar González, presidente de Almacenar, Colombia y Fernando Bolt, director de Logística de CODELCO, Chile (la mayor productora de cobre mundial), entre otros.
Según el director de Sumaq, Antonio Montes, “el afianzado éxito de este programa de Executive Education es consecuencia de la apuesta estratégica internacional del IE, junto con sus socios de la Alianza Sumaq, en el mercado de EE.UU. El Instituto de Empresa, como escuela internacional, reconocida por su innovación, carácter emprendedor, y conocimiento de mercados regionales como los de América Latina, tiene una posición sólida y diferencial respecto al resto de las escuelas de negocios globales”.
La Cumbre Sumaq 2006 contó con el apoyo de grandes corporaciones en el mundo de negocios iberoamericano, muchas de ellas del Estado de Georgia, tales como: AmericasMart, Coca-Cola; Delta Airlines, Turner Broadcasting, GE Energy, América Economía, Georgia Power, AIG; y Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, entre otros. Asimismo, organizaciones de desarrollo económico y profesionales como la Metro Atlanta Chamber of Comerse; Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Comerse y Mexican American Business Chamber fomentan la participación de sus miembros en el evento.
Alianza Sumaq
La Alianza Sumaq constituye una alianza estratégica orientada a la educación para directivos, con el objetivo de dar respuesta a las necesidades de las compañías globales, que cada vez más demandan programas de formación trans-nacionales, que armonicen sus estrategias y les mantenga al día en las últimas herramientas de gestión.
Además del IE, los socios de Sumaq son: Fundación Getulio Vargas- EAESP, Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey – EGADE (México), el INCAE de Costa Rica, la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, la Universidad de San Andrés de Argentina, el IESA de Venezuela y la Universidad de Los Andes de Colombia.