Posts Tagged ‘Innovation#8217;

When the IE Brown Executive MBA March 2012 intake began we interviewed a few of the participants to understand why they chose the program and what they expected to get out of the experience.  Gregorie Perez, Executive Director at Gifts and Graces in Manila, was one of the participants we interviewed (see the original interview here).  Fifteen months later Joël McConnell, IE’s Director of International Development for Asia Pacific, caught up with Gregorie in Madrid to see how the program went.

JM: Gregorie, first of all congratulations for your graduation! What have been your personal highlights of the program?

GP: Overall, I’m more than satisfied with the program and I’m really proud and happy at having completed this big step in my professional career.  For me, the best parts of the program were primarily:

1)      The friendships I have developed with classmates, as it really was an honor to have been part of such a diverse cohort

2)      Madrid (which is a wonderful city in October, but is even better in June!)

3)      Having been part of such an innovative program that really does allow students to gain a broader perspective, better their critical thinking skills, and also acquire hard business skills too.

At the same time, I have to be frank that the program wasn’t easy!  The final exam presented a big challenge, especially as the case assigned was only provided 30 days before graduation. Concretely, the final exam focused on a PPP project between the Brazilian government and GSK, specifically surrounding the dengue epidemic. While we had to use the case to showcase everything we learned during the program, we had to present our recommended course of action as if we were GSK employees, no easy feat!

JM: That sounds like an exciting finale of the program! What would be your top recommendations for potential candidates applying to an MBA at IE?

  GP: Be yourself, especially during the admissions interview.  The admissions process at IE is very interactive, and it is as much about the school choosing you as it is about you choosing IE.  Being yourself will help both sides gauge whether you’re a good fit for the program at IE.  When completing the application form, use the essay components to differentiate yourself.

If you are admitted to the program, keep in mind IE handpicks its program participants and if you were chosen, there is some special value you bring as a student on the course.  So, be generous once you’re in and share your expertise and knowledge with your peers.  Being overly competitive can be counterproductive in innovative programs like the IE Brown Executive MBA, the idea is to learn from the program and your (very experienced) peers.  The master degree is not just about getting an education, it’s about a “whole” experience – something you’re more likely to get at a top European school.  But keep in mind also that by doing the IE Brown Executive MBA, you get the benefit of being an alumnus of both a top European school and a top US school.

JM: Now being alumni with a lot of sudden free time, what are your next plans?

GR: Well, I’m off to see the best of Spain, France and Italy.  When I return to the Philippines, I will dedicate myself primarily to developing a design lab at Gifts and Graces. I expect to apply my knowledge from the MBA with regards to creating and managing the lab, and I will use crowd-sourced funding to fund this project.  In fact, if someone is interested in learning more about the lab and how to participate in the funding process, they can see here for more information.

My passion and mission is to make a real difference in my local community.

Professor Zhijian Cui will be travelling through Asia in June to talk about “How to reinvent your company”. He will address questions like: Do companies lose their innovation drive? Why are start-ups more innovative than multinational companies? Can innovation be structured and institutionalized?

Cui’s highlights the importance of innovating business models and developing a framework on guiding firms on how to innovate their business model from both the demand and supply side. Through comparing several successful and non-successful business stories, you will learn about several key roadmaps of business model innovation, the recreation or reinvention of an existing business.

Have a look and register at our IE Event Page for the details of the events in Taipei (June 4), Hong Kong, (June 5), Shanghai (June 6) and Beijing (June 8). In the meanwhile, enjoy the short interview to know him better:

How did you come to IE?

I joined IE as a full-time faculty in 2011 right after the graduation from INSEAD. Before that, I visited Madrid as a tourist for several times and was quite impressed by the city. I know that I will like this city as well as the life in Spain. When I went to the academic job market at the end of 2010, IE naturally became one of the top choices on my list. Clearly, IE Business School is a great school with high international reputation and a promising environment providing opportunities for faculties. Therefore, I declined several offers from other schools and decided to join IE.

What is your background?

I was an engineering student before. In 1995, I left my hometown and went to Tsinghua University in Beijing. After spending five years in Tsinghua, I joined Siemens and became an engineer. In 2001, I went to France and got my first Master in Management degree from Euromed Marseille School of Management. Then, I spent four year in US, including one-year study at Pepperdine University to get an MBA degree and three-year full-time work as a plant manager supervising 300 workers in California. In 206, I returned to France and continued my study for PhD. After five years full-time study, I graduated from INSEAD with PhD in Operations Management in 2011.

Why are you so passionate about what you teach?

At this moment, I am offering several courses at IE Business School, including Operations and Supply Chain Management core course, Strategic New Product Development elective for MBA and Master of Management programs, as well as Principals of Operations Management for PhD program. I am quite passionate about the topics I am teaching due to two reasons. First, as an academia, I believe that the topics of Operations Management and New Product Development are extremely important for the success of a business and are probably one of the foundations of all know-how in business school. Operations Management helps firms achieve efficiency and reduce cost, while New Product Development helps firm distinguish it from the competitors. I strongly believe that this knowledge will bring value for the business. Second, as a former practitioner, I was excited to see how change could truly happen in a business by implementing the knowledge of Operations Management. I am passionate about the implacability of everything I teach in classroom and the possibility to do good things for the business and the society.

What do you learn from IE students?

IE students come from different countries with quite different background. From them, I on one hand get a lot of specific managerial examples from different industries. This will for sure enrich my teaching and research materials. On the other hand, I, as a faculty, see and experience the challenge of managing a highly international, diverse pool of people. By talking with them, I learn how to communicate with different type of people.

Professor Cui Zhijian is also featured on The Other Side, a blog about IE faculty.

IE Business School ranks top 10 worldwide in all categories of this year QS Global 200 Business Schools Report.

This report focuses merely on the employability of MBA graduates by region and specialization asking more than 3,300 MBA recruiters. Focusing solely on employers’ views provide a reliable insight as to which business schools produce MBA graduates and alumni that are favored by recruiters. This is derived from employers’ votes as to which schools they prefer to recruit MBA graduates.

IE Business School was considered on the no. 4 spot in Europe, stepping up one position from last year, and in all categories IE was placed within the top 10:

Corporate Social Responsibility 5 (11 in 2011)
Entrepreneurship 4 (5)
Finance 8 (8)
Information Management 6 (6)
Innovation 7 (7)
International Management 6 (7)
Leadership 7 (10)
Marketing 6 (15)
Operations 6 (6)
Strategy 7 (9)

Some incoming students of IE Business School are among the lucky people who can enjoy IE’s new facilities which will be launched in September this year.

Flexible spaces, new innovative lounge areas for team work and host of the IE’s own start-up incubator provide an inspiring and entrepreneurial learning space – with your own Starbucks in-house .

By Enrique Dans, professor at IE Business School

Jobs has left us a legacy that goes way beyond technology. He has left us with an approach to life and business management based on innovation, commitment and a capacity for work.The way in which Steve Jobs’ legacy has impacted products and industries is seriously impressive. The first personal computers, the organization of windows and desktop on the computer screen, new life breathed into animation films, the revolution of the music industry with a market that everyone said could not exist, a revolution in the mobile phone industry that practically destroyed the previous leader… And more recently the reinvention of computers with the iPad, generating thousands of millions in sales, creating and destroying entire industries, while multiplying the value of the firm by a couple of thousand. And yet I believe that his greatest legacy is the way we now see business organizations, innovation, and the kind of commitment and capacity this involves.

In times when it seems that imitating, repeating, and spending your life doing as little as possible are in fashion, Jobs is the most salient example of what it means to dare, to fight, to do things better than expected. He wasn’t a technology genius. He didn’t need to be. His strength lay in understanding trends, or creating them. His products were always enormous commitments with an element of risk. But they were also born of passion, entering sectors to which he brought the values that his vision of Apple stood for: a focus on the user and ease of use, the design, the total integration between hardware and software that brings life to a device, not stopping at good, going for excellent. He entered industries where there had always been a disconnection between client and technology. In the music industry nobody had been capable of giving the customer a simple and solid means of managing his/her music.  Read more…

How are Bricolage and an EMBA connected? How does the art of generating value by adapting the resources at hand helps you to be a better manager? Find out through the video from the Creativity and Innovation Workshop of the IE Brown Executive MBA.

… curious? Explore what the IE Brown Executive MBA students experience in their Innovation and Creativity Workshop during the program.

There are many “online learning models” named online programs, distance-learning programs, internet-facilitated programs. IE’s innovative blended education format, however, combines the best techniques of traditional face-to-face education with technology-supported online interactive learning, making it a world-class learning experience recognized by international media and by highly satisfied alumni.

Check this out and let us know if you wish to learn more!

Have you ever had a security problem with your computer?

Currently there are many out there, such as viruses, spyware and malware. These are regularly called security attacks. Certainly, most of you have encountered one of these.

If you think about it, this may be a disaster for end-users, but it’s an even bigger problem for a company due to the amount of information needed for their daily operations. Companies therefore need to be aware of the latest security measures for their IT systems.

Should we get some advice from an IT security expert? Some might think so… Of course you should, but through this simulator, you will be able to tell what the most common IT security measures are, what their main purpose are, their limitations so you can really understand what is going on and what your company needs.

Check out the simulator by following link, learn and play the final game where you have to keep the IT system safe while accessing the web. Click here to access

This is just one of a large number of interactive resources you will see in IE’s classes; visit the IE multimedia documentation catalogue to experience more.