Posts Tagged ‘Technology#8217;

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…

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.

Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs was not a great inventor, but rather a great re-inventor, capable of transforming existing products like the mobile phone or MP3 to make life easier for the user.There are certain battles we human beings know we can’t win – at least for now. We all knew that Steve Jobs was going to die: first, because although he may have seemed to be immortal, he wasn’t. And second, because the gap between cancer and technology means that cancer is still cancer, and when it goes badly, you can’t beat it, even with all the means in the world at your disposal. It is very possible that many of the obituaries we have read recently in the press were actually written months ago. When a person with a reputation for being a born worker with a vocation stays at the helm of Apple until so recently, despite such obvious physical decline, you tend to think the worst when he finally takes the decision to stop working, namely that he must be in a very bad way. Read more…

What will the future look like? What are the challenges that society will have to face? The future is the consequence of our current actions. Studying the future could allow us to anticipate consequences and choose courses of action that can lead us to desirable scenarios. This session is not an exercise of prediction but an opportunity to discuss the main issues that are molding the years ahead. Is Globalization reversible? Are we facing a technological revolution? What consequences will current events have on society and business?

Enjoy two engaging sessions with our Professor William Davila in Australia:

Sydney – November 22, 2011 – Four Points by Sheraton, Darling Harbour

Melbourne – November 24, 2011 – The Hub, Level 3 – 673 Bourke Street

For more details, please visit the IE Event Page

Who tells that the class room cannot be a circle? Prof. David Bach teaches in a new learning environment.

Last July, Professor David Bach, Professor of Strategy and Economic Environment and Dean of Programs, taught an optional Business Government and Society class under a new learning environment.

The “Open Space” room, at Maria de Molina 4, has been set up as you can observe in the photo. Students sit in two half circles around the professor. Four flat screens (two on each wall) show slides, with the professor able to manipulate these from a tablet PC. Under this method the class is more dynamic and communicative and less unidirectional. As one participant puts it: “This new layout fosters participation and interaction and could be superior in an array of class situations.”

The professor is able to walk through the middle of the class, or to sit in one of the half cycles to form part of the group.Professor Bach describes this new teaching experience in the following way: “This situation is much more collaborative, the class is coming closer and students are not obliged to look in one single direction, as there are 2 flatscreens on each row. The professor can write on the tablet PC from anywhere and the message is visible from all angles. ” It is possible that this experimental setting will be integrated in new learning experiences at IE Business School in the future.

[First published on IE Learning Experiences Blog]

2 years ago IE University has created a Junior Advisory Board which serves to provide a worldly and youthful perspective to IE University. IE’s Junior Advisory Board is considered as a part of the IE community, and shows a commitment to excellence and innovation. Board members, though still in High School, are outstanding members of their community and serve as joint representatives of their communities to IE, and also of IE in their communities. Here are the impressions from the 2011 annual board meeting:

This year´s committee comprised of twelve pre-university students, all with an international profile and aged between 15 and 19. They met in Madrid and Segovia to debate the challenges facing university education. The members of the International Junior Advisory Board were selected using IE’s network of 23 international offices in 20 countries, and are from the Czech Republic,  Colombia, India, Jordan, Peru, Romania, Spain, Lesotho and the US.

The talented young members of the Board speak several different languages, are entrepreneurial and top-tier students in a range of disciplines. They are committed to humanistic values and social responsibility. They are international, practical, ambitious and above all they represent a generation which, thanks to its commitment to excellence, innovation, human values and ethics, will not only bring improvements to IE University, but will also serve as leaders in tomorrow’s world.

In their 2011 meeting, the Junior Advisory Board members were asked to think if entrepreneurship can be learnt and what is the role of universities in fostering an entrepreneurial culture. They also discussed how universities can promote diversity and how it can equip students with the tools and skills they need to function in an increasingly competitive global and cosmopolitan market. In an open forum they debated if Social Entrepreneurship has to be a part of a business education and how university sector can engage students in social issues. Read more…

By Enrique Dans, Professor at IE Business School, published on IE Focus

Social networks have the capacity to mobilize millions of people in defense of a cause, regardless of their location. The far-reaching impact of this is now starting to show.The expansion of social networks has had one extremely interesting effect: the proliferation of causes or claims capable of garnering the support of a large number of people, sometimes very quickly. When this occurs, the person promoting the cause in question cites the number of people involved as evidence of support, whereas sceptics and detractors try to downplay it by talking about of the scant value of support provided by merely using an index finger to click on a mouse. 

Who should we believe? Can we consider this type of group as tangible evidence of support, the virtual equivalent of a street demonstration with banners and slogans, or does the practically zero effort required to support the cause mean it is worth very little? The social importance of this issue is growing as the number of social network users increases: Spain has the highest number of social networks users in the world (according to the latest figures, we are talking about around ten million active users on Facebook and around eight million on Tuenti). As a result, many are starting to see social networks as a kind of “trend laboratory” or a gauge for measuring the “social mood”, a kind of permanent, real-time survey on the widest possible variety of subjects. Read more…

By Enrique Dans, Professor at IE Business School, published on IE Focus

One of the key factors driving the boom in so-called social media is customer involvement, now the subject of extensive study.One of the main drivers of the boom of the so-called social media is so-called customer involvement. This represents a measure of how far the customer gets involved with the sender of the message, and is now the subject of extensive study.

Have you ever considered the general effect your messaging has on your target public? In a world full of media that is technologically limited to being unidirectional, the answer to this question was very inexact: we could only find out by using panels or surveys, which were always approximate, and we were unable to associate the answer with specific subjects or try to measure it in purely binary terms: one, buys the product or service, or zero, doesn´t buy it. This absence of information means that communication via the net can be measured or evaluated in a large number of ways that businesses are starting to discover. 

On the social web, users´ reactions are gauged by that fundamental variable: involvement. The minimum involvement of a user in terms of content is to simply “watch it go by”; the content appears and the user simply moves on to something else without interacting with it. Display advertising, for example, is a clear case of this: we can´t even be sure of whether or not the user has actually seen it or stopped to look at it. In fact, display advertising is a luxury in comparison with other media: we can at least know whether or not a specific user has received the impact and then act accordingly. In the press, we can only know the number of newspapers that have been sold and, on television, we have to trust a frugal scattering of audience meters that provide measurements that are poor and few and far between, but which everyone decides to believe since there is nothing better. Read more…

The innovative master in management and design for architects is the world’s first postgraduate program to combine creativity and management – it now adds a third angle: technology!

IE University is using Toshiba’s Folio 100 to develop Spain’s first tablet-based academic program. The tablets play an integral role in the University’s Master in Architectural Management and Design (MAMD) program run by IE School of Architecture, with a student body comprised of ten nationalities. All students on the program have a Toshiba Folio100 which they use to communicate with their professors and among themselves, as well as to access practical cases and notes, and to work with different multimedia applications.
Toshiba’s Folio 100 is the only educational platform the student needs for this postgraduate master program, which means there is no need for traditional note-taking. All materials pertaining to the courses that make up the program can be kept on just one learning device.
At the start of the program each student received a Folio 100, using it from the outset to read practical case studies and recommended books, as well as to access the University’s online campus. They will also be using the device to follow video conferences and maintain constant lines of communication with professors and classmates during the online periods of the program. Read more…