IE & Asia-Pacific

This is title of the 2007 edition of IE Alumni Conference held on November 16 in Madrid. Nobody doubts that natural resources, shifting demographics and new markets/cultures constitute major challenges for businesses in the 21st century.

During the conference there will be panel discussions on topics like Natural Resources: Finding the Right Balance, Environmental Challenges and Future Alternatives, Shifting Demographics: Mapping the World Population, Business Opportunities Derived from Changing Demographics, The new world order. Who’s calling the shots?, New markets, new cultures.
The speakers are coming from international organisations like United Nations, IMF, World Bank, from leading academic and research institutions and last but not least from the private sector.

In past editions the IE alumni conference brought together more than 1000 alumni from 30 different countries and apart from these challenging topics it’s a great opportunity to meet former classmates and make new business contacts.

For a couple of years already IE publishes each month the academic newsletter IE Focus with the latest articles of IE professors and associates. The topics covered reflect the variety of expertise of the IE faculty and their close links to business. It gives also a very good insight into the academic approach into our Master programs since they are far from being just pure theoretical models, but a lot of realistic up-to-date business knowledge.

In the current October issue you will learn about:

Fernando Torres and the paradox of financial econometrics – Using financial econometrics to predict the future of markets based on past performances may be very fashionable, but does it make sense?

Brazil, a reliable partner and a sound economy – The last five years have seen major advances in Brazil that have led to massive investment there by Spanish companies. Now all Spanish firms need to do is increase their exports to Brazil.

Entrepreneurialism in Spain today: quantity and quality – Slowly but surely the entrepreneurial spirit is taking root in Spain as it becomes a real professional alternative. But there is still one hurdle left, which is to improve the quality of Spainâ??s burgeoning start-ups.

Competitiveness and workers: the invisible link – Low productivity levels are the Achillesâ?? heel of the Spanish economy, the result of a paternalistic mentality that makes the Spanish business community reluctant to give more autonomy to its workers.

The competitive edge of â??speaking in proseâ? – Trying to sell a few good things the company did in the past as corporate reputation is a big mistake that could have just the opposite of the desired effect. If you wish to get this newsletter from now on monthly in your inbox, just register here.

For many of us, one of reasons to study in IE is that we take into account IE’s huge talents pool and close business connection to Latin America. If this is your case, have a look at Tax Reform: Mexico Marks the Path by IE professor Rafael Pampillón, who made a through country wide analysis for tax reform in current Mexico.

Ok, guys, here is again IE’s Aspen Ranking in 2007.
(Don’t know what is Aspen Ranking?
Check Some General Introduction about Business School Rankings)
We ARE doing GREAT, esp. given that we are the ONLY European business school in the rank out of top 10 business school world wide. Have a look at IE’s MBA program among the top 10 worldwide in Aspen Institute’s sustainability ranking

Just in case many of you hardly have chance read China Economic Review , here is the link about IE’s EIU 2007 ranking news published there.
Well honestly I don’t like that pic very much…

As we can see each year, there are a variety of rankings about business school programs from different organizations, and it has been more common than before that school’s ranking from one organization varies a lot from another. The answer is obvious: different rankings have different standards and specialization. Here are some general introduction about the most commonly applied business school ranking.

Economist Intelligence Unit 英国经济学人信息中心（EIU）每年发布一次全球百强商学院排行榜，其依据的是校友和在校学生的反馈，以及学校提供的数据。该排名主要考量的是商学院能在多大程度上满足学生的预期。

Financial Times《金融时报》（FT）每年推出的商学院全球百强榜，主要依据的是毕业三年后的校友的反馈、校方提供的数据以及对商学院研究成果的评估结果。排名的三大标准是：毕业生的职业发展情况、学校的国际化程度和新思想的开创性。

The Aspen Institute (Aspen）的榜单主要衡量的是在世界排名前100位的商学院中，将社会和环境问题纳入课堂教学和课后实践的广度和深度。其排名被认为是目前在该领域最具权威性和发言权的。

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IE Business School is No. 3 in Europe and No. 5 in the world in Executive MBA programs according to the 2007 Financial Times Ranking. The ranking considers IEâ??s Executive MBA as one of the best in the world based on criteria that include graduatesâ?? subsequent professional development, fulfilment of participantsâ?? expectations and the international experience offered by the program. The result further consolidates IEâ??s position as a leading international business school for senior management training programs.

In this yearâ??s edition, authors of the FT ranking based their evaluations on 16 indicators of quality in Executive MBA programs, including degree of satisfaction of the student body, career progression and increase in salary, diversity of program faculty , the programâ??s international projection, the degree to which the program came up to participantsâ?? expectations, and the schoolâ??s level of research.

Gonzalo Garland, general director of external relations at IE Business School, says that â??the result of the Financial Times ranking is in line with those achieved in previous years, which serves to motivate us to enhance the quality of the programs still further and to keep innovating and building on our internationalisation strategy. In a few weeksâ?? time a new on-site Executive MBA will start at IE, run entirely in English. It is the latest addition to IEâ??s portfolio of Executive MBA programs that we have run for many years now, like the International Executive MBA, which meets the needs of senior executives worldwide by combining online sessions with on-site periods in Madrid and Shanghai, and which has a student body that comprises more than 90% international studentsâ?.

Have a look at this BUSINESS EDUCATION 2007: Empathetic business sense nurtured by disaster, a story of one of IE alumni from Financial Times
Jamila Bravo Maagdalia is a EMBA student @IE Business School, before that she had been working for non-government organizations long time such as commercial adviser attached to the Spanish Embassy in Johannesburg, director of international relations for the EU’s @LIS programme in European Commission. She is now director for south-east Asia at Excem, a family-owned company with diverse global interests, one of her current assignments also taps her passion for international co-operation and development.

I have been an IE student for over one year, but to be honest I hardly know any confernce going on inside IE until very recently when I started my internship in IE campus. Well here is the first conference I attended called “Leading for the Future”, which was an international workshop co-organized by IWE (International Women of Excellence) and IE.
The idea of the workshop is ¨to help women maximize both of their individual and career potential by sharing successful experiences from others and building on positive experiences; meanwhile, to help organizations attract and retain women talents by creating flexible working environment for them.” as said by Brian Hadfield, Chairman of IWE.
Well if you think carefully about it, this women issue is getting more important among all corporate stuff. But the problem is—–
despite the fact that women are gaining more important positions in the corporate world due to their contribution to facilitating the organization’s capacity to innovate, more women are leaving their organizations due to issues such as inhospitable corporate culture, lack of visibility in the organization, commitment to personal life or family responsibilities.
So what can we do?
(Yes, I was also participating the workshop, and surprisingly the result turned out that many of us rarely do any self development planning regarding social networking with peer business women, or seeking ways of dealing with a male dominated business world, etc., even if we´ve already been in middle management level.)

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Well this meeting European Energy Challenge was initiated by IE Business School in homage to the former Vice-President of the European Commission, Ms. Loyola de Palacio, who had cancer and passed away not long time ago. Loyola actually is sister of one of the board members of school, well, I guess that’s the very important part for us to hold this event. Anyway the event was quite influential, apart from Spanish national media, about 22 international media participated the event, among those are Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Reuters, Dow Jones, CNN International, etc. Just give you some idea, here are pictures from an amateur’s perspective.

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