Did you know? – Facts about Madrid I

Apart from many arguments to come to study at IE Business School, one you will repeatedly hear is MADRID, Europe’s second largest city and definitely one of the most vibrant ones! IE is located right in the heart of Madrid in the famous Salamanca district, being the most prominent residential areas surrounded by Embassies (the…

Students must think out of the box: IE Dean Iniguez

This article was written by May George and published at South China Morning Post on August 16.

Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degrees exist in abundance worldwide. They are there to help business executives and entrepreneurs learn the rudiments of finance, accounting and management. But the dean of the IE Business School in Madrid, Santiago Iniguez de Ozono, feels that business schools, while teaching management skills, are neglecting to teach their students creativity.

“One distinctive feature of our MBA programme is entrepreneurship,” said Professor Iniguez. “It is not just us who talks about this but also recruiters and students, who talk about this entrepreneurial verve in our graduates, regardless whether they work for a large corporation, a family business or create their own company. This is something very distinctive. We ask core participants to create their own businesses. We also have a venture lab. We also tell them about the many opportunities on the web and what opportunities the new technological environment will bring them.”
Professor Iniguez feels that business schools should take more responsibility in ensuring their students learn more creativity in their studies; out-of-the-box thinking that adds value to the set subjects that every other business school teaches.

In Hong Kong, Kevin Au Yuk-fai, associate professor at the Department of Management and associate director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Chinese University, agrees. He said that one of the distinctive features of the Faculty of Business Administration’s MBA course was entrepreneurship, allowing students to think for themselves and create business scenarios while sometimes working in a multidisciplinary team.

“I tend to agree with [Mr Iniguez]…

It’s quite difficult for a lot of the business students to be creative. Thereâ??s been a long debate in business schools on whether business schools should be professional schools or a research school. In recent years, it looks like the research school side has been dominant. To a certain extent the schools are looking for ranking and research is something that the ranking system will look into.”

How critical are GMAT scores for the application?

This is one of the most asked questions when applying to business schools. To be frank, it is a very good question and very difficult to answer as the GMAT score is an indicator on how you tackle difficult situations under stress – and during a Master degree program at IE Business School you will…