What was started as the social school network for Stanford has now reached 350 million users. Facebook as a social network has been as successful because people can decide who can see what. However to make even further improvements, Facebook is removing all regional networks so that every users is more in control of their privacy. Check out the open letter from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to all members:
Excuse that weird Facebook bar in the middle of the picture but that doesn’t seem to go away when I use ScreenGrab…
The day has come and today we will find out whether all this training has paid off. It is the day of the Iberia Rugby Cup of ESADE vs. IESE vs. LBS (women touch rugby only). Join this great event as spectator and show us your colors. We need all your support!!
Time: 16.00 to 18.00 (Warm-up starts at 15.00) Location: Universitat de Barcelona Sportsgrounds on Avinguda Diagonal 695 (View the map here) Details: Guys are playing rugby 7′s (at 4pm) and girls are playing rugby touch.
Preliminary Schedule:
16.00 LBS1 v ESADE
16.30 IESE v LBS2
17.00 LBS1 v ESADE
17.00 IESE v LBS2
17.30 IESE v ESADE
17.30 LBS1 v LBS2
Dinner
Time: 21.30
Cost: 25 Euros/Person covers food and Sangria
Location: Gran Via de Corts Catalans, 692 (map)
Late Night
Cost: We have arranged for free entry before 2am.
Location: Opium Mar, Paseo Marítimo, 34. (map )
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Update [27.11.2009]: I spoke to professors of IIM-B today, who are visiting ESADE this week. They confirmed that all the numbers and facts refer to MBA students and full-time positions. This was not sure previously but now it is! Apparently the figures are also the same for IIM-B, hence congratulations to both IIM’s.
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I would like to share this article from the India Times with you because it is impressive (thank you for the information, Romit). We have just completed our Career Week 2009 at ESADEourselves as have most other Business Schools around the world. With the flat world we are living in ESADE is competing with the universities around the world.
Investment banks made 77 offers on Day Zero (first day)
76 students received offers oversears (eg. US, France, Germany, the UK, the Middle-East, Africa and Southeast Asia)
McKinsey & Co, Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Co placed 3-5 students each
We are experiencing a Financial Crisis!!!!
I think that those figures are quite stunning and have set the bar high for other universities. This also exemplifies the quality of the Indian universities and students. The statistics for ESADE are not available to me but I would love to them know them.
Update: This article made it to the 6th most-read article in a few hours and today the blog has received the largest amount of visitors in one day, exceeding the record by 22% reation!
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After having written 99 articles and having had 4000 visitors (October 1050 alone) since March 2009 I was thinking that it might interest you to find out some statistics about the blog. The following are the 10 most read articles of my blog, which should give you an idea of the topics people are most interested in:
The following are the 10 most searched terms on the My ESADE MBA search engine:
entrepreneur
esade mba
esade
esade mba blog
esade blog
esade entrepreneurship club
esade student blog
my esade mba
esade good at entrepreneurship?
esade marketing career
I have received an increasing amount of personal emails, questions and enquiries about ESADE, the MBA and myself. A few issues keep popping up and I wanted to share my thoughts about some of these with you:
Many people are enquiring about entrepreneurship and marketing, which highlights the fact that ESADE is still famous for these, which also reflected in the statistics.
Yes, ESADE is focusing increasingly on Finance and Consulting
Yes, the fact that ESADE is famous for producing entrepreneurs makes it complicated to score on the salary-related aspects of the MBA rankings because usually entrepreneurs don’t earn that much at the start-up phase.
Barcelona plays an important role for people chosing ESADE
Why did I chose ESADE over IESE, IE and LBS? I will dedicate an article about this soon. Bear with me
What is the quality of the teaching, professors and course material?
Who is writing this blog, why and whether I have a link to ESADE? I would like to refer to the page About MYESADEMBA and reinforce that I have NOT received a scholarship from ESADE for writing this blog and I am free what I post here. To(un)bias-ed ;)
I wanted to thank you all for your support, comments and readership! I hope that I keep helping you in answering some of the questions that you have been asking yourself about ESADE and the MBA. Please don’t hesitate to spread the word about the blog and happy reading :)
The ESADE NetImpact Club has brought the following event to my attention. The University of Washington is organising a competition called the “Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition“. This competition tries to accumulate business ideas how to”alleviate a problem(s) of poverty in developing economies around the world.“* To read more about this interesting Business Plan Competition read the instructions hereto below.
GSEC business plans must clearly demonstrate the financial Return on Investment (ROI) and the Social Return on Investment (SROI), in addition to the social impact of the business idea. Please refer to the GSEC Submission Requirements and Resources for application and business plan criteria.
GSEC plans are judged on three criteria: (1) effect on the quality of life and poverty alleviation in the developing economies; (2) financial sustainability; (3) feasibility of implementation. To learn what former GSEC participants have proposed, visit the GSEC business plans section.
GSEC is open to students from any academic institution worldwide. Teams may be comprised of students from difference disciplines and institutions, and multi-disciplinary teams are highly encouraged. Both graduate and undergraduate students are eligible. Looking for team members? Become a fan of GSEC on Facebook and post on the Discussions page to recruit a team or team members.
Review the GSEC rules for full eligibility details.
How to Apply GSEC applications will be accepted August 03-Novemeber 11, 2009. Before applying, please review the GSEC rules and GSEC Submission Requirements.
To apply, GSEC student teams must complete both of the following by 11/11/09:
1) Submit an executive summary of your team’s business plan via email to gsec@u.washington.edu. Executive summaries must adhere to the GSEC executive summary requirements, detailed in the GSEC Submission Requirements.
2) Complete the online application, available here.
Both the executive summary and the online registration must be received by November 11, 2009, 11:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time. Only one application per team.
These are two more videos in my serious of recommended pre-MBA material. These two interviews in 2005 and 2007 of the former GE CEO and Chairman Jack Welch, hosted by MIT Sloan, teaches you to read between the lines and “do not to take lethary for an answer”.
I wrote this article at the beginning of August 2009 but have never gotten around publishing it for some reason. Now the FT.comhowever convinced me to publish this article finally. My humble thoughts:
The Financial Crisis has shaken up the perception of the banking and financial systems that we have gotten to know. The finance sector will inevitably undergo drastic changes in the near future. The rumors have it that the remuneration of the investment bankers will change from the purely incentive-based pay to an increased base salary and lower performance-based remuneration scheme to reduce the risk-taking behaviour that that has arguably caused this financial crisis.
At the same time all major universities are competing in finding the way for the future theories. The theories that rely on the notion that investors invest rationally are clearly overhauled and redundant. There are new school of thoughts that try to take more into consideration sociological factors along with the classical theories. However as of today no true realistic models have been developed that can really be applied and intuition remains the key decisive factor for investment decisions.
Another school of thought that gains increasing attention and in fact momentum is the Islamic Financial System. The sharia forbids banks to charge interests on loans and therefore banks will only receive the initial amount of the loan. Theoretically that does not make the banking sector very profitable because in the non-islamic banking sector interest is the main source of revenues. The Islamic banking system records a $1 trillion turnover a year with a growth rate of 15% to 25% for the past 15 years accordingto KMPG (the australian.com.au Aug 8-9,2009). La Trobe University in Australia, the National Australia Bank and the Muslim Community Co-operative Australia have now founded a university course that teaches a combination of both schools, which is an interesting development. Perhaps ESADE should start teaching about it as well in order to be thought leader.
Now the Financial Times has picked up the topic and co-organises the Islamic Financial Intelligence Summit in London on the 5th of November, 2009. You can find out more about the summit here.
As we are all currently in the midst of job applications I thought I might be useful to post a list of career websites that are targeted at MBA students all around the world. Most of these websites have relationships to ESADE and therefore there are ESADE specific entry codes, which you can find on the ESADE Careerportal with more detailed information. Have a look at the websites and see whether there is anything of interest to you and when you need anything further consult your the Careerportal. The credits for this list go to the Career Services. Enjoy!
The Economist published the full-time MBA rankings for 2009. Number one is IESE, second IMD and third Berkley. ESADE this year ranks 29 followed by HKUST. For the full rankings, click here.
It is commonly known that MBA studies are largely based on case studies and we at ESADE have already gone through many as of today. Last Friday during our class of “Corporate Citizenship” our professor has drawn our attention to ecch organization. This a great (apparently the largest) collection of business management case studies that are relevant for the MBA and therefore an invaluable resource for us MBA students. I guess it is best if I let ecch explain itself:
ecch offers the largest and most up-to-date collection of management case study materials to be found anywhere in the world, as well as a reprint service for a growing number of leading international management journals. ecch is a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting and facilitating case study based learning in management education and development. It was established by the business school community to fulfill its needs to provide a mechanism for publishing and distributing case study materials. The ecch case collection and facilities are unrivalled throughout the world.
ecch supports the writing and teaching of cases from its offices at Cranfield University in the UK and Babson College in the USA. Widely recognised as the foremost independent provider of training in the case method worldwide, ecch runs regular workshops for case teachers and writers. It also offers scholarships and awards for successful case authors. ecch produces and supplies publications and books on the case method.
During the preparing for the Management Information Systems (MIS) exam on Thursday I was wondering whether I should/have the time to really read the recommended book by Thomas Friedman “The World is Flat”. Then I made two interesting discoveries and his title fits well to the discoveries I made: the world is really flat!!!
1) Why read the book if you can watch the video about it. It is incredible that almost every reading has somewhat been “videomized”. We are truly living in digital era. Thank you for the tip, Romit!
2) I also tumbled over a very interesting consortium/website, called “OpenCourseWare“. This consortium basically provides the course and lecture material of all participating universities. This is somewhat similar to the initiative “AcademicEarth“, a portal with course videos (my article about Academic Earth is here) however the OCW seems much larger. The Spanish universities are well represented (view list here) and maybe ESADE should also join and start publishing course material. As we all know transparency ignites a lot of productive competition.
In case you want to watch the presentation of Thomas Friedman, check it out here.
We have received an invitation from the Singapore Management University for their event – “Asia Investment Banking Conference 2009“, a conference co-organized by the Singapore Management University (SMU) and the London School of Economics (LSE).
The AIBC, where its main focus would be on investment banking and the Asian Market, will be held in Singapore at the SMU Campus on the 23rd and 24th of September 2009. So far, they have invited senior bankers from major financial institutions such as UBS, Goldman Sachs, Normura, the Blackstone Group, Temasek Holdings, Lazard, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, The Carlyle Group, Linklaters, Clifford Chance, PwC, Ernst and Young, Oaktree Capital, Bain Capital and McKinsey and Co.
I just received this message on the ESADE LinkedIn Group and I prefer not to comment. This message is not from me. I just copy+pasted it here:
I urge all MBA alumni past and present to please read the MBA Oath and take it.
Please register at :
THE MBA OATH
As a manager, my purpose is to serve the greater good by bringing people and resources together to create value that no single individual can create alone. Therefore I will seek a course that enhances the value my enterprise can create for society over the long term. I recognize my decisions can have far-reaching consequences that affect the well-being of individuals inside and outside my enterprise, today and in the future. As I reconcile the interests of different constituencies, I will face choices that are not easy for me and others.
Therefore I promise:
I will act with utmost integrity and pursue my work in an ethical manner.
I will safeguard the interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers and the society in which we operate.
I will manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves.
I will understand and uphold, both in letter and in spirit, the laws and contracts governing my own conduct and that of my enterprise.
I will take responsibility for my actions, and I will represent the performance and risks of my enterprise accurately and honestly.
I will develop both myself and other managers under my supervision so that the profession continues to grow and contribute to the well-being of society.
I will strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide.
I will be accountable to my peers and they will be accountable to me for living by this oath.
Mary G. rose my attention to this funny video from a previous ESADE MBA student. The organisation International Student grants scholarship to US citizens who are going to study abroad if they blog, write, video podcast about their experience abroad.The applications tend to be in the form of a video and the following video in 2006 apparently convinced.
Matt Brattin, ESADE Alumni, won the scholarship before coming to ESADE in Spain. Have a look at the video and his winning speech!
