This text was written by freelance journalist Nick Harland.
What do you consider when you consider Barcelona?
For some folks, it may very well be the year-long sunshine or superb sandy seashores. For others, maybe it’s the metropolis’s emblematic Sagrada Familia or cathedral-like Camp Nou. However the Catalonian metropolis is changing into more and more recognized for one thing else totally: its excellence in enterprise training.
In Bloomberg’s newest Finest B-Colleges rating, 4 of the highest 20 faculties in Europe have been situated in Barcelona. The QS World MBA Rating options seven Barcelona enterprise faculties in its high 100, while the celebrated Monetary Instances World MBA Rating is house to a few extra.
In every case, no different metropolis on the earth has extra faculties within the listing than Barcelona.
So how precisely does a metropolis with a inhabitants of simply 1.6 million maintain so many world-class enterprise faculties? Jan Hohberger is the Affiliate Dean of the MBA programme at Esade Enterprise Faculty, one among Barcelona’s oldest and best-known faculties. He says the roots could be traced all the way in which again to Esade’s beginnings in 1954, once they needed to look past their very own shores to determine the nascent faculty.
“Esade was based when Spain was nonetheless a dictatorship,” he explains. “And when businesspeople within the metropolis tried to create a enterprise faculty, they couldn’t do it beneath this dictatorship. Esade went to the Jesuits, and IESE went to Opus Dei.
“Then, when Franco died, Spain opened up very quickly to the European Union. What the Spanish firms did was very early on, they began to internationalise.
“Multinational companies within the 90s and early 2000s had excessive internationalisation as a result of the Spanish market was too small. They couldn’t goal Germany, France and England as enlargement markets, so as an alternative they went to Latin America, to Asia, to Africa… they went worldwide in a short time. Esade and IESE, to a sure extent, did the identical,” Hohberger continues.
It meant that Esade and IESE – the subsequent oldest enterprise faculty in Barcelona – have been left with no alternative however to ‘play the worldwide sport,’ as Hohberger describes it. By recruiting from overseas early on, they widened their pool of potential candidates at a time when different faculties have been concentrating on their house market. These days, worldwide pupil recruitment is a key coverage of just about any college on the earth.
Again then, it was a revolutionary thought.
Esade’s MBA class is made up of 97% worldwide college students, whereas the IESE MBA worldwide pupil ratio stands at 87%
It helped, after all, that the internationalisation of Spain coincided with Barcelona’s post-Olympics growth. Pre-1992 it was a largely industrial metropolis, scarred by a long time of oppressive rule – and its lack of seashores on the time meant it was also known as the town de espaldas al mar (with its again to the ocean). The Olympics modified the notion of Barcelona nearly in a single day, turning it into some of the vibrant and visited cities on the earth. In terms of worldwide pupil recruitment, that glowing international fame definitely helps.
“Barcelona is a really engaging location, beginning inside a European context but additionally for different worldwide college students,” says Hohberger.
Paula Amorim, the MBA Admissions Director at IESE Enterprise Faculty, agrees. “From a social perspective, Barcelona has lengthy been thought-about some of the nice cities to reside in. It boasts a beautiful local weather with the Mediterranean Sea at its doorstep, and it’s a snug metropolis with many pure contrasts inside a brief distance.”
Barcelona didn’t simply open itself up in the direction of the ocean. Lengthy-term internationalisation has introduced not simply variety, however a way of openness among the many metropolis’s residents to new folks and new cultures. One which comes from the popularity that internationalisation was not a alternative, however a necessity.
“The town has additionally all the time been famend for its openness to folks of many nationalities,” says Amorim. “And this cultural variety has additional enriched it, bringing a wealth of artwork, tradition, and most significantly, pleasant folks.”
That openness additionally extends to the town’s financial insurance policies. A mix of entrepreneurship-friendly initiatives and comparatively low value of residing makes it a lovely place for entrepreneurs to return and check out their luck.
“It’s a spot the place one can try to fail with comparatively minimal penalties if issues don’t succeed,” says Amorim. In response to Hohberger, the town’s enterprise atmosphere ‘makes it engaging and energetic in a number of dimensions’.
Each faculties proceed to play the worldwide sport to at the present time. Esade’s MBA class is made up of 97% worldwide college students, whereas the IESE MBA worldwide pupil ratio stands at 87%.
But the town’s excellence in enterprise training extends past its two oldest faculties. The likes of GBSB World, EAE and EU Enterprise Faculty all characteristic within the international high 100 of the QS MBA Rating, whereas EADA has grow to be a fixture within the prestigious Monetary Instances World MBA Rating. All of their respective MBA lessons have a global pupil ratio of over 90%.
Given the sheer variety of faculties vying for consideration inside Barcelona, it’s straightforward to marvel how the town is ready to maintain so many. In spite of everything, Barcelona is a fraction of the scale of London or Paris, for example. In some circumstances that dense geography fairly actually brings the town’s faculties nearer collectively: the campuses of Esade and IESE sit simply 200 metres aside, while EADA and GBSB are so shut that they might virtually attain out and contact one another.
However that shut proximity drives every faculty to do higher, and even results in casual collaboration between them.
It’s a spot the place one can try to fail with comparatively minimal penalties if issues don’t succeed
Paula Amorim, IESE Enterprise Faculty
“The competitors is actually good and there’s a sure visibility of what’s happening at every faculty the place they must compete and innovate – you can’t simply calm down in your individual area,” says Hohberger.
Amorim provides that ‘every faculty has its distinctive particularities, mission, and worth proposition’, but acknowledges the work they do collectively to draw worldwide college students to the nation. “We’re all the time wanting to collaborate on occasions outdoors of Spain with different faculties to advertise Spain as a basic research vacation spot.”
The gradual improvement of Barcelona’s enterprise faculty ecosystem can be having a cumulative impact on pupil and workers recruitment. “Now now we have this ecosystem… there’s a sure cluster impact from having all of those faculties,” explains Hohberger. “When firms or analysis professors come to go to IESE, they may additionally go to us and vice versa.”
There are few indicators that Barcelona’s progress is slowing. IESE and Esade stay on the high of the town’s academic tree, however a brand new wave of colleges have gotten well-known at house and overseas. In Barcelona it appears like each college is taking part in the worldwide sport – however Hohberger believes that sort of competitors can solely preserve driving the town’s faculties on.
“We’re all the time pushing one another and getting higher on a regular basis. You can’t relaxation. You need to innovate.”
