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"Benefits from appreciating Nature " my latest post in on @LinkedIn https://t.co/tHoMxcbwxm
— Santiago Iniguez (@SantiagoIniguez) December 8, 2014
"In Defense of the Utility of Humanities", my latest post in @LinkedIn https://t.co/4MhRmpJh7d
— Santiago Iniguez (@SantiagoIniguez) November 22, 2014
"Cultivating Taste Improves Management Skills" my latest @LinkedIn @LinkedInPulse Influencer post
— Santiago Iniguez (@SantiagoIniguez) October 6, 2014
"Learning 'Strategic Intent' from Moby Dick" my latest post on @LinkedIn @Pulse http://t.co/nloyv230A5
— Santiago Iniguez (@SantiagoIniguez) August 19, 2014
On Lampedusian Changes and Dancing Elephants: my latest post on @LinkedIn http://t.co/Q6QKUXpswZ
— Santiago Iniguez (@SantiagoIniguez) August 13, 2014
#Leadership Virtues and Management Workouts: my latest post for @Linkedin Influencers @LinkedInPulse https://t.co/8OG7tASEak
— Santiago Iniguez (@SantiagoIniguez) July 30, 2014
"Do you have a Global Mindset?" - my latest LinkedIn post: http://t.co/AxBf32Itu8 @LinkedIn @Pulse
— Santiago Iniguez (@SantiagoIniguez) July 15, 2014
#MOOC s will not replace formal education but they may be complementary in multiple ways https://t.co/wQOlD1FPcQ
— Santiago Iniguez (@SantiagoIniguez) July 9, 2014
09:00 – 10:00 Plenary IV – MOOCs
#MOOCs are here to stay but not to replace trad. educ. http://t.co/QrlQ3VcGUi @SantiagoIniguez @EULearning @EFMDNews pic.twitter.com/gOAqQGytEg
— Richard Straub (@rstraub46) June 22, 2014
"Thinking of giving up your job for another day in paradise?" by @SantiagoIniguez on @LinkedIn http://t.co/88dncGUAvH
— EFMD News (@EFMDNews) June 24, 2014
Latest LinkedIn Influencer post, 23 June, 2014
Who hasn't dreamt every now and then of saving up enough money and retiring to live contentedly in some earthly paradise? This was Tom Wilson's plan, the main character in Somerset Maugham's 1935 short story, The Lotus Eater. Wilson is a hard-working bank manager in London, who at the age of 35 loses his wife and daughter, two of the worst setbacks anybody could suffer. Hoping to forget his sorrows, he travels to Italy, where he visits the island of Capri, an idyllic spot that bewitches him.
Upon returning to his routine job in London, Wilson begins planning early retirement in Capri. Now without familial responsibilities, he believes that his pension from early retirement, along with the sale of his house and his savings, will provide him with enough money to survive for the following couple of decades, given that the average life expectancy in the early years of the twentieth century for men was around 60. Wilson puts his plan into action and begins to enjoy a frugal, but peaceful, life in Capri.
Time passes by inexorably, and after two decades of the contemplative life, his income has dwindled down to nothing, at which point he decides to end his own life. He locks himself in his room, lights a charcoal fire that will fill the room with carbon monoxide and poison him, and lies down on the bed to die. But the next day, he is found unconscious, but alive. However, the fumes have left him brain damaged. Wilson lives on for a few years more, penniless, on the margins of the community, and sleeping in a shed provided by his former employees. In the final lines, the narrator, commenting on Wilson's situation, notes: "I think on the whole we all get what we deserve," … "But that doesn't prevent its being rather horrible."
Maugham's assertion that "we all get what we deserve" is arguable, particularly bearing in mind the role that moral luck can play in our lives. In any event, we make decisions at important moments in our lives that influence the rest of our existence. The Lotus Eater provides a good example of what can go wrong when we prematurely retire to earthly paradises without sufficient funds to live comfortably. At the very least, if we were to take such a decision, it would be advisable to build a business, or to look for a job in the paradise of choice; and not simply to finance a life the duration of which we cannot guess, but also to keep us in form physically and mentally.
This is not a view that Wilson shares: "Leisure," …"If people only knew! It's the most priceless thing a man can have and they're such fools they don't even know it`s something to aim at. Work? They work for work's sake. They haven't got the brains to realize that the only object of work is to obtain leisure."
Do you share Wilson's opinion? Interesting enough, a recent Gallup survey shows that just 30 percent of employees in America feel engaged at work. Around the world, across 142 countries, the proportion of employees who feel engaged at work is only 13 percent (1). In light of this, it seems likely that most people would leave their jobs tomorrow and head of to their respective paradises were their fortunes to improve dramatically, for example by winning the lottery or inheriting a large sum of money.
Wilson lost his family: it is clear that one of the main reasons that we continue to work is to sustain and improve the living conditions of our loved ones. That said, I would like to look at some of the internal reasons that motivate us to keep working, and that have to do with the job itself and our personal disposition, rather than external factors, such as raising a family.
We've all had rainy days at work. On such occasions, like Wilson, we might find ourselves dreaming of flying off to some paradisiacal destination where we could spend the rest of a tantalizing trouble-free life. What measures can we take to improve our disposition towards work, to enjoy it, and even be happy carrying out our profession? Below are a few suggestions:
- In the first place, enjoying your work depends primarily on you, and nobody else. Your proactive approach and mood are decisive when it comes to changing things in the workplace. If you will allow me to paraphrase a renowned piece of advice: do not think what the others, your boss, and your colleagues, can do for you at work; rather, think what you can do to turn your company into a respected and preferred organization.
- Put together a short, positive pitch about your job and responsibilities, your achievements and professional objectives; something along the lines of the kind of presentation you might make at your child's school on parents' day. Try to make this presentation inspiring, and that would earn you your listeners' praise. I am convinced after doing this a couple of times you will feel a stronger bond with your work.
- Think about and plan out your company's development objectives, and how you would like your career to advance over the next five years, and taking into account the training and education that might be required for this.
-Set out the most important tasks for the coming few days. Some people believe that during leisure time it is essential to disconnect completely from work. I don't agree. I think that work and leisure should flow naturally in your life. If you come up with good ideas during free time, write them down or record them.
- Similarly, prepare your free time so that you can properly enjoy your hobbies and leisure pursuits. Some people see free time as a blank space, or decompression chamber. This might be understandable in the aftermath of particularly stressful periods at work, but it is a good idea to plan for and diversify leisure activities.
-One final piece of advice. Look into the progress that has been made in positive psychology in recent years. If you think that you need outside help, talk to a coach about how they can help you focus on your career.
Wilson's choice for Capri is easy to understand. The Island has long provided a refuge for emperors, writers, aristocrats, and business people. Over the centuries, many people have succumbed to the beauty of its landscape, the charm of its people, its benign climate, and its wonderful food. It is an island on a human scale, where each stopping off point can be travelled on foot, its landscape verdant, colorful, and perfumed. The views out to the Faraglioni, of the sea from Monte Solaro or Villa Tiberio, or of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples are among the most lovely anywhere on earth. Maugham describes the Piazza in Capri as, "a perfect setting for an opera by Donizetti, and you felt that the voluble crowd might at any moment break out into a rattling chorus."
In short, it's the perfect paradise for "il dolce far niente". Sadly, any latter-day Wilson considering retirement to Capri would have to find far greater resources than our hapless bank manager: the island is now one of the most expensive places in Europe to live.
Maugham took his title from Homer's Odyssey, which at one point tells of an island whose inhabitants consume lotus leaves, which induces in them a state of akrasia, or indolence, allowing them to forget their homelands and families and to live contentedly. But let's not kid ourselves: Wilson's is very much a cautionary tale.
(Photo: View of the Faraglioni and Cape Punta Tragara from the Island of Capri)
#Patent's War & Peace: my post on @elonmusk decision to release #Tesla's patents & foster electric cars @IEbusiness http://t.co/wyKvYn9xmx
— Santiago Iniguez (@SantiagoIniguez) June 14, 2014
LinkedIn Influencer post of Dean Santiago Iniguez, 14 June, 2014
After years of fierce war among technology superpowers we may be witnessing the first glimpse of peace in the industry. Last Thursday Elon Musk, Co-Founder and CEO of Tesla Motors –an American company that designs, manufactures, and sells electric cars and electric vehicle powertrain components- announced that his company will open its patent portfolio to help expand the market for electric cars worldwide (1). Musk tells in his blog: "Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology" (2).
This decision has been described by some as "The Gettysburg Address for Entrepreneurship and Innovation" (3) and by others as an ingenuous move with lessons for Silicon Valley (4). Coincidently or intentionally, Musk's decision coincides very timely with the new rules announced by President Obama to curtail CO2 emissions from carbon plants by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.
In fact, despite the renovated excitement over electric cars, their market penetration has been reduced and, according to Musk, they currently represent less than 1% of the vehicle sales of major car manufacturers. True, there is an increasing sensitivity among customers towards the environmental impact of their traditional car's emissions. However, the relative higher prices of electric cars, costs of maintenance, lack of a wide network of electric stations to recharge batteries and lesser autonomy, among other reasons, make the option for electric vehicles still unaffordable for many.
Interestingly, one of the most salient advocates for electric cars has been LinkedIn Influencer Carlos Goshn, CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, the company enjoying the largest market share in the production of electric cars with 100,000 units sold worldwide, more than the combined production of the other car manufacturers. In an earlier post in LinkedIn Pulse this year, Goshn called for a major move by all stakeholders in the automotive industry: "I believe that if we are to transform the car for a new era, we must address three major issues: safety, the environment and affordability. But the auto companies cannot do this alone. We will need to partner with one another, with governments and other industries if the car is to remain a source of prosperity, progress and freedom" .
Is Musk's decision sound from a strategic management perspective or is he diluting the value of Tesla's patents, a major asset of his company? It is worth mentioning here a key finding released in an academic paper of the 1980's (6, PDF, 81 pages) and widely diffused at many business strategy courses at business schools. According to the opinions of an ample range of managers, the least effective way to benefit from new inventions or innovations in business is relying just on the protection of patents. The same study shows that the most successful way to maximize innovation is taking advantage of the lead time an exploiting the time-to-market advantage of being the pioneer in launching a new product or service. Other alternatives to protect innovation preferred by managers include climbing down the curves of experience, in order to reduce costs and offer competitive prices, as well as reinforcing sales efforts when launching a new product. Keeping secrecy and, particularly trusting in the legal shield provided by patents are the least reliable choices to defend innovation. The results of the mentioned study can be found in chart below.
Taking this into account, Musk's decision can be considered strategically sound and may contribute to the spread of electric car's technology and even to convert Tesla's products in the standard adopted by other players in the industry. At the same time, it should be emphasized that Musk's announcement does not entail that Tesla is giving away its patents. In his own words, it means that they "will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology" (7). It is thus to be determined the reach of "good faith" uses in the open source access to Tesla's technology, and the company retains its right to litigate with those players that may compete unfairly.
Clearly, Musk's announcement marks a decisive shift in the culture of patent protection in technology related industries. In past years, patent litigation flourished at the expense, in the opinion of many, of fostering innovation and progress and benefiting mostly lawyers. A clear case is the upsurge of patent trolls, those companies owning and enforcing patent rights against infringers, but without exploiting the full business potential of patents, thus impeding development and innovation.
Tesla's move to open source technology is inspiring, particularly for companies operating in rapidly evolving industries where the patent protection system lags behind actual innovation and market development. At the same time, it is arguable whether it would be transferable to other industries with huge research and development costs over time, like the pharmaceutical sector, or to organizations like universities, which may need different mechanisms to promote and capitalize on their intellectual property. This may be one of the reasons why Senator Leahy recently decided to drop the patent reform bill, which aimed at reducing litigation by patent assertion entities and patent trolls. However, he declared "that If the stakeholders are able to reach a more targeted agreement that focuses on the problem of patent trolls, there will be a path for passage this year and I will bring it immediately to the (Senate Judiciary) committee" (8).
Regardless what the future legislation brings, I believe that companies will better protect and capitalize on their innovation if they engage in collaborative schemes and alliances with other players in the industry, rather than in defensive or litigation strategies. In the words of Musk: "Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world's most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla's position in this regard". (9)
(1) www.wired.com/2014/06/tesla-patents
(2) www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
(3) Twitter.com/erikbryn/status/477278702687248384
(4) www.wired.com/2014/06/tesla-patents
(5) Carlos Ghosn, LinkedIn, Feb. 19, 2014, "We Can Ensure The Car Remains a Vehicle For Progress"
(6) dido.econ.yale.edu/P/cd/d08b/d0862.pdf
(7) www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
(8) Reuters, May 21, 2014: "Senator Leahy drops patent reform bill for now"
(9) www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
Photo: Heisenberg Media / Flickr
Linkedin Influencer post, June 9, 2014
Gurus use the metaphors "the world is flat", referring to the amazing impact of communication technologies and to global convergence, or "the world is round", meaning the still prevalent and centrifugal local forces across the Globe. Arguing about the shape of the World six centuries ago, however, could make you liable to be prosecuted, at even risk to your own life.
Christopher Columbus (1450/51?-1506 ), who lived at that time was fearless and and based his exploratory venture on the roundedness of the World. Today many countries celebrate October 12, commemorating the successful landing of Columbus' expedition, supported by the Castile Crown, at San Salvador (currently the Bahamas) on that same day in 1492. Some historians question whether this event was the actual discovery of the continent by Europeans, since the Vikings had reached Labrador Island in a previous epochs, but the credit went to the enigmatic Admiral given the subsequent conquest and a successful marketing initiative: Amerigo Vespucci, one of the members of his crew, accidentally gave his name to the discovered continent in one of his letters to a friend in Europe, who later spread the news.
One of the virtues of Columbus was his perseverance, especially manifested in the looking for support and launching of his project. He wanted to discover a new way to the Indies (Far East) westbound. Until then, explorers went to Asia following the path of Marco Polo and the Silk Road or navigating around the African Coast and rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Columbus challenged the extended belief at his time that the world was flat and he further thought that the distance between Portugal and Japan was 2,760 miles –a severe miscalculation since it is actually over 12,000 miles. In fact, these mismatches between data estimations and actual facts and figures, common at early expeditions before the world was properly mapped, remind us of similar errors at companies when trying to predict the uncertain, for example the size of the potential market for a new product, or the required future investments of a start up.
Columbus search of alternative financial resources for his expedition also reminds us of current fund raising efforts and road shows performed by many entrepreneurs. Columbus knocked at many doors and received negative answers from different kings and merchants. However, his endurance rendered results and he was lucky to find the support of Isabel, Queen of Castile, who was in the right mood just after reuniting the Iberian Peninsula and founding the kingdom of Spain.
Apart from his endurance, there are not many other virtues applicable to Columbus as a manager, according to available sources. He was not a skilled pilot, according to comments of different experts, although he improved with experience and did successfully take advantage of the trade winds. In fact, historians wonder whether he realized he had reached a new continent after his four subsequent travels to America. What is even more obvious is that he lacked the necessary and effective leadership skills: He fought with all his captains and his crew was on the verge of mutiny several times. Columbus could only trust the members of his family, something that unfortunately happens at some family businesses and this results in unsustainable management. During his third trip to America, he faced the opposition of settlers and friars who accused him of mismanagement and was imprisoned by a delegate of the Crown and required to go back to Castile. It is well-known now, his refusal to have his shackles removed during the whole voyage on the ship back to Spain, puffed up with pride. Indeed, self-pride, developed over the years as a consequence of his recognized achievements in life, was one of his weaknesses, as his son tells us of his passing away: "the Admiral, suffering more severely still from his gout and other illnesses and from grief at seeing himself so fallen from his high state, yielded his soul to God on Ascension Day"…
Being credited with the discovery of a new continent may be enough basis to inflate one's ego, and pride, as happened with Columbus. However, I believe that pride is not a good advisor for top managers: it may distort our opinions about people and their intentions. My suggestion is that you get rid of personal pride while deciding about important issues at your company or while evaluating the performance of others. I conceive management as more a service to others than a way to achieve fame and public recognition. I guess that if you cultivate this spirit of service you will much better equipped than Columbus to overcome future adversity and the inevitable low-points throughout your career.
The account of the first discovery of American land in the book(*) is not as epic as some paintings or movies have portrayed. The night between October 11 and 12 was filled with subsequent confirmations of land coming into sight. I enclose some words extracted from Columbus log-book on his historical landing at Guanahani: "In order to win their friendship –he refers to the natives-(…) I gave some of them red caps and glass beads which they hung round their necks, also many other triffles. These things pleased them greatly and they became marvelously friendly to us. They afterwards swam out to the ship's boats in which we were sitting, bringing us parrots and balls of cotton thread and spears and many other things, which they exchanged with us for such objects as glass heads, hawks and bells. In fact, they were willingly traded everything they had". It's a timeless evidence of business' prodigy. It proves that business is the best connector between people from different cultures. Business, then and now, makes the Word flatter.
(*) The book referenced here is a compilation of different writings, including Columbus log-book, and excerpts from works by Bartolomé de las Casas, Hernando Columbus –son of Christopher- and others, edited by J.M. Cohen.
June 1, 2014 LinkedIn Influencer post
Idealism and Pragmatism, as opposed but complementary and mutually beneficial visions of the World, are eloquently illustrated in Cervantes' masterpiece "Don Quixote,"acknowledged by many as the first modern novel. However, some literary scholars suggest that the novel should have been entitled "Don Quixote and Sancho Panza" for the two main protagonists of this book deserve equal merit and recognition and indeed represent two facets of the personality that, if combined into one, may achieve a perfect equilibrium.
Don Quixote is ethereal, idealistic (sometimes to lunatic extremes), detached from material goods, with a noble figure, tall but skinny, a low-level aristocrat who is victim of delusions of grandeur. "Honor" is the motto that drives him to afford risky, often foolish, actions since he has devoted the rest of his life to the old-fashioned enterprise of restoring chivalry customs.
Sancho Panza, working as Quixote's esquire for free, is short, has a distinguishable paunch but with his feet on the ground and a distinctive worldly vision. He incarnates the model of pragmatism and looks for chances to move up the social ladder, while taking care for the day-to-day basic needs of the couple, such as lodgings, food and other living arrangements. He even has capitalist instincts, rare in Spanish 16th Century: when he discovers the properties of the supposedly magic balsam of Fierabras that heals whomever drinks it, he wonders how to mass produce it (1).
The two protagonists represent respectively the "ying" and the "yang" and they are one of the most complementary and synergetic couples of world's literature. Since they represent opposed personalities, maybe living together is not just possible but enjoyable. Furthermore, they respect and profess profound affection for each other regardless their differences and what others may think. A quote from Sancho at the end of the novel is illustrative of this, when he takes upon his own shoulders his companion's mission after Don Quixote's death: "Let us take the field in shepherds' apparel, according to our agreement: who knows, but behind some bush we may find my Lady Dulcinea disenchanted, and a comely sight to see".
Quixote and Sancho may well characterize the personality poles that many companies need in their top management. In fact, idealism and pragmatism are not easily found together in a single person. Some managers are the embodiment of strategic vision and passion for innovation, whereas others have a marked orientation towards finance and performance. Some are risk-averse and conservative, and well suited for times of crisis, whereas others may drive successfully their organizations in times of growth.
There are many cases of companies where the actual governance was shared by an idealist and a pragmatist, in the Quixote-Sancho fashion. A paradigmatic example of this was the initial management at Philips, the Dutch electronics conglomerate, when during the first decades of expansion the company was co-driven by the two founding brothers; one embodying the innovative and production drive and the other the orientation to market. This synergetic polarity originally inspired the matrix structure that the corporation adopted and maintained operative until the 1980's.
Another example was Apple at the time when Steve Jobs hired John Sculley, then CEO of PepsiCo, to head the Cupertino-based company. Jobs intention of combining his idealism, strategic vision and perfectionism with Sculley's marketing talent and performance-oriented style was sound and potentially beneficial. However, we know that the tandem did not work together well, and that the power struggle between Jobs and Sculley ended with the exit of the former from the company he founded. Indeed, Job's quixotic traits, his erratic and temperamental attitude — some witnesses even referred to a sort of reality distortion (2) — came to the extreme at that time. Unfortunately, Sculley did not prove to be a supportive Sancho Panza either.
Given your past experience and the feedback that you get from your colleagues and coaches, do you consider yourself an idealist or a pragmatist manager, a Quixote or a Sancho? You probably combine elements of the two, but I guess that there is a useful piece of advice for managers if Cervantes' novel is interpreted from the perspective explained here. If you run a company and feel naturally inclined to one of the described poles, you should better counteract the undesirable effects of this inertia in your company and appoint a senior manager with a complementary profile to keep healthy dialectics. Steve Jobs, who acknowledged his past error, did this during his successful second mandate as CEO at Apple.
"Did not I assure you, they were no other than windmills? Indeed, nobody could mistake them for anything else, but one who has windmills in his own head?" tells Sancho to Don Quixote after the ludicrous attack the latter undertakes against the standing constructions, believing they were fierce giants. Was Sancho right or didn't he understand his master's vision? Well, we may stand before two conceptions of reality that are not put to the test until actions are performed and evaluated in the long term.
(1) See Carole Slade's "Introduction" to Barnes & Noble Classics edition "Don Quixote"(New York, NY, 2004) p. xvii.
(2) Andrew Hertzfeld: "Reality Distortion Field", http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt
Image: Andreas Achenbach (1815-1910), Don Quixote and Sancho Panza
It is rare to find a writing emperor, but even more an emperor who wished to be a philosopher rather than wear the purple. This is the case of Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE), known as the last good emperor of the Antonine's dynasty in the Second Century of our era, when the Barbarians besieged the Roman Empire. You may be familiar with his image if you visited Capitol Hill in Rome, where his colossal equestrian statute remains because early Christians believed it represented St. Peter.
Marcus Aurelius lived in times when Rome was experiencing both internal and external turbulence. Internally, different political and cultural opposing streams concurred: in religion, the fight between defendants of the old faith in Roman deities and Christians was starting to erode old beliefs associated with traditional Roman customs and Law; in philosophy, stoics, epicureans, and supporters of imported doctrines of Plato and other Greek philosophers contended to become the standard. Marcus Aurelius was, by education and self-cultivation, a stoic. Basically, stoics defended personal self-control, the subjection of the own senses to the mind, the acceptance of nature –they professed some sort of pantheism- and of given state of things, in order to achieve perfection.
This spirit influences Marcus Aurelius "Meditations", which exude some form of holiness and sanctity. In fact, at his death, after a battle on the Danube Front (the hit movieGladiator here at least was accurate), he was declared sacred, being the last Roman emperor to be considered part of the deities. Why did he write this book? The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains that "by reflecting upon philosophical ideas and, perhaps more importantly, writing them down, Marcus Aurelius engages in a repetitive process designed to habituate his mind into a new way of thinking".
Allow me to formulate a first takeaway from this. Writing a blog or a diary that reflect your ideas and thoughts is a beneficial practice for at least two reasons: First, by describing your actions you may give further meaning to your decisions and your behavior. Second, it is an excellent way to formulate explicitly your beliefs and values, reshape and interiorize them.
Many of the maxims in the "Meditations" sound repetitive, but they may be recommendable at times when managers have to face deception, failures or any other sort of setback. I include a selection below:
II.1. Begin the morning by saying to yourself: I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial (…) I can neither be harmed by any of them (…) for we are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.
II.14. Though you were to live three thousand years, or three million, still remember that no man losses any other life than this which now lives, or lives any other than this which he now loses.
An advice to those who look for places to retire and recharge the batteries –I declare myself guilty of this, since I am writing these lines at my little house in the country:
IV.3 Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, seashores, and mountains, and you too are wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the common sort of man, for it is in your power, whenever you shall choose, to retire into yourself.
A further piece of advice to cultivate modesty; valuable since it comes from an emperor:
IV.3. But perhaps a longing for the thing called fame torments you. See how soon everything is forgotten; look at the chaos of infinite time on each side of the present, and the emptiness of applause, and the fickleness and poor judgement of those who pretend to praise, and the narrowness of the space within which it is confined. For the whole earth is but a point and in that how small a nook is this your dwelling, and how few are there within it, and what kind of people are they who will praise you?
Interestingly, Meditation has become a popular and effective practice among managers. The experience from the courses on meditation that we run at our School is very positive, and most participants say that meditation has helped them improve their personal balance and their professional performance. It also helps to develop positive leadership. Allow me a second takeaway from this article. If you have not experienced yet, I suggest you give meditation a try.
Going back to our protagonist, there are two aspects of Marcus Aurelius' personality, which do not fit with the pure thoughts of his "Meditations". First, he devoted most of his life to warfare. Second, his son Commodus –excellently played in the movie Gladiator by actor Joaquin Phoenix-, who became his successor, was not a very good apprentice, since he became one of the most deplorable emperors of Rome. However, this happens in the best of families, doesn't it?
(Photo: Detail of equestrian bronze sculpture of Marcus Aurelius in Capitol Hill, Rome)
(Photo: I took this from the island of Capri in Italy, where the episode of Sirens supposedly took place)
The Odyssey narrates the hazardous journey of Odysseus –or Ulysses, in its Latin version- back to his kingdom in Ithaca from the Trojan War. It was a long trip indeed since it took him ten years to cover a distance that could have only taken few weeks then, and 30 minutes by plane today; although the exact location of Troy is a matter of controversy, most historians place it on the western coast of current Turkey, and Ithaca is an island in the Ionian Sea.
Odysseus is described many times in the book -abundant in epithets applied to its characters, humans and deities- as "the strategist", a word that comes from "strategos" (στρατηγός in Greek), meaning "leader of the army". The story depicts him as a respected leader with guile and resourcefulness, willing to take risks when necessary, respectful to his subordinates and committed to his mission. Many times he needs to force his crew against their fickle desires in order to continue their trip. Certainly, the book –versioned in many film movies- is a must for those who look forward cultivating ideas and concepts on strategy.
Throughout its fourteen chapters, the book relates the trials that Odysseus and his men have to overcome, not without loosing part of the crew in every episode until he remains the only survivor. The more celebrated passages include the escape from Polyphemus' cave, dressed up as sheep, ending with the blinding of the one-eye giant; the visit to Circe's island, where this witch turns many men into pigs; the crossing of the sea where the Sirens attract sailors with their charming and deadly chants to sink their ships, a challenge that Odysseus passes successfully by asking his crew to wear earplugs while he stands tied to the ship's mast. Incidentally, this last episode has served as an illustration to discuss paternalism in moral theory: When the sirens start to sing, Odysseus cries desperately to be unbound by his crew but they ignore him, an example of how prior decisions to restrict one's liberty are binding and can be enforced by others. The episode of Scylla and Charybdis, narrated in chapter 12 of the Odyssey is my favorite one. There, Ulysses and his crew have to face one of the most risky challenges of their nautical venture. Right after leaving the Sirens, they have to pass through a very narrow strait each side of which is dominated by a rock with a major danger. One of the rocks is inhabited by a terrifying creature, Scylla, which has six long necks and devours any creature that approaches. The rock on the other side of the strait is house of Charybdis, a formidable creature that produces a whirlpool by sucking the seawater down. If a ship captain wants to pass the strait successfully they have to flee Charybdis at the risk of loosing some oarsmen to Scylla, which is what indeed happens to Ulysses. From this celebrated Odyssey's passage comes the common aphorism used that sometimes, when trying to avoid something, you risk incurring in a different but also severe error: "Falling into Scylla for trying to avoid Charybdis".
The art of managing organizations has similarities with the Scylla and Charybdis challenge. It consists of maintaining the right balance, a workable equilibrium, which keeps the interest of the different company's stakeholders aligned.
The latest chapters of the book are devoted to Odysseus' arrival in Ithaca, how he restores his powers as king and how he is recognized by his patient wife Penelope, only after a series of tests. Greek tragedies made their characters subject to the wishes, often capricious, of deities. Odysseus was wrong in upsetting some of the Olympus' powerful gods. Again, a lesson to be taken for managers: don't challenge the Establishment unless you have some trumps to play.
LinkedIn post, Innovation in Daily Things: Learning from Leonardo (Da Vinci), April 14, 2014
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is well known for his Art masterpieces and for his architectural and engineering inventions but less people are aware of his chef's skills. His notebooks on culinary affairs ooze with so much irony that he probably wanted them inaccessible, a possible reason why the Maestro wrote them backwards; an awkward practice common to all his handwritten documents. Amusingly, a menu designed by Leonardo and Sandro Botticelli, the renowned Italian painter, for a Florence tavern was so illegible that, despite the proportioned figures drawn by the latter, neither clients nor cooks were able to interpret it.
Leonardo is considered a genius for all seasons and his notebooks also show that he was a tireless worker and that he kept everything under observation, his senses on the alert in order to improve objects and daily routines. This openness to the external world, to how things work and how can they be improved, is the basis of innovation and a desirable attitude for all managers. Intelligence without a constant disposition to improve practical things may become a useless asset.
The notes on kitchen were written by Leonardo for his own use, during his service as advisor to Luigi Sforza, the head of a prominent aristocratic family of Florence's Renaissance. They include recipes, design of devices to improve cookery, recommendations on the etiquette at the table and more. For example, Leonardo is attributed to have introduced the use of napkins, as recorded in one of his notes: "An alternative to dirty table clothes" –apparently, guests used to clean themselves with the same tablecloth.
I include some of the notes that caught my attention, though the whole book is recommendable and entertaining.
On new devices for the Kitchen
Leonardo's notes of to-do-things and new objects to be designed, combined with his characteristic drawings, raise reader's affection and admiration. In one of the notes, "the new machines that I have yet to design for my kitchens", he announces his intention to develop different devices "to pluck ducks, cut pigs into small cubes, knead bread, grind meat and press sheep". Another note deals with one of the first accounts of how freezing preserves food. He tells about a person called Leoni Buillarotti who every year took hundreds of frogs to Lake Trasimeno before it froze and then cut pieces of the ice with the frogs inside and kept them in a cold place. According to Leonardo, the frog's legs cooked by Buillarotti were one of the most demanded exquisite delicacies of the time.
On manners at lunch
A really hilarious note is the one describing "indecent behaviors at my Master's table":
- "Nobody should seat on the table, nor show his back to the table, nor on the lap of another guest".
- "Nobody should take food from another's guest plate, unless he first asks for permission".
- "Nobody should clean his knife with his neighbor's clothes".
- "Nobody should take food from the table and put it in his pocket for later consumption".
- "Nobody should pinch or beat his table neighbor".
The list of recommendations continues. Indeed, a note that could be used in toast if you look to provoke laughter from your audience
Had Leonardo lived in our days, I am sure he would have become an active Linkedin contributor though I wonder whether he would have developed his own software to write backwards.
Do Business Schools Breed Arrogance? http://t.co/kglUeVzKfW
— Santiago Iniguez (@SantiagoIniguez) March 17, 2014
Business schools are often blamed for inculcating arrogance in their graduates. "Humility is not a word often pegged onto MBAs," once wrote Henry Mintzberg. This feeling of belonging to an elitist business school is normally cultivated in three phases: First, during the admission and interview process there is constant emphasis on how the school only selects the best. Second, during the program, the attachment to a selected group –"la crème de la crème"- is reinforced. Third, before and after graduation, students are encouraged to only look for the top-paid jobs, those at the summit of their professional tree, or those with high status. Such a sentiment is handed down from generation to generation both by the school's management, as well as by graduates.
Is this something natural and unavoidable? I believe that we, as management educators, should do our best to dismiss narcissist and arrogant graduates. That said, it must also be accepted that many institutions, including higher education ones, are based on the idea of meritocracy, i.e., the recognition and promotion of the best individuals with the highest level of skills. Admission to school, grants, assessment of work, and selection for jobs are all based on the concept of meritocracy.
There are procedures to avoid excessive elitism, such as positive discrimination or the use of alternative methods to measure a person's qualities, or changing the rules of our institutions, but these are generally criticsed as counterproductive and undesirable. Of course, business schools are far from being the only institutions guilty of practicing elitism; it is a cultural characteristic of all well-regarded educational institutions. Similarly, candidates, their families, and all stakeholders tend to want to belong to elite organizations.
Given that the concept of meritocracy is intrinsic to the functioning of many social institutions, the objective of educators, and of business schools in particular, would be better focused on how to instill in students a real sense of confidence and self-recognition, along with a commitment to society and supported by the virtue of modesty. The challenge for educators and students is how to balance the self-assurance needed to lead people and to take decisions with the modesty required to avoid over-confidence and loosing touch with reality.
I tend to kick off the inaugural speech I give to MBA students at my school with the same words Socrates used when addressing new students: "The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing." I then add that they may feel a little bemused, since MBA students have normally a pretty high opinion of themselves, have followed a competitive selection system, and all have respectable professional experience.
But I believe that this is the proper way to welcome a group of motivated students who are starting a very challenging learning experience and who have invested an important amount of their time and their resources. To focus on cultivating their self-esteem as based on a sense of belonging to an elite would be misleading.
Allow me to encourage you to repeat to yourself, as frequently as needed, the Socratic magic words: "I know nothing".
(This post is adapted from my book TheLearningCurveBook.com)
Santiago Iñiguez, 23 March 2013, University World News
There is no magic formula for turning somebody into a consummate manager. Good managers are made over time, based on the systematic exercise of good habits and routines, and through the accumulated experience of their sector and their relationships.
To reach the heights of management excellence requires discipline and hard work. It is not achieved simply through the passage of time.
Nevertheless, universities and business schools can help lay the foundations for this process by providing a more integrated and rounded education to current and future managers.
The extreme specialisation developed in universities in the past has been criticised because of its undesirable consequence, namely 'silo syndrome', whereby academics deal only with colleagues in their subject and students gain only narrow perspectives on practical and theoretical knowledge.
Universities can combat this by restoring the value of the humanities in the tradition of American liberal arts colleges. Making the humanities a core part of all degrees will cement the learning experience and develop open-minded and well-rounded graduates.
I also believe that good management is not just about implementing good managerial techniques. It is about leading people, understanding collective behaviour and developing a strategic vision.
These managerial skills are genuinely related to the humanities, which is why I support the integration of different management disciplines within the context of the social sciences and the humanities.
Our experience at IE University shows that including humanities courses in management programmes enhances the whole learning experience. We have introduced subjects and sessions dedicated to the humanities in all programmes, from the bachelor in business to the MBA programme and executive education.
Ours is a two-pronged goal. On the one hand we hope to include management studies within the broad spectrum of the social and human sciences, with the aim of highlighting the inter-connectedness of the models, concepts and theories of a range of disciplines, thus leading to a better understanding of the social role of business.
The aim is also to create well-rounded managers – enlightened and cultivated directors who have a working knowledge of the arts and history of their own and other cultures, thus better enabling them to lead multicultural teams.
We believe that studying history enables directors to take better business decisions based on an understanding of the experiences of the past. Similarly, an understanding of the history of art can strengthen students' powers of observation and perception, which in turn enables them to take more reflective or considered decisions, thereby offering a counterbalance to the action-oriented approach of most directors.
In addition to revisiting the role of humanities in management programmes, we need to find new ways of identifying talent that go beyond conventional forms of intelligence.
One of our biggest challenges for the future is to come up with alternative ways of identifying diverse talent, and consequently developing the means to bring out the best in students. This will significantly expand the pool of potential applicants to business schools and other higher education institutions while helping these centres identify the candidates that are right for them.
Moreover, we need to develop new teaching methodologies and approaches to learning that bring out the entrepreneurial and innovation skills of management students, along with their interpersonal and leadership skills.
This is without doubt the next major challenge with regard to teaching in business schools, and in order to meet it we will have to work closely with educationists and psychologists. Such an approach will also have a tremendous impact on our students and on management in general.
First, it will amplify the pool and profile of potential applicants to business school programmes, attracting those entrepreneurial candidates who were previously reluctant to start along or quick to exit the academic path. But second, and most importantly, it will make management programmes become transformational experiences suited to each student's specific form of intelligence.
Opening up the curriculum to the humanities while developing new teaching methods for identifying individual aptitudes presents promising new horizons.
I believe that the changes outlined here are essential not only for the future relevance of business schools, but also for business graduates who look forward to becoming entrepreneurs or to joining the current challenging jobs market.
* Santiago Iñiguez is president at IE University and dean of the IE Business School in Madrid. His last book, The Learning Curve: How business schools are re-inventing education (Palgrave, 2011), explains the changes being undertaken in the sector worldwide. This article is based on a presentation he gave at the "Going Global" conference earlier this month.
Advice from the Experts We recently interviewed Dr. Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of IE Business School and author of "The Learning Curve" (thelearningcurvebook.com/), to share his insight into business education.
The Times of India, December 17, 2012
SANTIAGO INIGUEZ, president, IE University, talks to Karan Gupta, study abroad consultant, about the challenges facing higher education worldwide
What are the key challenges facing higher education today?
It depends on the region you analyse because we see that the focus has now moved from the Western hemisphere to Asia and so the problems in Europe and in the US are different from those that universities face in Asia or Latin America. For example, if you look at Europe and US, you'll find that we are attending to problems of governance at most universities, financing models and how to bring innovation into the reality and maximise the learning process of users and technology in the learning process. On the other hand, if you look at Asia or Latin America (which has a lot of similarities vis-a-vis higher education ), I guess that the challenges are how to build up prestigious accredited institutions with global status, how to develop their own research and contribution to knowledge from their distinctive perspective and how to build up sustainable models of universities that can transform the world of higher education. So both worlds are complementary and up until now Western universities have been to some extent an inspiration for Asian universities. In future, it may be reverse where Asian universities will become references for many Western universities.
Any steps that you have taken to help overcome the challenges?
One of the steps I have taken is to organise the Reinventing Higher Education conference...University World News, 18 November, 2012 (photos added) (conference www.rhe.ie.edu)
For the first time, the annual international conference on "Reinventing
Higher Education" gave prominence to the rapidly transforming Arab
world. Changes in the higher education landscape – driven by new
technologies, shifting global forces and funding cuts – were other
trends debated.
The event took place from 22-23 October at Madrid-based IE University, which is a private non-profit business owned by the Instituto de Empresa SL.
"The idea is to look at the university as a whole from all angles, and
try to suggest reforms for the future, for the better," said Santiago
Iñiguez, president of IE University and chair of the conference.
He pointed out that the Arab world comprises more than 400 million
people in 22 countries and is experiencing profound transformation. It
was significant, he said, that this change "is being supported by both
public and private institutions, including individual philanthropists".
"Philanthropy has been increasing in the Arab world, as 40- to
50-year-olds who, for example, have been very successful bankers, saw
that guys of 18 were willing to give their lives for change and then
thought, 'What can I do?'" said Salah Khalil, director of the Alexandria
Trust, which contributes to restoring world-class standards in
education across the Arab region. (DeansTalk, October 23, 2012)
"Everyone was really excited about the Arab Spring but the reality of
the situation is that we need an 'Educational Spring'," said Khalil.
"This is because 'perverse institutionalism' persists in the Arab world,
whereby an organisation, whether it is a mosque or a university
department, is set up to do something – and it does the exact opposite.
Our biggest challenge is to create structures that can change this."...
Financial Times, July 30, 2012
Santiago Iñiguez (Wikipedia entry) is dean of IE Business School.
Comment online: www.ft.com/soapbox
Asked what type of student they are looking for, most business school deans have the same answer: the best.
It is natural to want the most promising applicants. But are we really talking about and competing for the same group of potential students? At first glance it would seem so, given that the admissions criteria of business schools is so markedly similar – making for a zero-sum game. Each student can only go to one school.
The pool of potential candidates, along with the criteria by which they are measured capable of undertaking an MBA, should be convergent and complimentary, but not identical. Some schools give priority to applicants with a strong entrepreneurial spirit. Others look for tomorrow's marketing experts, or those who will excel in financial management.Consequently, if candidates have different profiles based on their career paths, it makes sense that different procedures should be applied in identifying their potential. One of the biggest challenges facing business schools in the future will be to come up with alternative ways of identifying diverse talent and of developing the means to bring out their best.
The most commonly used tests to pick out the "best" candidates, particularly the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), favour a certain type of intelligence, one that we might call analytical and that is also reflected in IQ tests. Studies show that there is a clear correlation between this type of intelligence and success in education, whether at the primary, secondary, or tertiary levels.
A growing number of educationalists are questioning our approach to assessing intelligence and talent, among them Howard Gardner of Harvard University. His multiple intelligences theory argues that traditional measures of intelligence fail to take into account cognitive and interpersonal abilities, which are equally important in learning and personal development, not to mention professional success. Traditional educational systems and measurements of IQ tend to emphasise linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence, largely overlooking other forms.
This may explain why many artistic talents and innovative thinkers have emerged from non-academic backgrounds and why they frequently forgo conventional ways of learning. Might this not also explain why entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates had little formal academic training.
Based on studies about intelligence that precede Prof Gardner's work, other scholars have contributed to the theory of emotional intelligence, including Daniel Goleman, who explains it not as something we are born with but that we learn along the way. Such skills – for example self-awareness, social awareness, or relationship management – can be developed through repeated practice and are all likely to improve one's management abilities.
We have all come across students with a prodigious analytical ability but who lack the emotional intelligence to be leaders. Similarly, there is no shortage of chief executives who have average IQs but have learnt to develop their emotional intelligence.
It is important to find new ways of identifying talent that go beyond conventional forms of intelligence. This will significantly expand the pool of potential applicants to business schools, while helping schools to identify candidates that are right for them. This in turn means schools will need to develop teaching methodologies that foster the individual traits of their student bodies. To bring out management students's entrepreneurial and innovation skills, IE now includes the humanities in its curriculum, for example.
This change in admissions criteria and teaching methodology and content is probably the next frontier for business schools. To get there we must work closely with educationalists and psychologists.
Such an approach will have a tremendous impact on MBAs and management in general. Not only is it essential for the relevancy of business schools, but also for our graduates.
YouTube July 16, 2012 by IEBusinessSchool
The other side of IE Professors: Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of IE Business School and President of IE University
Santiago takes us from Beijing, China to Segovia Spain and tells us why it is important to travel and see the world.
I invite all readers to attend the presentation of my book The Learning Curve on March 27 at @IEbusiness School http://t.co/25w1y3Ql
IE Business Publishing, tiene el placer de invitarle a la presentación del libro: "The Learning Curve"
Escrito por Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño, que se celebrará el martes 27 de marzo de 2012 a las 19,00 horas.
Presentación del Acto e Introducción:
Diego del Alcázar Silvela, Presidente de IE
- Carina Szpilka, Directora General para España, ING Direct
- Alberto Artero, Director General y Analista Económico, El Confidencial
- Fernando Barnuevo, Presidente de Antiguos Alumnos, IE Business School
- Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño, Decano, IE Business School y Presidente, IE University
Al finalizar la presentación, se servirá un vino español
(Santiago Iniguez' recent book thelearningcurvebook.com)
The Times Higher Education (THE) on Wikipedia
European universities should look to the US for a route back to excellence, argues Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño
Greece was home to the Academy founded by Plato in the 4th century BC, the first Western higher education institution. Bologna in Italy was the cradle of the first university in the 11th century. One millennium later, these two countries, along with the Republic of Ireland, Portugal and Spain, have seen their governments swept away by the current economic crisis. This also implies changes in the future political agendas for higher education, particularly given the significant cuts expected to public budgets. It is very likely that similar reforms and budgetary adjustments will occur in countries such as France and Belgium in the medium term. Inevitably, the economic interdependence within Europe will spread budgetary adjustments to most countries in the continent, including those that stand resilient today.
One of the most severely affected areas of austerity policies will certainly be public education. But, as well as posing threats, times of crisis bring many opportunities that could in fact help to rejuvenate Europe's universities...
New York Times, December 4, 2011
LONDON — It always pays to do your homework. And as Jeremy Bedzow, an M.B.A. student at the IE University in Madrid, can attest, in business school it often pays to volunteer — especially if you are looking for rewards that go beyond the bottom line.
Working with a team of IE students in Madrid, Mr. Bedzow helped Microsoft to develop a model program to provide training in information technology as well as the soft skills required to function inside the corporate world.
Known as ITCAN Academy, a pun on the Arabic word for perfection, itqan, the course recruited 100 university students, all of whom had to be Saudi nationals...
"One of our objectives at IE is to educate global citizens," Mr. Íñiguez (Dean) said. "We try to instill civic virtue through the whole curriculum. Instead of having a module on ethics, we believe every course, every subject, every professor, should address these issues."..
"That diversity also needs to be part of the learning process," Mr. Íñiguez said. "We need to get beyond gender, or the number of passports in the class, and make sure our graduates are genuinely comfortable with different views and different values. We need to help students get rid of their arrogance."
@quiquerm, Quique Rodríguez, journalist of @expansionempleo
Dean Dipak Jain "Between them are gaining international intellectual leadership in the sector " (referring to books by
Jordi Canals (Dean of IESE, The future of leadership development,) and Santiago Iniguez (Dean of IE Business School, www.thelearningcurvebook.com)).
Translated article (Google) of the article of Expansion y Empleo,"The Spanish business schools have earned global leadership", of 2 December 2011, (the leading Spanish business daily).
Article of Prvada, 14 June, 2011
Santiago Iniguez de Ozono believes that the gap between the poor and the rich can become smaller with the help of education. ...
"Reinventing Higher Education: The Role of the University in a Global Society"
IE University, Madrid (Segovia), October 18, 2011
Following the success of the first event held in Segovia on May 4, 2010, IE University, in collaboration with the Chronicle of Higher Education is organizing the second edition of the Conference on 'Reinventing Higher Education: The role of the University in a Global Society', which will take place in Madrid at IE campus, October 18th, 2011. The aim of the conference is to gather university administrators, policy makers, business entrepreneurs, academics, student representatives and media experts to discuss the current status and future evolution of Higher Education (HE), and to debate the direction in which research, learning, governance and management of universities should now go. The conference is organized in partnership with The Chronicle of Higher Education, No. 1 source of news, information, and jobs for university faculty members and administrators.
管理作为一项活动无处不在,它几乎覆盖了人类所有的活 动。但是迄今为止,我们尚未看到统一的管理者专业协会 的出现。许多人现在开始相信,为了坚持和推广标准,这 一切必须进行改变。圣地亚哥· 伊尼格斯(Santiago Iniguez) 就此展开了讨论。(translation)
Download PDF Issue_2_2010_Santiago Iniguez_(Chinese)
Global Focus in Chinese will be online tomorrow and hard copies will be available in a couple of weeks.
Download PDF Ambition, AMBA's magazine, Oct Dec2010
Do we need management guilds? Dean Santiago Iniguez' contribution in Ambition, AMBA's magazine.
(Ambition is the quarterly newsletter from the Association of MBAs that keeps our members – international alumni and students from our accredited schools – informed about their activities and MBA-relevant updates and articles. See how you could reach this audience by advertising in the next Ambition.)
The tantalizing idea of professionalizing management
Historically, management has never attained the status of a formal profession, in the sense of setting up a guild or association by managers. In large part, the reason why there are no managers' guilds is due to the flexibility and presence of management throughout such a wide range of activities. Would it really make much sense for the head of a hospital's surgery department, the partner-director of a law firm, the founder of a high-tech start-up company, and the CEO of a consumer products manufacturer to create their own guild or any other type of association? They are all managers, and it may be that some of them have MBAs, but their shared professional interests would not extend much beyond ideas on how best to manage a budget or to motivate their workforce. In all likelihood, they are going to be more interested in learning all there is to know about their respective professions— medicine, architecture, law—and applying these techniques, tools, and ideas on management within the framework of these professions...
One of the top six business schools in the world (according to the Financial Times rankings 2010), Instituto de Empresa Business School's transition into a university has been smooth and successful.Santiago Iniguez , rector, IE University, Spain, tells Tirna Ray that the change is in keeping with the times:
Why did IE Business School, a well-known brand, transform into a university?
It was our vision more than the need. Given the convergence of higher education and the Bologna process, we thought of the bigger picture and that is what propelled the transition of IE Business School into IE University. The university is the evolution of IE Business School's mission to shape a unique centre for higher education learning and innovation in Europe. We have a distinctly international approach and one of the major priorities is to bring together faculty and students from around the world. We recognise and acknowledge the fact that in these global times, we need to offer a holistic learning experience to our students that covers management skills, an element of innovation, an entrepreneurial mindset, a global vision and social commitment.
Was there any concern that it would dilute the 'Business School' brand?
A lot of thinking, deliberation and discussion went behind the decision. Further, we decided to enter only into those areas in which we were convinced that we could excel. We chalked out a clear charter for the next 15 years which not only involved the curriculum but also substantial tie-ups and partnerships with the lead institutes across the world.
What is the vision of the university?
An IE University education focuses on entrepreneurial vision, technological innovation and international mobility along with a hands-on experience. The idea is to produce global citizens, rather than producing graduates who are specialised in specific disciplines. With our university located in the 15th century monastery of Santa Cruz la Real, in the city of Segovia, a site that has been a crucible of different cultures and that embraces tolerance and knowledge, our vision goes beyond the given boundaries of academics and ignites the desire to explore.
The bachelor's degrees at the IE University are taught in English and Spanish. Our strength is an innovative blended methodology, which offers a classroom experience along with online modes of delivery in the fields of architecture, art history, biology, business administration, communication and psychology and tourism management.
What is special about the academic content of IE programmes?
Our programmes equip students to put their acquired knowledge into practice. Workshops and facilities at the university include the applied psychology centre, art rooms, biology laboratories, digital editing rooms and the language centre to mention a few. The university aims to be responsive to the contemporary needs and values of the global market. The learning process encourages leadership and humanistic skills in our students through the core IE module, which includes key areas such as business leadership, interpersonal skills, ethics and humanities.
Do you have any plans to launch an overseas campus in India?
We do not disregard the possibility of entering India in the future. But, we believe that every country has its own specific needs. In order to target the ideal market in India, we would rather go for strategic alliances. In the next couple of years, we may work towards blended programmes - with face-to-face periods in India and online modules.
Article of Monday, 12 July 2010 11:45pm UK
: And, according to Santiago Iniguez, dean of IE Business School in Madrid, Spain's brilliant run throughout the tournament can largely be attributed to the management style of Vicente del Bosque.
"He's the archetypal cool, calm, cerebral type," says Iniguez.
"He believes that playing well is a result of a carefully developed plan. For him, strategy takes priority over passion. He rarely shouts or expresses his emotions and he very rarely accepts tributes, referring all congratulations to his players.
"He's probably a prime example of elegant, effective and collaborative leadership. And how can you argue with a leadership style that won the World Cup?"
"B-school" in The Economic Times
"B-school" in the Business Standard
Download PDF EducationTime_Times_of_India_Cover_Story_28_06_2010
Referring to the Bologna process, Santiago Iniguez, Rector, IE University, Spain, says that changing times demand new academic paradigms. "A flexible curriculum fosters a modern, multi-disciplinary education," he says, adding that programmes specifically designed to train leaders by equipping them with the skills and values will shape a 21st Century society.
Zhong-Ming Wang, dean of Zhejiang University Business School (Hangzhou, China) on 5th May, 2010 at IE Business School in Madrid.
Management can be one of the noblest professions in the world. It creates growth, wealth and development in society, provides jobs, fosters innovation and improves living conditions. Good management is one of the best antidotes to most of the world's illnesses since it promotes convergence and understanding among civilisations. In times of crisis what is needed is more entrepreneurs and better management. At the same time, the current circumstances provide the arena where true leadership is tested and where managers can identify new opportunities or reinvent their existing businesses: it is time for the survival of the fittest, in Darwinian terms, or for the birth of new species that better adapt to this new environment. Times of crisis provide the breeding ground for entrepreneurs and innovators and many major companies, like Google, were created in adverse circumstances.
In this context, business schools' members should feel co-responsible for the current financial mess along the other major business stakeholders. However, since business schools have characteristically played the role of icebreakers in higher education and being forward looking, it is more important that we identify and implement new avenues that may bring business practices to a new and more sustainable plateau. At the same time, I do not believe that we promoted at our schools a narrow approach to management or a restricted concept of managerial duties. Moreover, the "greed is good" maxim, cultivated by some in the 80's and leading to the junk bonds crisis, has not been preached at any business school that I know of. On the contrary, the last decade has witnessed a significant growth in corporate social responsibility (CSR), which embeds many MBA courses and multiple initiatives at major corporations. However, it seems that these efforts have not been enough. Either the assimilation or implementation of CSR was superficial, or the directors who mismanaged their companies did not apply the golden rules taught at business schools or the system was already perverted and impossible to revert. On the other hand, teaching business ethics and deontology does not immunize students and graduates from engaging in unethical behaviour. This is something we have to live with, like in other clinical professions such as medicine or law.
We live in a brave new world where business schools are challenged to prepare not just good financial engineers or accomplished management technicians but also global citizens. My purpose here is therefore to identify a number of initiatives that business schools' deans, directors and faculty can implement in order to confront future crisis and better serve their social mission:
1. Cultivate constructive interaction with different management stakeholders, particularly governments, since they will become pivotal players in the economy as regulators, shareholders and investors in the coming years. Given the increasing protagonism of governments in the economy today and the foreseeable structural and cultural changes of the management landscape, business schools must adjust and explore a new paradigm for their relations between business and governments. Entities such as public-private partnerships may well offer opportunities for research, teaching and consultancy and potentially suitable careers for MBA graduates.
Historically, American and European business schools have put a different emphasis on stakeholders in strategy formulation and decision-making. Two decades ago, references to stakeholders in the US were discredited as borderline socialist; the only relevant constituency for managers was shareholders. Conversely, European business schools have evolved out of a very different management culture, open to a wider array of stakeholder groups.
For example, the European business environment has been characteristically regulated and governments –at EU, national or even regional levels- have a decisive presence. This has often been as major shareholders in big companies but also by awarding licenses, fixing tariffs, pre-emptively approving mergers or acquisitions or keeping various other prerogatives over companies' decisions. For example, in Germany the law determines that unions should have a representative in public companies' boards. In France recently there has been increasing economic interventionism, in the land where Louis XIV's finance minister, invented it under the term dirigisme, also used in English.
There are some advantages for business schools in this new world of a resurrected "visible hand". Firstly, civil servants, public administrators and politicians could become an increasingly relevant applicant pool for degree and custom programmes delivered by business schools. Given the participation of governments in business through bail outs and regulation, government workers such as civil servants will need to update their knowledge and skills to run and understand these new functions effectively.
One area of big potential development is public entrepreneurship that is, preparing public officers with the mindset of creating value for citizens (considered as customers). Equipping public servants with an entrepreneurial, innovative mindset should help them to identify and create opportunities, a more proactive approach rather than just administering public resources. In fact, most management ideas and techniques can be translated into government practices, something that explains the growth of MPA (Master in Public Administration) programmes in recent years across Europe.
Furthermore, CEOs and managers should realise the increasing importance of nurturing creative relations with governments and other stakeholders in general. My experience at IE Business School, for example, shows that CEOs at leading Spanish corporations dedicate more than 60 per cent of their time to dealing with their company stakeholders - governments, media and opinion makers, unions, customer associations, NGOs and professional networks, to mention but a few. The spheres of the private and the public are blurred and the profile of managers is becoming closer to that of politicians.
Anticipating this new scenario, different frameworks are being researched by business scholars to look at how to manage a broader array of stakeholders and create competitive advantage through these relationships. One such area of research is described as non-market strategies[i]. This calls for corporations to look beyond the traditional confines of the market (competitors, price etc) and find opportunities through interaction with groups such as government, regulators, NGOs, the media and reshape markets in their favour. A number of corporations do this well, but many others are going to have to improve in this area very quickly.
Yet business schools must not only research and teach these new approaches but practice them as well, as the management education sector faces greater scrutiny from a wider group of stakeholders than at any time in its history. Here, the case of successful joint programmes between different schools (e.g., Business, Law, Communication, and Political Science) at some American universities may serve as a valuable reference for European business schools, which have historically operated as independent institutions or, if belonging to universities, have maintained their autonomy and remained detached from other schools.
2. Realign academic research with the needs of the real business world. Since the activities of business schools focus not on a speculative but a clinical subject –i.e., management-, a substantial proportion of academic research should deal with real business problems, jointly with top managers. Investment banks created in the past years true in-house universities that developed huge research on markets and companies but lacked the soundness and independence of academic research. On the other hand, academics have sometimes neglected the practical relevance of their research.
Some years ago I was commissioned by the EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System) management to develop a set of standards that could be applied when evaluating business schools regarding their research activity. One of the first things I realised at the beginning of this project was that research is a contested concept, i.e., a concept with different conceptions or meanings with some even conflicting. In order to avoid the semantic trap, we decided to give up the controversial concept "research" and stipulate a new one: RDI, which stands for Research, Development and Innovation, a more ample concept that leaves room for many different forms of production and diffusion of knowledge, from articles in academic journals to teaching materials and white books on industries. This new category allowed for different knowledge contributions, academic and clinical, in line with the social mission of business schools of providing responses to real management problems. Traditionally, the test used to define research has been the pedigree of the channel used in its diffusion. According to this taxonomy, basic or original research is published in refereed academic journals whereas developmental or applied knowledge is distributed through professional publications. However, the reality is more complex today and management knowledge is originated in diverse places and distributed through multifarious channels.
Indeed, universities cannot claim to be the only reservoir of management knowledge (nor of many other disciplines). Most of us believe that business schools should act as bridges between Academia and the real business world. Consulting companies, investment banks and publishing houses are sometimes the source of valuable, original knowledge and business schools can promote an active dialogue with these and other institutions to further articulate multiple ideas to higher grounds. By becoming knowledge "hubs", instead of reservoirs, business schools may better contribute to the advance of management theory and practice. Furthermore, the actual use of RDI in the assessment of business schools' by the different accreditation agencies, which may encounter the eventual opposition of some, will not only allow for a correct evaluation of schools according to their missions, but also strengthen the closeness between our contribution to knowledge and real management and societal needs.
3. Develop a New Generation of Faculty. When I ask my colleagues about the main challenges our schools face today, many point to the attraction, development and retention of good faculty as one of the most serious. Indeed, today schools compete to attract those scholars who combine the best credentials in research with solid teaching skills and who also interface with top management of respected companies. I have sometimes referred to these well-rounded academics as "Kangaroos" as opposed to just "Gurus", because the former are able to jump from research to class to consultancy, performing excellently in the three activities. Let me further elaborate on this multifaceted type of academics by opposing two models of faculty, which I will name "Humboldtian Faculty" and "Mavens".
"Humboldtian Faculty" was moulded at the eponymous institution in Berlin in the early Nineteenth Century and has inspired the model of academia prevalent at all Western universities in the past two hundred years. Wilhelm Von Humboldt believed that, in order to make a significant leap in the sciences and in the humanities, the career of academics should become specialised –until then, university professors could teach different disciplines and lack subject affiliation- and universities should be organised in schools and departments. According to the Humboldtian model, faculty are the masters of the learning process, the guardians of knowledge and hold a certain academic pedigree: for example, finance professors should have PhDs in that field, write in financial journals, belong to finance networks and deal (sometimes only) with other professors of finance.
The Humboldtian Faculty model has rendered many positive results. Knowledge has experienced an unprecedented progress across the board. At the same time, a significant number of education analysts and scholars have warned about some undesirable effects of the model such as the "silos syndrome" derived from an extreme specialisation and lack of integration of academics, in both teachings and research at large.
In addition, the demands from stakeholders, the formidable impact of technologies in the learning process and the multifarious origination and distribution of knowledge abovementioned are transforming the role and the ideal profile of scholars. I believe that the concept of "Maven", widely popularised by Malcolm Gladwell [ii], can adequately illustrate what is expected from business schools' professors today. Mavens are active gatherers of new trends, ideas and data and have the key skill of identifying which of them may transform the world. Furthermore, they exercise the necessary influence to have these ideas diffused through other major opinion makers in society. As compared to Humboldtian Faculty, Mavens often have mixed backgrounds, a circumstance that may help business schools in their search for scarce talented scholars outside the management reserve. Conversely with their traditional fellows, Mavens act as orchestrators of the learning process and can be featured as catalysts of knowledge distribution, rather than the sole authoritative source of truth.
Raising this new generation of Maven scholars requires initiatives in several directions, including investing in the permanent preparation of our Faculty to develop their research and docent skills, particularly through the channels provided by new technologies. Implementing these efforts will probably encounter the excellent reaction of scholars, at any stage of their professional lives, if the necessary resources and incentives are brought along. My experience is that it also requires some degree of passion, of academics and educational managers, for both the development and the transmission of knowledge. Both roles, the generation and the diffusion of ideas, are valuable by themselves and inevitably interdependent. Indeed, research and teaching are both consubstantial to academic careers and when I meet a scholar who disregards or abandons any of the two I think I am in front of a lame academic.
It is sometimes neglected that teaching and the interaction with students provide a unique opportunity to test and refine new management ideas. In addition, it can be one of the most self-fulfilling activities practised by academics. As far as management education is concerned, the direct interface with managers is particularly important, since their behaviour and their experiences are actually the object of management research. Is there really any other way to develop business research than by dealing with the major business stakeholders? The published experience of respected educators, like Peter Lorange [iii], can provide fruitful arguments in favour of this approach.
If both research and teaching are two essential and fulfilling activities of academic careers, why do PhDs in management programmes at most business schools focus mainly –if not solely- on the development of research skills? In fact, the reduction of PhD programmes to develop researchers, instead of well-rounded scholars, has been criticised in different reports both in the US as well as in Europe [iv]. I hope that, if institutions do not react and solve this problem, PhD students will overcome their estrangement and demand a complete education.
[i] For example, Allen, David B.; Bach, David: "Beyond the Market: What Every CEO Needs to Know About Non-market Strategy"; forthcoming paper; featured in The Economic Times of India, Corporate Dossier, 24 July 2009. (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Features/Corporate-Dossier/Non-market-strategies-making-a-comeback-in-West/articleshow/4814061.cms)
[ii] Gladwell, Malcolm (2000): "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference". New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown & Co., p. 19.
[iii] Lorange, Peter (2008) ."Thought Leadership Meets Business: How Business Schools can become more succesful". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[iv] See, The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (2005): "The Responsive PhD: Innovations in Us Doctoral Education" (http://www.woodrow.org/images/pdf/resphd/ResponsivePhD_overview.pdf ).
On the other side of the Atlantic, Times Higher Education (27 May 2005) reported a communiqué of the European Ministers of Education meeting in Bergen: "Efforts to introduce structural change and improve the quality of teaching should not detract from the effort to strengthen research and innovation".
Santiago Iñiguez de Onzono: Dean, Instituto de Empresa (IE) Business School
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times (…) it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…" These familiar lines of Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities", one of the most celebrated literary openings ever written, seem very applicable today, as they were to the French Revolution – the context of the novel – and even to Dickens' own times.


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10 of 16
These are shots of recently engaged couple Channing Tatum and his Step Up co-star Jenna Dewan in Hawaii. I'd like to apologize in advance that most of these shots of Jenna don't show her face and all you see is her bikini clad butt. Not exactly classy, I know. So if it makes you feel better, I edite...

subset: commoncrawl


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The Twelve Days of Female Vengeance: Week Two
We're in the heart of BAM's "Vengeance Is Hers" film series right now, can you feel it?! (Feb. 7 -18.) Hatred and bitterness in the air! Head over to the official site for useful information and plot synopses, and then come back here for more-superficial "reviews," in case you live in New York and are deciding which one[s] to go to, or if you'd want to watch at home, at any point. Actually the more I write and think about it, the less this seems useful to anyone. But, here it is anyway!


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World English Bible (WEB) | New International Version (NIV) |
1 Run you back and forth through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places of it, if you can find a man, if there are any who does justly, who seeks truth; and I will pardon her. | 1 "Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem, look around and consider, search through her squares. If you can find but one person who deals honestly and seeks the truth, I will forgive this city. |
The World English Bible is in the public domain. (The World English Bible Online) | Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NIV) are from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica. All rights reserved worldwide. (New International Version Bible Online) |


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I tried the vinegar method and it WORKED. Cheap, easy and harmless. Whoever says is doesn't work is wrong. I wasn't interested in the remedies that destroy my liver or kidneys, that's for sure. So here's my situation.
The type of fungus I had was white superficial onychomycosis on my 2 big toenails. It's the 2nd most common fungus and the easiest to cure, lucky for me. It had been there on my 2 big toes for about 6 months and I stupidly failed to realize it was a fungus. I tried treating it with an over the counter remedy, which helped. I got on several forums and read about trying vinegar. I did a little research and learned that the reason vinegar may work is because it changes the pH of the nail bed, making the conditions hard for the fungus to grow. My method for a solid year, from August of 08 to today (9/12/09) has been to use white vinegar 2 times a day, in the morning and evening, RELIGIOUSLY. I may have missed 4 times the entire year. I put vinegar in an emptied out little bottle of shampoo, the kind you get for free in a hotel. I used an eye dropper and applied the vinegar under the nail and to the sides and nail bed and all over the nail, twice a day, every day, for a year. I also avoided nail polish all year, if I did put it on for a special event, I'd take it off the next day. My nail problem is gone, my toenails are back to their cute, normal selves. I'm going to keep it up for 1 more month just to be darn sure there's no little fungi still alive just waiting to come back. A year is a long time and 1 more month seems smart just to be sure. I picked up the fungus in the locker room at my work's gym. Now I wear flip flops. Again, stupid of me to not have been more careful in the first place. Ah, oh well, live and learn. Good luck... |
Follow-Up Postings:
- Posted by socks12345 (My Page) on Mon, Sep 14, 09 at 18:58
That's fantastic. A year is a long time though. I'm surprised you didn't give up. Maybe I'll try that. Do you ever get pedicures? You could have gotten it there as well. |
I wonder if it would soften toenails also |
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Am I a God near by, says the Lord, and not a God far off? Jeremiah 23:23Some days Yahweh's crayon boxholds colors for tiptoeing within regret's boldlines, and others for scribbling acceptance'sWild Blue Yonder on bathroom walls,jet trails through every grown-up's sky. Silverbecomes the dime I find in Seven Eleven'sparking lot, the memory of a minnow's flashor Aunt Mary's lost ring—found.And there's this gray crayon's violet wrap,labeled Purple Mountains' Majesty,Crayola's Rosetta Stone, a god gone corporate,and international conspiracy to grab a child's soul.But what I'd like to believe is that Yahweh, mostmornings, strolls through his garden toward a hillsidedoor, tugs it open, waves on light, revealingcountless casks holding dyes, glimmers, petals,screams, crushed insects, explosions, rust,ointments, folded galaxies, sage, giggles,lightning streaks, old lady dandelion hair,locomotives, wine, grief (some casks leak),blank peacock feathers, neon gas, angel raiment rags.Then, Yahweh plays.
Amy Frykholm on the community schools movement, Jesse James DeConto on the Wild Goose Festival, Miroslav Volf on honoring others.
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