This text was written by freelance journalist Nick Harland.
What do you consider when you consider Barcelona?
For some folks, it might 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 turning into more and more identified for one thing else totally: its excellence in enterprise training.
In Bloomberg’s newest Greatest B-Colleges rating, 4 of the highest 20 colleges in Europe had been situated in Barcelona. The QS International MBA Rating options seven Barcelona enterprise colleges in its high 100, while the distinguished Monetary Occasions International MBA Rating is dwelling to a few extra.
In every case, no different metropolis on this planet has extra colleges within the checklist than Barcelona.
So how precisely does a metropolis with a inhabitants of simply 1.6 million maintain so many world-class enterprise colleges? Jan Hohberger is the Affiliate Dean of the MBA programme at Esade Enterprise College, one among Barcelona’s oldest and best-known colleges. He says the roots may be traced all the best way 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 – had 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 colleges had been concentrating on their dwelling market. These days, worldwide scholar recruitment is a key coverage of just about any college on this planet.
Again then, it was a revolutionary concept.
Esade’s MBA class is made up of 97% worldwide college students, whereas the IESE MBA worldwide scholar ratio stands at 87%
It helped, in fact, that the internationalisation of Spain coincided with Barcelona’s post-Olympics increase. Pre-1992 it was a largely industrial metropolis, scarred by many years of oppressive rule – and its lack of seashores on the time meant it was also known as town de espaldas al mar (with its again to the ocean). The Olympics modified the notion of Barcelona virtually in a single day, turning it into some of the vibrant and visited cities on this planet. In relation to worldwide scholar recruitment, that glowing world popularity definitely helps.
“Barcelona is a really engaging location, beginning inside a European context but in addition for different worldwide college students,” says Hohberger.
Paula Amorim, the MBA Admissions Director at IESE Enterprise College, agrees. “From a social perspective, Barcelona has lengthy been thought-about some of the nice cities to dwell in. It boasts a beautiful local weather with the Mediterranean Sea at its doorstep, and it’s a comfy metropolis with many pure contrasts inside a brief distance.”
Barcelona didn’t simply open itself up in direction of the ocean. Lengthy-term internationalisation has introduced not simply range, 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 range has additional enriched it, bringing a wealth of artwork, tradition, and most significantly, pleasant folks.”
That openness additionally extends to town’s financial insurance policies. A mixture of entrepreneurship-friendly initiatives and comparatively low price of dwelling makes it a lovely place for entrepreneurs to return and take a look at their luck.
“It’s a spot the place one can attempt to fail with comparatively minimal penalties if issues don’t succeed,” says Amorim. Based on Hohberger, town’s enterprise atmosphere ‘makes it engaging and lively in a variety of dimensions’.
Each colleges 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 scholar ratio stands at 87%.
But town’s excellence in enterprise training extends past its two oldest colleges. The likes of GBSB International, EAE and EU Enterprise College all function within the world high 100 of the QS MBA Rating, whereas EADA has grow to be a fixture within the prestigious Monetary Occasions International MBA Rating. All of their respective MBA lessons have a global scholar ratio of over 90%.
Given the sheer variety of colleges vying for consideration inside Barcelona, it’s straightforward to surprise how town is ready to maintain so many. In any case, Barcelona is a fraction of the scale of London or Paris, for example. In some instances that dense geography fairly actually brings town’s colleges 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 attempt to fail with comparatively minimal penalties if issues don’t succeed
Paula Amorim, IESE Enterprise College
“The competitors is admittedly good and there’s a sure visibility of what’s happening at every faculty the place they should compete and innovate – you can’t simply loosen up in your personal 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 desirous to collaborate on occasions exterior of Spain with different colleges to advertise Spain as a normal research vacation spot.”
The gradual improvement of Barcelona’s enterprise faculty ecosystem can also be having a cumulative impact on scholar and employees recruitment. “Now now we have this ecosystem… there’s a sure cluster impact from having all of those colleges,” 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 town’s academic tree, however a brand new wave of colleges have gotten well-known at dwelling and overseas. In Barcelona it seems like each college is enjoying the worldwide sport – however Hohberger believes that sort of competitors can solely maintain driving town’s colleges on.
“We’re all the time pushing one another and getting higher on a regular basis. You can not relaxation. You need to innovate.”
