BizDeansTalk - business management education blog

100 Best Companies to Work For 2007

100 Best Companies to Work For 2007

1.	Google	67	Medium	6,500
2.	Genentech	25	Medium	9,979
3.	Wegmans Food Markets	8	Large	33,737
4.	Container Store	14	Medium	2,866
5.	Whole Foods Market	15	Large	37,806

Corporate recruiters go back to school

Opening paragraphs of an article of The Financial Times, by Della Bradshaw, June 3 2007.

Industrial companies have traditionally favoured hiring “second-hand” MBAs – those who have cut their teeth in banking or management consultancy and want to move on. Now, this is changing.

In spite of recent concerns in the business school world that MBA degrees do not teach students skills that companies need, recruiters are increasingly giving the professional services firms a run for their money when it comes to recruiting newly minted MBAs directly from business school. These days companies such as BP, BT, Google, Pepsico, Samsung and Shell are names as familiar on the business school campus as investment banks and management consultancies.

The sea change came with the classes that graduated in 2002 and 2003...

Wall Street Adjusts as Top Hires Flee

Opening paragraphs from an article of The New York Sun, May 29, 2007

Congratulations to the class of 2007: It is an excellent year in which to venture forth into the real world, and even onto Wall Street. For the very best and brightest among you, the bulge bracket firms (aka the really big guys) are hiring like mad. For the traditional entry-level position of "analyst," the firms are paying a base compensation of about $70,000, with a bonus of anywhere between $65,000 and $95,000. Not bad, right?

Not bad, but, astonishingly, not good enough. These days, the Wall Street firms are struggling to keep their top hires, many of whom move onto the greener pastures of private equity and hedge funds after their obligatory two-year stints.

Today, Google releases new off-line web apps capability

Santiago Iniguez, Dean of IE Business School.

Here is an initiative from Google that might usher in a new wave of offline web applications.

Linus Upson, engineering director at Google said: "It's been a long time since the web has gained new fundamental capabilities. I think it's been about 10 years".

ZDnet description of the release:  (ZDnet blogger "Game has changed") "Google engineers have enabled what internet surfers for years have yearned for — web applications that work offline."

The search giant on Wednesday launched Google Gears, a browser plug-in that will let people run web applications when they're connected to the internet or not.

The company released the source code for the Google Gears software in conjunction with Google Developer Day (Today), a day-long conference in 10 locations.

The goal of Google Gears is to create a single, standardised way to add offline capabilities to web applications, said Linus..."

Financial Times: "Google moves to take on Microsoft"
Techcrunch: "Google Gears Lets Developers Take Apps Offline"
GigaOM: "Google goes offline on purpose"

Fortune 500 -annual ranking of America's largest corporations

annual ranking of America's largest corporations

Unicon 2007 Spring Conference

This year, UNICON's Spring Conference will take place between April 24-26 at IE Business School in Madrid. The theme of the conference is "The Innovation Imperative for Executive Education" and speakers include: Jean François Rischard, author of the bestselling book "High Noon: 20 Global Problems and 20 Years to Solve Them"; Della Bradshaw, Managing Editor of Business Education at the Financial Times; Jeanette Purcell, CEO of the Association of MBAs; Santiago Iniguez, Dean of IE Business School; and the StarChef Jose Andres.

Over 100 representatives of leading business schools at the conference will discuss the challenges posed by innovation to executive education managers in an increasingly global environment. Can executive education consultants learn about innovation from different disciplines, such as high cuisine? How can business schools become more innovative, even disruptive, in the new European management education scenario after the Bologna Process?   

UNICON is the international university consortium for executive education, an organisation of over 70 leading business schools with a commitment to management, executive education and development.

Google: Fortune's New No. 1 Best Company to Work For in America

Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For 2007

3GSM in Barcelona

3GSMWorldCongress    Videos from the event

One of the biggest business events of the year took place in Barcelona this past week.

Barcelona, Thursday 15th February 2007 - The world's premier mobile event, the 3GSM World Congress 2007, has enjoyed a second successful year in Barcelona with an increase in both the quantity and quality of visitors. An estimated 55,000* visitors from across the globe gathered at the Congress to do business and discuss the hottest trends in the mobile phone industry.

This year the Congress, organised by the GSM Association, hosted 1,300 exhibitors

Innovation - Forbes Top Ten Disrupters Of 2006

The Panel

"Our panelists were Paul Danos, dean of Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business; Tom Stemberg, founder of Staples (nasdaq: SPLS - news - people ) and a venture partner at Highland Capital; Forbes.com columnist Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, author of The Innovator's Dilemma and founder of the consulting firm Innosight; Scott Anthony, a managing director at Innosight and co-author, with Christensen, of Seeing What's Next; and Arlyn Tobias Gajilan, the Leadership editor at Forbes.com."

Their Top Ten.  1. You Tube, 2. Private Equity, 3. Supersized Philantrophy ...

Fortune's 50 most powerful women

All the top Fortune 50 in International Business

(furthermore to this: FORTUNE 50 Most Powerful Women in American Business)

1. Patricia F. Russo Lucent,  Bio on Lucent site

..is chairman and chief executive officer of Lucent Technologies. As one of the founding executives of the company, she helped launch Lucent in 1996 and has spent more than 20 years of her career managing some of Lucent's and AT&T's largest divisions and most critical corporate functions. As Lucent's CEO since January 2002, she has led the company through one of the most challenging periods in the telecom industry's history and helped return the company to sustained profitability

2.	Anne Lauvergeon	Areva
3.	Anne-Marie Idrac	SNCF
4.	Linda Cook	Royal Dutch Shell
5.	Marjorie Scardino	Pearson
6.	Xie Qihua	Baosteel Group
7.	Marina Berlusconi	Fininvest
8.	Nancy McKinstry	Wolters Kluwer
9.	Ana Patricia Botín	Banesto
10.	Mary Ma	Lenovo

The war for talent

The Economist: A 15-page study, "The war for talent", was published last October 5th.

The battle for brainpower is the first part of the study (available without subscription).

A discussion with Adrian Wooldridge, Washington Bureau Chief of The Economist

"There is intense competition at the moment to hire the most talented and most intellectually able people ... We have a shortage of talent both within countries and between countries, and there is an intense battle between companies trying to hire the most talented workers and also between countries which are looking to recruit talented young immigrants.”

Listen to the audio interview ( 8.13MB)

• Play or Download MP3

Podcast - CIO Roundtable Update

Following up on the information we posted about last week's roundtable in Prague on doing business in emerging markets, we spoke with Tuck professor Eric Johnson (right of photo) about the meeting, the main lessons learned, and his thoughts on how activities like this can inform future research and shape business school curriculum:

Click here to hear Professor Johnson's overview of the roundtable series, their choice of Prague as a loc ation and emerging markets as a topic, and the ways these sessions inform future research and teaching. (~4.5 minutes)

Click here to hear Professor Johnson summarize some of the main themes and take-aways from the Prague discussion. (~3.5 minutes)

Top 25 European Businesswomen

The Financial Times and Financial Times Deutschland have announced their third annual ranking of the 25 most important businesswomen in Europe.

Ana Patricia Botin is number one for a second year running.

Ana Botin was previously mentioned in a previous post of BizDeansTalk

This representation of the top 25 requires Macromedia Flash Player 6 or higher

Download player 

Women: MBAs and business

Glass ceiling? Get a hammer, June 18, 2006, New York Times
WOMEN who want to make it to the top in corporate America face many hurdles, but the obstacles are surmountable

"Executive Insights - MBA", Posted: June 19, 2006, Business Day
Is there a proliferation of MBA programmes, are MBAs useful, and what about women and MBAs?

"Dean stresses need for female role models",  June 05, 2006, The China Post
...men face the same challenges, too, but "it's just a little tougher for women."

Equal Opportunity bias?, June 18, 2006, Business Week
A study of students finds both sexes feel discrimination.

"Women Face Multiple MBA Roadblocks, Say Female Executives", CNW Group
According to the survey, more than half (56 per cent) of women in senior level positions believe there are multiple barriers to female enrolment in MBA programs, but just 30 per cent of men in senior positions feel the same way. The obstacles most often cited by women are family responsibilities (36 per cent), lack of financial resources (18 per cent) and lack of female role models (6 per cent).

Tags(clickable): Women, China Post, New York Times

CIO DECISIONS 2006: MBA WORTH THE EFFORT, BUT DOESN'T GUARANTEE IT STARDOM

CIOs: MBA worth the effort - 14 June,  Linda Tucci, Senior News Writer

…keynote session at CIO Decisions 2006 in Carlsbad, Calif. (The annual conference is geared to CIOs at companies ranging from $50 million to $2 billion).

...A poll of the 200 CIOs in the audience showed that 30% had earned an MBA; 60% had not and 10% were pursuing one. When asked how they felt about the value of an MBA for IT executives, 19% of the audience said the degree was critical, 61% said "desirable but not critical," 16% were neutral on the issue, and 3% said the MBA was not important...

New MBAs receive up to $92,360 to start

Bloomberg News - May 20, 2006, 1:06AM

Students finishing Master of Business Administration programs this year are being offered base salaries as high as $92,360 for the first year of employment, up 4.2 percent from the average $88,626 received by the Class of 2005, a new survey says.

More than two-thirds of jobs taken by MBAs in the Class of 2006 came with average signing bonuses of $17,603, up slightly from the previous year, according to the study released Friday by the Graduate Management Admission Council, a McLean, Va., research organization that administers the Graduate Management Admission Test.

After demand for MBAs declined in the softened economy that followed the 2001 terrorist attacks, employers and recruiters are now seeking the degree-holders to fill jobs in areas ranging from investment banking to marketing.

"The MBA continues to demonstrate its strong value proposition," GMAC President and Chief Executive Officer David Wilson said in a prepared statement. "In a knowledge economy, leadership and management demand a complex portfolio of skills and talents. A selective MBA program gives its graduate those skills."

Tags(clickable): GMAC

Google leaps up MBA jobs wish-list

Universum's American MBA Edition is an independent research survey that offers detailed information on the work-related opinions of MBA's at the leading business shools in the US. Their survery of 2006 has been used in several articles including:


Fortunes list of "100 top MBA Employers"
Financial Times,
CNN,
College Recruiter and Zdnet

Tags(clickable): Google, MBA jobs

Research | - "Research has to make a difference, otherwise it is irrelevant"

Della Bradshaw, The Financial Times Business Education editor.

I have been really interested to read the comments about the relevance of research and its application to teaching.  I can't help thinking that the debate shouldn't be polarised around esoteric research on the one hand and on practical research and teaching on the other. Perhaps instead it should focus on how to develop really great ideas that can be researched, taught and used in the workplace. That is, how do you make sure research is provoking, whatever its remit and structure?

I'm afraid I'm on pretty shaky ground when I expound theories on high-level research, but clearly the best of it has changed the way businesses work, especially in the financial markets. I tend to think of it as being a bit like catwalk fashion - when I see some supermodel flouncing around in London or New York, I see clothes I would never wear in a million years, but eventually these designs influence the sort of clothes I buy in Marks and Spencer.

But that is the most exciting research - and clearly much research is neither exciting nor influential, particularly in second and third tier business schools.

I am reminded of the time when a subeditor on a UK national newspaper complained to the economics leader writer that he couldn't understand a word of his leader. The leader writer replied that there were only six people in the country would understand it - and the subeditor wasn't one of them! Clearly there are direct equivalents in the academic world, with academics publishing articles to impress other academics.

The same applies to "near-to-market" research: I often read case studies which only tell me things about a company that I have already read in newspapers. Unless they give companies new information on which they can develop strategies, what is the point of them?

Like Dean Danos, I believe the best teaching has to be informed by cutting-edge research. After all, teaching is about content as well as presentation. But it is what participants learn, not what the faculty teach, which is important, and there is a growing acceptance that other students, company internships or guest speakers are all contributors to this. 

I have just got back from China where the top business schools are working hard to write case studies of companies in the region. One dean made the point that China is changing so rapidly in areas such as investment opportunities and  banking, to name just two, that case studies are the most appropriate type of research. They capture the moment, if you will.

Perhaps the deep changes in the political, financial and business environments in Europe over the past 20 years have meant that lengthy research projects are less appropriate than in the US?