IESE Alumni Magazine. Num. 147

147 ALUMNI MAGAZINE October-December 2017 www.iese.edu

CROSSING BORDERS How IESE Became an International Organization

Javier Estrada An Approach for Asset Allocation

Antonio Dávila What’s the New Competitive Edge?

Interview Steve Shiffman (GCP ’17), Calvin Klein’s CEO

play_new rules The power of business innovation

IESE Global Alumni Reunion November 16-18, 2017 MADRID Register at www.iese.edu/GAR

The Power of Innovation and Design Thinking Tom Kelley | Partner, IDEO

Winners Dream Bill McDermott | CEO, SAP SE C

M

Y

The New Rules in Cybersecurity

_Listen to

the leaders of change

Félix Sanz Roldan | Director, National Intelligence Agency, Secretary of State Anthony J. Ferrante | Senior Managing Director, FTI Consulting Former Director for Cyber Incident Response, White House and Chief of Staff of the Cyber Division, FBI

The Upside of Digital Disruption Fuencisla Clemares | Country Manager Spain & Portugal, Google Helena Herrero | President & CEO, HP Spain & Portugal Marta Martínez | General Manager, IBM Spain, Portugal, Greece & Israel

Digital Impact on Our Work and Our Lives Andrew McAfee | Co-director, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy Alejandro Beltrán | Senior Partner and Global Chief Talent & People Officer, McKinsey & Company

Space Driven Innovation Pedro Duque | Astronaut, European Space Agency

Gold Sponsor

Silver Sponsors

Collaborators

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

_Visit leading companies

PUBLICIDAD 1 SPORTS FOR CHARITY Golf, Paddle tennis, Running

_Get

connected

NETWORKING 2,500 alumni from around the world

GALA DINNER at the Casino de Madrid

Leisure activities to share experiences with colleagues and professors.

COVER STORY

CROSSING BORDERS

8

How IESE Became an International Organization IDEAS

NEW DIGITAL COURSES FOR ALUMNI

IMPLEMENTING STRATEGY IS THE COMMODITY

What’s the New Competitive Edge?

Antonio Dávila

16

TIGHT SCHEDULE? TAKE A COURSE ON YOUR CELL PHONE

CROSSROADS

THE FACULTY INCLUDES 114 PROFESSORS OF 22 NATIONALITIES

Six New Appointments to the IESE Faculty

NEW CLASS HAS FIVE SECTIONS AND 360 STUDENTS, WITH 84 PERCENT FROM ABROAD

MBA Program Sets Record: 712 Students

INVESTMENT STRATEGIES

An Approach for Asset Allocation Javier Estrada

2

20

30

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

26

28

MARK THOMPSON, CEO OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Listening to your audience is key”

32

Alumni Magazine IESE

CONTENTS GRADUATION OF THE EXECUTIVE MBA SAO PAULO

Brazil’s New Leadership Style

PEOPLE 34

EXPERTS URGE COMPANIES TO BE MORE FLEXIBLE AND MORE DIVERSE

Promoting Equal Opportunities at Work AGENDA

36 37

PEOPLE

STEVE SHIFFMAN (GCP ’17), CALVIN KLEIN’S CEO

38

“WE HAVE TO BE OPENMINDED ABOUT HOW WE DO BUSINESS”

MARIETA DEL RIVERO (AMP ’16), BOARD MEMBER OF CELLNEX TELECOM

“Independent directors ensure the future of companies”

42

PEOPLE IN MEMORIAM: PROFESSOR JOSEP RIVEROLA

46

FOUR DECADES OF DEDICATION AND COMMITMENT ISRAEL BURÓN (EMBA ’15)

“We want to share the transformation we experienced at IESE”

44

YOU’RE IN THE NEWS

50

LIFE CHAPTER NEWS

54

WELCOME TO THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION!

The Culmination of a Challenge

60

LAST WORD ALBERTO RIBERA

7 Strategies for Fighting Stress

Alumni Magazine IESE

64

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

3

www.facebook.com/alumni.IESE www.twitter.com/IESEalumni

147

October-December 2017 www.iese.edu/alumni

ALUMNI MAGAZINE

Index of Companies 3G Office .........................................................54 3G Smart Group ............................................54 Abertix .............................................................42 Advokatfirmaet Selmer .............................54 Aéroports de Paris ......................................50 AESE Business School ........................... 8, 46 Airbus ...............................................................54 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ......................36 Allianz ..............................................................60 Almdudler .......................................................60 Amazon .....................................18, 34, 38, 54 Amena ..............................................................42 American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers ........................50 Ampex ..............................................................24 Angola School of Management ..................8 APK Renting ...................................................50 Argentine Center of Engineers ...............54 Asociación Profesional de Mediadores de Seguros .......................50 Association of Public Transport .............50 Association of the European Self-Medication Industry .....................50 Atresmedia Corporación ...........................50 Axians ...............................................................54 Banco Bci ........................................................54 Banco Bradesco ............................................54 Bank for International Settlements ......32 Barbuss ............................................................54 BBVA .................................................................54 Ben & Jerry’s .................................................25 Biofleisch Kontor .........................................54 Bloomingdale’s .............................................38 British Airways .............................................32 CaixaBank .......................................................36 Calvin Klein ............................................... 6, 38 Cellnex Telecom ...........................................42 CELSA GROUP ................................................36 Chanel ...............................................................38 China Europe International Business School .................................. 8, 46 Christian Dior ................................................38 Columbia University ...................................26 European Commission ..................................8 Compañía del Trópico ................................50 Conento ...........................................................50 Coomo ..............................................................50 Cosan ................................................................34 Degreed ...........................................................30 Deloitte .................................................... 30, 54

Deutsche AM ..................................................50 DNV GL .............................................................54 ekWateur .........................................................54 Erasmus University ....................................26 Ericsson ...........................................................42 Ferrer ................................................................50 Financial Times .............................................36 Frozen Devil ..................................................54 G.H. Bass ..........................................................38 Google ...................................................... 18, 54 Grupo Fontana ..............................................50 Grupo TBA .......................................................44 GyanDhan .......................................................50 Harvard University .........................8, 26, 46 HEC Paris ............................................................8 Higher Commercial Management School ..............................46 i-D ......................................................................38 INISEL ...............................................................46 International Society for Technology in Education .....................30 ISE Business School .........................8, 46, 54 IZOD ..................................................................38 JLL .....................................................................50 Keynos .............................................................50 Leadership Foundation for Higher Education .............................30 London Business School ..............................8 LOréal ...............................................................25 Macy’s ..............................................................38 Made in Möbile .............................................42 Mahou San Miguel ............................... 36, 50 Manufactum ...................................................54 Massachusetts Institute of Technology ..................................... 8, 36 McKinsey & Company ................................30 MDE Business School ....................................8 Microsoft ................................................. 30, 60 National Science Foundation ..................46 Navarra University ................................ 8, 46 Neinver ............................................................50 Nokia ................................................................42 Northwestern University ............................8 OpenDataSoft ................................................54 PA Consulting Group ...................................30 Pan-Atlantic University ........................ 8, 46 PurpleBeach ...................................................30 PVH ....................................................................38 PwC ...................................................................24 Rattunde ..........................................................60

RocaSalvatella ...............................................42 Rrebrand .........................................................54 Señor Cool .......................................................50 Shoppiday .......................................................50 Sincrolab .........................................................50 Sistema PJSFC ...............................................54 Smartclip .........................................................50 Sony ..................................................................24 Stanford University ........................8, 38, 46 StartTrack.ru ..................................................54 Strathmore Business School .......................8 Talentier ..........................................................50 Teka ...................................................................50 Telefónica .......................................................42 Tesla ..................................................................18 The Body Shop ..............................................25 The New York Times ...................................32 Twitter ..............................................................18 Uber ..................................................................18 Unilever ...........................................................25 Universidad Austral ............................... 8, 46 Universidad Carlos III de Madrid ...........26 Universidad de La Sabana ..........................8 Universidad de los Andes ............................8 Universidad de los Hemisferios ........ 8, 46 Universidad de Lund ..................................44 Universidad de Montevideo .......................8 Universidad de Piura ....................................8 Universidad del Istmo ...................................8 Universidad Panamericana ................ 8, 46 Universidade Católica Portuguesa ........50 Universität Liechtenstein .........................26 Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya .................................... 44, 46 Universitat Pompeu Fabra .......................26 Université de Lausanne ............................26 University of Asia and the Pacific ............8 University of Michigan .................................8 University of Pennsylvania ........................8 University of Virginia .................................30 University of West London ......................50 VASS ..................................................................50 Vassar College ...............................................38 Vida ...................................................................50 Vogue ................................................................38 Warnaco Group .............................................38 Wave .................................................................25 World Economic Forum .............................54 Xfera .................................................................42 Yale University .............................................46

Index of Alumni Amaral, Adriano (MBA ’94 & AMP ’07) ..............................54 András, Bence (AMP ’07) ............................54 Balbin, Javier (MBA ’00) ............................54 Barufi, Joao (PLD ’17) .................................60 Bernal, Jorge (MBA ’01) .............................50 Bilinski, Ireneusz (AMP ’17) ......................60 von Boeselager, Georg (AMP ’08) ...........54 Burón, Israel (EMBA ’15) .......................6, 44 Bustamante, Fernando (PDD ’11) ...........50 Carlsen, Atle H. (MBA ’97) ..........................54 Carnicero, Ignacio (MBA ’95) ....................50 Ceballos, Eduardo (PDG ’11) .....................50 Cheriegate, Jeferson (PMD ’16) ..............30 Chetverikov, Sergey (GEMBA ’15) ..........54 Chimeno, José Gabriel (PDG ’95) ............54 Confalone, Valentino (MBA ’01) ..............54 Cuerda, Pedro Luis (MBA ’87) ..................50 Dulinsky, Silvio (EMBA ’07) ......................54 Dunaif, Anthony (MBA ’93) .......................50 Echegaray, Fernando (PDG ’05) ..............50 Fernandes, Nuno (PhD ’03) .......................50 Fernández-Capo, Daniel (GCP ’17) .........60 Gautam, Shilpika (MBA ’10) ......................50 González, José Dionisio (PDD ’07) .........50

Guarnieri, Bruno (EMBA ’17) ....................34 Halcón, Luis Manuel (MBA ’96) ................50 Herrera, Antonio Jesús (PADE ’14) ........50 Hoffmann, Alfredo (MBA ’98) ..................54 Ivanov, Mikhail (GEMBA ’10) ....................54 Johns, Malcolm (GCP ’17) ..........................60 Jónsdóttir, Heiðrún (AMP ’17) .................60 Kalocsa, Bernadett (MBA ’99) ..................54 Korner, Reinhard (PMD ’17) ......................60 Lambert, Axel (MBA ’01) ............................54 Lavoie, Priscilla (MBA ’14) ........................50 Londoño, Luis Fernando (MBA ’03) .......54 Luesma, Santiago (PDD ’14) ......................50 Mehra, Ankit (MBA ’15) ..............................50 Méndez, Jaime (PDD ’15) ..........................54 Mercler, Laurent (AMP ’17) .......................60 Montolio, Francesc (EMBA ’16) ...............44 Morales, Javier (MBA ’07) .........................50 Neubert, Astrid (PLD ’17) ...........................60 Niesyto, Agata (AMP ’17) ...........................60 Olavarría, Lionel (MBA ’75) .......................54 Pace, Alan (MBA ’94) ...................................54 Pansegrau, Ingo (AMP ’16) ........................54 de Pereda, Héctor (EMBA ’14) .................50 Piqué, Enrico (PDD ’93) ..............................54

Numbers refer to the first page of the article in which the alumnus appears.

4

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

Prats, Carme (PMD ’17) ..............................60 Ramentol, Jordi (GPMD ’95) .....................50 de Ramón, Ignacio (EMBA ’17) .................50 Reina, Javier (MBA ’02) ..............................50 Reynés, Francisco (MBA ’89) ....................42 Rico, Juan Luis (MBA ’00) ..........................50 del Rivero, Marieta (AMP ’16) ..................42 Rodrigo, José Manuel (PDD ’84) .............50 Ronis, Yana (GEMBA ’16) ...........................54 Royo-Villanova, Antonio (EMBA ’09) .................................................50 Ruffini, Leonardo (EMBA ’12) ..................50 Ruiz-Alba, José (PDG ’05) ..........................50 Saller, Ulrike (AMP ’17) ...............................60 de la Santa, Clara (EMBA ’13) ...................50 Schouten, Rudolf (PDD ’11) .......................50 Schröter, Andreas (GEMBA ’08) ...............54 Shiffman, Steve (GCP ’17) .....................6, 38 Smirnov, Andrey (GEMBA ’07) .................54 Soloperto, Silvano (MBA ’13) ...................54 Struye, Frithjof (AMP ’17) ..........................60 Ugarte, Iñaki (MBA ’14) ..............................34 Valero, Alfonso (EMBA ’09) .......................50 Vázquez, Francisco (PDG ’03) ..................54 Venturini, Paolo (MBA ’02) ........................54

General Circulation 42,141 Spanish Edition: 33,616 English Edition: 8,525 Editorial Director Emeritus Antonio Argandoña Managing Director Aïda Rueda Managing Editor Maria Subarroca Editor Ana Galán Senior Editor, English Edition Sally Davies Contributors Cristina Aced Edu Ferrer Alcover Marta Matute Javier Pampliega Roger Perelló Isaac Sastre Natasha Young Miquel Utset Photography David Adamson, Javier Arias, Alexandre Baptista, Jordi Estruch, Edu Ferrer Alcover, Sara Lacuesta, Pili Martínez, Fernando Mucci, Roger Rovira, Jordi Tarrés, Sergei Tsirkunov and Juan Ude Illustrations Luciano Lozano Ana Yael Design and Layout Enric J. Gisbert Proofreader Mary Brennan Advertising M&N Consulting - Antonio Moré Tel: 93 544 12 34 Printing QP Print Published by IESE Business School – University of Navarra Depósito legal B.23.746-1963 ISSN 1138/2333 The opinions expressed in the articles published in this magazine are solely those of the authors.

Articles may be reproduced, provided that the original source is indicated.

IESE/University of Navarra Alumni Magazine Avda. Pearson, 21. 08034 Barcelona Tel: 93 253 42 00 • Fax: 93 253 43 43 Cno. del Cerro del Águila, 3 Ctra. de Castilla, km 5, 180. 28023 Madrid Tel: 91 211 30 00 • Fax: 91 357 29 13 www.ee-iese.com

Alumni Magazine IESE

Air Europa Business Class & Your comfort.

Relax and enjoy Air Europa Business Class premium flight experience, highest level of service, privacy, full flat-bed seats and inflight menus created by 3-starts Michelin Chef Martin Berasategui.

PUBLICIDAD 5 Every detail counts.

Information & Reservations SPAIN (+34 91 136 02 00) USA (+1 844 415 3955) www.aireuropa.com

EDITORIAL

A spirit of “service plus”

I

n preparing to submit this issue of the Alumni Magazine to the printer, I asked myself what its common thread is. I came to the conclusion that what knits the issue together is the spirit of service. I’m not talking about service alone, in some sort of distilled form. Rather, what permeates this issue is what you might call a spirit of “service plus”: service plus additional values.

For example, our professors’ recollections of our colleague and friend Professor Josep Riverola, who died in August, stress his great spirit of service. The “pluses” include his sense of friendship, his intellectual curiosity and many other virtues, including something that forms part of IESE’s mission: knowing how to see things from the manager’s point of view. Thank you, Josep!

Our interview with Israel Burón (EMBA ’15) includes the conviction that companies are here to serve society, and this belief takes Burón to the values that he acquired in the EMBA. The cover story has two readings. One reading is given in the title: how IESE became an international school. The other appears in the rest of the article: how IESE used that transformation to serve students and participants; the world’s companies and managers; and the schools and professors of the many countries with which it has shared that transformation. IESE could have internationalized merely by pursuing its own interests, and it would still be a global school. But undoubtedly it would be a very different institution from what it is today.

We can’t leave out the contributions of our professors in Ideas. Antonio Dávila tells us about the “other” competitive advantage, which is “seeing” change coming and taking advantage of it. Javier Estrada takes us to the world of asset selection – a task we all have to tackle at some point – offering us a simple and effective approach. And since stress also lurks in the dizzying day-to-day of managers, Alberto Ribera provides simple but useful tips.

ANTONIO ARGANDOÑA Editorial director of Alumni Magazine argandona@iese.edu

6

I particularly recommend our interview with Steve Shiffman (GCP ’17): with all the buzz around teaching with “narratives,” listening to the experiences of the successful CEO of Calvin Klein will be a brief lesson in good management.

And as always, I invite you to enjoy the news about IESE, its alumni and its recent graduating classes.

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

Alumni Magazine IESE

There is the short-term, the long-term and the term that lasts for generations.

PUBLICIDAD 7

Wealth generates unique challenges. Citi Private Bank brings the global network of Citi with local insight to help accomplish what is important to you and to manage your wealth for generations. For an office near you, and to learn more, visit citiprivatebank.com

®

Citi Private Bank is a business of Citigroup Inc. (“Citigroup”), which provides its clients access to a broad array of products and services available through bank and non-bank affiliates of Citigroup. Not all products and services are provided by all affiliates or are available at all locations. In the US, brokerage products and services are provided by Citigroup Global Markets Inc. (“CGMI”), member SIPC. Accounts carried by Pershing LLC, member FINRA, NYSE, SIPC. CGMI and Citibank, N.A. are affiliated companies under the common control of Citigroup Inc. Outside the US, brokerage products and services are provided by other Citigroup affiliates. Citi and Citi with Arc Design are registered service marks of Citigroup Inc. or its affiliates.

INVESTMENT PRODUCTS: NOT FDIC INSURED · NOT CDIC INSURED · NOT GOVERNMENT INSURED · NO BANK GUARANTEE · MAY LOSE VALUE © 2017 Citigroup Inc. All Rights Reserved.

8

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

Alumni Magazine IESE

COVER STORY

Crossing Borders How IESE Became an International Organization

Alumni Magazine IESE

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

9

COVER STORY

O

Nonetheless, IPADE wasn’t an initiative born out of n March 30, 2017, the Instituto IESE. In 1966, a group of Mexican businessmen first pePanamericano de Alta Directitioned Harvard for assistance in establishing a business ción de Empresas (IPADE) held school in Mexico. Harvard, instead, suggested that they a grand celebration. During a they go to IESE. The reasons might have been several. gala dinner with guests from all First, the cultural and language affinity with a school based over the business and academic in Spain would be greater, making communication more world, Mexican composer Samuel Zyman unveiled a specially fluid. Second, given that IESE was just eight years old, its commissioned symphonic piece, and several speakers people had hands-on experience in navigating the chalstressed the role IPADE has played in the Mexican busilenges and struggles of establishing a new school. The projness community. The occasion was particularly momenect had the backing of St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, tous as IPADE is now 50 years old, and in the years since then Great Chancellor of the University of Navarra, and its foundation it has grown to become one of the leading was approved by IESE Dean Antonio Valero. business schools in Latin America.

In 1967, the IESE-IPADE Advisory Committee, which Among the guests at IPADE’s birthday event was a delewas modeled on IESE’s own Advisory Committee with gation sent by IESE, and for them it was also a very special Harvard, was established. The classes began with IESE occasion. Back in 1967, IESE collaborated with the original providing advice, training for the IPADE professors, and promoters of IPADE in setting up the institution. For IESE sending several IESE faculty members to Mexico as visitit was the first time the then fledging business school had ing professors. reached beyond the borders of Prof. Cavallé recalls these Spain. times: “I think in the first year In these 50 years, IESE itof IPADE I travelled five times self has grown, and so have its to Mexico, and back then it international activities. After wasn’t as easy as it is today.” He assisting in the development adds: “it cost us money, time, of 15 business schools, it has and a great deal of effort. But also opened campuses in Muat the same time, we were imnich and New York, along with pressed by the many things we facilities in Sao Paulo, while decould learn from the business veloping a host of internationcommunity in Mexico. And al programs and welcoming a this encouraged many to go student body from 60 different further.”

IPADE was a resounding nations in the MBA program. success. After starting with How did IESE become a high-level programs aimed at global organization? And Mexican executives, it started where should it head from this Prof. Carlos Cavallé, IESE dean between its own MBA in 1970. In 1978, it point?

1984 and 2001. was certified as a fully fledged HOW TO INTERNATIONALIZE university with the name Uni“An organization – not a good versidad Panamericana. IPADE organization, at least – doesn’t leap into the void,” said would be the first of many similar schools, but those would Prof. Jordi Canals, who was IESE dean between 2001 and come later. While this was going on, IESE itself was devel2016, “Everything we have built, we’ve done it using the oping into an international organization. pillars that had been raised previously.”

This sentiment is echoed by Prof. Carlos Cavallé, IESE INTERNATIONALIZATION BEGINS WITH ONESELF dean between 1984 and 2001: “there’s no button you can Early in IESE’s life, the school started sending out faculty press and suddenly you’re an international organization. members to doctorate programs in the U.S. and around It is a process, a process that has several stages – some are Europe, an activity that it would maintain and expand in simple, others are more complex.” the 1970s and beyond. IESE programs were increasingly Indeed, the founding of IPADE might have been the first being taught by faculty with Ph.D.s from international stage of that process, but even that first chapter had a foreschools. This helped IESE in three ways. Firstly, it imword. In 1963, the first meeting of the Harvard Business proved the professional and academic capabilities of these School-IESE Committee had been held, and the advice of professors, but it also improved their English-language Harvard professors helped launch IESE’s MBA program. skills and helped establish a network of personal contacts In the first cohort of the program, one year later, IESE’s from which both the professor and IESE could benefit. first – still small - contingent of international students apThere was another factor, less tangible, that Prof. Cavallé peared, early proof of IESE’s international DNA. thought was key: “Internationalization is a process, and a

THERE’S NO BUTTON YOU CAN PRESS AND SUDDENLY YOU’RE AN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION. IT IS A PROCESS”

10

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

Alumni Magazine IESE

Milestones key part of the process is to give people an international mindset. And by that I don’t just mean more stamps on the passport – internationalization begins with oneself. We sent people abroad, and when they came back they were changed.”

Another key step was the establishment of the English language MBA, started in 1980. It was a minor component at first, and students were offered classes exclusively in English during the first year, and a mix of English and Spanish language classes in the second – so that international students could also develop a working knowledge of Spanish. It was a difficult step to take; not only did the professors need to be comfortable with leading case discussion in English, but cases and other materials had to be translated to English, and the whole institution had to be ready to operate in a different language.

The English-language MBA not only made IESE more attractive to foreign students, but it also offered IESE the opportunity to hire professors from abroad, which vastly expanded the talent pool from which the school could draw. Moreover, the English MBA paved the way for the first international alliances of IESE. In the early days of the English MBA, second-year students were able to join exchange programs with schools like the Wharton School, Kellogg School of Management, HEC Paris or London Business School. Nowadays, IESE has exchange agreements with over 25 schools all over the world. Overall, the English MBA was soon a great success, and after a few years applications outstripped available spots by five to one.

Then came the first joint programs and partnerships, another important step in the internationalization process. As Prof. Cavallé recalls: “We understood the importance of having good partnerships. We were a little-known Spanish school then, so it would have been difficult for us to attract senior executives for a high level international program alone.”

One of the first partners was the Stephen M. Ross School of Michigan, with whom IESE ran its first international high management program in 1994, near Lausanne (Switzerland). Following on the success of that program, others followed. Soon IESE was partnering with schools like Harvard, Stanford, MIT and CEIBS. Ties with international companies also grew and deepened. In 1989 IESE set up the International Advisory Board (IAB). The IAB puts IESE faculty together with chairmen and CEOs from large international companies to analyze the socioeconomic trends, and how academic institutions like IESE can better answer the needs of the changing business context. In the 1990s custom programs with international companies expanded and became more structured, a direct consequence of IESE’s growing international profile. “Once you have established your international credentials,” reflects Prof. Cavallé, “people come to check you out, to see if you have something for them.”

Another development was the International Faculty Program (IFP). It was launched in 1991 with the support of the European Commission, and was aimed at providing

Alumni Magazine IESE

of IESE’s internationalization 1958 IESE started

sending out faculty members to doctorate programs in the U.S. and Europe.

A key part of the internationalization process is to give people an international mindset,” says Prof. Cavallé.

1963 Harvard Business School-IESE

Commitee, the first partnership, is set up.

The advice of Harvard professors was invaluable in the launch of IESE’s MBA program in 1964.

Then, IESE welcomed the first international students. Schools such as Stanford, MIT and CEIBS were soon among IESE’s partnerships.

1967 IESE helps

to set up IPADE in Mexico.

A fully autonomous school that would become the first of IESE’s 15 associated schools.

1980 Launch of the bilingual MBA.

This made the school more attractive to international students and faculty, and paved the way for international alliances that facilitated the exchange programs. Nowadays, IESE has exchange agreements with over 25 schools all around the world.

1989 The IESE International Advisory Board is established.

The chairmen and CEOs from international companies help the school by analyzing socioeconomic trends and the current needs of the business community.

1991 LBS, IESE’s first associated school

in Africa

First, but not last, as MDE in Cöte d’Ivoire followed in 2003, and SBS in Kenya in 2005. Additionally, IESE assisted AESE when they helped drive the foundation of the ASM in Angola in 2008.

faculty members in Eastern European business schools, after the fall of Communism, with the necessary skillset to educate the next generation of their countries’ business leaders. When the European Commission stopped supporting the project, IESE fully took over, and the scope of the program widened. In 2000 it welcomed participants from Europe, Asia, Africa and America. Many of them were faculty members from the growing contingent of IESE’s Associated Schools.

THE ASSOCIATED SCHOOLS

In 1978, representatives from a group of Argentinian businessmen requested IESE’s assistance in setting up a business school in Buenos Aires, and IAE was born.

The “births” of Associated Schools began to increase.

Next was PAD in Perú in 1979; AESE in Portugal in 1980; INALDE in Colombia in 1985; IEEM in Uruguay in 1986; Lagos Business School in Nigeria in 1991; IDE in Ecuador in 1992; CEIBS in China in 1994; School of Business Administration of the UA&P in the Philippines in 1995; ISE in Brazil in 1996; ESE in Chile in 1999; MDE in Côte d’Ivoire in 2003; and SBS in Kenya in 2005. Additionally, IPADE-founded Tayasal Escuela de Negocios (UNIS Business School) in Guatemala became an IESE Associated School in 1996. More recently, AESE, IESE’s associate school in Portugal, helped drive the foundation of the ASM in Angola in 2008.

Most of these projects had several traits in common; they were promoted by local entrepreneurs, they started activities with the Advanced Management Program and many of them had a mission statement similar to IESE’s.

The teachings of the school were shared with all of them, and many even had the moral support of the Prelature of Opus Dei, which provides the sense of mission that imbues entrepreneurs and managers with a strong spirit of service and ethical values. These Associated Schools were fully autonomous, and the presence of a strong and dedicated group of local promoters that was willing to run the school was considered key to its success.

Prof. Vicente Font has been involved in developing business schools in Latin America for nearly 30 years, travelling and teaching in – among others – Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Colombia. He relates his experience: “The hardest part is always finding good professors. Our desire is that schools don’t have to rely on foreign visiting professors, but when you start a new school from a scratch, that’s difficult to achieve. In particular when you’re using the case method, which is a very particular way of teaching. You can’t just grab anyone from college and put them in charge of a session.”

In the initial stages, therefore, professors from IESE and other collaborating schools lead the majority of the sessions. They then help tutor local professors so that these in turn can eventually take over. This mentorship is also a way to “pass down” IESE’s culture to these schools, which are completely independent. Prof. Pablo Regent, dean of IEEM in Uruguay, explains: “Young professors that come to IEEM are sometimes surprised at how veterans help and tutor them. But that’s what we received from the professors that came here to help us, and this culture of helping and assisting has permeated our institution.”

Dr. Enase Okonedo, dean of LBS, elaborates: “Something that I see, is how people learn the concept of spirit of service. They see the way IESE professors apply themselves to the job. They see it’s no longer a job, it’s a way to serve, a way to help create a better society.”

Assisting the Associated Schools has been seen as a way to make IESE’s mission more far-reaching, and has been an institutional initiative. Prof. Lluís Renart, former head of IESE’s Africa Initiative, explains the reasoning: “We understood the importance of creating institutions that would educate managers not only technically, but also humanistically. Good managers who would create wealth in an ethical way, who could help their countries grow and develop.”

Associated Schools also can send faculty members to IESE for training. In addition to the IFP, other options are

2001 Global Executive MBA launched 1994 IESE strengthens

links with Asia

CEIBS was set up in Shanghai in 1994, with professor Pedro Nueno as a co-founder.

IESE’s Global CEO Program and Global CEO Program for China are offered in partnership with CEIBS.

An MBA modular program available to senior international managers around the world.

2002 The first AMP takes place in Sao Paulo

At the ISE campus, IESE offers a range of programs: the AMP program; the PMD, which started in 2003; and – since 2014 – the Executive MBA. An overseas module of the MBA and elective module of the GEMBA program are held in Sao Paulo.

2006 IESE launches the AMP Warsaw

Poland became the third European country to host IESE programs, after Spain and Germany.

COVER STORY obtaining a Master of Research in Management, and even fully completing their Ph.D. at IESE. This assistance is not only limited to training – cases and other teaching materials are supplied, and IESE’s know-how on how to run a business school, from general administrative tasks to how to run a library or an alumni association, can be tapped and implemented locally. As Prof. Okonedo explains: “We have program directors, administrators and marketing directors going to IESE to see and learn best practices and then they come back here.

This has been tremendous in order to raise the standards of how we do things.”

Of course, as Prof. Font says: “You have to be able to distill the essential from the accidental.” Prof. Regent explains: “For example, the idea that teaching is at the center, that the school is run by professors, and that the foundation of the school must therefore be spectacularly good tuition. This is also at the core of IEEM. But what makes a great session is probably different in Montevideo from what makes a great session in Barcelona.”

WE UNDERSTOOD THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATING MANAGERS WHO COULD HELP THEIR COUNTRIES GROW” Prof. Lluís Renart, former head of IESE’s Africa Initiative.

The first program offered in a new Associated School is almost always an Advanced Management Program (AMP), aimed at the highest level of executives. This replicates IESE’s own experience, since it began operations with an equivalent “Programa de Alta Dirección de Empresas” (PADE), in 1958.

The advantages of this approach are two-fold: 1. By reaching out to senior businessmen, the new school can enlist powerful ambassadors that can recommend the school to their colleagues.

2. By educating established CEOs and senior managers, the new school can maximize the early impact it can have in the community.

If these first AMP programs are successful, the school can then grow top down, establishing programs aimed at more junior executives and, eventually, an MBA. Most of the time, the new school uses temporary facilities – even rented hotel rooms – to teach those first programs. As the school becomes more established, permanent facilities are then acquired or built.

The “maturation” process can take around 15 years, and it is considered that an Associated School is fully developed once it can field two high-quality full-time professors in every area, and offer a comprehensive catalog of programs. Right now, all Associated Schools have reached or are near to that point. IESE considers all of them success stories. But what now?

“We’ve reached the point where we have achieved our original aspirations, and we’re creating new ones. We want to grow internationally – it’s an exciting moment for us,” says Prof. Regent.

“We’re still a young school. During our first 20 years of existence our focus has been Nigeria, because there wasn’t any kind of advanced business education available in Nigeria. But now we are enlarging our focus, and aspire to develop socially responsible managers for Africa and the world at large,” says Prof. Okonedo.

And while the Associated Schools find themselves thinking about their future, IESE has been hatching international plans of its own.

2010

IESE inaugurates its New York campus

In 2007, IESE became the first European business school to have a permanent office in New York city, and three years later, it opened its own campus.

2015 A new campus is opened in Munich

Ten years after the AMP program was launched in Munich, the newest IESE campus was opened in the German city.

COVER STORY BECOMING GLOBAL

2016-17, also has a global scope. On top of which, 93 perIn 2005, IESE launched its AMP program in Munich, and, cent of the 47 students in the doctoral program last year for the first time, the school had a permanent presence came from outside Spain. IESE has also enlisted more inoutside Spain. This developed into a fully fledged campus ternational personnel, not only at the academic level, but in 2015. In 2006, IESE launched an AMP in Warsaw. A year also among the general staff – nowadays, more than 40 nalater it became the first European business school to have tionalities are represented in IESE’s workforce. “In recent a permanent campus in New York, and since the 2000s, years, IESE has undergone a substantial internationalizaIESE has been offering a variety of programs in Sao Paulo, tion process, which has resulted in great diversity among in partnership with ISE. This was a turning point in IESE’s our program participants, our own teams and the faculty,” international strategy; the first time it operated in other says IESE’s dean, Franz Heukamp. countries with its own brand and permanent facilities.

The activities of the Alumni Association have been sup“This is not something that happens in a vacuum. We ported and bolstered. Nowadays, the Association has 36 couldn’t have done this in the 1980s or even the 1990s, chapters and over 46,000 members. It held the first Global it wouldn’t have made sense,” Alumni Reunion outside Spain, explains Prof. Canals, “but in Amsterdam, in the year 2000. we saw that the companies we Since then, reunions have been held in cities like Sao Paulo, Muwere working with were more and more global, and we had to nich and New York. become global ourselves.” He “It hasn’t been a matter of also stresses that “this has been ticking boxes or planting flags made possible by what has been on a map, we’ve sought to grow IESE’s international presence done before.”

Indeed, the buildings of the organically, in the places where new campuses are the most noit made the most sense, where ticeable signs of IESE’s growing we could have a meaningful iminternational stature, but other pact,”says Prof. Canals when work had gone into laying the describing IESE’s international foundations. In 2001, for exstrategy. ample, the Global Executive A strategy that is to be deProgram – a modular EMBA veloped further in the future: program for senior managers “IESE has had a growing presfrom all over the world – was ence abroad, and looking into Prof. Franz Heukamp, IESE dean. born. In 2003, the MBA prothe future, we should contingram became English-taught ue reinforcing our presence in in its entirety. The catalog of programs offered in English North America, Latin America and Central Europe. Also, expanded progressively, encompassing higher-managewe should think about our presence in Asia, beyond the iniment programs. On top of this, the MBA got a fourth sectiatives we already have,” says Prof. Heukamp. tion in 2010, and then a fifth in 2015, reflecting the success THE IESE OF 2067? of the program, and helping create a student body that was Fifty years ago, when IESE took on the adventure of helpincreasingly diverse, and which benefited from exchange ing to create a business school in Mexico, few could have programs from schools all over the world. In 2017, the MBA imagined what IESE would accomplish during the next program has started with 712 students, and 84 percent half a century. Yet in an ever-changing and dynamic world, came from outside Spain. this may only signify part of the journey, and who knows Offices in Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong how much stretches ahead? How will the internationalizahave helped drive recruitment from those areas, while tion of IESE continue in the coming years? How can it be building up relationships with Asian companies. At the strengthened, what paths can be explored? And what part same time, IESE has deepened its relationship with CEIBS, can the Associated Schools play? the business school in Shanghai promoted by IESE profesMaybe in 50 years, when the first century of IPADE sor Pedro Nueno in 1994. The Global CEO Program For comes around, we will look back and once again marvel at China sees 60 Chinese high executives travel to the Barwhat people and institutions, in partnership, can accomcelona campus every year, and hundreds of MBA students plish together. travel in both directions under exchange programs.

The faculty, with 114 professors, has become even more international, exemplified by the 2016 appointment of MORE INFORMATION: Franz Heukamp as IESE dean, the first non-Spaniard to Pampliega, J. “El IPADE de México (1966-1967),” Historia del IESE, Volume III, 6 December 2016, pp.105-136. hold that position. The school’s research, with around 70 Pampliega, J. “Las escuelas asociadas del IESE,” 19 August 2010. articles published in international refereed journals in

THE INTERNATIONALIZATION HAS RESULTED IN GREAT DIVERSITY AMONG PARTICIPANTS, TEAMS AND FACULTY”

14

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

Alumni Magazine IESE

PUBLICIDAD 15

16

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

Alumni Magazine IESE

IDEAS IMPLEMENTING STRATEGY IS THE COMMODITY

What’s the New Competitive Edge?

The ability to implement strategy better than anyone else is no longer just a competitive advantage; it has turned into a commodity in its own right.

The new competitive edge consists of being the first to see a change on the horizon and taking advantage of it.

To do this, we have to stop looking inside and start looking at the landscape around us.

ANTONIO DÁVILA Professor of Entrepreneurship and Accounting and Control, IESE

Alumni Magazine IESE

A

mazon is revolutionizing distribution to the point of getting employers and unions to make agreements without the traditional fights. Taxi drivers go on strike again and again to try to protect a market that’s undergoing change. There are new companies on the car manufacturers’ scene: start-ups, like Tesla and Uber, and software giants like Google and Apple.

According to Joseph Schumpeter, capitalism is often mistakenly understood to be about managing existing industrial structures; in reality the essence of capitalism is how these structures are created and destroyed. Until now, management centered on running the firm rather than on creating. The focus has been on implementing the strategy.

Our enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) indicate deviations from the plan in red and green. We know what’s going on at every moment and in every location

of our organizations: a company based in Chicago knows that it has sold one of its products in its Manila store. The paradox is that this same company has no idea whether the building across the street houses a start-up that will take over 30 percent of its sales in two years.

Implementing strategy better than anyone else has gone from being a competitive advantage to being a commodity in and of itself.

The new competitive advantage, the thing that makes you different and better, is your ability to identify opportunities before anyone else and take advantage of them. We’re in the second phase of Schumpeter’s argument: the future is creating and destroying; managing is just a necessary condition.

Because until now implementation has provided an important source of competitive advantage, our organizations are focused inward. People are concerned with what’s going on in the department next door. They make sure that the processes they’re in charge of don’t end up getting a red light. And they extrapolate conclusions from the ERP data that go beyond what the

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

17

data can reasonably support. Management tools, focused on running the organization, direct our attention to what happens on the inside.

Corporate cultures have followed the same path and they too look inward. In addition to this structural bias, we have to add that many firms are centralized and talent is only used for executing strategy.

The little bit that we do look outward is limited to our nearby neighbors, like customers and competitors. Strategic planning always begins with SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), an analysis of Michael Porter’s five forces, or a PEST analysis (political, economic, social and technological). All of these concepts were developed in the 1970s and ’80s. No wonder we’re surprised when an Amazon or a Tesla suddenly appears and gobbles up our slice of the pie.

Culture is essential for adapting organizations to new challenges.

From an insular culture preoccupied with the inside and the status quo, we need to move toward cultures that value the opportunities that are constantly appearing outside the firm. These new cultures understand the need to be the first to see a change coming. And they know that this is only possible if we dedicate time and attention to what’s happening outside.

How can organizations change their culture to adapt to the new context? For more than a decade, this question has been an important part of the agenda of a Swiss research group. Their model is called the Landscape Monitor, and organizations that apply it incorporate the search for opportunities, both tactical and strategic, into their DNA. The complexity of current markets makes it necessary to have tools that allow us to see farther and better, and to be ready for action. Landscape Monitor is a management system that changes the way both large and small organizations perceive and analyze their

18

competitive, social and political surroundings. Its methodology allows companies to identify changes in the environment that are critical for the future of the organization, like emerging opportunities and risks. This capacity for detection becomes the starting point for strategy, innovation and corporate risk management.

The Landscape Monitor draws on information and experience from everyone at the organization and it uses crowdsourcing to identify and analyze threats and opportunities in the environment that otherwise would pass unnoticed: new competitors, changes in customers’ lifestyles, emerging markets, technological advances, new regulations, and political and social changes. Thanks to Landscape Monitor, the organization obtains a coherent and integrated view of its surroundings.

Although its design is specific for each organization, Landscape Monitor is based on four common principles. I’ll illustrate them using the case of a group of educators interested in changes in primary education (age five to ten).

From an insular culture preoccupied with the inside and the status quo, we need to move toward cultures that value the opportunities that are constantly appearing outside the firm

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

1. MAKE A MAP OF THE LANDSCAPE • Which actors are creating opportunities?

• Which actors can inspire you to change your technology or your business?

Just as we make process maps to identify indicators and understand the internal workings of management, analyzing the landscape also requires a map.

The map synthesizes the view of the group’s surroundings. Like any map, it can be seen from different perspectives, but it’s important to know which spheres and actors can change the environment and create opportunities.

In primary education, there are two main spheres: the school’s administration and its pedagogical

Alumni Magazine IESE

IDEAS approach. Under the umbrella of administration, we find teaching management, student admissions and school management. Under the umbrella of pedagogical approach, we find online education, technology in the classroom, and new teaching methods. Inside each of these areas, potentially important things are happening.

To give just one example, in the area of classroom technology, there is work on virtual reality as a learning tool. In this way, a biology student can see a heart in 3D, rotate it to see it from different angles and open it to look inside.

The map brings into relief differences in perspective that previously were implicit. For example, an R&D specialist viewed the landscape differently from a specialist in marketing or finance, and these differences – when not made explicit – easily led to miscommunication.

2. UTILIZE AS MANY PAIRS OF EYES AS YOU CAN • Which people from the organization can contribute interesting observations and analyses of the environment?

• Is there a group interested in innovating?

In each Landscape Monitor there are various participants who, through their experience, inform and share what’s happening in the environment. Innovation begins with a sandbox of ideas. Creativity means connecting ideas that were previously separate. Taking advantage of that richness of viewpoints and sharing it is what makes regions like Silicon Valley so innovative.

In seeking to innovate, firms often ask their employees to offer up ideas. This approach has two problems. First, many people fear that their ideas aren’t good enough, and they exclude themselves from the new strategy from the outset. With Landscape, contributing observations is a way of contributing to

Alumni Magazine IESE

innovation. Second, embarking on innovation projects without having worked on inspiration – that is, the richness of ideas – is an entertaining exercise with little ultimate value.

In our Landscape of primary education, we discovered that two thirds of U.S. schools and schools from more than 180 countries manage teaching through a platform developed by a start-up. We also saw that a company has teaching management software with more than 12 million users. A group that is applying Landscape has been collecting data on advantages and disadvantages of this platform (and others), and the next step is to evaluate if the school should change how it manages teaching.

3. USE TALENT TO CREATE • In the organization, is it explicitly communicated to employees that observing and analyzing the landscape is part of the job description?

• Do the people who monitor the landscape meet at least once a month to share their impressions?

• Is time dedicated to analyzing what external actors do and the opportunities that they generate?

Use talent to create. When we hire people, we spent a lot of time seeking out and attracting the best talent. They are very well trained professionals that understand better than anyone else in the organization a certain aspect of the environment. Today’s complexity doesn’t fit inside a single person. The paradox is that we only use that talent to have them implement strategy. We don’t keep in mind that they can also observe, analyze and project into the future. Applying the Landscape Monitor makes it possible to take advantage of their capacity to create.

In our primary education Landscape, the group has collected a lot of information about online education and how it can be integrated into the in-person class. This work

has led a part of the group to create a project to integrate the online and offline worlds.

4. GATHER INFORMATION FROM BOTH PUBLIC SOURCES AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCES • What sources of external information will help you understand the actors in your landscape?

• How do people from your team communicate their experiences and observations of what is happening around them?

Analyzing multiple perspectives in real time requires weeks or months of data collection. This process immerses the group in the happenings of every region of the landscape.

This information is both quantitative (for example, market share and share price) and qualitative (for example, the Twitter followers of a certain opinion leader).

The personal experiences of group members are important, but so is the input of outside experts, accessible though the Internet and other reference sources.

In the case of our primary education group, in addition to what they see and learn directly, they also receive information from researchers, teachers and organizations to help them make sense of changes on the horizon.

Quantitative and qualitative information, interactions among group members, and knowledge of what’s happening in our surroundings offer innumerable opportunities for Landscape Monitor to change the way we manage organizations. This methodology allows us to focus outward, to be first to see change coming and to create new sources of competitive advantage.

MORE INFORMATION: Dávila, Antonio; Oyon, Daniel; Parmigiani, Pilar; Schnegg, Maël (2015) “Look Outside Your Firm: A Tool to Sense What’s Coming” IESE Insight, second quarter 2015.

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

19

20

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

Alumni Magazine IESE

IDEAS INVESTMENT STRATEGIES

An Approach for Asset Allocation Asset allocation is a critical part of any investment strategy. By taking the GHAUS approach, individual investors can make decisions in a simple and meaningful way.

JAVIER ESTRADA Professor of Finance, IESE

Alumni Magazine IESE

T

he risk and return of any investment portfolio can be altered by using three levers: asset allocation, security selection and market timing. The first lever refers to the proportion of the major asset classes (stocks, bonds, and alternatives) in the portfolio; the second to the implementation of the asset allocation selected, or more precisely, the assets (stocks, bonds, funds) used to obtain exposure to each asset class; and the third refers to changes in asset allocation or security selection over time. In this article, I will focus on the first of these levers – asset allocation.

There is broad consensus that asset allocation is far more important than security selection and market timing in determining performance. Some estimates show that over 90 percent of the differences in risk and return across portfolios can be explained by differences in asset allocation, with the rest explained by those in security selection, market timing or other factors. So investors would be wise to focus their time and effort on this portfolio lever.

THE GHAUS APPROACH Determining the optimal combination of stocks, bonds, and alter-

natives is a mix of art and science.

There is neither a perfect way to determine an asset allocation nor a perfect asset allocation for any given investor.

However, I would like to propose a simple, plausible and effective approach that investors can use. I refer to this as GHAUS. This abbreviation is taken from the variables an investor needs to consider when selecting an asset allocation, in the order they should be considered.

These variables are:

G oal

(of the portfolio to be built) H olding period (of the portfolio to be built) A bility to tolerate losses (of the investor) U pside and downside potential (of the portfolios considered) S horter holding periods (than that expected for the portfolio to be built) These variables are taken into account in a three-step approach, which puts the individual investor in the driver’s seat. Investors can directly choose the asset allocation that is ideal for them. They do this after performing an evaluation, according to their preferences, of the

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

21

trade-off between the upside and the downside potential of a set of portfolios.

The GHAUS approach has several desirable features. First, it is simple, intuitive and does not require the investor to have any financial expertise. Second, it accounts for the most relevant variables, considering both the upside potential and the downside potential of a range of portfolios. Third, it captures downside potential through the probability and magnitude of expected losses, which to most investors are more meaningful than volatility as a measure of risk. Fourth, it accounts directly for the investor’s tolerance for risk, requiring that he explicitly considers his ability to tolerate losses. And last but not least, it does not come out of nowhere. Instead, it is chosen by the individual investor after a careful evaluation of the relevant trade-offs.

bonds by one-year U.S. Treasury Bills. Returns are nominal and account for capital gains/losses and cash flows. The 50-year sample period begins in January 1965 and ends in December 2014.

Table 1 displays some characteristics of 11 asset allocations containing different proportions of stocks (S) and bonds (B) ranging, as the first column indicates, from a portfolio fully invested in bonds (S=0 / B=100) to one fully invested in stocks (S=100 / B=0). Because we consider only two asset classes, it should be clear that the proportion of the portfolio not invested in stocks is invested in bonds. All figures in the table are given as percentages.

Two holding periods are considered in Table 1, one year (12 months) and five years (60 months). The main reason for focusing on “short” holding periods of one and five years is that most investors cannot help evaluating the portfolio in the short term even if they invest for the long term.

The second and third columns of the table show the annualized re-

ANALYZING THE DATA It is useful to start with a concrete example, focusing only on two asset classes, stocks and bonds. Stocks are represented by the S&P 500 and

turn (GM) and volatility (SD) of all portfolios. The rest of the columns show, for each holding period, the proportion of holding periods with losses (PL), the average loss across all the holding periods with losses (AL), and the average gain across all holding periods with gains (AG).

To illustrate, a portfolio invested 60 percent in stocks and 40 percent in bonds had an annualized return and volatility of 8.6 percent and 9.1 percent; it delivered losses in 17.1 percent (0.7 percent) of all 12-month (60-month) periods considered; when it did, it lost an average of 7.1 percent (4.1 percent) per period; and when it gained, it delivered a 12.5 percent (56.1 percent) gain per period.

THE THREE STEPS

• Step 1: The first step consists of determining both the goal and the implied holding period of the portfolio. The goal and the holding period are two “inputs” that should come from the reason an individual has for investing for the future rather than consuming today. It is important to clearly specify both,

EXHIBIT 1:

GHAUS Asset Allocation 12 Months

60 Months

S

B

GM

SD

PL

AL

AG

PL

AL

AG

0

100

5.8

1.9

0.0

N/A

5.9

0.0

N/A

36.4

10

90

6.3

2.4

0.8

–1.2

6.5

0.0

N/A

39.6

20

80

6.9

3.5

4.2

–2.4

7.4

0.0

N/A

42.7

30

70

7.3

4.8

8.5

–3.3

8.5

0.0

N/A

45.9

40

60

7.8

6.2

12.6

–4.4

9.9

0.0

N/A

49.1

50

50

8.2

7.6

15.1

–5.8

11.1

0.2

–4.6

52.5

60

40

8.6

9.1

17.1

–7.1

12.5

0.7

–4.1

56.1

70

30

9.0

10.5

19.7

–8.2

14.0

2.6

–3.6

60.6

80

20

9.3

12.0

21.4

–9.5

15.5

6.1

–4.3

66.5

90

10

9.6

13.5

21.9

–11.3

16.8

8.7

–6.3

72.4

100

0

9.9

15.0

23.1

–12.6

18.4

11.1

–8.3

78.5

S = stocks B = bonds GM = annualized return SD = annualized volatility PL = proportion of holding periods with losses AL = average loss across all holding periods with losses AG = average gain across all holding periods with gains

22

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

All figures in percentage (%)

Alumni Magazine IESE

IDEAS which may critically help an investor endure the bad times he or she will likely have to go through during the portfolio’s life. For the purpose of this discussion, I will assume that the investor has decided to hold the portfolio for five years.

• Step 2: The next step involves evaluating the upside and downside potential of the portfolios considered. The annualized return of the portfolios in Table 1 ranges between 5.8 percent for the most conservative allocation and 9.9 percent for the most aggressive one. Most investors are likely to direct their attention to the portfolio with the highest return, and that is perhaps the best place to start.

Over the last 50 years, a portfolio fully invested in stocks delivered an annualized return of 9.9 percent.

Across all the five-year periods in which the portfolio increased in value, it gained an average of 78.5 percent (12.3 percent annualized).

These figures summarize the upside potential of this allocation.

The critical part, however, is to consider the portfolio’s downside potential and the investor’s ability to bear it. A portfolio fully invested in stocks decreased in value in 11.1 percent of all the five-year periods considered; in those periods, the average loss was 8.3 percent (1.7 percent annualized). Is the investor willing to lose that much, with that probability?

An investor who finds the downside potential of this allocation acceptable can move on to Step 3. If the portfolio seems too risky, then the investor should move upwards in Exhibit 1 until finding a probability of loss and average loss that he is able to bear over five-year periods; he can then move on to Step 3.

For our discussion, I will assume that the investor is going to find the portfolio fully invested in stocks to be too risky, and that, upon further analysis, he will decide he can bear the downside potential of a 60-40 stock-bond allocation.

• Step 3: The final step consists of assessing the downside potential of

Alumni Magazine IESE

There is neither a perfect way to determine an asset allocation nor a perfect asset allocation for any given investor

the asset allocation found acceptable in Step 2, but this time over a shorter holding period. The reason for this step is that an individual may be investing for the long term but cannot help reacting to shortterm events; hence it is important that the individual explores and understands what may happen over holding periods shorter than those intended for the portfolio.

The investor now needs to explore the downside potential of this portfolio over a shorter holding period. Let’s assume the investor now considers a one-year period. As shown in Table 1, a 60-40 portfolio decreased in value in 17.1 percent of the one-year periods considered; in those periods, the average loss was 7.1 percent. Is the investor willing to lose that much, given this probability? An investor who finds this downside potential acceptable has found their ideal asset allocation. If not, he needs to move upwards in Table 1 until he finds an allocation with a downside potential he is willing to bear over one-year periods.

Step 3 could obviously be repeated over increasingly shorter holding periods. This may be particularly useful to investors who cannot help focusing on short-term fluctuations, and less useful to investors who are able to take the long view. One way or another, after first considering the upside and downside potential of a set of allocations over the portfolio’s intended holding period, and doing the same over one or more shorter holding periods, the investor should have found an appropriate asset allocation.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION As I mentioned, asset allocation is both an art and a science. It is also the most important aspect in determining portfolio performance. The GHAUS approach I propose here can help investors address this task in a simple and sound way.

MORE INFORMATION: Estrada, Javier, “GHAUS Asset Allocation”, Journal of Asset Management, Vol. 17, No. 1, 2016, pp. 1-9.

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

23

IDEAS

20 Tips for Making Intuitive Decisions ROBERTO GARCÍA-CASTRO AND ISABEL GARCÍA-MÉNDEZ

Fifty-eight percent of strategic decisions are guided by intuition, according to a study by PwC. Can we improve how our intuition works?

Yes, by working with the unconscious information that feeds intuitive decisions. Professor Roberto García-Castro and Isabel García Méndez offer 20 tips to guide that process, known in Spanish as the “HAD” method. The method is divided into three distinct stages: mental hygiene, expansion and disconnection.

The approach offers advice on how to distinguish between emotion and intuition, ward off bias, leave your comfort zone, change perspective, take advantage of experience, educate yourself and gather information, and share your intuitions with others. All of these skills can help you improve your intuition and avoid the most common mistakes when letting intuition guide your decisions.

PROTECTING TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS WITHOUT DISCOURAGING DEVELOPMENT KELD LAURSEN, SOLON MOREIRA, TOKE REICHSTEIN AND ISABELLA LEONE

l

Ampex invented the video recorder, but it was left out of the market when it licensed its technology to Sony.

Sony improved on Ampex’s technology, making Ampex obsolete. To protect themselves, some companies include grant-back clauses in their contracts. A grant-back clause requires that licensees share any improvements made to the product. But the downside is that

such clauses can discourage technology development. When should companies use grant-back clauses?

An article in Organization Science shows that companies are more likely to include a grant-back clause if the technology is key to the business and if there’s uncertainty about its future.

MORE INFORMATION: IESE Insight / Innovation and Change

A Rainy-Day Boost to Sales ABDEL BELKAID AND VÍCTOR MARTÍNEZ DE ALBÉNIZ

Retailers can earn two percent more on rainy days, according to a study by professor Víctor Martínez de Albéniz and researcher Abdel Belkaid. The authors analyzed 98 stores in Spain, Germany, Italy and France. On rainy days, consumers are less sensitive to prices, so retailers can increase turnover by raising prices slightly on those days.

MORE INFORMATION: IESE Insight / Service and Operations Management

MORE INFORMATION: IESE Insight / Decision Analysis

24

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

Alumni Magazine IESE

INDICATORS

PODIO POR

INDICADORES CAPITAL HUMANO

RANKING

1 Londres 2 Boston 3 Washington

New York and London, the World’s “Smartest” Cities

HUMAN CAPITAL

1 London 2 Boston 3 Washington

COHESIÓN SOCIAL

1 Helsinki 2 Zúrich 3 Stuttgart

SOCIAL COHESION

1 Helsinki 2 Zurich 3 Stuttgart

ECONOMÍA

1 Nueva York 2 San Francisco 3 Boston

ECONOMY

1 New York 2 San Francisco 3 Boston

1 Ginebra 2 Washington PASCUAL BERRONE AND JOAN ENRIC RICART 3 Baltimore

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

1 Geneva 2 Washington 3 Baltimore

GOBERNANZA 1 Ottawacity in the New York is once again the “smartest” 2 Toronto world, followed by London and Paris, according 3 Vancouver to IESE Cities in Motion 2017. The top ten is filled MEDIO 1 Zúrich AMBIENTE 2 Tallin out by Boston, San Francisco, Washington, 3 Viena Seoul, Tokyo, Berlin and Amsterdam.

The MOVILIDAD Y 1 Londres TRANSPORTE ranking was prepared by the IESE2Center for Seúl Globalization and Strategy, under3 Fráncfort the direction PLANIFICACIÓN of professors Pascual Berrone and Joan Enric 1 Ámsterdam URBANA 2 Suzhou Ricart.

3 Oslo Europe and the U.S. dominate the list, with 43 PROYECCIÓN 1 París INTERNACIONAL cities among the top 50. The ranking analyzes 2 Londres 3 Bangkok 180 cities in 80 countries, based on 79 indicators Taipéi covering 10 areas, asTECNOLOGÍA displayed in 12the chart.

Nueva York

GOVERNANCE

1 Ottawa 2 Toronto 3 Vancouver

ENVIRONMENT

1 Zurich 2 Tallinn 3 Melbourne

MOBILITY AND TRANSPORTATION

1 London 2 Seoul 3 Frankfurt

URBAN PLANNING

1 Amsterdam 2 Suzhou 3 Oslo

INTERNATIONAL OUTREACH

1 Paris 2 London 3 Bangkok

TECHNOLOGY

1 Taipei 2 New York 3 Baltimore

GESTIÓN PÚBLICA

MORE INFORMATION: IESE Insight / Information Technologies

CAN CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY BE BOUGHT? CHRISTOPHER WICKERT, ANTONINO VACCARO AND JOSEP CORNELISSEN

l

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a must-have for multinational corporations. And many of them opt to “buy” CSR through mergers with socially oriented companies. But there’s a big caveat. Unilever improved its reputation by acquiring Ben & Jerry’s, but L’Oréal didn’t do as well with the purchase of The Body Shop, which wasn’t a natural fit within the French multinational. For this kind of merger to work, there has to be a match between the organizational identities of the two companies.

MORE INFORMATION: IESE Insight / Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

Alumni Magazine IESE

3 Baltimore

CASE

Wave: Can Crowd Equity Make Your Business Grow?

THOMAS MAXIMILIAN KLUETER AND AMPARO DE SAN JOSÉ RIESTRA

Wave is a mobile app that makes it possible to contact other people in real time and see their location. The app’s success in Brazil convinced the founders that they had room to grow in the coming years.

They secured funding from several business angels, family offices and a U.S. start-up accelerator. But only a few months after the last round of investments, they needed more capital if they wanted to pick up the pace of growth. They had three options: they could turn to business angels, seek venture capital funds, or they could try something new: a crowd equity platform. Was the time right for collective funding?

PARTICIPATE IN THE FORUM FOR THIS CASE: www.ieseinsight.com/review

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

25

CROSSROADS THE FACULTY INCLUDES 114 PROFESSORS OF 22 NATIONALITIES

Six New Appointments to the IESE Faculty

From left to right: Sampsa Samila, Tobias Dennerlein, Sebastian Hafenbrädl, Sanja Tumbas, David Wehrheim and Johannes Müller-Trede.

The IESE faculty continues to l grow, with six new additions for the 2017-2018 academic year.

Sebastian Hafenbrädl, who earned a Ph.D. from the Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC) at the Université de Lausanne, will

Faculty Skill Building: International Faculty Program l A total of 24 professors from 14 countries across four continents participated in the 25th edition of the International Faculty Program (IFP) in June. This program empowers professors to enhance their teaching and leadership capabilities. The academic director of the IFP, Prof. Miguel A. Ariño, says the program is designed to challenge the status quo of the participants’ academic work. It helps them identify their strengths and areas for improvement and prepares them to use the case method effectively.

26

serve as assistant professor in the department of managing people in organizations.

Johannes Müller-Trede, who holds a doctorate from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, will take up the same post, but this time

in the department of managerial decision sciences.

Sampsa Samila, holder of a Ph.D. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, will occupy this position in the department of strategic management.

Holder of a doctorate from the Faculty of Economics at Universität Liechtenstein, Sanja Tumbas will join the department of information systems, also as assistant professor.

Also stepping into this position is David Wehrheim, who earned a Ph.D. from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, in the department of strategic management.

Lastly, Tobias Dennerlein, holder of a doctorate from the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University, joins the department of managing people in organizations as postdoctoral fellow.

HBS-IESE COMMITTEE MEETING

Sharing Goals: Innovating In Education Innovating for progress. This is l a clear objective throughout the business world and business schools are no exception, as seen in the Harvard Business School-IESE Committee meeting on June 5 in Boston.

What improvements can new technologies bring? What are the implications on business models and knowledge generation? How can program formats and content be optimized?

These were some of the questions ad-

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

dressed at the meeting, attended by Harvard Business School (HBS) Profs.

Srikant M. Datar, W. Carl Kester, Das Narayandas and Richard H.K. Vietor and, from IESE, Profs. Franz Heukamp, José L. Nueno, Joan E. Ricart and Eric Weber. Through the committee, since 1963, IESE has an annual forum for the exchange of ideas with HBS, a school that also seeks innovation by maintaining the case method as a core component.

Alumni Magazine IESE

PUBLICIDAD 27 STRATEGY IN ESTRATEGIA ENACTION ACCIÓN WORKINGCONJUNTAMENTE TOGETHER FOR EXCELLENCE COMPROMETIDOS POR LA EXCELENCIA challenges withuna a winning strategy los desafíos con estrategia ganadora • Meeting • Alcanzando and leveraging resources and maximizing y apalancándose en los recursos actuales para efficiency maximizar la eficiencia • Engaging • Comprometiendo a dynamic and culture of sustained operational excellence una cultura de excelencia operacional sostenible • Creating • Creando EFESO Consulting is a strategy and operational excellence consultancy, EFESO Consulting es una empresa de consultoría en estrategia present in 26presente countries than 35 years. y excelencia operacional, enfor 27more países durante más de 35 años. efeso.com

Contacten in España Spain: info.iberian-peninsula@efeso.com Contacto : info.iberian-peninsula@efeso.com

CROSSROADS NEW CLASS HAS FIVE SECTIONS AND 360 STUDENTS, WITH 84 PERCENT FROM ABROAD

MBA Program Sets Record: 712 Students The incoming MBA Class of 2019 l is made up of 360 students of 57 different nationalities. The new students join a second-year class of 352 members, bringing the total number of full-time MBA students on the Barcelona campus to 712, the largest number in IESE’s history.

The 2017-2018 academic year is the first time ever that both first- and second-year classes have five sections of students. The fifth section of the MBA was incorporated last year due to the

28

28 percent increase in the number of applications received since 2010. The rise in applications is largely thanks to the positive global positioning of the program in rankings and the increased presence of IESE around the world with its different campuses (Barcelona, Madrid, New York, Munich and Sao Paulo).

The number of women in the program is also growing, with women now making up 32 percent of the class.

The Class of 2019 class is extremely

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

international, with 84 percent hailing from outside Spain. Of the international students, the countries with the most representatives are the U.S., Brazil, India, and China. There has also been a 40 percent increase in German students in the program.

But nationality is not the only way in which the Class of 2019 is diverse – the number of students from non-traditional industries, such as social media, e-commerce and I.T. has grown to 24 percent.

Alumni Magazine IESE

PUBLICIDAD 29 Cisco Spark Board TRANSFORM YOUR ORGANIZATION'S COLLABORATION SPACES Discover how to improve the productivity, creativity and satisfaction of your human teams

www.ttrends.es www.salasdetelepresencia.com

+34 93 394 18 30

• Telepresence • AV Integration • Unified Communications • Streaming Live & On Demand

• Turn Key Projects • International projects • H.323/SIP/SfB-Lync integration • Cloud/Hybrid based solutions

• Support & Maintenance • Managed services • Training services • “User & Adoption” programs

• Specialized rentals • Engineering & Design • Consulting • Audits

CROSSROADS TIGHT SCHEDULE? TAKE A COURSE ON YOUR CELL PHONE

New Digital Courses for Alumni The Alumni Association’s new short courses for cell phone and tablet are enjoying an enthusiastic response.

Now there’s no excuse for not l continuing your education.

Even the tightest schedule has a one- to two-hour window for taking a short course specially designed for IESE alumni. From their phones or tablets, alumni can participate in a new kind of course, which includes videos from IESE professors, readings, questions and exercises, and the chance to exchange messages with other participants.

This new platform was launched in May with the condensed course

“Innovation Fundamentals,” which delivers IESE’s insight on the topic via ten ten-minute sessions. More than 2,100 people have registered for the program, which has enjoyed an enthusiastic response from participants. Jeferson Cheriegate (PMD Sao Paulo ’16) said, “Interesting tool, easy to use and great to get the alumni community together sharing ideas.”

A second course, “Boosting Employee Management,” is already under way, and the two courses together boast a total of 5,100 registered participants.

Members of the Alumni Association have been sent a link to these courses, which are available to all interested alumni – just one way that the Alumni Learning Program continues to expand its offerings, with growing diversity in digital programs.

The short courses, lasting one to two hours, offer a condensed version of IESE’s teachings on a given subject.

The courses are organized into sessions containing readings, videos and exercises in a format specially designed for mobile devices.

30

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

EXPERT SERIES: A UNIQUE WAY TO EXTEND YOUR EDUCATION

Learning to Learn

With the Best l One of the main challenges posed by globalization and digitalization is overhauling the way that managers learn. New technologies have created advanced tools with which to implement the latest educational methods. In this context, continuous education is emerging as a priority in managerial development. But what is the best way to learn? And what are the latest developments in the field of adult education?

IESE has been at the center of this debate with the launch of the Expert Series. The series features online conversations among IESE professors and renowned world experts who share their view of education’s present and future.

During the 2016-2017 academic year, five webinars were held for more than 2,500 registered participants. Participants followed the conversation live online and were able to submit questions.

Speakers included Josh Bersin, founder of Bersin by Deloitte; Edward D. Hess, professor at the Darden School UVA; Annemie Ress, founder of PurpleBeach; David Blake, CEO and co-founder of Degreed; and Nick Shackleton-Jones, director of Learning & Performance Innovation at PA Consulting Group.

The Expert Series will continue in the 2017-2018 academic year, with top-level speakers such as Alison Johns, CEO of the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education; Nick van Dam, global chief learning officer at McKinsey; Richard Culatta, CEO of Iste; and Dona Sarkar, leader of Microsoft’s Windows Insider Program.

Alumni Magazine IESE

Once is an achievement.

Three times in a row is IESE.

PUBLICIDAD Executive Education 31 2015 · 2016 · 2017

Share it:

CROSSROADS MARK THOMPSON, CEO OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Listening to your audience is key” In both journalism and polil tics, listening is key, says Mark Thompson. The CEO of the New

Jaime Caruana assessed the financial crisis in a visit to the Barcelona campus.

JAIME CARUANA, GENERAL MANAGER OF THE BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS (BIS)

Tips for Safeguarding the Economy l Taking advantage of favorable tailwinds to increase the resilience of the economy through structural reforms that go beyond monetary policy to boost productivity. This is the course of action recommended by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to counter the latent threats of the financial environment, explained its general manager, Jaime Caruana.

In the July 3 alumni session at IESE Barcelona, Caruana said we are safer than before the crisis and things have improved in many ways, although “systemic risks have also evolved.”

Specifically, he pointed out four potential risks that need to be given special attention: the flare-up of inflation; the maturation of bullish financial cycles, especially in emerging economies like Brazil and China; growth fueled solely by consumption, rather than by investment; and, finally, the threat of protectionism.

32

York Times believes the ability to listen and respond to your audience may be the secret to enduring success in these two sectors, which have so often been at odds in recent times, especially in the United States.

He discussed how the press is adapting to the changing political landscape and shared his insights on the shifting language of politics, in a session held on June 7 at the IESE campus in New York. Rhetoric is about opening your ears and listening to the other side, said Thompson.

Mark Thompson discussed politics and journalism at IESE New York.

ÁLEX CRUZ, CEO OF THE COMPANY, WITH ALUMNI IN LONDON

British Airways Adjusts its Course l

Álex Cruz spoke in London about the future of British Airways.

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

In May, an I.T. systems failure grounded hundreds of British Airways flights and confirmed that the company needs to step up investments in customer service, and halt a “trend in brand depression,” according to its CEO, Álex Cruz.

“We have entered an era of new products and services, with significant mergers and acquisitions changing the competitive space,” he added. “Regaining the confidence of our customers; operations with a focus on safety and reliability; efficiency and implementing improvements in technology,” as well as prioritizing staff, are some of the pillars of the plan that Cruz shared in London with IESE alumni in attendance on July 11.

Alumni Magazine IESE

DIRECTORY

PUBLICIDAD 33 4:21 PM

100%

Gabriel Miklova EMBA-17 CEO e·life

ACTIVITY

IESE ALUMNI APP

Registered events

AV A I L A B L E O N

INFORMATION Personal details Professional details

Home

Directory

My profile

iese.edu/app-alumni

ACTIVATE YOUR NETWORK Search other Alumni by industry, title, country or professional interests.

AMAZON PATHWAYS PROGRAM

Express Delivery to Upper Management “Amazon is a company in which l the biggest challenge is always ahead of you. The biggest breakthrough for me so far took place a year ago, when, after two years in the company, I was told I would be leading our Spanish outbound department.”

Iñaki Ugarte (MBA ’14), is now senior operations manager at Amazon’s first fulfillment center in Spain. He was asked to lead a team of thousands of people, responsible for deliveries throughout the country during the Christmas holidays. “Thankfully we achieved tremendous year-on-year growth.” Amazon has hired more than 100 IESE MBA alumni, and Ugarte was chosen for the Amazon Pathways Program, an internal program for developing Operations leaders.

It offers a straight path to leadership positions, and Ugarte says that “few comparable programs exist where you are making decisions that could shape a whole market.” Participants benefit from the guidance of an experienced manager and the support of a specialized team. About IESE, Ugarte says, “What has helped me more is my leadership classes,” because of the importance of being able to align a team toward achieving our goals. “In any job – but particularly in operations – any gaps in a plan can be compensated for by a motivated team,” he adds.

Iñaki Ugarte (MBA ’14), senior operations manager at Amazon.

34

The fourth graduating class of IESE’s Executive MBA Sao Paulo.

GRADUATION OF THE EXECUTIVE MBA SAO PAULO

Brazil’s New Leadership Style ceremony, which took place June 24 at IESE’s Sao Paulo campus. IESE’s dean Franz Heukamp took up this theme in his speech to the graduates. above-average sense of commitment.

“With the example you set as execuI don’t believe in being Superman or tives, you have the opportunity and Superexecutive. What I believe is responsibility to serve others, to be that the big difference of successful truly useful in thinking of other peoexecutives is their ability to attract ple, to lead in an altruistic way,” Prof. and lead talent.” This was the mesHeukamp said. “In the end, this is the sage of Cosan CEO Mario Augusto most humane and da Silva to the 30 most efficient way graduates of the to lead.” In the same Executive MBA Sao “We are role vein, Bruno GuarPaulo on graduation models and we nieri, president of day. Without forgetthe 2017 class of the ting the challenges must accept this and consequences Executive MBA Sao responsibility.” of the digital revoluPaulo, explained, tion, da Silva spoke “We are living in of the need for “all of difficult times. In us, business leaders and executives, Brazil, we are dealing with a political to have a constant ability to adapt and and economic crisis resulting from respond quickly and efficiently in a what we really must attack: an ethical and moral crisis. I think that we business climate that is, and will conare role models and we must accept tinue to be, permanently changing.” this responsibility. We need to inspire The responsibility of executives others to seek the best.” was a key theme of the graduation

“Successful companies are l made up of people with talent, in love with what they do and with an

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

Alumni Magazine IESE

CAREER ADVISORS GAIN A NEW PERSPECTIVE TO YOUR CAREER DECISIONS

Germany, Austria and Switzerland

PUBLICIDAD 35

Lars Maydell

English and German

20+ years experience with C-Suite members, business owners, senior partners and start-up entrepreneurs. 8+ years in executive search and board consulting with Egon Zehnder International.

Lars is one of the Career Advisors guiding IESE Alumni across the globe.

Find yours at www.iese.edu/careeradvisors and request an in-person or online session

Alfredo Millá AMP Munich ‘14 CEO of Sonneil Homes

“We had an excellent and fruitful session. Lars gave me a lot of recommendations on how to approach the business community for start-up entrepreneurs in Germany. I am very happy with this new service for Members, which I highly recommend.”

Alumni

CROSSROADS EXPERTS URGE COMPANIES TO BE MORE FLEXIBLE AND MORE DIVERSE

Promoting Equal Opportunities at Work The rules of the workplace need l rewriting. For true progress to be made, the corporate world must

Prof. Erin Kelly, MIT Sloan School of Management.

redesign the workplace to allow for greater flexibility in areas such as schedules, telecommuting and maternity leave, and must create an atmosphere where diversity is valued.

This was the proposal of Kathleen Christensen, director of the Working Longer program at the Sloan Foundation and Erin Kelly, Professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, at a session of the Alumni Learning Program held July 4 on IESE’s Barcelona campus.

The speakers agreed that there is a need for a greater number of women

INDUSTRIAL EXCELLENCE AWARD

Mahou San Miguel Wins Prize Given by Celsa Group and IESE

The award ceremony took place July 6 on IESE’s Barcelona campus.

A firm commitment to the long l term, an excellent strategy for entering emerging markets, and an innovative spirit. These are the three reasons why Mahou San Miguel has been recognized with the Industrial Excellence Award 2017,

36

given by Celsa Group™ and IESE. The award, which recognizes the industrial enterprises that contribute most to competitiveness, is the prelude to the Industrial Excellence Award Europe, presented October 4 in Berlin.

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

in managerial positions, on boards of directors and at business schools.

But they warned of the danger of focusing solely on women and ignoring men in the fight for equal opportunities. “We should push towards more inclusive environments,” recommended Kelly.

The session, which was moderated

by Helen Barrett, editor of the work and careers section of the Financial Times, coincided with the VII International Conference of Work and Family and the International Conference of Women and Leadership, both of which were organized by professors Nuria Chinchilla and Mireia Las Heras.

Professor Xavier Vives, New Coordinating Director of CaixaBank l Professor Xavier Vives, an independent director for CaixaBank, has been named coordinating director by the board of directors.

The coordinating director is a new figure who is elected from among the independent directors.

According to the Code of Good Governance, the coordinating director’s main roles will be to preside over the board in the absence of the president and vice-president; voice the concerns of the non-executive directors; and coordinate the succession plan when the time comes for a new chairman.

Alumni Magazine IESE

CROSSROADS AGENDA

Getting Things Done

Digital Mindset

MBA CAREER FORUM BARCELONA October 16 2017

NEW YORK October 25-27 2017

NEW YORK November 15-17 2017

GLOBAL ALUMNI REUNION MADRID November 16-18 2017

Developing Leadership Competencies

MEETING OF THE GOVERNING BOARD OF THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

BARCELONA-MADRID February 6 2018

BARCELONA November 21-24 2017

MBA

Alumni Magazine IESE

•

FOCUSED PROGRAMS

•

INDUSTRY MEETINGS

•

ALUMNI

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

37

PEOPLE

Steve Shiffman (GCP ’17), Calvin Klein’s CEO

“We have to be open-minded about how we do business”

M

any CEOs had unusual starts, and Steve Shiffman is no exception. After graduating with a degree in psychology from the prestigious liberal arts college Vassar, he spent three years as a social worker for the State of Massachusetts before discovering his current passion: fashion.

He got into sales in the luxury department store chain Bloomingdale’s. “And I just got the bug,” he recalls. “There was something that I migrated to instinctively.” He ended up moving to Macy’s, “because they had a management training program, and that is really how I got into this business.”

In 1992, he joined PVH, the parent company of Calvin Klein. He held several positions of increasing responsibility, including president of Van Heusen Retail and group president of retail for the Van Heusen, Izod and Bass divisions, before joining the Calvin Klein team as president and chief operating officer. He then served as president and chief commercial officer for the brand, until he was promoted to CEO in July 2014.

“This is more of a passion than a job,” he says, citing a favorite quote of his from Coco Chanel: “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fash-

ion is in the sky, in the street. Fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”

“I love what I do,” he adds. “I love this brand, and I believe that, as great as it is today, it will be dramatically better and more relevant well into the future.”

Ever since Calvin Klein opened his first coat store in 1968 in New York City, the brand that bears his name has had an impact. Within a year, the young designer was being featured in Vogue magazine, and fashion awards and big profits soon followed. In 1978, Klein reportedly sold 200,000 pairs of his famous jeans within the first week of their going on the market: a craze was born.

But the enduring fame of Calvin Klein has not only been about the clothes. For decades, the brand has been synonymous with provocative advertising campaigns. The impact of its first TV commercial for jeans – featuring Brooke Shields – cannot be overstated. The attention it received marked a watershed for fashion advertising, as did the iconic billboards that followed featuring its men’s underwear. Arguably no other brand has been responsible for setting the tone for the kind of meme-based marketing that has become the norm today, as well as expanding the conception of fashion beyond clothes to include “lifestyle.” Today Calvin Klein is known for everything

“When I took over as CEO, transforming the company felt like trying to change the engine on a plane while it was still flying.”

7

from accessories and fragrance to homeware and luxury ready-to-wear.

In 2003, Calvin Klein became a wholly owned subsidiary of Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation (PVH). Under the leadership of then-CEO Tom Murry, Calvin Klein grew from $2.8 billion in global retail sales in 2003 to close to $8 billion in 2013, having evolved from a license-only model to a more directly operated business.

In July 2014, Murry stepped down, passing the baton to long-time company man Steve Shiffman. The past three years have seen more changes at Calvin Klein, as Shiffman explained to IESE professor Fabrizio Ferraro when they caught up in Barcelona during Shiffman’s attendance at IESE’s Global CEO Program. (Days after giving this interview, Shiffman made the surprise announcement at the 2017 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity that Brooke Shields would be returning to collaborate with Calvin Klein, 37 years after they first made headlines together – a sign of more to come.)

When you took over as CEO of Calvin Klein in 2014, what did you see as your biggest challenge?

I took over a commercially very viable company. However, the fashion relevance of our jeans business was waning.

Our underwear business – another pillar of the brand – was doing fairly well but was under pressure. Meanwhile, our Calvin Klein Collection (branded using the street address of our headquarters, 205 West 39th Street) was more of a PR vehicle than a brand with real commercial relevance.

Put simply, we needed to elevate every part of our brand and make the entire company fashion-relevant again. But I knew we had the ability to do it.

In addition to that, I had seven creative directors. Seven.

I don’t know if you have ever run a fashion company, but trying to run a fashion company with seven creative directors under a unified vision is very, very challenging. All of them were very talented, but if I was going to transform the company and make it viable 50 years from now, I knew we needed a single creative vision that would take us forward into the future.

This brings us to your decision to hire Raf Simons from Christian Dior as creative director, a move that caused quite a sensation in the industry when it happened last year. Why him?

Raf has been described as a once-in-a-lifetime talent, someone “whose vision is so unique, belief system so strong, that their work exists up there amongst the fash-

40

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

ion hall of fame ... with the ability to change the fashion industry forever,” to quote the British fashion magazine i-D. I would absolutely go along with that description.

Let me tell you a little bit about Raf. He started out as a furniture designer in Belgium, before switching to fashion.

He launched his own men’s clothing brand in 1995, which is an incredibly well-received brand with a cult-like following. It doesn’t necessarily do a large volume of business, but it is a brand that fashion people – especially young people – are passionate about. He then went on to Jil Sander, before spending three years in haute couture at Christian Dior.

Historically, Calvin Klein has always been a youthful, culturally relevant brand. We were the first brand to put designer jeans and designer underwear in stores, the first to launch a unisex line with the fragrance CK One, and the first to openly talk about AIDS when that was a taboo subject. The brand has always been an innovator and a disruptor. We needed someone with an equally unique vision.

Raf has that.

The challenge with bringing in somebody who is fundamentally a creative genius is the balancing of art and commerce. We are a public company, and my first obligation is to the shareholders. My role is not only to elevate the fashion relevance of the entire portfolio and regain the prominence that the Calvin Klein brand had in the past, but also to drive the business. It is a constant balancing act between short-term pragmatism and long-term artistic vision.

Has it been difficult working with such a creative visionary?

Of course there are cultural differences and assimilation challenges, but I believe we share a common vision that will ensure our long-term success. It is an ongoing dialogue between Raf and myself, but it is surprising how often we end up in a remarkably similar place.

Aside from doubling down on creativity, what is your vision for the company going forward? Are you looking to change the relative size of the different businesses or change retail channels?

When I took over as CEO, I was looking at the transformation that I thought was needed and the challenges ahead, and it felt like trying to change the engine on a plane while it was still flying. There was a lot going on at that time.

In 2013, our parent company, PVH, acquired Warnaco, which had previously licensed our clothing brand. This gave us the opportunity to unite our formal, underwear,

Alumni Magazine IESE

PEOPLE jeans and sportswear lines. So, in addition to needing a sole creative voice, we needed to pull the company back together and reorganize.

Calvin Klein was already a complex organization. We have several major operating platforms, with New York City being the global hub, and other major hubs in Amsterdam, Milan, Hong Kong and Sao Paulo. For me, connecting everything together, and globalizing a brand that was previously run by regions, was a priority.

It has not been easy, but we are well on our way. We are also in the process of launching e-commerce platforms around the globe, as we used to have relatively little presence outside North America.

With regard to e-commerce, there has been much discussion about whether the internet will kill off Main Street.

What’s your view on this?

In the retail world, it is true that technology is disrupting everything. I don’t believe that brick-and-mortar is dead yet, or that digital is going to be the only venue moving forward. However, I do believe that managing these multiple channels is critical.

Fundamentally, it is about connecting with the consumer. If you lose sight of the fact that the consumer is the only person who really matters, you won’t be successful.

The digital world is helping us connect with and engage with the consumer, wherever they shop. The landscape is changing daily, and we have to be agile and completely open-minded about how we do business.

Some of those who ominously predict a “retail apocalypse” lay the blame at the feet of Amazon. Do you think Amazon will dominate fashion as they have with other categories?

Amazon is a formidable brand and a great commodity seller. They haven’t broken into the high-fashion spectrum yet, but I am sure they will have some success when they put their mind to it.

However, the consumer experience with Amazon is transactional – what I would call a low-fidelity experience. And that is where great brands and stores can have the upper hand.

I don’t doubt for a second that some Main Street stores will close.

There will be winners and losers, as there always are. That being said, those brands and stores that recognize they need to ramp it up and create magnetic consumer engagement

Alumni Magazine IESE

when people walk into their stores – those companies that really engage with their customers – they will succeed.

They will continue to survive and thrive in a brick-andmortar environment.

You yourself started out in a different field before moving into retail and fashion. What would you say to someone tempted by the idea of moving from, say, consulting or banking to working in fashion?

The thing about this business – whether you are in the retail side, running a brand, wholesale, design – is that it is all fully integrated. And there is a beauty to each one of those components. Being the CEO of one of the great brands of the world makes it very easy for me to come to work every day. Sure, not every day is wonderful, but it is important to love what you do. And this is a brand and a business that makes it easier to love what you do.

At Calvin Klein, you are constantly hiring and nurturing new talent. What do you think are the key competencies that executives need to be successful in your industry today?

First, we need our people to believe in diversity, and not just in terms of racial or cultural diversity, but diversity of thought. We are a global company, and to really ensure that level of diversity, we need to have people from all over the world working for us, embedded into the company.

At the same time, we need to bring in a variety of different skill sets. We need young, smart people at ease in a digital world. We need people who are worldly.

Fundamental to it all is openmindedness, and a willingness to listen and to learn. The day I stop learning is the day I should leave the job, because I believe that one of the things that makes any company great is a willingness to always learn and evolve.

STEVE SHIFFMAN WAS The way this world is going, if you INTERVIEWED BY are not open to new ideas, and if you FABRIZIO FERRARO are just trying to protect the legacy rather than looking forward, then Fabrizio Ferraro is a professor your company is going to struggle. of Strategic Management at For those who are willing to look IESE. He holds a Ph.D from into the future, to transform themStanford University. His areas selves, to be open-minded and to emof interest include strategy brace even dissenting points of view, execution, responsible I believe they are the companies that investing, and the fashion will be most successful. and luxury goods industry. He serves as academic director of IESE’s Fashion and Luxury Goods Industry Meeting.

This interview appeared originally in Issue 34 of IESE Insight, the management review available free for IESE Alumni members www.ieseinsight.com/review

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

41

PEOPLE

MARIETA DEL RIVERO (AMP ’16), BOARD MEMBER OF CELLNEX TELECOM

“Independent directors ensure the future of companies”

T

echnology and marketing crossed paths for Marieta del Rivero (AMP ’16) more than two decades ago. Since then, the major transformations in the digital industry have shaped both her life story and her career.

“I didn’t have it easy in the beginning; being a woman and not being an engineer was a challenge. But I jumped on the wave in a very attractive sector that was experiencing double-digit growth. It’s been satisfying to be part of the success of this market.”

Her deep knowledge of innovation is what led her to write and publish the recent book Smart Cities, una visión para el ciudadano (Smart Cities: An Outlook for Citizens), an enjoyable tour of the world’s pre-eminent urban centers.

Married with two children, and a lover of outdoor sports, hers has been a journey that’s seen her in leading positions of responsibility at Amena, Xfera, Nokia and Telefónica and strategic consulting at Ericsson, and as a board member at RocaSalvatella and Made in Mobile. Her career path reached new heights this year as she was named independent director of Cellnex Telecom, which is partly owned by Abertis and was the only IBEX 35 company without a single woman on its board.

“I am facing a new challenge and doing so with the conviction that independent directors are set to play an increasingly important role in corporate governance. There is no doubt that we ensure the future of companies,” Del Rivero says.

42

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

She arrives at Cellnex with a wealth of international expertise and knowledge of the technological world. But, above all, her mission on the board is to advocate the social good of the company and its shareholders. “Helping to solidify this institution is extremely invigorating,” she says.

Del Rivero does not feel conditioned by the quota policy and especially appreciates the company’s commitment to having independent directors. “Right now, we’re a majority, and we represent diverse nationalities, which makes things even more interesting, perhaps, than having gender diversity.” Her decision to join the project was also heavily influenced by the professionalism of the board, headed up by Francisco Reynes (MBA ’89) as non-executive chairman.

As an alumni of IESE, where she recently completed the Advanced Management Program (AMP), Marieta del Rivero rates her academic experience as 10 out of 10. “It has been enormously gratifying. Updating trends, spending quality time working on cases as a group, the one-to-one with professors and the daily contact with top-flight executives has been extremely enriching,” she explains.

From student to mentor, one of her many current tasks is assisting other women in their careers. “Those of us who have reached a certain level as female board directors have an obligation to help other professionals.” She is also president of the Spanish chapter of the International Women’s Forum and a member of Women Corporate Directors, two institutions that promote women’s leadership and the presence of women in management.

Alumni Magazine IESE

PUBLICIDAD 43

44

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

Alumni Magazine IESE

PEOPLE

Israel Burón (EMBA ’15)

“We want to share the transformation we experienced at IESE”

W

ith the mind of an engineer and the soul of an architect, Israel Burón (EMBA ’15) is passionate about entrepreneurship and dedicated to his most important life project: his family. Burón expresses an enormous respect for his origins: for all of the steps and stages that have unfolded in his career to bring him to where he is today.

Specifically, he is at TBA Group, the firm he founded in 2009 with partner Francesc Montolio (EMBA ’16). “What started as a small engineering study has become a company with 35 employees on three continents. Through various platforms, we manage the entire value chain of the asset; that is: design, construction, maintenance, operation and investment of a building,” explains Burón.

TBA Group has a strong social commitment, and the company has been linked to IESE for a year: “For some time we’ve been collaborating with various NGOs in developing countries. But when my partner and I finished the EMBA, we realized that part of our donations could move in another direction that was equally valuable. We believe that the best way to give back to society is to contribute to the areas that have had the biggest impact on us,” he says.

For this reason, they opted for helping others through education: “The EMBA had an impact on us from the first day to the last, for two years that were tough but incredible.

And what could be better than helping people like us to grow through knowledge? We opted to help through scholarships for students like we were, students who want to follow the same steps and grow in the same way. The goal is to help

them make values the core of their professional ecosystem.

This is a vision that, for us, no school expresses like IESE does,” he says.

GROWING WITH THEIR FEET ON THE GROUND

Raised in a family of modest means, Burón graduated in l Industrial Engineering for Construction from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and underwent specialized training at Lund University (Sweden), as part of one of the first generations to take part in a then little-known program called Erasmus: “In Sweden, I went through a transformation that foreshadowed the one I would later experience in the EMBA. My world view expanded so much that I grew exponentially,” he says. Years later, he began an even more important educational experience, when it became clear that his company’s momentum required new management knowledge: “As we saw new markets opening up, we realized that we needed education, especially in accounting and finance. I chose IESE because of its international focus, but the transformation I experienced went much further.

IESE’s program demanded the maximum of me but helped me make progress on all levels.”

Ever aware of his origins, Israel Burón is a leader who is much more motivated by collaborating with others than by focusing on his personal income: “We want to help other people enhance their personal growth and professional development, through IESE and through all of the other paths we discover,” he says. This collaborative spirit is also reflected in a project the company will launch in the coming years: a business incubator where firms will share their knowledge with young entrepreneurs.

ISRAEL BURÓN (EMBA ’15), WHOSE TBA GROUP CONTRIBUTES TO IESE SCHOLARSHIPS. AN INDUSTRIAL ENGINEER, BURÓN FOUNDED THE COMPANY WITH FRANCESC MONTOLIO (EMBA ’16). THEY JOINED THE IESE PARTNER COMPANIES TO CONTRIBUTE TO FINANCIAL AID FOR EMBA AND MBA STUDENTS. Alumni Magazine IESE

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

45

IN MEMORIAM:

Prof. Josep Riverola

Four Decades of Dedication and Commitment

“P

eople are not just labor. People are individuals that work with the company in a desire to serve society.”

Josep Riverola words, published in an Alumni Magazine article for the IESE’s 50th anniversary, bring us closer to the professor after the sad news of his passing (see the full article at www.iese.edu/articleprofRiverola). Prof.

Riverola died on August 10 at age 77 in Barcelona. Emeritus professor in the department of production, technology and operations management at IESE, he devoted more than half of his life to research and teaching.

Josep Riverola held a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the ETSII at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and a Ph.D. in operations research from Stanford University.

His long and fruitful relationship with IESE began in 1964, when he joined the school as a research assistant. Four years later he was named assistant professor of IESE, following his time at Yale University, having earned a scholarship from the National Science Foundation for a doctoral fellowship.

He attended the PDG program in 1968 and over the following decades became a fundamental pillar of the IESE community, known both for his intellectual brilliance and for his humanity.

Josep Riverola was associate director of general management programs in 1969 and of the Ph.D. program at IESE from 1971 to 1979, the year in which he became head of the school library until 1982. Four years later, he moved to the Madrid campus. He was also the holder of the Alcatel Chair of Technology and Operations Management at IESE from 1988 to 2006.

His dozens of books, articles and cases covered a multitude of topics, from technology management to supply chains. He

46

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

was also interested in the study of culture as a force for social and economic development.

PIONEER OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES

In 1969, Profs. Josep Riverola, Josep Faus and Antoni Subirà co-led the series “Computers: What entrepreneurs should know,” within the framework of the IESE Continuous Education Program (now the Alumni Learning Program). This series, also featuring Prof. Arthur Schleifer of Harvard Business School, was very successful. As a result of their knowledge, Profs. Riverola, Faus and Subirà advised IESE on the purchase of the school’s first computer.

Years later, between 1993 and 1995, Prof. Riverola was in charge of the computer center of the Higher Commercial Management School (HCMS) of Moscow. Josep Riverola was a visiting professor at universities and business schools around the world, including AESE in Portugal, LBS in Nigeria, IPADE in Mexico, IAE in Argentina, IDE in Ecuador, ISE in Brazil and CEIBS in China.

With almost four decades of experience as a professor of production, technology and operations management at IESE and UPC, he also engaged in extensive consulting work for more than 50 companies. He was head of military and aerospace systems at INISEL (the state-owned electronics and systems firm in Madrid). Throughout his career, he founded and ran several small consulting firms specializing in IT, healthcare and industrial sectors, both in Spain and Latin America.

In recognition of his prolific professional career, on December 21, 1989 he was awarded the Silver Medal from the University of Navarra. Below, the fond memories of his classmates pay homage to a professor whose talent and personality have left an indelible mark on IESE.

Alumni Magazine IESE

PEOPLE 1

2

3

1. Josep Riverola is handed the PDG diploma by Antonio Valero, the first dean of IESE, after completing the program in June of 1965.

2. Josep Riverola was one of the promoters of new technologies at IESE. In this image from September 1970, he is working on a computer next to Prof. Rafael Andreu, in building B of the Barcelona campus.

3. Holder of a Ph.D. from Stanford University, he was photographed here with fellow faculty at the graduation of the Executive MBA program in Madrid in June 2011.

Lifelong friendship

Antoni Subirà, emeritus professor of financial management It began in September 1957, on day one of classes for first-year engineering in Terrassa. I met a very young Josep Riverola. We were both 17 years old, just teenagers, and we started our higher education with about 30 equally inexperienced classmates. We sympathized with each other and thus began what would become a deep friendship that lasted until his death a few weeks ago.

The five-year program meant a daily relationship with Josep; commuting from Barcelona to Terrassa and back, quick lunches in some cafeteria or diner near the school, the intense coexistence between student friends that would gradually become a relationship that not only encompassed the studies we had in common, prepping for exams and group projects, but also the exploration of the world and life, tastes and hobbies that we shared.

Almost without realizing it, we were sharing snippets of life and personality: music, opera, theater, literature, projects, ideals… Parties with girls, among them, Nené and Josefa, whom we married and who remain good friends to this day.

Riverola and Subirà: we became the tandem that has worked well for so many years.

IESE appeared in our lives when we were in the fifth and final year as undergrads (1961-1962). In the chair on company management that had been created and led by Antonio Valero, we organized – with his support – a seminar on Operations Research. The seminar must have been a success because Antonio Valero, who had launched IESE (in 1958), asked us to become faculty, on the condition that we continue our education in the United States. I joined IESE in September 1962 and Riverola a bit later, because Valero asked him to work for a few months with a French consultant who had taken part in the seminar.

Our career at IESE is now well documented, but I would like to highlight that our collaboration, along with the fundamental contributions of Josep Faus, was decisive in defining the quantifiable aspects of the content of our programs, especially in the areas of operations and finance.

We will all remember him as a great scholar, a lovely person, a highly cultured man, a brilliant (and contentious) conversationalist and an endearing friend to everyone — especially to me. We honor your memory.

How can I be like you when I grow up?

Jaume Ribera, professor of production, technology and operations management I met Josep as an engineering professor in Terrassa. A “different” professor, who quickly turned me on to the area of operational research, his teaching style and the combination of teaching-research-consulting that characterized his professional life. I remember asking him at the end of a class, “What does someone have to do to be like you when they grow up?” And soon after that I was working as his assistant at IESE. His personal and academic support, his introduction to a former professor at Stanford who invited me to do a doctorate in the U.S., and his way of guiding my work without ever directly telling me what to do, but actually letting me discover it, completely changed my life from that point onward, and I have never been able to thank him enough.

Then as a colleague at IESE, in redesigning the MBA courses or spending the weekend together at his home deciphering the “Japanglish” books on JIT to prepare what was then a seminar (now called focused program), I was able to appreciate his great critical intelligence (especially with models that were politically correct at all times), his somewhat cynical humor that could startle unwitting strangers, and also the great person hiding behind all of that, and the empathy with, and support he gave, to the younger professors in the department. If he were looking at us right now, and saw that they asked us for a memory of him, he would say to us, “What are they thinking?!” Although deep down he would appreciate the affection that we have all held for him over the years that we spent together.

Alumni Magazine IESE

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

47

PEOPLE A “teacher” first and foremost

Beatriz Muñoz-Seca, professor of production, technology and operations management Josep Riverola and I wrote seven books together and worked together for 26 years. He was a jovial man, who loved life and had a big personality. His incisive comments always made people reflect. Our workdays were filled with shared debates and questioning. We held the same curiosity and desire to find answers to the operational issues faced by all managers. Our colleagues nearby always knew when we were writing something together because the lovely calm of the IESE campus in Madrid would suddenly hit a bit of turbulence.

His passion for music and opera made finishing the book Opera and Operations a real odyssey, because he enjoyed it so much that finishing it meant losing the opportunity to be immersed in that world.

He was first and foremost a “teacher,” someone who loved to teach and share his knowledge.

Educating was his life and he enjoyed every moment of it. He was, is and will continue to be an academic example for all.

Josep Riverola, one of a kind

Rafael Andreu, professor of strategic management and information systems and Josep M. Rosanas, emeritus professor of accounting and control Josep Riverola was undoubtedly a unique character.

As a person, professor and academic. An incredible sense of humor, a passionate and enthralling debater, some charming eccentricities, a classic absent-minded professor, totally sincere, and above all, a good friend! If he had something “difficult” to say, he knew how to say it in a way that did not offend at all, but he said it.

We would like to point out that some of these unique qualities immediately translated into his work.

In 1971, he designed a new course for students of the MBA program, which he titled “Mathematical Models in Finance.” The first edition of the course had only eight students (Rosanas among them), and three professors, since Subirà and Agell were in class. Half of the students were from humanities, but we all agreed in the end that it was the best finance course we had taken. The constant incisive questions of Riverola — such as “What is the use of having money in cash?” were answered naively by many of those present, whose responses he “dismantled” with solid arguments based on mathematics. This increased the students’ knowledge, but above all their ability to reason.

To cite another aspect, it is only fair to recognize that he was the one who “brought information technology to IESE,” approaching it from the beginning not only from a technical perspective but also as a sensible application to management (the first seminars date back to 1970).

He worked with the pioneers of hardware design in Spain and also looked at how to accompany them with basic, application-oriented software (Andreu was fortunate enough to participate closely). The results were impressive, and useful in their application, while at the

48

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

same time conceptually advanced: It is no exaggeration to say that he designed and developed the first spreadsheet that we know of in 1971 (“row module,” he called it — an advanced idea back then given that computers at that time didn’t even have screens!), and that helped popularize and perfect an idea that is still valid: that in a management environment the use of technology cannot be separated from human action (a technical note used in the EMBA in the 1980s talked about systems for planning and aid for management, such as the applications of artificial intelligence (which he was aware of from the outset) — concepts that are discussed today.

Much later, in the early ‘90s, in a different galaxy, he was one of those who witnessed the birth of the theory of Pérez López. We met every Monday, and Juan A. told us what he had been thinking (and writing) about during the previous week. Again, the incisive questions of Riverola mixed with his sense of humor and his highly original suggestions had a major impact on solidifying the theory.

Recently with him we were able to revive almost all of these concepts, ideas and their application in a project in which Rafael de Santiago also participated. Everything appeared again, prepared “à la Riverola,” with rigor, a sense of practicality, clear objectives, development of what is technically necessary and a sense of humor. We had plans to continue, but we can’t do it alone, because only he was able to combine everything and make it a reality in a way that we do not recall seeing in anyone else.

Thank you, Josep. We have so much to thank you for... more than we even realize yet.

Alumni Magazine IESE

SEARCH, CLICK AND DISCOVER

In your ongoing quest for knowledge, there’s no time to lose. IESE Publishing at WWW.IESEP.COM allows you to expand your understanding of the latest global management trends with a simple click of your mouse.

PUBLICIDAD 49

Our streamlined portal features an exceptional collection of case studies, as well as complementary content to enrich your understanding of critical leadership issues.

Go to WWW.IESEP.COM and discover a world of knowledge at your fingertips.

YOU’RE IN THE NEWS

head of OEM and Strategic Cooperation at Teka.

MBA ’93

Anthony Dunaif is the new executive vice president and head of international affairs for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

MBA ’95

Ignacio Carnicero was appointed COO of Conento.

MBA ’96

ARE YOU IN THE NEWS?

We are interested in all your latest news.

Send your comments to: AlumniMagazine@iese.edu

EMBA-Q-09

www.facebook.com/alumni.IESE www.twitter.com/IESEalumni

Luis Manuel Halcón was appointed director of APROMES in Western Andalucía.

MBA ’01

GPMD ’95

Jorge Bernal is the new CEO of the Compañía del Trópico group.

JLL announced the addition of Alfonso Valero as its new director of business development and account management.

EMBA-S-09

Deutsche AM hired Antonio Royo-Villanova as a product specialist in passive investments.

50

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

Jordi Ramentol, CEO of Ferrer, was appointed vice president of the Association of the European SelfMedication Industry (AESGP).

MBA ’02

MBA ’87

Pedro Luis Cuerda has been named as the new

Alumni Magazine IESE

PEOPLE

GIVING BACK

Paddle for a Cause

Shilpika Gautam (MBA ’10) is an India-born, world-record-breaking adventurer and global citizen. Having swapped her corporate life of banking and consulting for the pursuit of “adventurous activism,” she is a passionate advocate for “doing good better,” using business to solve environmental challenges and promote the empowerment of women. Led by Gautam, GangesSUP was the world’s first descent of the entire length of the river Ganges by stand-up paddleboard. The Ganges presents a dichotomy, in that a river that hundreds of millions worship as their mother is also among the most polluted in the world. Her goal was to empower awareness and advocacy for cleaner water. Gautam and the team kicked off their expedition in Gaumukh, in the Indian Himalayas.

On January 11, 2017 – 101 days and 1,850 miles (2,977 km) later – she paddled to her destination at the mouth of the Ganges at Gangar Sagar. Gautam also broke the world record for the longest continuous stand-up paddleboarded distance by a female in one journey, source to sea. Find out more about her adventure at www.iese.edu/ganges-alumni

Javier Reina joined the VASS Group as director of insurance.

MBA ’07

University of West London, held on May 24. His research topic was the customer orientation of private banking and his thesis director was a fellow alumni, Dr. José Ruiz-Alba (PDG ’05).

Antonio Jesús Herrera was appointed European director of the Fontana Group for Iberia, Italy, UK and Romania.

Atresmedia group has agreed to acquire Smartclip Latam, which operates in Spain and Latin America.

PDD-II-84

PDD-B-14

José Manuel Rodrigo, chair of Smartclip in Spain, announced that the

Santiago Luesma is the new sales director of APK Renting.

PADE-1-14

Javier Morales was awarded first prize for best presentation at the annual conference of doctoral students at the

Alumni Magazine IESE

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

51

PEOPLE

YOU’RE IN THE NEWS

PDD-E-07

PDD-E-11

PDG-B-05

José Dionisio González was appointed director of strategy of the International Association of Public Transport (UITP).

Mahou San Miguel named Fernando Bustamante CEO of Mahou India.

Fernando Echegaray joined Aéroports de Paris (ADP) as COO.

ENTREPRENEURS EMBA ’12

As CEO and founder of the Talentier platform, Leonardo Ruffini has optimized the talent selection and management processes. Companies can access accredited recruiters directly and intuitively from the app.

It also includes economic data and real-time selection processes.

Talentier allows users to save time on calls, meetings and reiterative negotiations, and frees them from the most demanding bureaucratic procedures, making it easier for both recruiters and hiring companies. www.talentier.com

EMBA ’17

Sincrolab operates primarily in Spain and also has a presence in some Latin American countries, including Argentina and Mexico.

The company, co-founded by Ignacio de Ramón, comprises Sincrolab Kids, a mobile app that has cognitive training tools for children; Sincrolab Adults, aimed at stimulating the deficient cognitive processes of patients in adulthood; and, lastly, a platform that registers and tracks their cognitive activity with an artificial intelligence engine, which identifies the appropriate therapies for improvement. www.sincrolab.es

52

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

MBA ’00

Earn money on your purchases. This is the motto of SHOPPIDAY, an innovative solution based on the concept of cashback: getting a cash refund on every purchase. The company, co-founded by CEO Juan Luis Rico, works with well-known brands as well as small businesses, both physical stores and online platforms. Users earn a percentage of the money spent on any purchase, which they can transfer to their bank account or spend on establishments through the app, where, in addition to the cashback, each vendor offers its own promotions. www.shoppiday.es

MBA ’14

Bida is an app that offers subscribers a drink every day — up to 31 cocktails a month — for the price of a single drink: €9.99. The platform already works in bars, restaurants and clubs; the user just shows the app to the person serving the drinks.

The arrival of new customers also benefits the establishments, which have the opportunity to surprise them and earn their loyalty. At present, the company operates exclusively in Barcelona, but Priscilla Lavoie, founder and CEO, expects it to hit Madrid in the coming months. www.tomabida.com

Alumni Magazine IESE

ARE YOU IN THE NEWS?

We are interested in all your latest news. Send your comments to: AlumniMagazine@iese.edu www.facebook.com/alumni.IESE

PDG-C-11

PhD ’03

Eduardo Ceballos is the new head of NEINVER Italia.

Nuno Fernandes is the new dean of the Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa.

www.twitter.com/IESEalumni

EMBA-B-2014 MBA ’15

GyanDhan is an education financing marketplace that currently focuses on Indian students abroad. Under company co-founder and CEO Ankit Mehra, this platform has helped 400 students obtain over $17 million in loans over the past 12 months. Half of them did not have an additional source of funding. Among other factors, continuous risk monitoring is key to GyanDhan when it comes to making students an attractive proposition for financial lending institutions. www.gyandhan.com

PDD-D-11

It is not always possible to talk to each employee at a company. For that very reason, the Keynos team has developed an app that recreates conversations and makes them automatic and scalable. The company, which has Rudolf Schouten as CEO/ co-founder and Prof. Carlos Rodríguez-Lluesma as one of its investors, has created a bot that chats with workers according to the objectives of their company. Connecting with employees is important because it improves the work environment, reinforces company values and resolves interdepartmental challenges. www.keynos.com

Alumni Magazine IESE

Héctor de Pereda has connected a broad spectrum of graphic artists, from the world of illustration to the world of photography, with potential customers around the world, in his commercial venture Señor Cool. The platform allows artists to sell their designs on made-to-order products without having to invest in stock, production or order management; all free of charge, in a secure environment with helpful guidance. www.senorcool.com

EMBA ’13

Coomo, an online personal shopper service for men, with Clara de la Santa as its founding partner, offers a solution for people who lack the time to go shopping. After a brief questionnaire is completed, the personal shopper contacts the customers to better understand their needs. Then they select the best ten-12 garments and ship them to the customers. The customers can try them out, pick the ones they like best and return the rest without paying for shipping or service charges; they just have to pay for the items they decide to buy, which are priced the same as in stores. www.coomo.es

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

53

Boston New York

Miami Bogotá Lima Santiago (Chile)

THE LATEST ON IESE’S ALUMNI CHAPTERS

CHAPTER NEWS The regional chapter of the United States, headed by Alan Pace (MBA ’94), invited alumni to an informal meeting at the Downtown Harvard Clubhouse. The meeting gave alumni the opportunity for a meet and greet with IESE’s new dean, Franz Heukamp.

computing, big data, social networks and mobility, are altering business models in all sectors: from music to photography; from retail to television; from hospitality to banking. Prof.

Josep Valor gave a quick analysis of some successes and failures and offered 10 lessons to be learned from them, which he discussed with the alumni gathered in Miami.

Miami

Paris

Boston JUNE 6

l

JUNE 12

Digital technologies, driven by continuous advances in cloud

l 54

JUNE 12 Prof. Rob Johnson moderated an informal discussion between two

l

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

entrepreneurs in a new edition of the conference “An Evening with Entrepreneurs.”

Jean-Marc Lazard, co-founder and CEO of OpenDataSoft, joined Julien Tchernia, co-founder and CEO of ekWateur, in order to talk about their new businesses, focusing on the entrepreneurial journey that each has undertaken and the respective challenges they have faced to build their businesses. The meeting was organized by the regional chapter in France, chaired by Axel Lambert (MBA ’01).

Alumni Magazine IESE

MORE PHOTOS OF THE SESSIONS: www.facebook.com/alumni.iese www.twitter.com/iesealumni

LIFE Oslo Hamburg Moscow Paris Castel San Giovanni

Geneva Lisbon

Sao Paulo Buenos Aires

NEW PRESIDENT REGIONAL CHAPTER OF RUSSIA

Lima

JUNE 14 Hugo Perea, chief economist at BBVA Continental, reviewed Peru’s current economic situation and its future prospects for the alumni gathered at the bank’s headquarters in Lima.

The meeting, organized by the regional chapter of Peru, headed up

by Alfredo Hoffmann (MBA ’98), was made possible thanks to the collaboration of BBVA Continental and Javier Balbín (MBA ’00).

l

Alumni Magazine IESE

Sergey Chetverikov (GEMBA ’15) investment l director at StartTrack.ru – the first crowdinvesting platform for business angels and startups in Russia – has been named president of the Russian regional chapter. Chetverikov will soon celebrate a very important anniversary: next June it will be 10 years since the founding of the chapter, in 2008, when Andrey Smirnov (GEMBA ’07) was its first president. He was succeeded by Mikhail Ivanov (GEMBA ’10).

The Russian regional chapter has a total of 205 alumni, most of whom reside in Moscow. The new president believes the chapter plays an essential role, since “it is a way to maintain direct contact with the school, and also to strengthen the personal and professional ties of the IESE community in Russia.”

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

55

Oslo

JUNE 19 Marketing has evolved dramatically over the past few years. Formerly a rational and datadriven tool for selling, it is now the wellspring of strategy for brands and companies. Some brands have deciphered human behavior in these times of drastic change and have stopped selling, in favor of inviting people to participate.

Prof. Xavier Oliver spoke in the Norwegian capital about the role of marketing in companies and society today, in a session organized thanks to the collaboration of Atle H. Carlsen (MBA ’97) and Advokatfirmaet Selmer.

l

Geneva JUNE 6

Invited by the Swiss regional chapter, chaired by Bence András l (AMP Munich ’07), alumni had the opportunity to get an inside look at the headquarters of the World Economic Forum in Geneva.

After a guided tour of the innovative architectural complex, attendees gathered inside to take part in the presentation “Fostering Effective Global Collaboration: A Framework of Knowing, Doing and Being,” led by Prof. Yih-Teen Lee. The Alumni Association appreciates the cooperation of Silvio Dulinsky (EMBA ’07) and the World Economic Forum in organizing this meeting.

Lisbon JUNE 22

The regional chapter of Portugal, chaired by José Gabriel Chimeno (PDG ’95), invited alumni to a session titled “Design Thinking as a Method for Problem Solving,” where Prof. Joaquim Vilà presented this methodology with a case study. The conference featured two guest speakers who shared their experience in design thinking: Ana Pité, head of Innovation Design at Axians; and Sérgio do Monte, partner at Deloitte.

l

Moscow JUNE 22

Prof. Pedro Videla reviewed the current macroeconomic landscape for the alumni gathered at the headquarters of Sistema PJSFC in the Russian capital.

The meeting was organized by the Russian regional chapter, led

by Sergey Chetverikov (GEMBA ’15) thanks to the collaboration of Sistema PJSFC and Yana Ronis (GEMBA ’16).

l

Sao Paulo JUNE 23

The school’s dean, Franz Heukamp, on this occasion visited the l alumni gathered at ISE in Sao Paulo. The event was kicked off by the president of the Regional Chapter of Brazil, Adriano Amaral (MBA ’94 and AMP Sao Paulo ’07). After the academic session by Prof. Heukamp, the speaker and attendees took the opportunity to introduce themselves and exchange opinions.

56

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

New York JUNE 22

Conor Neill, IESE lecturer, gave a session at IESE New York on the lessons and teachings taken

l

Alumni Magazine IESE

MORE PHOTOS OF THE SESSIONS: www.facebook.com/alumni.iese www.twitter.com/iesealumni

LIFE

1

2

3

4

5

from psychology shared by ultraendurance athletes like Kilian Jornet, Miquel Sunyer, Josef Ajram and James Lawrence, which can be applied to our own lives and careers.

Castel San Giovanni JUNE 23

The alumni, invited by the regional chapter of Italy, headed up by Valentino Confalone (MBA ’01), gathered at the offices of Amazon in the Italian city of Castel San Giovanni,

l

Alumni Magazine IESE

6

where Prof. Philip Moscoso recapped the success story of the American e-commerce company. The Alumni Association thanks Paolo Venturini (MBA ’02), Silvano Soloperto (MBA ’13) and Amazon for their collaboration in organizing this event.

1. Alumni in the facilities of BBVA Continental in Lima.

2. Prof. Oliver’s session in Oslo.

3. Prof. Videla gave a session on macroeconomics in Moscow.

4. Alumni gathered in Amazon’s facilities in the Italian town of Castel San Giovanni.

5. Alumni session in Lisbon.

6. Prof. Berrone’s session on Sustainable Cities in Hamburg.

Santiago (Chile) JULY 5

The headquarters of Bci in the Chilean capital hosted the conference “Global Macroeconomic

l

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

57

MORE PHOTOS OF THE SESSIONS: www.facebook.com/alumni.iese www.twitter.com/iesealumni

Outlook,” led by Prof. Pedro Videla.

The event was organized by the regional chapter of Chile, chaired by Lionel Olavarría (MBA ’75).

Hamburg JULY 10

The academic co-director of the research platform IESE Cities in Motion Strategies, Prof.

Pascual Berrone, led a session titled “Sustainable Cities: Where Big Challenges Meet Huge Opportunities.”

The IESE professor provided innovative approaches to city management and explored a new urban model for the 21st century based on four pillars: sustainable ecosystems, innovative activities, equality of citizens and connected territories. The event, organized by the German regional chapter and its president, Georg von Boeselager (AMP Munich ’08), was made possible by the collaboration of Andreas Schröter (GEMBA ’08) and DNV GL.

l AMP Alumni Meet in Munich The alumni of AMP Munich got together on the IESE campus in l the German city on July 1. The meeting, which revolved around how to generate businesses connected to the digital reality, featured the participation of Christopher Heinemann, CEO of Manufactum, one of the most successful Mittelstand in the country. Heinemann summarized the challenges facing premium products in the digital world. Attendees also visited the Manufactum facilities. Another speaker, Steven Rymell, head of technology and cybersecurity at Airbus, explained the new risk scenarios that cybersecurity experts work with. The final session presented the start-ups Biofleisch Kontor, of Ingo Pansegrau (AMP Munich ’16); and Frozen Devil, of Dunia El-Said.

Sao Paulo AUGUST 10

The ISE campus in the city of Sao Paulo once again served as a meeting point for IESE alumni. On this occasion, participants enjoyed the presentation “The Disruptive Digital Revolution and its Impacts: Economic, Social, Political and in the Workplace,” led by Octavio de Barros, chief economist and statutory director of Banco Bradesco.

l

Buenos Aires

Bogotá JULY 10

The alumni gathered in Bogotá enjoyed the conference “Transl formation: How and What for? Space as a Lever for Change.”

The afternoon featured talks by four different speakers: Francisco Vázquez (PDG ’03), president and founder of 3G Smart Group; Jaime Méndez (PDD ’15), Director of Projects at 3G Office; Edgar Helou, head of Google Cloud Colombia; and Alejandro Castillo, strategic designer and co-founder of Rrebrand. The conference, organized by the regional chapter of Colombia, led by Luis Fernando Londoño (MBA ’03), would not have been possible without the collaboration of Bernadett Kalocsa (MBA ’99).

58

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

AUGUST 29

In the alumni session “Internationalization of Small and Medium Enterprises,” Adrián Caldart, senior lecturer at IESE, discussed the case of Barbuss, a small Argentine company that operates in 12 countries and four continents, and whose senior management team has an average age under 40. The event, hosted by the Argentine Center of Engineers (CAI), was organized by the regional chapter of Argentina and Uruguay, chaired by Enrico Piqué (PDD ’93).

l

Alumni Magazine IESE

PUBLICIDAD 59

WELCOME TO THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION!

THE CULMINATION OF A CHALLENGE

T

he alumni community just expanded, welcoming the participants of IESE’s most recent Executive Education programs.

Between June 16 and July 7, participants from the Global CEO Program, AMP, PLD and PMD bade farewell to the classrooms and, armed with the knowledge and tools provided by the school’s programs, embarked on the next stage in their lives.

The first to celebrate the completion of their program were the 24 participants of the Global CEO Program, on June 16. Among them, the class president, Daniel Fernández-Capo (GCP ’17), whose closing address highlighted the program modules offered in different cities of the world (Shanghai, Philadelphia and Barcelona), and stressed that “this experience we have faced together is something that goes beyond the professional realm: we have created an unexpected value at the personal level.

We have evolved from initially meeting interesting people, towards a value concept blending friendship with new references for our life and professional network, which I hope will stay constant in the future.”

ONWARD WITH CONFIDENCE

A week later, on June 23, the Advanced Management l Program (AMP) had its turn. The 83 participants from 20 different countries, who had taken part in courses given in Barcelona, Munich and Warsaw, participated in a joint closing ceremony on the Barcelona campus. Frithjof Struye (AMP ’17), representative of the AMP Munich, expressed gratitude “for the learning, which will help us make a mark in this changing world. We are certainly more prepared for heading into the future.” Meanwhile Ireneusz Bilinski (AMP ’17), of the AMP Warsaw, said the program “is reflecting what today’s Poland is all about: its dynamics, positive hunger, unique skills and great spirit.” He also ci-

GLOBAL CEO PROGRAM 2017

President: Daniel Fernández-Capó • Vice president: Malcolm Johns

60

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

Alumni Magazine IESE

LIFE AMP Barcelona 2017

President: Heiðrún Jónsdóttir • Vice president: Laurent Mercier

AMP Munich 2017

President: Frithjof Struye • Vice president: Ulrike Sailer

AMP Warsaw 2017

President: Ireneusz Bilinski • Vice president: Agata Niesyto

Alumni Magazine IESE

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

61

LIFE ted the words of Pope John Paul II: “Remember the past with gratitude, live the present with enthusiasm and look forward to the future with confidence.” The celebrations continued on the Barcelona campus on July 7, when participants from the Program for Leadership Development (PLD) Barcelona and the Program for Management Development (PMD) Munich walked the IESE campus for the last time as students. The Barcelona section included 23 participants from different industry segments, from technology to energy – and from four continents – all of whom had completed the PLD Barcelona. Meanwhile, 18

other participants from large companies such as Microsoft and Allianz, as well as medium-sized German companies including Almdudler and Rattunde, completed the PMD. Among them was Carme Prats (PMD ‘17), vice president of the class and a Lleida native based in Germany, who spoke in her closing speech of how she moved there 20 years ago without speaking German, and a year and a half ago decided to take another important step in her life: enroll in the PMD at IESE. It was a decision that, she said, “Changed the way I see the world, it widened from a human perspective. And not only that: it has also grown my expertise.”

PLD Barcelona 2017

President: Joao Barufi • Vice president: Astrid Neubert

PMD Munich 2017

President: Reinhard Korner • Vice president: Carme Prats

62

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

Alumni Magazine IESE

Present, Interact, Collaborate

PUBLICIDAD 63 Get in the fast lane with wePresent wireless collaboration

wePresent is a professional wireless presentation system that allows up to 64 users to collaborate and give a wireless interactive presentation from their Windows/Mac computer, smartphone or tablet.

We offer 4 systems to choose from: our presentation model WiPG-1000, interactive models WiPG-1600 and WiPG-2000, and the NEW collaboration model WiCS-2100, plus the SharePod for adding any HDMI content into the wePresent environment. PresentSense is a Bluetooth accessory for your wePresent hardware that automatically connects to the unit closest to you.

Key Features of the new WiCS 2100 ChromeCast Support

WiCS-2100

SharePod

PresentSence

WIPG-2000

WIPG-1000

WIPG-1600

Key features of the

www.charmex.net charmex@charmex.net Tel. 93 303 66 20 (Barcelona) Tel. 91 303 24 84 (Madrid)

Improved Audience Remote View Auto-Layout Faster Processor & Upgraded Memory New

Exclusive Distributor in Spain and Portugal:

www.charmex.net charmex@charmex.net www.wepresentwifi.com

LAST WORD

7 Strategies for Fighting Stress ALBERTO RIBERA Senior Lecturer of Managing People in Organizations, IESE

I

f you’re reading this article, perhaps it’s because the title has drawn you in.

Maybe you’re stressed out right now or have been so recently.

A critical situation at work, a personal problem, a difficult decision, a complicated relationship with a supervisor or colleague, working against the clock and managing uncertainty are situations that involve high levels of stress. At times, even when everything is going well in your personal and professional life, you might still feel stressed. Numerous studies confirm that stress has much more to do with how we handle situations than with the situations themselves.

In the workplace, what causes stress for some people can motivate others. For example, giving a presentation at a shareholder meeting can be agonizing for some and energizing for others.

Stress is closely linked to our inner world and our perception of reality, and we can work on our inner ability to face pressure.

Stress in itself is not harmful. In fact, without a certain amount of stress, we wouldn’t be able to meet new challenges. But this physiological reaction is not always helpful, and can be excessively long or intense, even weakening or blocking our mental, emotional and physical resources until we reach exhaustion.

To avoid reaching this point, it’s important to be able to remain stable and focused, even in turbulent times.

The following seven strategies can help to tackle stress:

1 Focus on the moment. Forget about

multitasking. Shifting one’s attention from one thing to another has a high cost in terms of stress, time, accuracy and productivity.

Focusing attention on a single task makes

64

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2017 / No. 147

it much easier to accomplish successfully.

Eliminate digital interruptions: turn off your cell phone and email notifications if they’re not strictly necessary for the task at hand.

2 Learn to say “no.” Say “no” to impossible

deadlines that you won’t be able to meet and to employees and colleagues who return work that you’ve delegated to them. Refuse to favor the urgent over the important. Set, respect and defend your priorities.

3 Know yourself and your own limits. We’re all human and we all make mistakes. No one is perfect and no one is good at everything. We all get tired. Identify the first signs of stress when they appear and take measures. Ask for help when you need it.

4 Accept reality. Realize that there are

situations that you can’t change and problems whose solution doesn’t depend on you.

5 Question your own negativity. Keep

perspective on the relative importance and consequences of your mistakes and the expectations that you think others have of you and your results.

6 Observe healthy lifestyle habits. Get enough sleep, exercise, and eat well. Adopt habits that ensure your physical, psychological and spiritual wellbeing. Look for moments to replenish your energy throughout the day.

Find out about techniques for relaxing and switching off.

7 Connect with others. We all need contact with other people. Talking and laughing with friends and family helps reduce stress.

Alumni Magazine IESE

Does your Criminal Compliance programme assure you complete security?

Implementation of Criminal Compliance Programmes.

Yearly Auditing of Compliance Programmes.

Adapting Compliance Programmes to the UNE 19601-2017 Law.

Assessment of Procedures in process of Export and Import.

Legal assistance concerning Criminal liability of legal persons.

Drawing up of judgements and reports.

CRIMINAL COMPLIANCE Consult us about our

corporate Compliance Programmes for Large firms info@maldonadopascual.es

900 104 578 www.maldonadopascual.es

and Small and Medium sized firms. www.rppj.es

Premier advantages, for IESE Alumni only

ALUMNI Beyond Knowledge

IESE Alumni and CaixaBank have agreed an exclusive deal to offer you the best conditions and Premier services. Discover all the advantages we can offer you: ■

■

■

■

■

A single account The best financing Custom investment solutions Personalised advice An exclusive card package

IRN: 1765 / 2016 – 09338

See the details of the offer at www.CaixaBank.es/colectivospremier/iese-en and request the cards by scanning this QR code.

Always one step ahead. This is Premier Banking