The ESADE MBA Student Blog · ESADE Business School · Barcelona

Archive for October, 2009

ESADE Business School’s Entrepreneurship Institute and Career Services Team partnered to launch the first edition of the Innovation Speed Dating event on 30th October. In collaboration with leading Spanish institutes, the event was designed as a meeting place between innovative projects and our Full Time MBA participants currently undertaking the Entrepreneurship course.

As an interactive “match making” event, 27 innovative ideas across the technology, science and creative categories were presented with the aim of pairing these with our MBA participants to develop structured business plans for. Apart from meeting the Entrepreneurship course’s academic objectives, the possibility exists for our MBA participants to launch the business plans and join these companies full time once they graduate from the Full Time MBA.

What’s going on with the Euro vs the Dollar?!

I think most of the students that live in Europe and have US dollars are very concerned about the recent exchange rate of the Euro vs the Dollar. The Euro has been trading as high as $1.50, the strongest since August 2008. I started investigating the opinion of some of the European and US officials and like us, they are also very concerned. Recently, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the move a “disaster” for the economy while Timothy Geithner, US Treasury Secretary, commented “…it is very important for the US to have a strong Dollar”.

So why are they so concerned?

Well, mainly because as the Euro strengthens it makes the exports more expensive to overseas buyers, hurting the region’s competitiveness. This, plus the excessive volatility affect the economic recovery of the Eurozone which in turn can impact most economies around the world due to the globalized system in which we live. The US has no real incentive to have a stronger Dollar in the short term considering the weakness of the economy and so Geithner’s comments would appear to just be directed to investors in dollar-denominated assets, such as China.

What’s next?

The European economy is still too weak and so it would seem likely that we will continue to see low interest rates for a while and, combined with significant government expenditure and the ECB providing liquidity to banks through various programs to get credit flowing again. It is difficult to see a significant weakening of the Euro soon. However, many economists believe that a recovery in the US is likely to happen before the Eurozone.

So we should watch out for a rise in interest rates first in the US lifting the dollar and helping out us, students, holding dollars. Hopefully now, its just a matter of time…

Since many of us have already been talking about this upcoming Career Week, I’ll just take a few minutes to thank Career Services for organizing such an event!

It has definitely been very interesting to listen to different companies and presentations. Not only has it broadened my professional perspective but it has also given me a clearer and more concise perspective of companies of interest, their working environment, and professional culture.

Everything was well organized to make each presentation worthwhile: from networking coffee, to panels and brochures. All was made available to get the most out of this event.

Even though places were limited for each presentation (and online registration was very competitive), Career Services made sure that all presentations were (and are still) available online: any presentation not attended could be watched live!

It was practically impossible to miss any bit of info we wanted: everything was provided not to miss any opportunity. And this proves to be the best support when it comes to career search and network.

Many thanks again for Career Services and looking forward for Winter Career Week!

Career week is here…the past few days have been very busy because of extensive company research in addition to the already heavy classroom workload. Three days of non stop company presentations and networking sessions await us. Health care is one of my sectors of major interest, and I am eager to participate in the presentations of Abbott and Novartis.

The latter is also organizing a marketing competition, the Novartis Masterminds Challenge, open to several of the top European business schools. Teams from each school will have to come up with a strategic marketing plan for a specific product. The best teams will be given the opportunity to present their project in front of Novartis’ executive board, and the winners of the contest will have chances to join Novartis for an internship. Forming a new team for the contest is exciting, but also challenging, because the number of different teams I work with goes up to three and each one is so different than the other.

Time to suit up and head to the first presentation! Stay tuned for more career week related news!