World's most attractive cities for MBA students

Cities account for 80% of the global GDP and new hubs are emerging around the world with more influence than even countries. For instance, the influence of City of London when it comes to financial regulations is extraordinary, or the global reach of cities like Singapore and Hong Kong. As well as American cities became a magnet for European talent in the first half of the 20th century as a consequence of the World (European) Wars, are there other cities that will tap into the opportunities of the ocean of talent being expelled from home countries after the advent of the Great Recession? For instance, Doha and Dubai in the Middle East, the above-mentioned Singapore and Hong Kong in the Far East, or cities like Santiago, Sao Paulo and Bogotá in Latin America. The capacity of cities to attract international talent is one of the key issues in the century of talent and mobility. International students enrolled in top MBA programs may be an indicator of a city's capacity to attract global talent. This is the reasoning that made me think about creating the MBA City Monitor, hosted by ESADE Business School. The Monitor is basically a list of cities sorted by their international MBA population (only those students enrolled in top programs, considering top MBA programs those that have been ranked by the Financial Times at least once in the last three years, which makes a list of 126 programs around the world, more than half in the US).

The top ten urban areas of the ranking:

1. Boston

2. NY

3. London

4. Chicago

5. Barcelona

6. Paris

7. Toronto

8. Raleigh-Durham

9. Singapore

10. SF/SJ/ Bay Area

Link to the press release:

http://www.esade.edu/web/eng/about-esade/today/news/viewelement/288570/1/esade-study:-barcelona-is-the-5th-most-attractive-city-in-the-world-and-2nd-in-europe-for-international-mba-students-

Congratulations to El Celler de Can Roca

The Girona-based (1 hour-drive north of Barcelona) restaurant tops the Restaurant Magazine list of the best restaurants in the world.

Click here for the list

Value for Money in business education

Business education seems to have developed a sort of bubble in the last few years. Sky-rocketing tuitions and thousands of new MBA and Master programs added to the overall supply, all of them fed with students coming with a loan in their backpack. Once salaries have stopped growing, the virtuous cycle is in jeopardy. Interestingly, this decline in value for money (VfM) in elite MBA programs, may be sowing the seeds for the rise of new players in business education who will disrupt the industry with a more reasonable VfM.

Clayton Christensen

"There’s a fundamental problem about the world, which is that data is only available about the past. If you wait until the data is clear that you’re getting disrupted, you’re going to be taking action when the game is over."
Clayton Christensen (HBS), for a Q&A at Bloomberg Business Week

Pinnochio the fact-checker

 If I had to pick a newspaper section that I enjoy reading, this would be Glenn Kessler's "Fact Checker" in The Washington Post, where he makes political leaders and others accountable for their rethoric: they pass or fail the Pinnochio test every day. By fact-checking their speeches and other rethoric, readers come up with more rounded and solid opinions on relevant topics.
As an example, check Glenn's great post on The Biggest Pinnochios of 2012.

In God We Trust, All Others Must Bring Data

William Edwards Deming (1900-93), was an American statistician, lecturer ,and consultant.

I first learned about W.E.Deming quote in a visit to Infosys headquarters in Bangalore (India) in 2008. I just thought this quote was amazing and reflected on the need of individuals, organizations, media, and all sort of constituencies, to formulate opinions and decisions based on reliable data. This is exactly why the rankings, despite all their noise and flaws, play a role in business education.