On June 28th and 29th, IPADE faculty and staff welcomed the Harvard Business School- IPADE Advisory Board to the IPADE campus in Mexico City for two days of discussion and exchange. Formed in 1967, the Board was created to maintain an ongoing relationship between the two institutions, and is made up of IPADE’s Steering Committee and three invited professors from Harvard Business School. The Advisory Board meets every two years to share perspectives on the challenges and opportunities faced by the business schools, and to learn from each other’s experience. This year, the IPADE Steering Committee welcomed W. Carl Kester, the George Fisher Baker Jr. Professor of Business Administration, J. Gunnar Trumbull, the Philip Caldwell Professor of Business Administration, and Richard H.K. Vietor, the Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration.
“The objectives are several,” said Professor Vietor. “One is to build a relationship between IPADE and Harvard Business School. The second is for us to learn what’s going on at IPADE…for us to get ideas and the reverse…to ask us questions about things IPADE is doing and how we react to those.”
Professor Vietor has served as a member of the Advisory Board for 25 years and has experienced first hand how IPADE has evolved. “(IPADE) has grown,” he said. “The campuses in Monterrey and Guadalajara have expanded, and (the school) does a wonderful job teaching.”
In contrast, this was Professor Trumbull’s first visit to IPADE. When asked his initial impression, he said, “(IPADE) shares a common spirit of a serious focus on education and transformational leadership that we try to embrace at HBS. The colleagues that I’ve been able to talk with here are really an amazing group…
“Part of the philosophy true at HBS, and certainly true here (at IPADE),” he continued, “is that business education is part of transforming individual people’s lives, but also providing a broader public good. It’s about helping society to become better off and ultimately helping everybody in society… The more we are able to reach out to other schools, especially schools that have a similar spirit to our own, like IPADE, the better off everyone is… More exchanges of this kind are really in everybody’s interest.”
Topics discussed during the two days included innovation and technology, globalization, academic and professional development of faculty, and institutional collaboration.
In addition to its relationship with HBS, IPADE also has an ongoing Advisory Board relationship with IESE, based in Barcelona. These relationships provide IPADE with an international perspective, and promote ongoing, cutting-edge collaboration in business education and leadership.
