Last week the EURO*MBA held its residential week in Nantes. The EURO*MBA? Yes, this is a distance learning MBA program in which 2 French Universities, 1 German Business School, 1 Spanish Business School, 1 Polish Business School and Maastricht participate. It is a distance learning program, but in order to meet students and for students to meet peers and to discover different cultures in different parts of Europe, the EURO*MBA organizes 4 residential weeks per year. Last week this residential week was organized in Nantes. Such a residential week is very interesting because there is a series of lectures about a specific topic, there are a number of company visits and students can mingle and discuss. I am involved in the EURO*MBA as a member of the Academic Council which is responsible for the quality of the program. This time we discussed intensively the thesis and it was interesting to discover that the perception of an MBA degree differs between countries. In Germany the MBA is considered an academic degree while this is not so in France. Of course, this has consequences for the thesis. Need it be an academic piece of work or can it also be a consultancy project or an extensive business plan? We did not reach a final conclusion yet although we agreed that an MBA thesis does not require the same academic content as an Msc thesis.
This week started in Barcelona with a meeting of the European Affinity Group (EAG). This EAG consists of representatives of AACSB accredited schools in Europe. The aim is to make a voice about European points of view that are relevant for the American based AACSB. Such points as ranking, the implementation of Bologna, accreditation standards and so on have been discussed. The meeting was organized by ESADE, a Barcelona based business school. The day before the meeting started ESADE organized a tour to their new campus which is built around the center for open and cross innovation, CREAPOLIS. This CREAPOLIS is an interesting concept. The idea is to invite people from diverse large and small companies to work on innovation. They can discuss ideas, try out new products, discuss management concepts and so on. So it is not an incubator for start-ups but a place to share creativity and innovative ideas. What I particularly liked about this CREAPOLIS is that this is integral part of the university so that students can easily get in touch with the people that work in CREAPOLIS. In this way ESADE can organize both campus jobs and internships. It came to my mind that the Euregion would be an excellent location for such a centre.