Description
In such a brief explanation about igniting entrepreneurship.
Pedro Nueno
Professor of Entrepreneurship
IESE Business School
[email protected]
Executive Summary
IESE Prof. Pedro Nueno introduced
entrepreneurship as a course on the MBA
program 35 years ago in 1974. Its launch
came six years before the school introduced
the bi-lingual MBA program in 1980, and so it
was known initially as NAVES, a contraction of
“Nuevas Aventuras Empresariales” (“New Business
Adventures”).
Since then, many IESE MBA, Executive MBA and
Global Executive MBA students and participants
have been inspired by the course to set up their
own “new business adventure” across the globe.
Prof. Nueno, along with his colleagues in the
Department of Entrepreneurship, continue to
make every effort to support alumni in this field
of business creation that is so vital to society.
The inspiration for the IESE entrepreneurship course in the school’s MBA programs came to me during
my time studying for a doctoral degree at Harvard University. Besides working as a research assistant,
and juggling all my doctoral thesis obligations, I took the “Starting New Ventures” course. As soon as
I got back to IESE, I decided to launch a similar course.
Entrepreneurship
Igniting Entrepreneurship
Profs. Richard Dooley and Patrick Liles launched a second-year MBA course on entrepreneur-
ship titled “Starting New Ventures” at Harvard Business School (HBS) in the late 1960s. It
soon became one of the business school’s most sought-after electives. As a Ph.D. candidate
at HBS in the early 1970s, I was aware of how much I could learn from the school’s MBA
program. So, besides working as a research assistant (to pay the bills) and juggling all my doc-
toral thesis obligations, I took advantage of being able to participate in the MBA program,
slating a full work load every semester. I remember taking courses on energy, real estate,
strategy and international business. But what interested me the most was undoubtedly the
“Starting New Ventures” course.
As soon as I got back to IESE I decided to launch a similar course. I asked Prof. Dooley for per-
mission to more or less copy it. In 1974, no one struggled with the great intellectual debate of
whether to study for an MBA in Spanish at IESE in Barcelona or in English at HBS in Boston.
Dooley was honored by my request and gave me the go-ahead. I named the course “Nuevas
Aventuras Empresariales” (“New Business Adventures”) and the MBA students, practical as
always, immediately contracted its name to NAVES (Nuevas Aventuras Empresariales) or
“ships” in Spanish. Back in the early days, I translated HBS cases into Spanish. But I wanted
to add another dimension to the course. So I asked students to prepare a business plan for an
innovative business opportunity. It would be a useful assignment for all the students, even for
those who were not interested in starting their own company.
Years later, Prof. Dooley came to IESE’s Barcelona campus for a semester to teach the course
with me. By then, the IESE MBA was taught in English, the student body had grown consid-
erably and NAVES was one of the most popular classes. NAVES featured original case studies
based on the experiences of IESE alumni entrepreneurs. And this is the structure we have
maintained to this day. Over the last 30 years or so, more than 100 cases have been written,
and students on the full-time MBA program have drafted over 1,000 business plans. On top
of that, IESE now offers the NAVES course in the Executive MBA and the Global Executive
MBA, so the total number of business plans prepared by IESE alumni is approaching 2,000.
IESE’s Department of Entrepreneurship took a leap forward when Dean Jordi Canals allowed
the NAVES course to be the centerpiece of an academic department. This made it possible to
attract excellent faculty such as Prof. Julia Prats, who holds a doctorate from HBS where she
worked with Prof. Howard Stevenson, one of the world’s leading experts in entrepreneurship.
Antonio Dávila, another Ph.D. graduate from HBS joined the faculty along with Juan Roure.
While studying for his Ph.D. at Stanford University in California, Roure witnessed the Silicon
Valley entrepreneurial boom first hand. And Chris Zott left INSEAD in Paris to join IESE.
NAVES continued to chart new waters for a number of years. Early on it launched a yearly
forum to showcase MBA students’ business plans to potential sponsors. Many of these busi-
ness plans became actual businesses thanks to that presentation to business leaders, most of
them alumni, who came to “invest” in IESE’s MBAs.
Logisfashion, a logistic operator specialized in the textile sector is one example that comes
to mind. Three MBA ’96 graduates, Juan Manzanedo, Carlos Villa and Juan Martínez,
16
IESE Alumni Magazine / APRIL - JUNE 2009
Luciano Lozano
18
IESE Alumni Magazine / APRIL - JUNE 2009
launched the company that same year. Logisfashion now has
over 80,000 m
2
storage capacity in Spain, Chile and Mexico.
Another of the course’s innovations was to create a venture
capital fund, called FINAVES, to provide seed capital for start-ups.
Over 15 companies obtained their first capital thanks to FINAVES.
For faculty, FINAVES is a fascinating lab in which to study the
day-to-day process of starting a new company.
Professors in IESE’s Department of Entrepreneurship also
launched an active business angels network, headed by Prof.
Roure. On top of that, faculty has established several new com-
petitions, conferences and award programs. They have pub-
lished over 20 books and countless case studies and articles. All
this could not have been achieved without the help of people
like Neus Martínez, Amparo San José, Mathieu Carenzo, Emily
Kunze, Silvia Gomáriz, Isabel Cuesta, Rosa Fité and Juan L.
Segurado.
Many IESE alumni have started new companies or undertaken
entrepreneurial activities such as rescuing a distressed company
or diversifying efficiently. If we start on the West Coast of the
United States, we find Benjamin Krempel (MBA ’99) in San
Francisco, with Aqueduct Medical, which provides post-op
machines for cosmetic and trauma surgery patients. Over on the
U.S. East Coast, we find Fritz Folts (MBA ’91) in Boston, a con-
summate entrepreneur in financial services.
And across the Atlantic in Europe we find Andrea Christenson
(MBA ’83) with her Käthe Kruse toy and children’s wear com-
pany in Germany. Or we could talk with Andrés Cárdenas (AMP
’97), who spearheaded the leveraged buy-out of Sintax Logís-
tica, a company specialized in international logistics services.
If we continue moving east all the way to China we can find
entrepreneurs who have gone through IESE programs organized
jointly with CEIBS and HBS, such as Xu Han, who created a
medical diagnosis company 15 years ago that is now listed on
the NYSE. Or Yang Lan, who created Sun Media, a top Chinese
TV and media company.
There are entrepreneurial IESE alumni operating in virtually all
business sectors. In technology we find Lucas Carné (MBA ’99)
from Privalia and Antonio González-Barros from Grupo Inter-
com (AMP ’01); in retail - Javier Relats from Aita, in financial
services the brothers Borja García-Nieto (MBA ’97) and Ignacio
García-Nieto (Executive MBA ’87) at Riva y García.
Catching the right wave
Of course, there are aspects of entrepreneurship that are beyond the
controlled environment of the classroom. An entrepreneur needs an
opportunity and vision. But opportunity is elusive. Sometimes our
stars are aligned and the opportunity coincides perfectly with the
business concept’s launch.
Other times, the opportunity is right under our nose and we fail to
see it. This is where vision comes in. In the 1970s, some students
were struggling to come up with ideas for their business plan. I gave
them a HBS case study on a small U.S. company called Identicon
that had come up with the bar code but could not think of an appli-
cation for it. In response to my students’ questions and since I was
making one of my frequent trips to Boston anyway, I dropped by
Identicon’s offices there. They offered me the exclusive rights to the
barcode system in Spain and Portugal for $3,000, the price of the
two scanner systems needed to do demos.
The MBAs thought that the barcodes would never amount to any-
thing and they left me out to dry. I asked two or three Spanish com-
panies if they were interested in acquiring the rights, but no one
thought barcodes had any future. What lack of vision we all had! I
was able to save face and back out of the agreement without any
cost. There are many stories like this I could tell.
And even once you’ve got your business idea, opportunity and
vision, the first years can be a bumpy ride. The founders of Log-
isfashion, Advance Medical and many other companies had to
fine-tune their business plan to capture the elusive opportunity they
had in sight. Their tenacity and financial prudence allowed them to
finally grab it. From that moment on they stepped on the gas and
their companies are today small, successful multinationals.
These issues are the focus of our NAVES course: how to spot an
opportunity (inside or outside a company); how to formulate busi-
ness plan; and then how to make it a reality. IESE’s close ties with
alumni have led to their involvement in the Business Angels Net-
work, FINAVES, the various forums and more directly by phone and
e-mail contact with faculty who are passionate about this field of
business creation that is so vital to society’s advancement.http://insight.iese.edu/researchexcellence08http://insight.iese.edu/researchexcellence08
For more information:
Publicidad
19
doc_631969131.pdf
In such a brief explanation about igniting entrepreneurship.
Pedro Nueno
Professor of Entrepreneurship
IESE Business School
[email protected]
Executive Summary
IESE Prof. Pedro Nueno introduced
entrepreneurship as a course on the MBA
program 35 years ago in 1974. Its launch
came six years before the school introduced
the bi-lingual MBA program in 1980, and so it
was known initially as NAVES, a contraction of
“Nuevas Aventuras Empresariales” (“New Business
Adventures”).
Since then, many IESE MBA, Executive MBA and
Global Executive MBA students and participants
have been inspired by the course to set up their
own “new business adventure” across the globe.
Prof. Nueno, along with his colleagues in the
Department of Entrepreneurship, continue to
make every effort to support alumni in this field
of business creation that is so vital to society.
The inspiration for the IESE entrepreneurship course in the school’s MBA programs came to me during
my time studying for a doctoral degree at Harvard University. Besides working as a research assistant,
and juggling all my doctoral thesis obligations, I took the “Starting New Ventures” course. As soon as
I got back to IESE, I decided to launch a similar course.
Entrepreneurship
Igniting Entrepreneurship
Profs. Richard Dooley and Patrick Liles launched a second-year MBA course on entrepreneur-
ship titled “Starting New Ventures” at Harvard Business School (HBS) in the late 1960s. It
soon became one of the business school’s most sought-after electives. As a Ph.D. candidate
at HBS in the early 1970s, I was aware of how much I could learn from the school’s MBA
program. So, besides working as a research assistant (to pay the bills) and juggling all my doc-
toral thesis obligations, I took advantage of being able to participate in the MBA program,
slating a full work load every semester. I remember taking courses on energy, real estate,
strategy and international business. But what interested me the most was undoubtedly the
“Starting New Ventures” course.
As soon as I got back to IESE I decided to launch a similar course. I asked Prof. Dooley for per-
mission to more or less copy it. In 1974, no one struggled with the great intellectual debate of
whether to study for an MBA in Spanish at IESE in Barcelona or in English at HBS in Boston.
Dooley was honored by my request and gave me the go-ahead. I named the course “Nuevas
Aventuras Empresariales” (“New Business Adventures”) and the MBA students, practical as
always, immediately contracted its name to NAVES (Nuevas Aventuras Empresariales) or
“ships” in Spanish. Back in the early days, I translated HBS cases into Spanish. But I wanted
to add another dimension to the course. So I asked students to prepare a business plan for an
innovative business opportunity. It would be a useful assignment for all the students, even for
those who were not interested in starting their own company.
Years later, Prof. Dooley came to IESE’s Barcelona campus for a semester to teach the course
with me. By then, the IESE MBA was taught in English, the student body had grown consid-
erably and NAVES was one of the most popular classes. NAVES featured original case studies
based on the experiences of IESE alumni entrepreneurs. And this is the structure we have
maintained to this day. Over the last 30 years or so, more than 100 cases have been written,
and students on the full-time MBA program have drafted over 1,000 business plans. On top
of that, IESE now offers the NAVES course in the Executive MBA and the Global Executive
MBA, so the total number of business plans prepared by IESE alumni is approaching 2,000.
IESE’s Department of Entrepreneurship took a leap forward when Dean Jordi Canals allowed
the NAVES course to be the centerpiece of an academic department. This made it possible to
attract excellent faculty such as Prof. Julia Prats, who holds a doctorate from HBS where she
worked with Prof. Howard Stevenson, one of the world’s leading experts in entrepreneurship.
Antonio Dávila, another Ph.D. graduate from HBS joined the faculty along with Juan Roure.
While studying for his Ph.D. at Stanford University in California, Roure witnessed the Silicon
Valley entrepreneurial boom first hand. And Chris Zott left INSEAD in Paris to join IESE.
NAVES continued to chart new waters for a number of years. Early on it launched a yearly
forum to showcase MBA students’ business plans to potential sponsors. Many of these busi-
ness plans became actual businesses thanks to that presentation to business leaders, most of
them alumni, who came to “invest” in IESE’s MBAs.
Logisfashion, a logistic operator specialized in the textile sector is one example that comes
to mind. Three MBA ’96 graduates, Juan Manzanedo, Carlos Villa and Juan Martínez,
16
IESE Alumni Magazine / APRIL - JUNE 2009
Luciano Lozano
18
IESE Alumni Magazine / APRIL - JUNE 2009
launched the company that same year. Logisfashion now has
over 80,000 m
2
storage capacity in Spain, Chile and Mexico.
Another of the course’s innovations was to create a venture
capital fund, called FINAVES, to provide seed capital for start-ups.
Over 15 companies obtained their first capital thanks to FINAVES.
For faculty, FINAVES is a fascinating lab in which to study the
day-to-day process of starting a new company.
Professors in IESE’s Department of Entrepreneurship also
launched an active business angels network, headed by Prof.
Roure. On top of that, faculty has established several new com-
petitions, conferences and award programs. They have pub-
lished over 20 books and countless case studies and articles. All
this could not have been achieved without the help of people
like Neus Martínez, Amparo San José, Mathieu Carenzo, Emily
Kunze, Silvia Gomáriz, Isabel Cuesta, Rosa Fité and Juan L.
Segurado.
Many IESE alumni have started new companies or undertaken
entrepreneurial activities such as rescuing a distressed company
or diversifying efficiently. If we start on the West Coast of the
United States, we find Benjamin Krempel (MBA ’99) in San
Francisco, with Aqueduct Medical, which provides post-op
machines for cosmetic and trauma surgery patients. Over on the
U.S. East Coast, we find Fritz Folts (MBA ’91) in Boston, a con-
summate entrepreneur in financial services.
And across the Atlantic in Europe we find Andrea Christenson
(MBA ’83) with her Käthe Kruse toy and children’s wear com-
pany in Germany. Or we could talk with Andrés Cárdenas (AMP
’97), who spearheaded the leveraged buy-out of Sintax Logís-
tica, a company specialized in international logistics services.
If we continue moving east all the way to China we can find
entrepreneurs who have gone through IESE programs organized
jointly with CEIBS and HBS, such as Xu Han, who created a
medical diagnosis company 15 years ago that is now listed on
the NYSE. Or Yang Lan, who created Sun Media, a top Chinese
TV and media company.
There are entrepreneurial IESE alumni operating in virtually all
business sectors. In technology we find Lucas Carné (MBA ’99)
from Privalia and Antonio González-Barros from Grupo Inter-
com (AMP ’01); in retail - Javier Relats from Aita, in financial
services the brothers Borja García-Nieto (MBA ’97) and Ignacio
García-Nieto (Executive MBA ’87) at Riva y García.
Catching the right wave
Of course, there are aspects of entrepreneurship that are beyond the
controlled environment of the classroom. An entrepreneur needs an
opportunity and vision. But opportunity is elusive. Sometimes our
stars are aligned and the opportunity coincides perfectly with the
business concept’s launch.
Other times, the opportunity is right under our nose and we fail to
see it. This is where vision comes in. In the 1970s, some students
were struggling to come up with ideas for their business plan. I gave
them a HBS case study on a small U.S. company called Identicon
that had come up with the bar code but could not think of an appli-
cation for it. In response to my students’ questions and since I was
making one of my frequent trips to Boston anyway, I dropped by
Identicon’s offices there. They offered me the exclusive rights to the
barcode system in Spain and Portugal for $3,000, the price of the
two scanner systems needed to do demos.
The MBAs thought that the barcodes would never amount to any-
thing and they left me out to dry. I asked two or three Spanish com-
panies if they were interested in acquiring the rights, but no one
thought barcodes had any future. What lack of vision we all had! I
was able to save face and back out of the agreement without any
cost. There are many stories like this I could tell.
And even once you’ve got your business idea, opportunity and
vision, the first years can be a bumpy ride. The founders of Log-
isfashion, Advance Medical and many other companies had to
fine-tune their business plan to capture the elusive opportunity they
had in sight. Their tenacity and financial prudence allowed them to
finally grab it. From that moment on they stepped on the gas and
their companies are today small, successful multinationals.
These issues are the focus of our NAVES course: how to spot an
opportunity (inside or outside a company); how to formulate busi-
ness plan; and then how to make it a reality. IESE’s close ties with
alumni have led to their involvement in the Business Angels Net-
work, FINAVES, the various forums and more directly by phone and
e-mail contact with faculty who are passionate about this field of
business creation that is so vital to society’s advancement.http://insight.iese.edu/researchexcellence08http://insight.iese.edu/researchexcellence08
For more information:
Publicidad
19
doc_631969131.pdf