• AACSB has included the Binational Node for Health Innovation, led by EGADE Business School, among the most innovative educational initiatives on the American continent.

Research is a core pillar of business schools, since it drives the advancement of the different disciplines and areas of knowledge, as well as up-to-date, quality education. However, as societies and companies transform, business schools must also capitalize on their academic strengths to develop the fertile space between theory and practice, in order to have a positive impact on their communities.

In the current context of digital disruption within the education sector, business schools are being called on to innovate in their knowledge creation and dissemination models, finding new ways of generating value drawn from relevant, high-impact applied research.

In order to acknowledge the most innovative initiatives that are redefining global business education, the accrediting agency AACSB International launched, for the fourth consecutive year, the Innovations That Inspire challenge. The result was more than 100 initiatives that demonstrate disruptive approaches in research, education, leadership, commitment and scope.

In the 2018-2019 challenge, AACSB has selected the Binational Node for Health Innovation (NoBi Health), an entrepreneurship program devoted to creating startups in Mexico’s healthcare sector, as an example of best practices. NoBi Health is an interinstitutional effort led by EGADE Business School, with the participation of Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS), Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos (UAEM) and Instituto Nacional de Rehabilitación (INR) Luis Guillermo Ibarra Ibarra.

The Binational Node for Health Innovation was honored for its standout publication Innovations and Best Practices in Canada, Latin America, and the United States 2018-19, together with the best innovation initiatives on the American continent, for their capacity to “drive MBA students to develop science- and technology-based entrepreneurship projects with the ultimate goal of creating social-impact startups,” according to AACSB.

Professor Fernando Moya, NoBi Health leader in the two editions he has offered at EGADE Business School, indicated that the program “has a huge impact on both MBA students and participating researchers, facilitating group learning that transforms their vision towards applied research and real-world problem solving.”

“AACSB recognizes innovations that permit the cocreation of knowledge by specialists from all fields, both inside and outside traditional business settings, and innovations that channel research activities towards solutions that will benefit community wellbeing; and this is precisely what NoBi Health achieves, ” he added.

For Lilia Bárcena, coordinator of NoBi Health, the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Enlace+ in Mexico City, “One of the accomplishments of this program has been a change in researcher vision, since the I-Corps methodology has made it possible to learn about business topics and the impact of their product on the market.”

“In the same way, through this program, MBA students have developed entrepreneurship competencies and skills so that, when graduating, they can validate any type of entrepreneurship and contribute to the creation of new technology companies that will have a social impact on Mexico and the world,” she stressed.

In this program, financed by Conacyt, teams made up of MBA students, researchers from the health sector and mentors, come face-to-face with the real world, where they learn to deal with their potential clients through in-person interviews and to experience the possibility of achieving knowledge transfer in relation to products and services that will benefit society.