By José Ángel de la Paz 

The Beta Gamma Sigma Chapter at EGADE Business School, founded in 2016, was recognized for the first time within the Chapter Honor Roll program of Beta Gamma Sigma (BGS), the international honor society that brings together top-performing students and alumni from AACSB-accredited business schools across the world.

EGADE Business School formed part of the institutions who were awarded Honors in the 2018-2019 academic year, for outstanding engagement of the chapter members and driving participation in the BGS global network.

With this recognition, the Beta Gamma Sigma Chapter at EGADE Business School earns the ability to present nominations for three exclusive BGS awards: Outstanding Chapter Advisor Award, Business Achievement Award and Entrepreneurial Achievement Award.

“Being members of Beta Gamma Sigma means belonging to an organization that is synonymous with the highest standards of academic excellence, so we are very proud to have been awarded this recognition, which clearly reflects the positive global impact of our students and alumni, derived from their enormous sense of humanity, transforming leadership and omni-entrepreneurial talent,” declared Ignacio de la Vega, dean of EGADE Business School.

“Congratulations to Dean Ignacio de la Vega and the entire Beta Gamma Sigma Chapter at EGADE Business School. This recognition is indicative of a school where academic excellence is highly valued and where the chapter faculty work diligently to exalt the stature of Beta Gamma Sigma,” expressed Chris Carosella, CEO of Beta Gamma Sigma.

The Chapter Honor Roll program annually distinguishes three categories: Highest Honors, High Honors and Honors, rating the chapters based on the number of students inducted every year, the results obtained through the BGS Chapter Annual Survey and the data compiled by BGS Global HQ.

This year, the chapters selected in the three categories will be recognized by BGS at diverse events, notably the AACSB International Conference and Annual Meeting, to be held from April 26 to 28, 2020, in Denver, Colorado.

Beta Gamma Sigma, founded in 1913, has more than 600 chapters and 875 thousand members recognized as the “best in business,” solely from AACSB-accredited schools, which comprise the top 5% worldwide.  

With Dr. Juan Antonio Enciso González as Chapter Advisor, to date, 263 members have been admitted to the Beta Gamma Sigma Chapter at EGADE Business School, made up of students and alumni with the top 20% grade average in their class.

Therefore, being accepted as a BGS member is the highest global accolade a business school student or graduate can receive.

By José Ángel de la Paz 

Nearly 200 graduates from EGADE Business School - Tecnológico de Monterrey returned this year to their alma mater to celebrate the second Annual Alumni Reunion in Mexico City.

The activities began in the evening of July 5th with the conferral of the first EGADE Alumni Achievement Award 2019 to Ana Karen Ramírez Téllez, graduate from the Full-Time MBA in Innovation & Entrepreneurship program of EGADE Business School, and founder and CEO of Epic Queen.

The young entrepreneur won the award for her leadership and social innovation at the head of this nonprofit, which is narrowing the gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (the so-called “STEM degrees”), offering online and face-to-face education to more than 20,000 girls and young women in Mexico.

The next day, July 6th, the graduates participated in class sessions, conferences and panels with renowned EGADE Business School alumni and faculty.

Ignacio de la Vega, dean of EGADE Business School and the School of Business of Tecnológico de Monterrey, praised the role of “one of our most important assets: this rich community of talented alumni.”

“The possibility of coming together and returning to the classroom to share the values of leadership, innovation and social commitment, common to everyone at EGADE Business School, is extremely enriching and uplifting,” said the dean.

Engel Fonseca, CEO of Potenttial Group, offered the conference “Management 2.0 and intelligence in the Digital era”.

"Management must focus on triggering the team’s highest potential, which translates into channeled freedom for innovation,” explained the also Vice-President of Manos Accelerator.

Later on, the alumni participated in parallel class sessions with EGADE Business School faculty members, Fernando Moya, Jesús Garza, Luli Pesqueira and Elliott Kruse to learn about the latest in business innovations, Mexico’s economic outlook, corporate sustainability and future vision.

Regarding the panel “Artificial Intelligence Artificial and the Future of Talent”, moderated  by Néstor Márquez, LinkedIn TopVoice LATAM 2018, participants commented:

"Being digital goes beyond having technology; there should be processes, experiences and cultural attributes. We shouldn’t just have technology, but also understand and mature it,” said Jorge Ponga, Human Capital partner at Deloitte México.

"Nowadays, we need to evolve structurally and create new positions to solve the challenges the digital revolution is taking to industries,” assured Yazmin Díaz, Digital Employer Branding & Recruitment Coordinator at L’Oréal.

"New technologies help us to analyze and make decisions faster,” indicated Roberto Villalvazo, Global Head of HR Development at Nemak.

“The digital revolution is here to stay; as individuals, we need to learn and evolve our skills constantly," stated Paulina Soriano, Global Talent Acquisition at Cinépolis.

The activities also included the Alumni Talks, by four outstanding graduates who recounted their leadership experiences:

“In life, we don’t have what we deserve, but what we’ve negotiated,” explained Alma Rosa García, EMBA graduate and CEO of Cielito Querido Café.

“When the priorities are clear, decisions are easy. I have four principles for transcending: do what you like doing, do it well, generate value for others and make it your way of life,” expressed Jorge Torres, OneMBA alumnus and President of FedEx Express in Mexico and of AmCham/México.

“Lifelong learning is a necessity; you never stop learning. Follow your dreams and you will achieve them,” said Irene Espínola, MMT graduate and Global Director of Renewable Energy at Grupo Bimbo.

“Invest in whatever will take you wherever you want to go; you are your most valuable intangible," expressed Adriana Berrocal, EMBA alumna and partner at Deloitte.

In the networking session that brought the event to a close, the alumni were reunited with their graduate classmates, concluding the catch-up weekend with the opportunity to meet other business leaders and continue to drive innovation to support the development of Mexico.

By Karla Díaz

EGADE Business School presented its first EGADE ALUMNI Achievement Award, within the framework of the welcome dinner for the 2019 Annual Alumni Meeting, in Mexico City.

Ana Karen Ramírez, a graduate from the Full-Time MBA in Innovation & Entrepreneurship, received the school’s highest alumni honor for her professional career and impact on the transformation of society.

The award winner is the founder and CEO of Epic Queen, a social enterprise that seeks to narrow the gender gap in the technology sector, having impacted over 20,000 girls and young women through STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) academic programs.  

“With the EGADE ALUMNI Achievement Award, we are celebrating and recognizing the talent and impact generated by our graduates in Mexico and across the world. Ana Karen, through Epic Queen, empowers thousands of young Mexican women and, at EGADE Business School, we are convinced of her enormous transforming potential and her contribution to the ongoing creation of a better future for society,” said Ignacio de la Vega, dean of EGADE Business School and the School of Business of Tecnológico de Monterrey.  

Ana Karen Ramírez was named by Endeavor as a “Young Leader of the Americas” and is a member of the World Economic Forum’s “Global Shapers” community. In 2014, she was selected by Alta Ventures as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs in Mexico and chosen as one of the 80 worldwide leaders to participate in the Global Solutions program of Singularity University, in Silicon Valley.

“I am deeply grateful to the entire EGADE and Tecnológico de Monterrey community and honored to receive the EGADE ALUMNI Achievement Award. It gives me enormous satisfaction, since it highlights the value of social entrepreneurs who want to transform Mexico,” commented Karen Ramírez.

Epic Queen has been recognized as one of the 20 best educational innovations in Mexico by Ashoka, and also by EY as one of the top 100 digital social innovation initiatives that are transforming Latin America.

The EGADE ALUMNI Achievement Award recognizes the impact attained in academic, entrepreneurial, corporate, public or social areas, consistent with the institutional vision of leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship for human flourishing.

The award selection committee, made up of the President of the EGADE Alumni Association and EGADE Business School leaders, studied more than 50 nominations.

Watch this video to find out more about Ana Karen Ramírez.

By José Ángel de la Paz

Nineteen students from six Global Network for Advanced Management (GNAM) schools came together at EGADE Business School in Mexico City to explore the topic of Social Innovation, within the June 2019 EMBA Global Network Week.

The participants, of 11 different nationalities, are MBA students from EGADE Business School (Mexico), Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley (USA), Yale School of Management (USA), ESMT Berlin (Germany), Fudan University School of Management (China) and UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School (Ireland).

Through conferences, debates and experiential learning,  EGADE Business School’s “Social Innovation” immersed the participants in the process of finding innovative solutions for social transformation.

The program explored the idea of Social Innovation from three perspectives:

• Context: which factors foster or hinder social innovation in a particular context?
• Agent: who generates social innovation, why and what for?
• Mechanisms: what makes it possible to combine existing elements in new ways, across sectors and disciplines, forming new social relationships?

The EGADE Business School academics who taught the course were Eric Porras, National Director of MBA Programs, and professors Ezequiel Reficco, Francisco Layrisse, Ezequiel Reficco and Luli Pesqueira, specialists in Corporate Sustainability, Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development.

Furthermore, guest speakers from Ashoka and Gentera, among others, offered participants diverse viewpoints to understand the social innovation scenario in Mexico and Latin America.  

Through business, cultural and recreational trips, the participants visited the Impact Mx innovation hub, the “green” accelerator New Ventures, the archeological zone of Teotihuacán, Mexico City’s Historical Center, the National Museum of Anthropology and the Coyoacán neighborhood.

During the week, some of the participants in the EMBA Global Network Week held in Mexico City commented on their experience:

“(I have met) people from around the world sharing ideas, willing to participate, to connect with you, to stay in touch, to share all about what are they doing and how they do it in their countries," said EGADE Business School student, Juan Pablo Préstamo.

"This experience at the Global Network Week has been amazing. It's been fantastic to meet new people from all over the world," said EGADE Business School student, Karla Peña.

“Coming to EGADE taught me so much about this industry (Social Innovation) which I was not aware of,” said Haas School of Business student, Anuja Verma.

“I was able to interact with different (social) entrepreneurs, see their ideas, their passion, and offer some guidance and advice afterward. It was an amazing experience. I loved this (Global Network) Week,” said Yale School of Management student, Caleb Cheng.

“The GNAM experience at EGADE has been so impactful for me. I wanted to experience its city and its wonderful Mexican culture. I would 100 percent recommend this experience. The program is phenomenal putting Social Innovation in action,” said Yale School of Management student, Ashley Lorenz.

This edition of the EMBA Global Network Week took place from June 0 to 14 at fifteen of the GNAM network schools, including EGADE Business School.

A total of 48 EGADE Business School students, from the EGADE MBA and MBA in Global Business & Strategy programs, participated globally.

The EGADE Business School students who participated outside of Mexico travelled to 11 GNAM member schools, such as UNSW Business School (Australia), IE Business School (Spain), Asian Institute of Management (Philippines), Hitotsubashi University Business School (Japan), Seoul National University Business School (South Korea), among others.

EGADE Business School is a founding partner of GNAM, comprised of 30 leading business schools from diverse regions, countries, cultures and economies from across the world.

Alejandro Ibarra-Yúnez, professor emeritus of EGADE Business School, received the “Raúl Conde Hernández” Prize for Excellence in Research, within the XXIII International Conference for Research in Administrative Sciences “The Digital Economy and its Impact on the Management  of Organizations.”

The award is given to the best paper within the academic event organized by  the Academy of Administrative Sciences (ACACIA), held, in the 2019 edition, from May 21 to 24, at Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí.

The award-winning paper was “Promotion and Growth of Demand Response in Mexico: Lessons from US Experiences,” written by Ibarra-Yúnez in collaboration with Mary Collins and James Mahady, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

“The study analyzes the feasibility of creating business models to reduce the price of congestion periods and high prices of energy in peak hours, thereby increasing electrical energy efficiency in intensive energy users, while extending the benefits to medium- and small-scale users,” Ibarra-Yúnez commented.

Moreover, the Economics and Public Policy professor explained that the work addresses the need to transcend past bilateral contracts between the state-owned electricity generation company, CFE, and energy users towards purchase-sale models in the wholesale market, and extend such opportunities to non-conventional clean and renewable energies to enhance the development of the electricity market in the current transition period.

Dr. Ibarra-Yúnez’s paper was selected as the best from among a total of 360 works presented during the  XXIII International Conference for Research in Administrative Sciences, considering the relevance of the subject matter, the integration of a pertinent, up-to-date theoretical framework, the development of an appropriate methodological framework, and the transcendence of the findings presented, among other criteria.

• 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.

EGADE Business School announced the incorporation of Jaime Martínez Bowness to the Institution as Site Director of EGADE Business School in Mexico City, as of June 3, 2019.

"With the leadership of Jaime and the collaboration of the entire team we will continue to consolidate the positioning, impact and influence of EGADE Business School in Mexico City," said Ignacio de la Vega, Dean of EGADE Business School, through a statement.

Martínez Bowness is an entrepreneur with extensive experience in the areas of education and development of human capital in Mexico. During the past eight years, Jaime has served as General Director of Fundación Pro Universitaria, a non-profit platform he founded to promote youth employability programs and skills development, as well as the Pro Meritum initiative, one of the largest programs of internships from Mexico.

He was previously Co-founder and part of the leadership team of the Citibanamex Youth of Excellence program, which provides training and mentoring to outstanding young people to access postgraduate studies worldwide.

He has also been Co-Founder and Director of TestPoint, a preparation center for international postgraduate admission exams, while serving as Admissions Advisor for Latin American applicants to global universities at the graduate level.

He has also been a Senior Investigator in Human Capital of the Development Research Center, A.C. (CIDAC), Advisor in the General Assembly of the National Electoral Institute and Strategy Advisor in Semarnat. He has also collaborated as editor and columnist in various Latin American business publications and is the author of several academic essays.

Martínez Bowness has an MBA with a concentration in Entrepreneurship from Duke University (Fuqua School of Business) and a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from ITAM. He has also completed continuous development programs at the University of California.

The “For & From: Inditex Group's Social Franchise” case study, written by Dr. Ezequiel Reficco, research professor at EGADE Business School, in collaboration with Dr. Alfred Vernis, professor at ESADE Business School, was chosen as a winner in the Competition of Case Writing 2018 of the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), in the category “Inclusive Business Models”.

The award-winning work focuses on the For & From chain of stores, launched by some of the Inditex brands in partnership with social organizations through a franchise model, to create a support ecosystem for people with disabilities, and that they receive training in retail sales, gain experience and strengthen your self-esteem.

“The case of For & From is essentially a new way of conceiving Corporate Social Responsibility. We know the limitations of launching projects to "feel good" separate from the core activity of the company, or to accumulate company stamps that "do good". It is time to bring social projects closer to the main corporate assets and capabilities. The case shows how this can be done through corporate social entrepreneurship, ”Reficco said.

Inditex, one of the largest fashion distribution groups in the world, is made up of brands such as Zara, Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, among others.

EFMD, recognized worldwide as a global accreditation body for business schools, business school programs and corporate universities, has organized its annual case writing competition over the past 30 years.

In the 2018 edition of the contest 17 categories were included, focusing on specific topics and regions of the world, with the aim of encouraging and supporting the drafting and creation of new and innovative case material.

Winning cases, such as co-written by Reficco and Vernis, were made in collaboration with companies, reflecting the current social and economic changes around the world, and providing deep learning and an inspiring experience for students.

The full list of winning cases of the EFMD 2018 Case Writing Competition can be found here.