Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School is a top European Management School, with campuses in Gent and Leuven, Belgium, and St-Petersburg, Russia. Being the autonomous Management School of Gent University and K.U. Leuven, the School also has important international alliances with universities and business schools all over the world, such as Peking University in China and Amsterdam Business School in the Netherlands. In recent years, the School has been steadily climbing the international rankings in the Financial Times and the Economist, up to reaching the top 10 in the FT European Business School rankings. As one of a select group of institutions Vlerick holds three main international accreditations: the American AACSB, the British AMBA and the European EQUIS quality label.

As an academic management School, research is central to the mission of the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School. Research and business expertise are combined in the varied programme portfolio.

Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School offers:
    - Part-time, Full-time and Executive MBAs
    - Masters in General, Financial and Marketing Management
    - Executive Master Classes in several expertise domains
    - Long and short Management programmes.

We invite you to visit our website at vlerick.com/mba, to find out more about us you can join us on Linkedin / Facebook / Twitter / YouTube.

Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School Day In The Life Podcast 10.0 MB 28:32 Min

Guest list:

• Corinne Centonze – Full-time MBA student
• Andrew Mason – Full-time MBA student
• Philippe Haspeslagh – Dean of Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School
• Peter Rafferty – International Business Development Director
• David Venter – Director of the MBA Program
• Robert Boute – Assistant Professor in MBA Program

Links:

• Full-time MBA programme: vlerick.com/ftmba
• All MBAs: vlerick.com/mba
• Masters: vlerick.com/masters
• General management programmes: vlerick.com/go/programmes
• Career Services : vlerick.com/en/network/recruit.html

Transcription:

Welcome to MBA Podcaster’s Day in the Life series. This time we travel to Belgium to showcase one of Europe’s leading business schools, Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School. To hear how this school offers a unique, personalized business education to students from across the globe. “It’s been a great experience they tell you to spend a lot of time with people from all around the world.” “It’s really an important matter for a student to feel that they are home and to feel comfortable.” “We have become the fastest rising business school of the European rankings table of the FT.” “We don’t really see our students as students. We see them as persons in the full sense of the word.”

This business school located in the very heart of Europe believes in a personal approach. Vlerick has three campuses in the Gent and Leuven in Belgium and one in St. Petersburg in Russia. “The school has developed its own campus in St. Petersburg where it has a part in many of the first international MBA in Russia.” The school is also a degree granting partner in the BMBA in Beijing, “We have our extended campus at the University of Peking campus known as BMBA where we have part-time and full-time students.”

I’m Bobbie Owens for MBA Podcaster and we are at the Leuven campus. It is 12 o’clock noon and the full-time MBA students are playing Imax Business game this week. “We’re ready to take over the companies of the teams.” This is Corinne; she’s a 30-year-old professional from Switzerland. She holds a masters degree in Environmental Science. Before coming to Vlerick she worked as a product manager in the food retail industry and had founded an NGO. “I think we’ve had some really interesting discussions about what our strategies should be and how we want to come to market. “That is Andrew Mason from Canada. He is also 30. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Political Science. Before embarking on his MBA adventure he worked as an associate investment banker, “With six people in the room who are all bright people you get a lot of input and are able to make some pretty informed decisions so it’s been good about sitting all around and discussing whether our strategy should be inputting some of our courses into context. It’s been a good experience.” “We’re not doing too well right now.” “I’d say that our share price has been going down steadily, unfortunately but we are very confident that we will manage to turn it around. We have been investing a lot lately and operational excellence and the mass market strategy means you have to put in some money first and produce a lot and at the end you will the big profits and we are ready to take over the companies of other teams.” Confident. “We’re always confident.”

Assistant Robert Boute has joined us to elaborate on this intensive business game, “The Imax game is a virtual business game where the MBA students are divided into different teams and every team has to run their own production company. Different companies they are direct competitors in the sense that they all fight for the same customer so there is a 100% market available and all of the different MBA teams they try to catch as much market share as possible compared to their competitors. The game runs virtually over three years. We play it in reality in one week. And in every quarter of a year all of the companies have to make decisions. They have to decide how much do they produce. They have to decide how much people do they recruit. They have to decide how much they train because the higher training will lead to a higher quality of the product and they have to decide on the marketing efforts. At the end of the program this type of game is valuable because it’s a way to practice what the professors preach and this is what the game actually does.”

Another end of the year project to prove their game skills is a business plan which the MBA students had to present last week, “It’s based on yeast as raw material. Brewers yeast and we use it to produce to encapsulate nutrients and it’s a market that already exists but we come up with a new technology that is patented. We worked together with researchers in Switzerland and we really saw very big opportunities for that product and we’re actually going to launch that business. So the first step will be to find funding for it but we’re pretty confident that we will find research funding in Switzerland.” “My team’s project was developing online media content so web 2.0 content for the education sector and for our project we’re looking specifically at our business school experience and how business schools recruit and use the web for recruitment purposes, to share content, share media, the impact of social networks in education. So what we had a team of two other students and we decide that we’d provide consultancy to that sector so we’d help companies shape their marketing strategy, help them develop content, help them implement some web 2.0 tools and really help get schools more online and get them more involved in what’s going on online because we thought that that was a real opportunity that schools were missing out on. I think we’re 46 people and 23 different countries so it’s been a great experience to spend a lot of time with people from all around the world and understand how they work and how they think.”

The Vlerick MBA is the third most international MBA program in the world. Peter Rafferty, Director of International Business Development also stresses the wide diversity in the full-time MBA class, “We have each year around 65 students and for us the target is to comprise a group that is as diverse as possible. Our diversity is a word that is used in different sects and different cultures. What we are doing is reverting back to the original use of that word which means the differences that we can bring into the class. So we bring in differences in terms of professional experience of the students, their educational experience and history, their work experience that they’ve undergone both in their own cultures but more importantly for us in another culture. So it’s what we look for in terms of international experience that is really important. And we look for diversity in terms obviously of gender but also in terms of where the students have spent time and energy outside of their professional lives. So we’re looking for contributions to their communities, to societies, to the arts. We’re looking for creativity almost in any area and we look for evidence of an interest in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship in its widest sense. That is the creation of economic activity or activity for development purposes. We’re particularly proud that the student body is 40% female and that is a very high ratio of female participation, it is one that we are aiming achieve and to be consistent at. So the outlook for us is a much more balanced world of MBAs going into the job market.”

“It’s a professional environment and when you come as a MBA student that’s what you want to find. You learn a lot of theory and you want to see that the professors and that the management of the school apply it which is the case here. There is a very good infrastructure. A lot of students spend their days and weekends in the school and it’s really an important matter for us to feel at home and to feel comfortable.” Feeling at home is exactly what the Dean of Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School values important, “My name is Philippe Haspeslagh. I am a graduate from this school but now actually the dean. Personal care for the students is very important to us. And I think that the experience of most people going through Vlerick is that it is a team oriented, nice, not overly competitive but entirely dynamic experience which is quite unique in diversity of students and of international composition. It’s not a big MBA factory; it’s a place for people who want personal care and attention and a great group of friends, and a great group of colleagues. Vlerick was one of the earliest business schools in Europe. It started in ’53 in Gent University as a very entrepreneurial business school, very close to business. And then ten years ago it merged with Leuven business school which is the business school of the second oldest in Europe that is. The entrepreneurship of Gent sort of combined with the strong technology and innovation orientation of Leuven because Leuven after Cambridge is the second largest center of university spin-offs in Europe. In the recent years we have become the fastest rising business school on the European rankings table of the FT; entering the top ten last year. We have been one of the first schools to be triple accredited and actually we were nominated for best practice in three areas which may be of interested to students. One is in terms of partnerships with businesses, the second one in terms of personal care for our students, and the third one in terms of intergovernance. Another characteristic of Vlerick is the importance it has always given to corporate responsibility. CSR is not only a core course but the school is a founding member of the Abbeys. This is something our personnel is very dedicated to our working very actively at reducing our own ecological footprint. And last characteristic of the school is that from the beginning it has been the school for generalists. I guess those of us reflecting on the current crisis realize that the crisis has not happened because of lack of technicality or technical sophistication but more because too much of it and because of a lack of real management and generalist leadership capability to deal with risks, to look at the overall aspects of the company and to have a real honest assessment of the situation. I think if you come to Vlerick you will not be trained in our game techniques. You will be trained to be a generalist with principals and values.”

“I found Vlerick to be great. It’s small class size so you don’t feel like you’re a number. You feel very good personal connection with all of your classmates and certainly all of your professors and all of the administrative staff. Charlotte who runs the program is fantastic.” David Venter the Director of the Vlerick MBA program, “We don’t only see our students as students. We see them as persons in the full sense of the word. And therefore our course has a program director apart from a coordinator and their responsibility is not only to take care of the academic side of the life of our students but most importantly also to apply what I would refer to a personal role in terms of our students. We really want the look at them in all other aspects whether it be housing, whether it be health, whether it’s sometimes even the affairs of the heart and a little bit of outside attention is required. We are there to help. We are available. Sometimes just to motivate when examinations don’t go the way they go or the assignments are starting to pile-up and to help them sort out themselves.”

The full-time MBAs taught entirely at the Leuven campus. All students come to live and study in this historic University City, “Living Leuven has been great. It’s the classic kind of European town. It’s very beautiful and nice and kind of classic European. It’s really easy to get along in Leuven; I found I don’t speak any Dutch or Flemish I guess, sorry. And I do speak French but it’s not very useful in Leuven but it’s been a really good experience because there’s a huge university here so there’s a lot of infrastructure in terms of availability of people for international students. Certainly everyone in Leuven I’ve found knows English really well so even if you don’t know Flemish you can get along quite easily here. It’s difficult sometimes like any place but I think most people are very good about speaking English to you and are happy to help. It’s really fun; the Belgium people are really great people, really nice people. And it’s very easy to get along in Leuven certainly. A lot easier than I studied in Vienna previously in my undergrad and comparatively speaking it’s been a lot easier and the Belgium people are excellent English speakers, it’s easy to get around.”

Peter Rafferty originally from Ireland has been living in Leuven for nine years now, “I’m been here now for nine years and I have yet to meet a single person anywhere in any of my activities who cannot speak to me clearly and comprehensively in English and so that’s a real bonus point for me being able to be on the European mainland right next to the capital of Europe but to be able to operate totally in English is just superb. Another area of attraction that really can’t be ignored is the context, the physical context of the city of Leuven. The university was founded in 1425 and some of the buildings that are actually still in use belong to that medieval period and it’s a real pleasure when studies have ended to go and enjoy the superb social life and cultural life that exists here. It’s interesting that the other big activity in the city of Leuven is the world headquarters of Anheuser-Busch InBev perhaps the biggest brewer in the world and of course as a MBA program we use a lot of the local big companies and the international companies to visit the school to recruit our MBA students.”

“I love Leuven, really. And when I was looking for the MBA I didn’t want to go for a big city because in a small city you can have a better orientation quickly. I mean the time is limited to one year and in terms of mobility, going around meeting people I saw more chances and I really am very fascinated about this city because it is a university town and the average age of the persons walking on the road is maybe something around 25. So the bars, the restaurants, everything is done for students. It’s always full of people as soon as there is a bit of sunlight which is not too often in Belgium everyone is sitting on the terrace and there is just a very nice atmosphere. And I think in terms of support that you need as a student because we are students for one year you really find everything here.”

“And I think it’s also easy to get around because it’s only about 25 minutes from downtown Brussels and there is a train station right near Leuven or right in Leuven and I mean it’s an hour and half on the train to Paris, it’s two hours to London, two hours to Amsterdam so it’s very easy and convenient to get around, to travel, to go see other European capitals. It’s been a good central place to be.” “Living in Leuven is also great from a transportation perspective. I have my bike here as most of the students and I am completely free and independent. I don’t need a car and it’s just a very, very practical city.”

So it’s four o’clock already and Andrew and Corinne are going back to their team where they will try to raise the stock price of their virtual company until seven. I just really want to know what is still ahead of them this MBA year. “So we’ve got the IMAX game for another two days and then we’ve got a couple of classes next week preparing for international study trips that we have. This year there are international study trips being offered to China, South Africa, the United States and Russia.” “Yeah and India.” “And India. So we’re getting ready for those so there are country presentations next week and then we’re off for two weeks for our Easter break which includes our international study trips.” “I’m going to China, to Beijing yeah.”

“So we’re all looking forward to going to China. And we believe that for our students it’s a very valuable experience because afterall China is becoming an increasingly important economy. And will in due course probably become the biggest economy in the world. So a lot of our business is going to the east and makes a good lot of sense to equip our students very well for that purpose. It’s possible that in future years we will look at other possibilities but for the moment I think our focus is on China.”

“And then after that we come back and we have a very quick week where we have seminars from McKenzie about project management and that moves into our in-company project which is a big part of the course. And the in-company projects really are consulting project that you provide for a company for seven weeks at the kind of as a final major project in your MBA I guess you could call it the thesis of your MBA. So you’re in a company helping them solve the strategic problem or solve any kind of problem that they’re looking to solve. Working on-site, working with the company and in my case my project is going to be with a major pharmaceutical company in Europe helping them develop a venture fund. So works well with my background, my two partners in the project also have very strong backgrounds in pharma and private equity so it’s a great mix of people. So I’m looking forward to it and it’s going to be a good opportunity to put a lot of what we learned into practice.” “I am really looking forward to it. For me it’s important to stay, to get a feeling of working in Belgium to get a bit of that more international experience in working life.”

“In terms of destinations the MBAs when they graduate tend to go all over the planet. A third of them stay in Europe. About a third of them go back to their home country. And the remaining third tend to go to completely different places, new places where opportunities have opened for them during the MBA. At the moment we have something like 14,000 alumni in over 100 countries. And in addition to their very close knit network that the person generates in the class they have immediate access to that entire network of alumni around the world.”

We meet with David Venter, the Director of the Vlerick MBA Program. We ask him what makes this project so special. What makes the Vlerick MBA special? “I’m often asked you know what is it about this MBA that makes it so special? Because afterall as you’ve heard it’s very highly regarded and increasingly highly regarded in the world. So it must have something that makes it very unique. And I believe it is a whole bouquet of qualities. Yes most undoubtedly the students, the most important ingredient. But then also the fact that it is situated in a school that is not burdened by bureaucracy in a school that is totally independent in a school which has a philosophy of lead and be led. That listened very; very carefully to the market and within academic framework tries to establish programs that are as closely related to what the market would require. Naturally the MBA has the full array of normal course subjects that you would find at any school within a MBA. But it also is special in many ways. We seek to build a unique balance between hard and softer skills and therefore in the Vlerick MBA we see it as our task to equip our students to when they move out in the world of work one day to be more rounded individuals and people who can really stand their ground in all spheres of life so there’s a very, very good balance in our MBA between hard and soft skills. But we also understand that a MBA cannot only be about doing the things that you have to do. It also has to be a fuller experience and therefore we ensure that our students get as much social exposure as possible. Fortunately, in Belgium this is not a problem. We live in a country which is small but very beautiful. It has magnificent history, exemplified in its architecture, is a country which is extremely well known for very important things in the lives in students like beer and chocolates and every year we find that our students do participate in this quite actively and it really contributes to making a very, very good student experience.”

“We as part of the MBA have now a compulsory two week study trip and the 2009/10 group will go to China for two weeks. And for those two weeks there will be formal tuition, they will have the opportunity to explore the world of business in China, to interact with our students at our extended campus at the University of Peking campus known as BMBA. We have part-time and full-time students that will interact with their Chinese colleagues and it will become a very valuable cultural experience. So we really try within the MBA to give them a real full experience academically and otherwise. Furthermore, I think our career services also that we offer is very, very strong and very good. We have an outstanding person who has a very, very good understanding of the whole business of careers and does a tremendous amount of work with our students to give them first of all personal knowledge, and then knowledge of the world of work out there that they will have to approach. Equips them with the necessary skills to be able to go to the market and make the value proposition successfully to the market. Up to now naturally this is a very difficult year but up to now we’ve really had great success in terms of our students being able to find for themselves employment opportunities that really justify having done a MBA. And even this year well that’s more difficult and it’s more challenging and we know we have to put extra weight behind helping them we also believe that they will still succeed and will find themselves very worthy positions in the world of work. So all-in-all I am very, very excited that this is a great MBA program. I think this is a great school. I’m at that phase of my life that I’m fortunate that I can make choices and I choose to be here because I like Belgium, I like Belgium people, I like the environment in which I operate, I am absolutely thrilled with my colleagues, with their dedication, with their level of knowledge and skills and expertise. I think that what the school offers is a brilliant product and any person looking to launch themselves further in their life career, in their career should not look much further than Vlerick. It’s not the biggest school but it’s a school where you are not a number, you’re an individual and you’re recognized as an individual. It’s a school where people really care about you, not only from an academic perspective but as a person.”

I’m Bobbi Owens from Leuven, Belgium for MBAPodcaster.com. For more information, a transcript of this show or to register for your bi-weekly MBA podcast visit MBAPodcaster.com. Look for us on Twitter and Facebook to get the latest news and insight in the world of business schools. This is MBA Podcaster. Thanks for listening. And stay tuned for next time when we explore another topic of interest in your quest for a MBA.