IESE: Where Small Global Classes & Case Studies Are A Beautiful Thing

Byrne: Did you have some doubts about launching that degree?

Heukamp: At the time, there was a clear priority of actually growing the MBA program. We’ve been growing it from three sections of about 210 students in 2010 to 350 today, and there was a lot of focus on that. It required resources and remodeling of the campus. So there was neither the attention span nor even the physical space to actually think of an additional program.

The MBA is good where it is right now, and I think also over the years there’s been a little more clarification about whether master in management programs could peacefully coexist with MBA degrees or not. Or whether they would somehow create a problem in the alumni base. I think we had the benefit of working on other projects to watch this evolve. I realize that it does work at other schools that are similar to ours and so that’s why we are launching it.

Byrne: When does the expansion open up in Madrid?

Heukamp: September of 2020. The first group that will be starting the new master in management will still be on the old campus, and then the second year when we have the second group in place, it will be already open for service.

Byrne: What else will you do with the additional capacity in Madrid?

Heukamp: Right now, we have very few international programs there in English, so we plan to do more of that. We’re doing a lot of it here in Barcelona and in Munich, of course. We just needed more space. And there is a general issue of simply having more faculty present there to actually attend to the different things that we do. We have 22 faculty members in residence there, but there is no faculty member who can currently move to Madrid or can be hired for Madrid because there is no more space. But we will be having space for an additional 25 faculty members there, and that’s also really needed. If you want to do meaningful projects with students, with alumni, with partner companies, also more executive education, you need people around.

Byrne: And how long will it take you to hire 25 new people?

Heukamp: I don’t know exactly. We are hiring, currently, each year between five and 10. That’s already happening depending on the year. So the additional 25 in Madrid will take us a few years. Now, we already have today 115 full-time faculty members, and we are growing at the rate of five, six each year anyway. So this will take us a few years to fill this segment in Madrid, but not long.

Byrne: And then your Munich EMBA program. Will you fly people in for that?

Heukamp: In the beginning, yes. The program will run on alternating weekends, and in some cases actually every three weeks, so it’s a format that’s supposed to be relatively easy both on students and faculty. We will fly in the faculty. For me, it is a two-hour flight, and that’s not a big deal.

Byrne: How is that executive MBA market in Europe right now?

Heukamp: The business school market in Germany specifically is really in development. For different reasons, there are no very long established German business schools, and there is also a lack of knowledge with German business people. But it’s growing. There are more and more institutions there now, and the market has been created. There are people who do know what MBAs are. They have executive MBAs and there are a few more players, so right now it’s not a big market if you compare it to the size of the country. But we think there is a lot of potential in this.

Byrne: And IESE already has EMBA programs in Barcelona, Madrid, and Brazil.

Heukamp: That’s right. That’s right. So we have, on campus in Madrid, 240. In Barcelona 240. And 80 in Sao Paulo. The first class in Munich will have about 40 students. In our case, it’s positioned a little bit more junior than other executive MBA programs, so the average age when they start is about 32. They are a little younger. We also have a global executive MBA program which has an average age of 37, 38, something like that. So those are more senior people. That program has seven required eight- or nine-day modules, with two in Barcelona, two in New York and then you have one in Silicon Valley, one in Shanghai, and there is one in Sao Paulo. And then in between, they do online learning. We have people literally coming from all continents.

Byrne: So you have four executive MBA programs, this is going to be the fifth in Munich.

Heukamp: The Munich one is going to be in the same style as the one we have currently in Barcelona, Madrid, and Sao Paulo, and they are integrated. Meaning they do share international weeks in Shanghai, on our New York Campus, in Sao Paulo, so besides being in their campuses sort of normally throughout the year, in different moments in time they actually coincide, the schedules are coordinated.

Byrne: Sure. What has been your biggest challenge so far as a dean?

Heukamp: Raising money is a big challenge, even though I have to say we have generous alumni and partner companies. For European standards, I think we are doing a reasonable job on this. The project is 52 million Euros and we have set ourselves a goal to raise two-thirds of it, about 35 million, and we are a little over halfway there.

Byrne: I know in Europe it’s not all that common for the business schools to have large endowments.

Heukamp: That’s right. We have an endowment that stands currently, at about 35 million, Euros. So it’s growing, but it’s tiny obviously compared to what our equivalent or similar size schools have in the U.S., absolutely.

Byrne: So, what’s surprised you most about becoming dean?

Heukamp: For me, the surprise really has to do with the extent of the relationships that the school has developed with the alumni. After more than 200 meetings with relevant stakeholders in the first year, it was surprising for me to find out how much interest there is in what the school is doing on the part of the alumni and sponsoring companies.