IESE Business School

IESE is among the few top MBA programs known for its Case Study Method. We ask Pascal how effective the method is for teaching new concepts and will the call for hands-on experience decrease the relevance of cases

What learning could be more experiential that discussing a real general management situation in a classroom combining roughly 2000 years of work experience across all sectors, functions and geographies?

What is amazing about the case-study method is that it is simply the most powerful way to leverage the incredible diversity that we bring into the classroom. The idea is to learn from your classmates as well as from the professors.

In the second part of the interview with Pascal Michels, we ask how IESE approaches Leadership development and the reasons why 1/3rd of IESE graduates pursue Entrepreneurship within 10 years of graduation.

How does the program develop leadership skills in MBA students?

“Leadership,” “Leader” are terms that get thrown around these days without much thought about what they actually mean. At IESE we teach Leadership as a subject in the first term, but I think it is very telling about how we look at leadership to see that this class is followed in the second term by “managing oneself” and “business ethics.”

All disciplines are woven into the cases we discuss, but it is particularly interesting to see these three connected.

Leading others starts with being able to manage oneself.

What is the biggest misconception about IESE Full-time MBA program?

I would say that with a predominance of one year programs in the European market there is an assumption that two-year programs are more relaxed. This is certainly far from true regarding IESE. Our full-time MBA is academically extremely rigorous and, especially during the first year, the workload is very high. This is done on purpose because a belief that people get the best out of the learning experience only if they are stretched to their limits underpins our educational philosophy. I have no doubts that the first year of our program is at least as intense as the most intense one year programs out there.

Read the Full Interview with IESE MBA Admissions team