IESE’s New Master in Management Students Impress with Entrepreneurship Projects

To get an idea of what final presentations of IESE´s Master in Management (MiM) were like, imagine 47 highly qualified students of 17 nationalities putting in months of hard work in the midst of difficult COVID-19 circumstances, and producing many innovative ideas with great market potential. Add to that the structure and methodology of IESE, and a select jury of experienced professors, entrepreneurs and investors.

A total of 12 team projects were presented, impressing the jury in their quality and variety. They ranged from social entrepreneurship with high tech (using drones and AI to clean up event and concert trash), to applied biotech (a new hydrating ink for workers, sports fans, etc), to unleashing the potential of online computer demand (assembly of high performance of low cost PCs), just to mention a few.

The jury included two IESE professors: Julia Prats (Head of the Entrepreneurship Department), and Juan Latasa (Lecturer of Entrepreneurship in the MiM, and an experienced entrepreneur and executive in the internet industry). There were also two representatives of the venture capital world (Anindya Saha, Founding Partner of Nero Ventures, and Verónica Trapa, Managing Partner at Swanlaab Venture Factory), and a representative of IESE Business Angel Network (Oscar González of Hemera Capital).

In addition to providing feedback and grading, all members of the jury had words of appreciation and enthusiasm to applaud the teams and the high-quality projects presented.

We hear that next year’s MiM class will be even larger, with more nationalities, etc … But in spite of all the difficulties, these first MiM students of the Class of 2020 have set the bar very high for future generations of MiMs.

Congratulations and good luck to all!

About Juan A. Latasa

Juan A. Latasa is an experienced Intra and Entrepreneur, as well as Marketing and Business Development executive in the Telecoms industry, where he worked for over 18 years at AT&T, Telefónica and Vodafone, leaving behind an international record in creating successful technology businesses during the Internet revolution. later, among other things, he co-founded SwanLaab Venture Capital (www.swanlaab.com), and several companies. Additionally, Juan is the President of the MiT Enterprise Forum Spain, and he is very involved in the entrepreneurship community in Spain and Latin America as a mentor and part-time professor. A natural of Madrid, Juan holds a Bachelors Degree in Physics from MiT (Boston 1991), and an Executive MBA at IESE (Madrid 1997). He has been teaching Entrepreneurship since 2016 at the University Francisco de Vitoria, and Instituto de Empresa´s Global MBA, before joining IESE´s Entrepreneurship Department as a part-time Lecturer for the Master in Management (MiM) program.