Success stories from IESE

Aya Sakai, aiming to break Japan’s glass ceiling. Success Stories

IESE Standout — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 14:02:12 +0000

Aya Sakai is a winner of an IESE Future Female Leaders Award 2024. She is currently on an MBA program at IESE in Barcelona, Spain, having previously worked for the Development Bank of Japan.

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A recent Kyodo News survey revealed that only 13 of Japan’s top 1,600 companies have female CEOs. What’s more, only around 15% of the country’s private-sector executives are women, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Aya Sakai is determined to help change those statistics.

“My mission is to be a leader in the Japanese renewable energy industry, which is a very traditional, male-dominated industry, and by being a leader in that industry, maybe I can change Japanese society a little bit,” says the current IESE MBA student (Class of 2026).

Her decision to do an MBA at IESE was an important step toward accomplishing that mission. “The opportunity to learn leadership skills and to work with teammates from international backgrounds in an intense environment will really help me when I go back to Japan,” she says.

A focus on renewables

Before embarking on an MBA, Sakai worked for the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ) in Tokyo and in London. One aspect of this organization that she valued highly was that it pursued not only profit but also social impact; that part of its mission was to support and help its customers.

As is common in many Japanese companies, Sakai gained valuable experience in many different departments and sections, from financial analysis to human resources, which was quite a challenge for her, having to quickly get up to speed in new fields every one or two years.

This employment policy did, however, give her the opportunity to work in the renewable energy sector, leading her to the conclusion that it was what she wanted to focus on in the future.

Much of the innovation in the renewable energy sector is being developed in Europe, another factor that attracted Sakai to studying in Barcelona. She wants to learn more about green energy technologies in Europe that can help change the energy landscape in Japan.

Teamwork and leadership

While at IESE, Sakai is also getting used to working with people from a wide variety of different backgrounds and cultures, something she has not had to do before. In her team there are students from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Spain and the U.S., in addition to classmates from Japan, all with different management methods and communication styles, which naturally presents certain challenges.

For Sakai, the solution to those challenges is respect, both for people and for processes. “Individually we each have strengths and weaknesses, and we can all learn from each other,” she says. “And we have strict team rules, a contract that nobody breaks, and that helps us work together effectively in a comfortable manner.”

As an undergraduate, Sakai was a trainer for an American football team, where she enjoyed working for and with other people and achieving good things as part of a great team. And great teams need great leaders.

In her time working in different departments at the DBJ, Sakai had many different bosses. The best leaders, in her opinion, were “insightful, considerate, visionary and hardworking.” Bravery and having the courage to be disruptive are also values that she thinks are important. “A woman who dared to take the challenge of being the first female director in our company is someone I really respect,” she says.

A role model

As the winner of an IESE Future Female Leaders Award 2024, Sakai sees herself as being “a role model for younger female generations” in Japan. “In an environment where there are few female leaders or few female managers, women may feel a little uncomfortable. I want to show them that you can do it. Hopefully, my achievements and the good that I do will encourage and empower some people,” she says.

An achievement from her professional career up until now was, while working for the HR department at the DBJ, managing to increase the number of female applicants for certain roles that had been traditionally carried out by men. “Establishing a good work-life balance can be difficult in Japanese companies; maybe that’s one reason why there are so few female leaders,” she explains.

Less successful was her attempt to introduce reforms so that more men occupied positions that were seen as jobs for women. But that was a useful learning experience about how to manage change.

Looking to the future

Sakai is driven by a desire to “do good things for society,” especially in renewable energy. She envisions a future where the widespread use of clean energy technologies, some yet to emerge, will help achieve net-zero emissions, allowing people to enjoy the benefits of energy without harming the environment.

Sakai’s journey is set to be one of breaking barriers and inspiring change in a traditionally male-dominated society. Her experiences at the DBJ, her commitment to the renewable energy sector and the leadership skills she hopes to perfect at IESE reflect a powerful ambition not only to rise as a leader but to pave the way for future generations of women in Japan.

As she works to challenge the status quo, she embodies a new wave of leadership that is insightful, courageous and inclusive. Her example underscores the importance of diversity in driving industrial and societal change.

Are you a young professional woman with big accomplishments and even bigger goals? Apply to the next IESE Future Female Leaders Award. IESE will select a small number of young professional women who embody IESE’s mission, are focused on developing their careers and on making a positive impact in the world. The next IESE Future Female Leaders Award will take place on Jan. 28-30, 2025, on IESE’s Barcelona campus, coinciding with the Women in Business Conference.

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Enrique Linares. Nobody prepares you for what comes next. Success Stories

IESE Standout — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 09:03:34 +0000

Founding partner of Plus Partners and prior to that, Letgo. Named 40under40, the IESE award recognizing top entrepreneurs. IESE MBA 2006.

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At 43, Enrique Linares had achieved every entrepreneur’s dream: he had launched a startup, which became a market leader and reached unicorn status. But after its sale, he faced a daunting question: what next?

Enrique Linares’ entrepreneurial success came sooner than he imagined. After a brief foray into fintech in Latin America, this Spanish lawyer-turned-entrepreneur joined forces with two business partners, Alec Oxenford and Jordi Castello, to found Letgo in 2015. This mobile app was an online marketplace to buy and sell secondhand goods. Initially offered for free, it quickly amassed millions of downloads. And within 502 days, the startup reached an astonishing valuation of $1 billion, earning unicorn status, so named because of the rarity of the achievement.

Undoubtedly, one of the keys to Letgo’s success was its global strategy from the start. “Letgo was born international,” Linares explains. The founders lived and worked in different cities around the world — Linares in São Paulo, Oxenford in Buenos Aires and Castello in Singapore — which facilitated them entering multiple markets simultaneously. Linares recommends this approach, especially for B2C internet-based business models, emphasizing the strategic value of doing so for faster, expansive growth.

Along the way, Letgo merged with Wallapop, and in 2020 was acquired by a U.S. competitor, OfferUp, marking the end of a thrilling ride.

For Linares, however, his primary challenge in 2020 wasn’t just navigating the COVID-19 pandemic back in Spain, but grappling with a profound personal and professional shift. “Something that frequently happens with entrepreneurs is that they get so caught up with their company that it becomes their whole identity. This thing to which you devote so much of your energy and dedicate so many hours can end up becoming pernicious,” he warns.

He was experiencing this himself. He had reached the highest of heights and was financially set, yet he felt bewildered and empty inside. “Everyone talks about how to sell your business,” he says, “but no one ever tells you what happens the day after the sale. Nobody prepares you for what comes next.”

Finding a new purpose

According to Linares, people commonly respond to such times of transition in one of two ways. They either immediately dive into new ventures, constantly seeking to replicate their past success in new emerging businesses, as serial entrepreneurs. Or they embark on a long period of reflection to discover a new purpose in life. He chose the latter.

He started trying new things that would take him out of his comfort zone, stretching him personally and professionally, but without demanding full-time commitment, given that he still wasn’t entirely clear about what he really wanted to do. He jokingly refers to this as his “casual dating” period.

He taught some classes, did some mentoring, invested in other startups with development potential, and served as an independent adviser. He also took advantage of this time to expand his network of contacts, listening to those who had gone through a similar experience and could offer their perspectives.

It was then that he realized what he most liked doing was sharing experiences with other entrepreneurs. One day, he got up, fueled by a newfound energy and eager to get started again. He decided to set up a professionalized version of what he had been doing all along: mentoring, investing and consulting. In 2024, Plus Partners was born.

Investing in others

Plus Partners is a venture capital (VC) fund focused on early-stage startups. Linares launched it with a friend, Oriol Juncosa, another prominent figure in the Spanish startup scene scene (both pictured). They seek to raise 40 million euros to support entrepreneurs in Southern Europe in three key sectors — health and nutrition, finance and property, and work productivity — where artificial intelligence (AI) and big data are already playing crucial roles in innovation.

This new venture allows Linares to combine his personal and professional passions. “It involves entrepreneurship, but isn’t about me being an entrepreneur in another startup,” he explains. “But I’m still following my calling, using everything I’ve learned about entrepreneurship to help others.”

As implied by its name, Plus Partners will add more than capital as they hold entrepreneurs’ hands, actively supporting them in navigating the complicated early stages of a startup, from business development and seed funding to strategies for growth. “We’re the partners that I wish I’d had during my own startup journey,” he says.

All the time and energy Linares dedicated to finding his path eventually illuminated the way: “It took me a while to see it,” he admits.

What he’s most proud of is not taking the easy path. “In thinking about next steps, it was coming to the realization and accepting that I’m not capable of putting in the same number of intense hours that I did in my 20s and 30s. Now, there are other, better ways that I can add the most value to companies, teams and communities. As our professional journeys evolve, so must our thinking on how we can contribute best.”

LISTEN: Enrique Linares discusses his journey in the podcast, “Éxito internacional y reinvención personal” (“International success and personal reinvention”), part of the Talent Pills series.

Find out more about IESE’s ecosystem for entrepreneurship, innovation and new ventures, including the 40under40 awards, and subscribe to the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Center newsletter here.

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Scoolinary, a recipe for bringing people together. Success stories

IESE Standout — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 08:04:34 +0000

Five entrepreneurs have turned their passion for gastronomy into Scoolinary, the world’s largest online cooking school. The Scoolinary team is: Vicente Fortea (production director), Maria Parareda (director of content), Martin Caleau (director of technology), Lorena Hidalgo (director of marketing & communication) and Jordi Ber (CEO). All of them are part of IESE’s School of Founders (SoF).

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It has been said, “Cooking is the alchemy of love.” In 2020, that alchemy came together in the form of Scoolinary, an online cooking school now adding one new course per week to its growing catalog of more than 300 courses, with 6,500 lessons, 550 hours of video and 2,000 recipes and counting.

Scoolinary was conceived in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when half the planet was locked down at home. A lot of people suddenly decided to try their hand at cooking all kinds of new recipes, watching video tutorials online. Remember the global craze for bread baking?

At the time, serial entrepreneur Jordi Ber was looking to create “a purpose-driven, global, scalable project aimed at people accustomed to working with their hands.” In that moment, his business vision found its focus: cooking.

The right ingredients

To turn the idea into reality, Ber knew he needed to gather the right ingredients. He tapped Maria Parareda, founder of Creative Signatures, another startup related to online cooking classes. She joined as content director. Mutual friends put him in touch with Lorena Hidalgo, a skilled marketer and cook, and Vicente Fortea, a chef and gastronomy consultant. They became key members of the team. For tech expertise, Ber recruited a former colleague, Martin Caleau, with whom he had launched Habitissimo in 2009, a platform for finding home tradespeople.

The goal was for “one plus one to equal three,” says Ber. Although each resided in different parts of Spain — Madrid, Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca — the team had no problem organizing themselves remotely.

“We wanted to leverage our individual expertise and backgrounds to cover all the main pillars of the business,” says Parareda. “Although not all of us knew each other personally, our extensive experience in the field allowed us to work well together.”

For financing, they used some of their own savings, but this wouldn’t be enough to create all the quality content they needed. On top of their own funds, they secured investments from business angels and venture capitalists. And they obtained a loan from Enisa, the Spanish government body dedicated to supporting entrepreneurial endeavors.

Scaling the business

Scoolinary has amassed 28,000 paying users — a figure in line with the team’s growth expectations to date. Users are able to take their passion for gastronomy to a whole other level under the guidance of chefs who are internationally renowned, Michelin-starred and/or listed in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants ranking. For example, users can learn to cook shellfish with Spanish chef Paco Perez; create technically precise dishes and aesthetically beautiful plating with Manhattan-based Australian chef Shaun Hergatt; or delve into the world of spices with Anjalina Chugani, a specialist in Indian cuisine.

The team’s initial plan was to provide a training tool for the hospitality industry. “But we soon realized there was a great deal of interest from foodies and cooking enthusiasts in general, both from amateurs as well as knowledgeable chefs,” says Hidalgo. Pivoting in this direction has allowed them to achieve continuous growth.

Scoolinary has gone from being available only in Spanish to operating in other languages. “From the beginning, we were clear that we had to be able to internationalize the project,” says Caleau.

Artificial intelligence has been key to their scalability, allowing automatic subtitling and dubbing into other languages. Natural language processing enables AI assistants to answer queries or provide 24-hour assistance.

The power of tech

The pervasiveness of digitalization in society works in their favor. In addition to new AI tools helping to generate content, streaming platforms like Netflix have demonstrated the viability of subscription-based business models. Social media channels like Instagram have made haute cuisine go mainstream, spawning the phrase “phone eats first.”

Ber cites the Basque Culinary Center (BCC) as an example of “the democratizing power of technology.” Located in the northern region of Spain famous for its gastronomy, BCC is a nonprofit foundation that receives corporate sponsorship so they can offer courses, conferences and collaborate on culinary innovation projects and do research on gastronomy and nutrition. With the addition of an online component, people can now access training from wherever they are for as little as 6 euros a month, as opposed to attending in-person courses costing thousands of euros.

As tech accelerates content production and specialist knowledge becomes more universally available, the curation of content becomes paramount, so they can deliver content that is ever more relevant and accessible to users.

In the medium term, they expect to continue growing in the markets where they are already present, particularly in the Spanish- and English-speaking ones. “We will keep investing in the product, working hand-in-hand with the best to produce more and more content on global cuisine,” says Caleau. They also plan on increasing the experiences they offer, such as awarding qualifications, as they cultivate an ever more culturally diverse community united by cooking.

Learning to be leaders

The five Scoolinary partners are currently participating in the School of Founders, which IESE launched in 2022 to equip entrepreneurs with the skills, knowledge and mindsets they need to transform their startups into large, purpose-driven companies. For Ber, it’s “an opportunity to improve as leaders, spend time together and grow as a group.” He considers such training to be vital, since “one isn’t born an entrepreneur but it’s something that can be learned.”

Fortea highlights how enriching it has been for him “to learn from other business experiences and discover that other entrepreneurs from diverse sectors have faced many of the same challenges that a project like ours entails.”

The five teammates share a vision of conscious capitalism, as advocated by the School of Founders’ Director Sebastian Ross. In this sense, they try to amplify the voices of marginalized professionals in the hospitality sector, and they plan to offer scholarships for training. In addition, they donate a percentage of sales to initiatives that mitigate climate change, acknowledging the impact of food production and food waste on the planet. Scoolinary has obtained B Corp certification verifying the company is meeting high standards of performance, accountability and transparency.

“We believe the creation of companies and jobs should generate wealth but also make a positive contribution to society,” says Ber. A healthy recipe for doing business today.

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Supporting companies going green. Hiroshi Tomita. Success stories

IESE Standout — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 16:01:47 +0000

Hiroshi Tomita (IESE MBA ’95) is a Consulting Partner of Corporate Sustainability & Climate Change at Environmental Resources Management (ERM).

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We’re at an inflection point to achieve Net Zero emissions goals by 2050. How are we doing? Are there reasons to be optimistic or pessimistic? Both, says Hiroshi Tomita. On the one hand, “we’re seeing attacks, criticisms and negative movements against climate action,” he says. On the other hand, “I look back to when I started working on climate change issues and energy market reforms in the ’90s, and nobody ever thought those would become private sector led like they are now. And that makes me feel optimistic.”

As a bicultural executive, Tomita is used to holding two realities together at the same time. He grew up in Brazil, where his father’s job for a Japanese shipping company took them to live. “Actually the first language I started to speak was Portuguese, and I really only started to speak Japanese after we moved back to Japan. So a deep part of my character is this mixture of Brazil and Japan.”

This embedded in him a keen interest in Latin America. So, after Tomita graduated with a degree in international law from Waseda University in Tokyo in 1990, Latin America became the natural focus of the risk reports he wrote for his first employer, the Nomura Research Institute (NRI). At the time, Latin America was undergoing an economic transition, with Brazil (along with Russia, India and China) soon to form the BRIC grouping of up-and-coming markets.

It was in the midst of these transition years that Tomita decided to pursue an MBA at IESE. “Most people were going to the U.S. to study but, because of my Latin American focus, I was determined to go to Portugal or Spain.” He had to convince his employer though, as there was little precedent for a Japanese student going to a non-English-speaking country to do an MBA. Luckily, NRI supported his application and he was accepted at IESE. He was one of only five Japanese students, among very few students from Asia, although he recalls a diverse student body from Latin America and other countries in Europe, besides Spain, which enriched his learning experience and prepared him for the multicultural, globalized business world he was about to enter. “Here you can exchange ideas with people from many backgrounds while developing invaluable assets for the future,” he wrote in the school magazine.

An idea whose time had come

This exposure to diverse ideas, combined with “the diversity I have within myself,” served him well when he began working in Washington, D.C., for the Inter-American Development Bank, which provides financing for sustainable infrastructure development in Latin America. After that, he spent a decade working on climate financing, including carbon credits, for the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, Fortis Bank and BNP Paribas, again focusing on the two regions he knows best: Asia-Pacific and Latin America. Then, he spent another decade working for PwC Advisory, formulating market strategies for Japanese firms looking to invest in energy and infrastructure projects overseas.

“At first it was my Latin American experience that opened doors,” he says. But once the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (the world’s first emissions reduction treaty) came into effect in 2005, Japanese financial institutions shifted their focus to emission reduction projects and sustainability. And Brazil — being a BRIC economy, as well as the site of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (where the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change was first adopted) — became the natural place to invest. “And then the market really started to move.”

“It seemed like everything I had been doing related to energy technology or energy transformation had prepared me for this moment, and I jumped into it.”

It’s when Tomita looks at the sweep of history that he feels hopeful. “Seeing the private sector shifting to renewable energy and biofuels is when I’m most optimistic, together with the increasing adoption of environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria, which the business world wasn’t seriously trying to evaluate 10 years ago. I feel confident about what we can achieve in the long run.”

CREDIT: Jan Buus

Looking back to look forward

Regarding progress on ESG, a recent study by IESE professors Gaizka Ormazabal and Igor Kadach found that 38% of companies globally (60% in the EU) now tie executive pay to ESG goals. This is partly the result of growing alignment on the issue among institutional investors. In companies with ESG-linked compensation, there is evidence carbon emissions are going down (although there do not appear to be short-term financial gains from them doing so).

On this point, Tomita feels ESG is not a straightforward cost-benefit analysis but rather, in Japan at least, an imperative for energy security and to diversify over the long term, so as not to be reliant on one energy source. “Japan started moving in this direction 30 years ago,” he says. “Transforming energy is not something that happens from one day to the next.”

What would he say to a skeptical oil or gas company dragging its feet? “I would say your business needs to be diversified. Maybe not a 100% transformation overnight but you need to start doing something. You need to make an economic calculation for the future. And in making that calculation, you have to remember that renewable energy wasn’t profitable 15 years ago but look at what has happened and where we are today. These were not easy decisions 30 years ago, but we are now sitting in a place where, thanks to those hard decisions, we are seeing transformation.”

Tomita believes these are messages people are more receptive to now, post-pandemic and since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. People appreciate the benefits of diversification as they have experienced firsthand what happens when we put all our eggs in one basket: the risks are all too real.

What gets measured gets managed

Tomita credits diversification as one of the reasons Japan managed to get through the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that took out the Fukushima power plant. Another recent study by IESE professor Pietro Bonetti et al. found that, although the cost of capital went up for all Japanese firms after that environmental disaster, it went up less for firms that had made voluntary disclosures of their carbon emissions in prior years. Moreover, firms that subsequently changed their disclosure practices, doing more sustainability reporting, saw reductions in their cost of capital over time. This shows the importance of environmental reporting, especially in the event of an energy shock, for providing valuable information for investors.

“In Japan, there used to be a notion, especially if you were in a heavily polluting industry, that disclosing too much might have negative business effects. But as I tell my clients, it’s not reporting that has the negative effects. Even with a coal-fired plant, when they started disclosing what they were doing, that had a positive effect. I remember I once took a Brazilian delegation on a tour of a Japanese coal-fired plant and they were surprised there was no dust — it was as clean as a hospital. The people living just beside the coal-fired plant were hanging their laundry outside in the garden as there was no dust, not even in the surrounding area. Of course, the fact they have the coal-fired plant is still something they need to change. However, until you start measuring it and reporting on it with reliable metrics, then improvements or progress won’t be made.”

Best practices in disclosure and corporate decarbonization and climate change are part of what Tomita’s new employer, ERM, provides to business clients as a consultancy focused exclusively on sustainability. “Sustainability is our business in ERM. In this stage of my career, I really want to support companies in the greening of power and the introduction of renewables and new energies such as hydrogen and biofuels.”

Oil and gas companies, in particular, need a roadmap to transform themselves. “They need to understand the risks and the global frameworks that exist, such as carbon credits and carbon markets, to achieve Net Zero goals, which not everyone fully understands.”

One group who does seem to grasp that sustainability is the way ahead for business is the new generation of future business leaders coming through. “Young people have a big interest in sustainability and the idea of business as a force for good,” Tomita finds.

And there’s no standard profile, as Tomita’s own career path attests. With the rise of sustainability financing and big capital pouring into climate projects, a background in banking can be helpful, as could “someone who has been working in a coal-fired plant for 10 years — we need people who understand energy. People with a background in engineering. Or trade.”

In other words, we need diverse profiles able to tackle the climate challenge from multiple angles and “contribute to the development of this exciting new market we are experiencing.” And that’s a reason for optimism.

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Starting a career with optimism and enthusiasm. Junior Kone. Success stories

IESE Standout — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 14:17:23 +0000

Junior Kone is currently studying for a Master in Management at IESE in Madrid and hopes to start a career in management consultancy.

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It is a challenging time for graduates starting out in the world of work with aspirations to senior management. The uncertainty caused by the global political and macroeconomic situation means companies are reluctant to make decisions about investments in people, making it difficult for individuals to get on the first rung of their career ladder. What’s more, this was perhaps the cohort whose education and development were most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, and they are still suffering the consequences.

Despite these formidable obstacles, Junior Kone, 23, currently studying for a Master in Management (MiM) at IESE in Madrid, remains resolutely optimistic about the future. Embracing an unwavering belief in the cyclical nature of economic downturns, he confidently asserts, “Usually after these very bad moments, the economy starts growing, so opportunities will come.” His enthusiasm is infectious and inspiring.

Embracing change

He is especially excited about the potential offered by the current technological environment, especially artificial intelligence (AI). As he observes, “A lot of things will be substituted by AI. But this also means that new job opportunities will open up. This is how it works; things have always worked like that.” He is, however, well aware of the possible threats and pitfalls of this new technology. “We have to use AI as a support for decision making and not as a substitute for people taking decisions: we have to be the responsible ones,” he warns.

As, hopefully, one of those people taking those decisions in the future, Kone is clear what kind of values will be necessary, as they are now. Above all, he believes, leaders need to have a mission that goes beyond motivation based on money or power or prestige: “It’s taking responsibility, trying to do something that can be beneficial for the community, whether that’s local or global.”

Kone also says that leaders need to be flexible, to be able to adapt to different circumstances, to integrate into different environments. His multicultural upbringing and diverse academic trajectory underscore his adaptability and resilience. Born in the Ivory Coast to an African father and Colombian mother, his family’s journey took them from Africa to Italy, where Kone spent his formative years. His academic pursuits led him to Reims in France for part of his undergraduate degree and a work placement in Brussels, Belgium, before his current studies in Madrid, Spain.

The importance of mentorship and networking

At this early stage in his career, Kone is very clear about the need for mentors and role models. His parents, entrepreneurs who have navigated various ventures, serve as his primary sources of inspiration, instilling in him a deep appreciation for adaptability and tenacity. Reflecting on their experience in the movie industry – distributing African content throughout Europe – he admires their ability to pivot when the internet reshaped their business landscape. His father’s belief, “If you don’t have a job, just create it,” echoes as a guiding principle in Kone’s worldview, one that he believes comes from the African entrepreneurial spirit.

As a way of expanding his contacts, Kone is a member of two organizations aimed at helping young talent get ahead. Mentors4U is a mentorship program that connects students at Italian universities with experienced professionals. “When I joined my mentor was working in in a leading consultancy in Italy. He guided me through my career path, trying to understand if consulting was the right choice for me.” The experience of these mentors is invaluable, he believes: “Trying to understand your career plan and giving insights from their past experience because they’ve been through all the things that you’re going through right now.” The other organization he belongs to is Nova, a platform that has the ambitious aim of connecting the top 3% of the world’s talent. Every Wednesday Kone has a meeting with someone from around the world. Just talking to people and learning from them is something that he finds very helpful.

The spirit of entrepreneurship

Once he has completed his MIM, Kone aims to be a consultant in a top consulting firm. In the longer run, Kone’s main objective is to become a CEO. The alternative is starting his own company. And he has a bit of entrepreneurial experience, as he describes: “I remember when I was 15 or 16, one summer I was supposed to be studying for a French test and I had to learn the verbs, but I didn’t want to do it, so I decided to create a little app for my mobile that could be like a game where I could learn the verbs as a game. The problem is that I spent the whole summer doing that…! But when I finished, I decided to sell it to my classmates, and I made a little bit of money.”

Kone embodies a mixture of optimism, adaptability, and resilience, backed up by a clear set of values. His journey symbolizes the fusion of diverse cultural influences and a steadfast determination to forge a career path that has a global impact but that gives something back to society.

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Alberto Cabanes. Social entrepreneurship with Adopta un Abuelo. Success stories.

IESE Standout — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 12:05:25 +0000

Alberto Cabanes is the CEO and founder of Adopta un Abuelo [Adopt a Grandparent], a social enterprise that connects tens of thousands of young people with older people. Cabanes also has an EMBA from IESE.

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Alberto Cabanes must have been very young – a child, in fact – when he realized that his grandfather, Clemente, always went everywhere with him. Clemente took him to English and handball (Cabanes ended up playing the sport competitively, and joining the federation), and he was also there to tell him stories. Sometimes, little Alberto went on ‘trips’ with him and Pilar, his grandmother, to Picón, the town in Ciudad Real where they came from.

Time passed, and eventually Pilar died. And Clemente became very dependent. And Alberto Cabanes began to come from Madrid every weekend to visit him in the home. And that was how he got to know Bernardo, his grandfather’s new friend. The three of them spent time chatting and playing dominoes or card games. One day, Bernardo, who was widowed, admitted that his greatest dream would have been to have a grandchild. And Cabanes told him that, in that case, he was adopting him as his grandfather.

In this way, the idea for the social enterprise Adopta un Abuelo was the result of a joke. But it was a very serious joke. Because, in some ways, Cabanes really did adopt Bernardo. And he immediately realized that there were millions of ‘Bernardos’ who needed someone who would remember them.

And he wanted to offer them the same opportunity as he had offered his grandfather’s friend. But all he had was an idea, and he needed a helping hand. Lots of helping hands. He could not have imagined that, within a decade, he would become one of IESE’s 40 most prominent entrepreneurs under the age of 40, or that the Adopta un Abuelo website would end up with 250,000 registered users in 18 countries.

I’m going for it: I want to be a social entrepreneur!

By the age of 27, Alberto Cabanes had come to one conclusion: he truly wanted to be a social entrepreneur. And he thought he was ready to launch a project that would create connections of mutual understanding and care between the generations.

It was 2016, and he had a daunting year and half ahead of him. He earned nothing for 11 months, spent all his savings, applied for a loan, sold his car and television, and left his house, sleeping on the floor at his friend Mario’s place, and at his then girlfriend’s. At least, he says, he didn’t have children or a mortgage. In spite of this, as Alberto Cabanes said in the conversation he had with IESE professor Mireia Las Heras, which you can watch below, “I would have been stupid not to go for it!”

The need he wanted to respond to was very real. According to some surveys, more than 10% of older people in Italy, Germany, France and the United States feel lonely. In Spain, where two million older people live alone, and around 350,000 of them are in homes, the situation is the same.

But, even though he was young, Cabanes thought he was ready, because he already knew what it was like to try and fail. He had played handball professionally and, at the age of 24, shortly after having earned his degree in Business Administration and Management, his first startup went out of business. Cabanes made almost 10,000 euros with Tachans.com, which could have been the first social network for federations, clubs and sports people.

However, nothing turned out as he had hoped. He learned how to fall. And how to get back up. And how to stand out as a senior auditor at KPMG once he got back up from his leap of faith. He juggled the difficult beginnings of Adopta un Abuelo and his work at KPMG, until he was finally able to make the leap once again; something which, according to him, was a real challenge.

And that leap would only be the first of many. As a result, in 2021, his passion for continuing to innovate, as well as the growing complexity of the business and of managing more and more operations and teams, led him to believe that he needed more training. So, he studied for his EMBA at IESE; a demanding experience that lasted 18 months, spanning 3 continents.

Cabanes noted that, for him, the program had been “a transformative experience”, in which he had the opportunity to learn from both his classmates and his professors, studying 350 real-world cases of companies that faced some of the challenges that the CEO and founder of Adopta un Abuelo would need to overcome from that moment on.

Once of those challenges, undoubtedly, was how to continue to exploit innovation in order to fight the loneliness epidemic that is plaguing older people.

Innovating with Adopta un Abuelo, so that older people aren’t alone

Adopta un Abuelo has surprised the entire sector, with organized activities (dances, after-work gatherings) and unique experiences that allow the relationship between the older person and their new companion to flow naturally.

Out of all the experiences, it is worth highlighting, for example, one in which some ‘grandmothers’ taught AXA employees some traditional, healthy recipes via video-conference, and another in which BBVA volunteers helped some older people with technology through the Abuelos Hackers initiative.

Adopta un Abuelo has reinvented the idea of donations, creating specific campaigns through which sponsors can give money to help make an older person’s dream come true. This is how, for example, one lady fulfilled her dream of flying in a plane for the first time, and it is how another older person, Juan, was able to watch a match in the new Atlético Madrid stadium.

Both the donations that people make when they become a member and the donations from the challenges use a secure online electronic gateway, and the Adopta un Abuelo mobile app. Cabanes also made the most of technology to increase transparency: sponsors can always see what their donations were used for, and the expenditure that justifies them. At the same time, volunteers can register digitally on the platform in just a few minutes.

Cabanes also designed a digital control panel, which allows him and his team to monitor all the Adopta un Abuelo operations, and to develop their own metrics. As an example, they know that almost 50,000 hours of company have been provided for older people, and they also have specific knowledge of the needs of members, sponsors and volunteers. More than 1,000 Google reviews give Adopta un Abuelo an ‘average score’ of 4.9 out of five.

Naturally, none of this would have been possible if Cabanes had not understood that even the smallest decisions can have a major impact on the organization, and that leading involves learning from the best and cultivating humility, in order to continue learning every day. In short, to be a great leader, you first have to be a great person, because true leadership is human; a real story of Real Leadership from IESE.

Adopta un Abuelo: older people have a lot to offer

For Alberto Cabanes, spending time with older people is a win-win, as the ‘older people’ clearly benefit from the volunteers giving them a helping hand, while at the same time, the volunteers also get access to an experience that will change their lives, thanks to the older people.

What exactly does that win-win consist of? It consists of the following:

1) The volunteers can benefit from practicing their empathy, or their active listening. And everyone gets the opportunity to connect with people from completely different generations, who have had completely different experiences. This is especially beneficial for children.

2) The older people can simply enjoy the company of the people who meet them and appreciate them, or they can participate in fun leisure activities with them, or live their dreams by flying on planes or going to watch soccer.

As Cabanes says, “older people tell better stories than Netflix”, and it’s a pleasure to listen to them. At the same time, volunteers can not only share this experience with the older people, but also with their parents and siblings, school friends or work colleagues.

This was the case for Pablo and Sofía, a couple who started spending time with Mariví, a lady who never left her room in the home as she was suffering from severe depression. As Cabana recounted in the podcast with Mireia Las Heras, after a few months of spending time with them, Mariví not only started leaving her room, but one day even dared to cross the street in the home to buy some cakes. She wanted to organize a little tea party for the couple who had come to see her so often.

Alberto Cabanes is conscious of the fact that this example of Mariví demonstrates the success cultivated by a tiny startup which grew very quickly, and became a well-established social enterprise within ten years. Adopta un Abuelo has already exceeded 12,000 volunteers, 6,000 ‘adopted’ grandparents, and almost 50,000 hours of company for the most vulnerable

Alberto Cabanes knows that he has come a very long way in a very short time since that day, long ago, when he decided to ‘adopt’ Bernardo, and when he subsequently sold his car and left his house to make his dream a reality. Indeed, he has come a long way, but this is just the beginning of the great adventure of his life.

You can watch the video-podcast of the conversation between Alberto Cabanes and the IESE professor, Mireia Las Heras, here:

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Sarah Buckley, finding her voice, telling her story. Success stories

IESE Standout — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 07:22:09 +0000

Sarah Buckley is a winner of IESE’s inaugural Future Female Leaders Award 2023 and a recipient of an IESE Forté Fellowship, for women who demonstrate exemplary leadership.

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“Dream big, do right” is the motto of Mounds Park Academy in the U.S. state of Minnesota where Sarah Buckley went to high school. It could also sum up Buckley’s life philosophy. “As future leaders, we have the responsibility to explore how business can be a positive influence on the world,” says the current IESE MBA student (Class of 2025).

Before embarking on her MBA, Buckley got degrees in accounting and worked in financial planning and analysis, first for The Walt Disney Company and then for Netflix. “What attracted me to Netflix was the idea of being part of something creative. You see the power of storytelling and the impact that can have on someone, connecting with people of diverse backgrounds all around the world.”

She worked closely with the company’s creative executives, making decisions on whether to invest in new projects and managing all the financial implications and risks until the film appeared on-screen. It was, she says, “a beautiful blend of the numbers and the analytical with the creative side and the strategic lens.”

Out of the comfort zone

Initially based in Los Angeles, California, Buckley jumped at the chance to transfer to Netflix’s EMEA office in London as a way of broadening her horizons. There she witnessed firsthand the complexities involved when an expanding business goes global — from the need to adapt content to different cultures, to hiring local talent who understand the nuances of local markets. “It was interesting to see the mindset shift across the company as it grew.”

In 2022, the year she took up the EMEA assignment, Netflix reported its first subscriber decline in a decade, so managing budgets to produce the same top-quality content with fewer resources became the big challenge for her and her colleagues throughout the region. While cultural differences were inevitable, Buckley found the best strategy was to be completely straightforward and honest — “to communicate the goals and understand where local executives were coming from, so we could find the best solutions.”

This is the same approach she brings to the MBA classroom: “Being in a class filled with people from all over the world forces me to find new ways to communicate and connect with diverse groups of people, so we make better decisions together.”

Listening to and trying to understand a diversity of opinions, constantly challenging yourself to step outside your comfort zone, expanding the way you look at things and approaching problems from multiple angles are what Buckley thinks make a good leader, today more than ever.

Values-driven leadership

Leadership for Buckley is also a question of being true to your values. As she says, “The best leaders I’ve met haven’t been driven by extrinsic motivations of money, success or title, but have been those who led in a way that prioritized people, enabling them to achieve their full potential.”

The way leaders conduct themselves is fundamental, she adds: “Most important is having empathy for others, making sure we’re treating each other with kindness and respect.”

Buckley believes “some of the best ways we can drive positive change in the world are through business. How can we do business in a way that’s sustainable, ensuring every decision is aligned with the right core values?”

She’s passionate about empowering women to find their voices (“Women are sometimes made to feel they have to be extra qualified, competent and experienced just to be in the room”) as she advocates for equality in business.

The power of mentoring

Throughout her career, Buckley has been grateful for the feedback and encouragement of female mentors, who she says have had an extremely positive impact on her, both professionally and personally: “Seeing powerful, intelligent, capable women in leadership at Netflix has given me a model of the qualifications and competencies I need in order to deliver the same kind of value.”

Buckley appreciates the support IESE gives to female leaders, not just during the two years of the MBA but throughout their professional lives. For her, a mentor is someone who can “selflessly guide me in aligning the steps on my path with my future long-term goals, which can have more of an impact than any technical learning.”

Eventually, she would like to start her own business, becoming the kind of female entrepreneur driving social change that so inspired her on her own path. Like many of her generation, she wants to work toward solutions to climate change, particularly improving the health of the world’s oceans through a sustainable blue economy, something that struck her the first time she went scuba diving. “I felt an overwhelming sense of inspiration to take a more active role in the preservation of our oceans. Especially for those who never saw themselves as the loud one in the room, like me, I’d like to help others make their voices heard. Inspiring others as they have inspired me would make me forever grateful.”

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Christophe Chevallier, crafting beer from bread. Success stories

IESE Standout — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 07:51:05 +0000

Christophe Chevallier (IESE MiM-21) prioritizes sustainability and people. His Lavoisier brewpub in Madrid, which transforms leftover bread into craft beer, combines both his passions.

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“Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.” This quote, attributed to the 18th century French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, captures the idea that, rather than creating or destroying something, we can transform it into something new. It’s highly appropriate then that when French chef and entrepreneur Christophe Chevallier decided to open a brewpub in Madrid in 2022, he named it Lavoisier. Not only does he transform leftover bread into craft beer, based on principles of the circular economy, but he has also transformed the bitterness of his early work experiences into a more humane way of doing business and treating people.

Growing up in the famous French wine region of Burgundy, Chevallier developed a natural love of gastronomy, which led him to study at the prestigious Ferrandi culinary school in Paris. Before long, he was cooking at some of the best Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris.

His culinary dreams, however, ran up against harsh realities that would define his future path: “I witnessed some of the worst treatment of employees that you can imagine. The days were exhausting and the pressure was too much,” he recalls. Those formative experiences in Paris made him see things differently and reaffirmed his principles: where others only saw resources, he would always see people.

Realizing he had to find another way to pursue his dreams, Chevallier decided to get a bachelor’s degree in management from EMD Business School in Marseille. There, he encountered an entirely different way of treating people.

“The head of faculty knew each student by name. He even contacted me to wish me a happy birthday even though my birthday falls in the middle of summer,” says Chevallier. The experience could not have been more different from what he had experienced in Paris.

A plan with a purpose

Thus inspired, Chevallier wanted to continue studying management after graduation, but he wasn’t going to settle for any master’s program; it had to be underpinned by strong ethical, humanistic values. An EMD professor recommended IESE Business School. Although he would be based in Madrid, the international nature of IESE’s Master in Management (MiM) meant English was the language of instruction, which suited Chevallier, who did not yet speak Spanish. Most important for Chevallier was that IESE had the right philosophy he was looking for, which chimed with that of Chevallier’s family business group, Théos. “Our group is committed to taking special care of our employees, our customers and our suppliers, and operating in a socially responsible manner,” he says.

A highlight of the MiM was putting together a business plan: “Working in small teams, we drew upon everything we had learned and went through all the necessary steps — brainstorming, market research, financials, minimum viable product — and submitted a final business plan to a jury of professors and investors who, if they saw the project as viable, might invest in it.”

“The most difficult part was finding a good business idea. It was important to find something that we were passionate about. My team and I wanted to develop a product focused on sustainability, but with high scalability.”

Chevallier’s eureka moment came when he saw a local supermarket throwing away a huge amount of bread at the end of every day. “I wondered how we could take advantage of all that waste.”

A solution already existed: recycling leftover bread into beer. Indeed, it is believed that the ancient Egyptians had discovered a way of making beer by letting bread ferment in water. Based on similar principles, they figured the bread that supermarkets, bakeries and restaurants were going to throw away anyway could be substituted for 30%-50% of the malt used in beer.

Originally, their plan was to distribute their specialty beer directly to local bars. But the more Chevallier thought about it, he began to get other ideas.

Caring for people and the environment

Rather than being a private label brewer, distributing his product through other bars, why not open his own brewpub and distribute his own product himself? It made sense, since he would sell only what he produced, without intermediaries, and this would give him greater control over the experience he was able to offer to his own customers.

The Lavoisier brewpub opened in Malasaña, a hip neighborhood popular with students in Madrid. It offers tastings of craft beer, which is produced in collaboration with the Mica Brewery, located in Spain’s Ribera del Duero region, using leftover bread from area bakeries. Chevallier is already looking to expand his premises to be able to brew more beer.

In many ways, Lavoisier reflects the principles of caring for people and the environment that are so central, not only to Chevallier, but to his family business group, which also owns a stake in the business. He explains how their core values manifest themselves:

Renewal. “We have recovered more than a ton of bread that would otherwise have ended up going to waste.”
Conscious collaboration. “We choose to partner with a local artisanal brewer that shares our vision of sustainability, the circular economy and inclusion.”
Purposeful design. “Almost all the decor in our brewpub comes from recycled or repurposed materials — for example, reusing wood from old boats.”
Human attention. “We seek to maintain stable relationships with our customers, as well as with our employees and suppliers — whom we pay on time — built on an understanding of transparency and fairness.”
Work-life balance. “We close on Sundays and Mondays. While we could make more money if we opened on Sundays, for us it is vital that people have time off for rest, and Sundays are when people traditionally spend time with their families.”

For Chevallier, “the quality of our human relationships is what determines the economic results.” That is what life, school and family have taught him, and that is what guides his next steps. “Maybe Lavoisier is the beginning of a small revolution.”

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Fernanda Lopes Larsen, planting seeds for a better world. Success Stories

IESE Standout — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 07:25:39 +0000

Fernanda Lopes Larsen (IESE Global Executive MBA 2023) is Executive Vice President Africa & Asia of Yara, whose mission is to feed the world and protect the planet. She received the WIN Inspiring Women Worldwide Award.

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When Fernanda Lopes Larsen moved to Norway in 2012, she wasn’t expecting to have that much trouble fitting in. After all, this was the fifth country for the Brazil-born civil engineering graduate, after studying in Austria and working in Germany and the United Kingdom. How hard could it be?

“It was the biggest culture shock of my life,” she says. She recalls feeling out of place, both professionally, in a traditional company with a corporate culture very different from the ones she had worked in before, and personally, as a self-described “loud, extroverted Brazilian woman.”

Even so, since landing a job at the Norwegian fertilizer company Yara, she has quickly moved up the ranks to become a member of the senior management team. She is now based in Singapore, as Yara’s Executive Vice President for the African, Asian and Oceanian markets.

“I credit the struggle and hardship of the early days with making me the leader I am today,” she says. It taught her to stick her neck out for causes she believes in. Today, as a diversity and inclusion campaigner, she is on the front line of conversations about sustainability and social equality.

Rethinking the system

“If I’m still at Yara, it’s because of its strong mission,” she says. “We’re here to feed the world and protect the planet.”

The company has a strong commitment to decarbonizing fertilizer production and supporting an agricultural transition to being carbon-neutral and nature positive. Fertilizers are essential if we are going to feed a growing global population, particularly under the added stress of climate change. But food production is a heavily polluting industry, responsible for an estimated quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

What does an agricultural transition look like? “It’s recognizing we have to find a new way to farm,” she says, explaining that Yara’s approach is built on three pillars.

First, as ammonia is the foundational ingredient of most fertilizers, it starts by producing ammonia in a cleaner way — decarbonizing its production by using renewables instead of natural gas. There’s also what’s called blue ammonia, which captures and stores the CO2 generated during ammonia production, making the process virtually carbon neutral.

Beyond cleaning up production, the other two pillars are embracing regenerative agriculture and promoting farmer prosperity. Regenerative agriculture involves practices that enable farmers to increase yield and nutrient efficiency, reduce water consumption, and protect the soil. Prosperity is also key, because making progress on emissions should not have to come at the expense of smallholder farmers, some of the poorest people in the world, and responsible for at least a third of the world’s food production. It also means addressing the 30% of food that goes to waste, often because of the difficulty in accessing marketplaces. “Improving systems that will help farmers access knowledge and offtake markets can help lift them out of poverty,” she says.

Lopes Larsen has seen the global conversation on sustainability evolve greatly over the years she has been with Yara. What’s the view from Asia, where a Green Deal akin to that of Europe is starting to be discussed. “It’s not a solid, unified voice yet,” she says. But those voices are growing louder, particularly at recent ASEAN summits.

Regarding Singapore, “I always say that many of the solutions to transition the food system to something more consistently sustainable may, ironically, come from a country that doesn’t grow much itself: currently 90% of its food is imported. But what Singapore does is invest massive amounts of money in science, technology, agritech and sustainable agriculture: the government has a strategy to produce 30% of its food by 2030.”

Although there’s still much work to be done, Lopes Larsen believes overhauling the food system and reducing its effects on the planet is possible — but it requires radical change. And advocating for change, on a personal as well as professional level, is something she feels passionate about.

Using her platform for good

Another area where she has been working for change is in diverse representation in management. Despite Brazil’s reputation as a racial democracy, she recalls being one of a small minority of Black students at her university. Moving to Europe raised her consciousness, and she began to develop the vocabulary to describe the systemic racism that she witnessed and experienced.

“Being a Black woman in the corporate world has really increased my awareness of these issues,” she says. “Because being Black is not something that I can (or want to) switch off in the morning when I go to work, in order to fit into the environments that I am part of. I want to bring my full self to work — and that includes my culture, my ancestry and my Brazilian upbringing.”

Her activism in this space was galvanized by the shocking death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in the United States in 2020. “It’s a little embarrassing for me to admit that it took an American dying on camera, when Brazilian kids die in favelas every single day, but there was something about an innocent Black man killed for the entire world to see that was transformational for me.”

Together with a colleague, she went to her CEO to demand action on improving the corporate world for young Black leaders. “I thought I would get fired, but I figured, what is the point of being in a leadership position if I cannot use this platform?”

Instead, her CEO responded with his full support, and a program for Black leaders was established to help them navigate the corporate world better, something Lopes Larsen says she wishes she had had when she was starting out.

“I’m proud of how my company responded,” she says, “and I wish more people would speak up and use their platform. Ultimately, the goal is that we can all go to work being ourselves and have equal access to opportunities.”

Speaking up and moving the conversation forward is important, because so much still needs to be done. “Look at the composition of the boards of the world’s top companies,” she says, pointing to their general lack of diversity. “And so many companies are still not taking the climate emergency seriously.”

In this sense, she cites as inspiration two Brazilian compatriots, Luana Genot and Adriana Barbosa, “who through their relentless advocacy work have empowered and opened the doors of opportunities to countless Black Brazilians” in the corporate world. She met them at the Davos summit, which she attended for the second time in 2022.

“For those who think the World Economic Forum event is just an elite gathering, they couldn’t be more wrong. I’ve met fantastic CEOs, entrepreneurs, public officials and third sector leaders who are humble, purpose-driven and committed to resolving the most urgent issues we face as a planet today: food security and climate change. I’ve had the privilege to meet some of the most amazing minds, particularly women, who are at the forefront of the fight for racial equality, social justice and prosperity.” She also connected with African presidents, business leaders and entrepreneurs “who share a passion for Africa that is worth emulating. I have never felt so much pride in my African ancestry and so much sense of belonging.”

Lopes Larsen remains ever hopeful: “I think the corporate world is a major actor. We have the intellectual competence, and we employ a lot of people. So when the corporate world moves, other parts of the world will as well. Nothing will deter me from continuing to advocate with the tools I have at my disposal.”

And though she may never see the fruits of her labor in her or her daughter’s lifetime, she says, “Honestly, I don’t need the flowers, I just want to make sure I am helping to plant the seeds.”

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Roman Mlodkowski. Creating a low-cost TV channel from scratch. Success stories

IESE Standout — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 08:38:20 +0000

Roman Mlodkowski is CEO of BIZNES24, a private business news channel in Poland, and IESE alumnus.

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You would think that starting a new national television channel from scratch would require major investment and lots of people. Not so in the case of BIZNES24, Poland’s only 24-hour business news channel, a model of effective innovation, improvisation and cost control. According to BIZNES24’s founder and CEO, Roman Mlodkowski, “You can make professional television for pennies. It requires lots of work but it’s doable.”

Mlodkowski began his career as a journalist in Poland in the 1990s after the Solidarity movement helped bring about the end of Communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. “It was an exciting and interesting time to be a journalist,” he recalls, “not just because we were young, but because the world had changed completely: we moved from oppression to freedom. It was a new world.”

Unlike his colleagues who focused on political news, Mlodkowski specialized in business journalism. “Strategically, it’s good to differentiate,” he says. “For me, there are more answers to be found in business and economics than in politics. Business journalism deals in real numbers, so you can tell the full story.”

Stories that need to be told

After many years as a radio and TV presenter, producer and director, Mlodkowski didn’t see much space on Polish television for the many interesting stories that he felt needed to be told of companies that were growing and changing the ways things were done. So, he decided to set up his own business news channel. “I keep starting things, which is a privilege but also a curse,” he remarks wryly.

BIZNES24 was launched on January 2, 2020, in the same building where the first independent Polish television channel, Polsat, had also begun. Polsat vacated the building on March 2, and in 18 days Mlodkowski and his crew transformed the studio into their own operation. Their inaugural broadcast was Friday, March 20, 2020 — a fateful time as it also coincided with the start of COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in Poland and around the world.

A large percentage of BIZNES24’s revenues came from doing special projects, which they weren’t able to do because they weren’t allowed to meet anyone. In time, lockdowns eased, but just as things were picking up and growing, the war in Ukraine broke out, which once again curtailed their ability to do projects.

Innovation, the secret to survival

Despite these crises, BIZNES24 has prevailed. The secret to their survival is innovation, he says, especially in their cost structure. Instead of spending millions on the latest technology and equipment, they bought a PC — a powerful one but a PC nonetheless — and software costing around $450, which he says can do as good a job as a million-dollar control room.

They also saved money by buying equipment that Polsat no longer wanted, obtaining three studio cameras for a fraction of what they were worth when Polsat moved out. They also keep personnel costs down by employing one control room operator instead of the usual three, and when one of the anchors is off work, Mlodkowski himself steps in and assumes their place in the newsroom.

Making a difference

Mlodkowski credits the creation and success of BIZNES24 to the sheer motivation of his small yet highly dedicated team. He is a strong believer in “triple motivation” — that is, extrinsic motivation (pay), intrinsic motivation (professional challenge) and, above all, transcendent motivation, the idea that the work you do benefits society. In a world of fake news, he and his team are convinced of the importance of keeping people well informed about economic and financial matters.

“We enjoy this professional project that we are building and the feeling that we are making a difference together. It’s a huge privilege to work with people like this.”

One of the things that Mlodkowski learned while doing the Advanced Management Program (AMP) at IESE is the need for structure. The media industry requires an attention to detail and a focus on things that can easily get overlooked, especially when broadcasting 24 hours a day. Setting up clear management structures from the start is invaluable.

Being a trustworthy source

BIZNES24 is carried by all the major distributors in Poland and has its own streaming channel. According to Nielsen, BIZNES24 reaches over 2 million viewers a month, or roughly 100,000 unique viewers a day, catering to a niche but affluent target audience. “We make terribly boring television,” he jokes. “You have to be really interested in business to watch us.”

Because BIZNES24 is a small, low-cost operation, what their shows may lack in spectacular lighting or slick graphics, they more than make up for in the quality of their guests and the strength of their editorial independence.

“One of the reasons that we can survive in this market is because we’re a trustworthy source,” says Mlodkowski. “The news is something that we never sell; you can’t buy an interview. We’re very strict about making sure that the viewer knows which content is independent editorial and which is promotional or commercial content.”

Mlodkowski’s life is dominated by television. He admits that the long hours can sometimes make family life challenging, but he wouldn’t have wanted a different career. “When you have a creative job, it’s a blessing. Just like a painter or sculptor doesn’t go to work, they just paint or sculpt, I don’t go to work either: I make television. My job is my passion.”

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