<p>Brown University and Instituto Empresa announce a joint initiative in teaching and research, bringing together one of Europe's leading business schools and a leading North American research university.</p>

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Brown University and Instituto Empresa (IE), a top-ranked European business school, will launch a joint initiative for research and training in commerce, entrepreneurship, and organizational management, according to an announcement at the Brown faculty meeting Tuesday, May 5, 2009.

Instituto Empresa, with campuses in Madrid and Segovia, is among the world’s most distinguished business schools, recently ranked second among non-U.S. business schools by Business Week and sixth worldwide by the Financial Times. Senior administrators from Brown and the IE in Madrid signed a memorandum of understanding in February 2009 to explore a variety of collaborations. Now, they anticipate developing a wide range of research and teaching opportunities together over the coming years, linking the expertise of the two institutions in a number of innovative exchanges and programs. Utilizing the strengths of IE Business School in management and Brown’s excellence in the humanities, social, biological, and physical sciences, both institutions seek to foster a platform of interdisciplinary research and teaching. This will be supported through exchanges of faculty and students from various programs and at different levels of each school.

David Kennedy, Brown’s vice president for international affairs, described the new relationship as an opportunity to focus on innovative approaches to management. “The future of management and leadership education lies in re-imagining the M.B.A. and other management programs so as to link traditional analytic skills with humanist and scientific learning, pursue interdisciplinary research across a broad range of fields relating to organizational, economic and social dynamics, and develop new pedagogic and research avenues in the fields of innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship.”

Brown’s undergraduate program in Commerce, Organization and Entrepreneurship will be a key component of the relationship with IE, as will Brown’s master’s degree Program in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship (PRIME). Additional synergies are expected among summer and continuing education, adult education and executive education offerings, both in Rhode Island and in Spain.

One of the first major ventures to be launched will be an IE executive M.B.A., developed through an alliance between IE and Brown’s Office of Continuing Education. IE will launch a version of its top-ranked international executive M.B.A. with some distinct characteristics developed with Brown in the summer of 2009, aiming to commence the program in the fall of 2010. Aimed at senior executives with more than 10 years work experience, the program will draw on IE’s expertise in blended learning formats, linking state-of-the-art online learning methodologies and face-to-face periods. This program will include residential periods on Brown’s campus in Providence Rhode Island and IE’s centre in Madrid. Faculty from both institutions will be involved in the design and delivery of the program, which will primarily be taught by leading faculty from IE. This effort represents a major step for Brown in the field of continuing, adult and online education.

“This initiative comes at a particularly propitious time, as the global economic situation calls for a systematic rethinking of financial systems and management paradigms. There needs to be a much wider approach to understanding the role of corporations and managers within our global society. Managers need to be exposed to broader philosophies and schools of thought, building a wider vision of value creation and sustainability. This alliance is a major step forward in developing a higher education model which is focused on developing students who are global citizens as well as well rounded professionals,” said Santiago Iñiguez, dean of IE Business School.

IE Business School

IE Business School shapes leaders that promote innovation and change in organizations, equipping directors with an entrepreneurial mindset that generates employment, wealth and social wellbeing. Recognized as one of the world’s leading business schools, IE Business School has an urban campus in Madrid and a faculty of more than 500 professors who teach students from 75 countries on its master’s, Ph.D. and executive education programs. IE students use innovative online and face-to-face learning formats, including the IE Communities platform where they exchange knowledge and experiences with 35,000 IE graduates that currently hold management positions in some 100 countries.

Brown University

Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, is an Ivy League institution with a distinctive undergraduate academic curriculum, outstanding faculty, state-of-the-art research facilities, and a tradition of innovative and rigorous multidisciplinary study. Brown offers nearly 100 programs of study to its approximately 7,700 undergraduate, graduate, and medical students from around the world and has a firm commitment to academic excellence and diversity in its student population. The University adheres to a collaborative university-college model in which faculty are as committed to teaching as they are to research, embracing a curriculum in which students are the architects of their education.