Alumni Association honors IESE’s best research in 2024

Professors Romain Boulongne, Sampsa Samila, Pascual Berrone, Domènec Melé and Jordi Gual have received the 2024 Research Excellence Awards from the IESE Alumni Association. The awards ceremony took place yesterday as part of the annual meeting of the Governing Board, held simultaneously at the Barcelona and Madrid campuses.

The awarded research projects address topics with particular relevance for today’s business and social environments, such as impact investing in underprivileged neighborhoods, the strategic challenges of artificial intelligence, ethics in business management and the crucial role of trust in the economic system.

The awards were presented in three categories:

Best Article:

• “Impact Investing in Disadvantaged Urban Areas” by professors Romain Boulongne, Rodolphe Durand (HEC Paris) and Caroline Flammer (Columbia University).
  The article highlights how impact investing in disadvantaged urban areas improves financial performance and generates a significant increase in employment. The study focuses on small businesses in suburban France, showing that these companies face greater difficulties in accessing financing, limiting their growth potential. However, when supported financially, these firms outperform their counterparts in more affluent areas, particularly in terms of job creation and return on assets.

Best Case:

• “OpenAI and the Large Language Model Market” by professors Sampsa Samila and Pascual Berrone.
  This case study focuses on Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who faces crucial decisions regarding the future of the company in the rapidly growing large language model market. With the success of ChatGPT-4, OpenAI has established itself as a key player in the industry. Altman must now develop a comprehensive strategy to maintain this position while navigating a series of significant challenges.

Best Books:

• The Humanistic Person-Centered Company by Professor Domènec Melé.
  This book offers an in-depth analysis of the main ethical principles from the Catholic tradition in business management. It includes proposals such as person-centered ethics, ethics as intrinsic to business activity, the company as an organized community of people and corporate purpose oriented toward the common good through both an internal and external mission.
• Trust Has No Price by Professor Jordi Gual.
  This book reflects Jordi Gual’s deep understanding of economics and the banking system. Gual argues that trust is essential for economic transactions and social cohesion, and that its decline has led to increased instability. He emphasizes the need for public institutions to prioritize professionalism, fight discrimination, and focus on the common good in order to restore trust and ensure a stable economic environment.

Governing board meeting with new leadership

The awards were presented during the Alumni Association’s annual board meeting, chaired for the first time by María Diaz-Morera, who took office as president of the association in March 2024. Also participating were Dean Franz Heukamp and Mireia Rius, Director of Alumni & Institutional Development at IESE.

During the meeting, the association’s annual report was presented, and the main achievements from the past academic year were reviewed. This year has been especially significant for the IESE alumni community, as it reached the remarkable milestone of more than 60,000 alumni across over 150 countries. It is also worth highlighting that 82% of the budget surplus was allocated to scholarship funding.

Regarding regional and international activity, 190 sessions were held for more than 17,000 alumni, including new e-conferences. Additionally, 37 in-person and virtual events and reunions were organized, bringing together over 9,000 participants. Career development remained a key focus, with new career talks and over 5,200 alumni taking part in mentoring programs, either as mentors or mentees.