Overseas education breeds innovation

In order for Emiratis to become hungry for success they should do a stint at an overseas educational institute, says a top professor at one of Europe’s elite business schools.

By Amanda Fisher

• Follow us on
• 
• 
• 

Published: Tue 16 Apr 2013, 8:59 AM

Last updated: Sat 4 Apr 2015, 10:53 AM

The Associate Dean of the MBA programme at Parisian Business School HEC Bernard Garrette — in Dubai seeking new students, networking with top multinational businesses and connecting with alumni — told Khaleej Times he believed the comfortable upbringing of many and the wealth of the country had dampened the entrepreneurial spirit in some.

“(There exists) a particular challenge because learning and innovation is not natural, so you have to create the need for that. Students from the GCC have to develop the hunger for new things and hunger for innovation.”

There existed a tension between “exploitation and exploration” in many oil-rich states, as it was easier to harvest the market that already existed and was generating wealth as opposed to outputting a lot of money in the pursuit of discovering or creating new markets.

“It’s very difficult to both exploit and explore because if you have oil under your feet, what makes more sense is to exploit the oil you already have, so you’re not hungry for new things.”

It was “very, very difficult” to buy a good education system, such as those that had evolved in Europe and America over many years.

“Bringing education here is one thing, but like in any other place, just making people go outside and compete in a better market with different sets of talent skills is the best thing you can do.”

HEC, consistently rated either the top or second European business school by the Financial Times in recent years, took about 200 students in its flagship MBA programme, about 80 per cent of whom were international — including students from the Arab world.

It was increasingly looking to recruit students from the Middle East as the large companies they worked with that had offices in the region were demanding it, Garrette said.

“I’ve met three companies here and they all say the same thing, which is they want to increase the number of (native) Arabic speaking people they have at the top level, plus they want to increase the number of nationals and there is a lot of people not trained in the way that fits...so there is a very strong need (for training).”

The push for more nationals was partly to do with the Emiratisation policy introduced by the Government, but also because there was an increasing need for international companies to interact with local companies and regulatory bodies, as they expanded.

“(The companies) are able to hire the top graduates from the best business schools in the world, the problem is most of these people are not originating from this part of the world — plus the people who do originate from here do not necessarily want to come back here for their first job.”

There was a need for better training of talent in this part of the world, both because of the rapid development happening here but also because the current education on offer was not on par with that of other institutions in regions such as Europe, North America and Asia, Garrette said.

It was imperative multi-national companies had good staff at the top levels who originated from emerging markets, as this was becoming more lucrative than the North American and European markets combined.

“At the moment, these companies are run by Europeans, but they want to internationalise their top executives.”

Many graduates from HEC ended up coming to the Middle East.

“It is a growth area in economic terms, it’s quite attractive for people that we train...there are a lot of opportunities in oil and gas.”

Garrette attended networking events for alumni and prospective students while he was in Dubai.

amanda@khaleejtimes.com