The Spanish business school Iese has benefited from rising student interest in its executive education courses from many parts of the world in recent years, but one region has stood out for the scale and growth of demand.
“Twenty per cent of our participants are from the Middle East and 80 per cent of those are from Saudi Arabia,” says Andrea Montalvo, Iese’s associate dean for executive education. “We believe Saudi will become a global player. They are building a diversified economy and have to prepare for a lot of changes. They know talent development is critical.” (View Highlight)
The country is viewed by many in business education as a high priority location to recruit executives to train abroad on open-enrolment and custom programmes, and also to offer training and employee development domestically. A number are exploring establishing offices, campuses and joint programmes with institutions inside the kingdom. (View Highlight)
Sergei Guriev, dean of London Business School, recently announced plans to open an office in Riyadh, expanding from the Dubai campus LBS established in 2007. (View Highlight)
LBS counts Saudi Aramco, the Public Investment Fund and Saudi Basic Industries Corporation among its clients for custom education, and aims to reach more than 10,000 Saudi executives with its programmes by 2030.
“The high income Gulf countries are growing fast and investing,” says Guriev. “There is a growing economy, a growing population and a rather limited supply of world class business education.” (View Highlight)
IE in Spain is another school planning to open an office in Riyadh later this year. “It is becoming probably the fastest growing region in the world for executive education,” says Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño, the university’s president. “Everyone is running programmes there, although the information is not shared or easily monitored.” (View Highlight)
While other emerging markets offer scope for expansion, they also have greater limitations. In India, for example, international business schools need to balance the high costs of expatriate faculty against an expectation of modest pricing for local students, while competing with domestic rivals such as the Indian Institutes of Management, the highly competitive elite state-funded business schools.
By contrast, Iñiguez de Onzoño says: “In Saudi, many of the institutions are in an emerging phase. There are still opportunities for alliances and joint programmes. There is demand from leading corporations like Saudi Telecom and Aramco. And government agencies are investing heavily, with a clear vision of transforming the country.” (View Highlight)
While many of the larger companies continue to send executives to business schools abroad to take advantage of the networking and global diversity of a range of participants from around the world, there is growing appetite for training within Saudi Arabia. One executive says Spanish business schools have been particularly competitive on pricing.
Guriev at the LBS says that the topics sought by Saudi clients are in line with those globally. “The whole world wants to learn about digital transformation, innovation, agile organisations and strategy,” he says. (View Highlight)
