Archive for October, 2005

The “Bulletin” and doing business in Belgium

A well known expat magazine based in Brussels, the Bulletin, has interviewed us regarding Attentio. The angle is entrepreneurship in Brussels and our experiences here. Setting up experience in Brussels has been mixed, having a lawyer has certainly helped but parts of the administration in Brussels have been really good to deal with (Especially ORBEM). Still, the costs of employment and flexibility of hiring are very difficult obstacles.

On the article itself, there is a funny beginning, warning people if they write blogs they should be careful, because we might be tracking them. Of course it is not like that, what an individual writes might be interesting but the people that buy our services are more interested in the aggregate or trends of the results. Anyway, if someone writes a blog I suppose they accept that people will want to read what they write, that’s the raison d’etre of a blog, right?

At the end of the week I mailed with Bernadette O’Reilly, she runs an entrepreneurship centre in Dublin and they are really expanding, she was even on RTE talking about it last week. The Belgians don’t get involved with activities like that, but if they want to create more innovation (and they say they do) they may also need to make investments like this. It seems that Ireland is starting to make some headway here http://www.rte.ie/business/2004/0429/entrepreneur.html. The support for the Belgian entrepreneur is almost non-existant but with a recent growth in the number of independents and some centres of innovation (mainly offering cheap rent), things could be changing…

Otherwise, it was a busy week writing proposals, making sales calls and discussing direction of technology. On Friday morning had to leave for Copenhagen for Mother-in-law’s birthday, thankfully we missed the worst of the “social action” in Brussels, although we couldn’t get a taxi so my car sits in airport parking €15 a day… A small price to pay for living in the capital of Europe…

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First published on www.simonmcdermott.com

Vlerick

As I work through a project I am doing with Vlerick, it occurs to me that they deserve some credit for the recent Economist ranking. They have increased their position to number 12 in the world… For a school that is quite new, it represents a great achievement and most probably acknowledges the student involvement in the MBA, strong alumni and improving faculty.

IESE are considered number 1 but there is heavy criticism of the salary data from people who seem to know the school…

http://www.yannicklaclau.com/2005/10/mba_rankings_ta.html

I wonder though if there will be a move away from ranking and perhaps a bigger focus on simply highlighting the life experience of an MBA and what you will earn when you leave… I can’t think of many other reasons for doing an MBA and selecting a school that fulfils these requirements is probably most important for the majority of applicants…

Still, number 12 in the world! :)

First published on www.simonmcdermott.com