“Companies tend to stay private for longer before they decide to launch an IPO. The median age of a company that went public used to be 8 years, but now it’s closer to 13”, says Natalia Matanova, who recently joined us from Pennsylvania State University as professor of Corporate Finance. She comments on her areas of expertise, her attraction to the School and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the IPO market.

How does a cooling tower engineering company stay competitive in a fast-changing global market? “Thanks to this in-company project, Hamon now has a strategic view of the different sectors: which ones are easy for us to access, where we need to invest in new technologies or adapt to new regulations, and whether it’s profitable for us to do so.” Bernard Goblet, Hamon’s CEO at the time, and the three Masters in International Management & Strategy (MIMS) students involved, Sven, Nicolas and Louis, reflect on a project that took them to India and China.

The Belgian Association of Marketing (BAM) is launching the Institute for Meaningful Marketing (IMM) together with the leading Belgian business schools Vlerick Business School and Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management. The Institute’s goal is to train marketeers to be curators of client-focused innovation and transformation projects. To this end, BAM has also devised the certification process through which students can be awarded a Certificate for Meaningful Marketing.

Employees of the Dutch asset manager Robeco are gradually returning to their familiar office environments, but the world has changed considerably in recent months. Robeco's COO Karin van Baardwijk has observed a remarkable shift within the ESG criteria that the group uses as its guideline: 'There is now a greater focus on the 'S' for Social.' Read the full discussion between Karin van Baardwijk and Vlerick's professor Xavier Baeten.

It is with a heavy heart that we share with you the sad news that our respected colleague Peter De Prins passed away. Joining Vlerick Business School in October 2010, Peter De Prins was Professor of Management Practice for the past 10 years, specialising in change management and leadership. In this role, he leveraged his ample international experience as engineer, entrepreneur, coach and manager and had an impact on thousands of participants.

Since 2015, Rode Kruis-Vlaanderen (Red Cross Flanders) has collaborated with Vlerick Business School to support its international capacity building programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa. Every year, a small group of Vlerick students is dispatched to one of the partner countries of Rode Kruis-Vlaanderen to work on a wide variety of different projects.
Despite the ongoing CoVID-19 crisis, this year was no exception. While the Vlerick team worked remotely, they were tasked with developing an evidence-based and contextualised Business Game to train the employees of various Commercial First Aid (CoFA) departments associated with the various African Red Cross Societies with whom Rode Kruis-Vlaanderen has a partnership. Our students happily explain how their In-Company Project came to life and how they brought it to a successful end…

Over the last two months 1351 executive programme participants, 264 masters students and 220 MBA students took the leap to learn online with us. We count our blessings for being surrounded with such a warm and supportive Vlerick community. So from all of us to all of you: THANK YOU! You rock!

The crisis calls for contemplation. Decisions that directors take now can help to make companies future-proof, with the added benefit of strongly embedding them in society. Professor Xavier Baeten argues that it would be courageous to take advantage of this crisis to rethink corporate remuneration policies. Not so we can still pay bonuses in spite of everything, but in order to bring them much more into line with the company's strategy.

Due to the current health crisis, our lives have become digitalized at an overwhelming speed. Despite of this new digital literacy, we have also developed new, potentially more demanding needs for satisfying digital connectivity. According to Professor Fredrik Hacklin, we may not necessarily experience a fatigue from the digital medium per se, but simply from the type of content. We seem to be on a transition of silently moving away from a one-to-many based social media, broadcasting easy-to-consume content, that is of mere informative intent and accessible to a large audience. Instead, we are embracing one-to-one or one-to-fewer interaction: direct connection, longer periods of engagement, deeper levels of insight.

Even a small but sudden change in consumer demand may lead to large demand variations upstream. This bullwhip effect is observed in today’s supply chains. The inventory dynamics downstream in the supply chain will determine how the recovery from the Covid-19 bullwhip will look like. At the same time, it is vital to keep an eye to our upstream supply companies, as they should remain resilient to the large swings in demand. If they collapse, it will create supply shortages and prevent us from fully taking advantage of the market recovery when demand picks up again.