A case study about the electoral technology company Scytl, co-authored by Eugenia Bieto, Director General of ESADE, Luisa Alemany, Director of the ESADE Entrepreneurship Institute, and Lourdes Urriolagoitia, Researcher at the ESADE Entrepreneurship Institute, has been recognised in the Entrepreneurship category of the Case Writing Competition of the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), one of Europe’s most prestigious competitions in this field.

The award-winning case is based on data obtained from interviews conducted with the founders of Scytl in 2002 and later with the current CEO, Pere Vallès, in 2015. This longitudinal study outlines the history of Scytl from its launch in 2001 until autumn 2015. In summer 2014, after Scytl’s fourth round of financing, Mr. Vallès announced plans to launch an initial public offering on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 2016. At that time, Luisa Alemany, Associate Professor and Director of the ESADE Entrepreneurship Institute, Lourdes Urriolagoitia, Researcher at the ESADE Entrepreneurship Institute, and Eugenia Bieto, Director General of ESADE, approached Mr. Vallès about writing a case study.

Because its main focus is finance for entrepreneurs, the case has been used in the subjects Entrepreneurial Finance, Venture Capital & Private Equity, and Financing of New Ventures, as well as in general entrepreneurship subjects in the MBA programmes, the MSc in Finance and the MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at ESADE. “This case takes students up to the final months of 2015, when the CEO of Scytl was weighing various exit alternatives for the company’s investors,” commented ESADE researcher Lourdes Urriolagoitia, co-author of the case study. 

Luisa Alemany, Associate Professor in the Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting at ESADE and Director of the ESADE Entrepreneurship Institute, commented: “For the past four years, we have been working to create a compilation of European cases on the subject of entrepreneurship – the Entrepreneurship Case Collection – covering both entrepreneurs and investors in the early stages.” She added: “This recognition makes us believe that we are going in the right direction, and we will keep working to complete it.”

Pere Vallès, CEO of Scytl, commented: “As a company created as a spin-off of a university research group, Scytl carries an important academic component in its DNA. Therefore, we are especially pleased that the Scytl case has been shared with students of various nationalities in the world’s best business schools.”

Eugenia Bieto, Director General of ESADE, collected the award at the EFMD Annual Conference in Berlin, where other cases were also recognised in categories such as Family Business, Finance and Banking, Responsible Leadership, and Latin American Business Cases.