Madrid and Barcelona: 4th talent magnet in the world according to Esade ‘MBA City Monitor’
Barcelona and Madrid, separated by a high-speed train journey of just 2.5 hours, are the fourth global magnet for talent, only behind London, Boston and New York, and just ahead of Silicon Valley, according to the 'Esade MBA City Monitor' survey. The report studies the number of international students enrolled on MBA programs and – a new feature in this edition – analyses it in relation to the risk capital funding received by the city in the last five years and the number of the best technology universities in the metropolitan area. The outcome is a unique global indicator making it possible to forecast a city’s ability to attract and retain talent.
More than 50% of the 147 international business schools teaching MBAs are in the USA or Canada, 24.5% are in Europe and 11.5% in Asia. According to Ivan Bofarull, Chief Innovation Officer at Esade and co-author of the report, “In recent years there has been a certain shift in international MBA talent from the USA to Europe. Whereas the USA has lost 10% of its ability to attract talent (particularly the East Coast hub), Europe (particularly the London-Paris-Barcelona-Madrid hub) has attracted about 13% more. East Asia has remained the same, which suggests an untapped opportunity.
“There is a trend towards the relocation of talent,” says Natalia Olson-Urtecho, advisor and mentor in Palo Alto, CA, and co-author of Esade’s 2022 MBA City Monitor. “At the same time as signs of deglobalization are being detected in different areas (nationalist or protectionist leadership, Brexit, supply chain breakdown, etc.), talent has an unprecedented opportunity to establish itself anywhere and can be potentially more ubiquitous, partly because the pandemic has facilitated WFH and digitalization.
Three variables: talent, capital and technology
Barcelona is the fifth most attractive city in the world for foreign MBA students and the third in Europe. The city that attracts the most global talent is Boston with 1,708 students enrolled on MBA programs at the same time, followed by London with 1,501 students, New York with 1,204 and Paris with 1,113.
The MBA City Monitor highlights another two variables that cities should take advantage of in order to grow. On the one hand, funding from investors, and on the other, the concentration of universities with first-rate technology programs. “When MBA students have the opportunity to come into contact with a critical mass of expert technology talent and risk capital, the possibilities of creating future businesses and companies are much greater”, said Bofarull.
In this ranking, featuring the three variables talent, capital and technology, Madrid is placed 13th in the world and Barcelona amongst the top 10 cities and in 6th place in the world in the combined list headed by London, Boston and New York.
Opportunity for other cities
Cities such as Seoul, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Miami and Munich are great talent magnets but do not appear in the top 25 of this ranking because they do not have an MBA program ranked amongst the world’s best. The Esade MBA City Monitor highlights the impact on cities of first-rate academic programs for attracting the best MBA students or, if they already existed, making them larger. “If, for example, cities such as Seoul, Munich, Tel Aviv and Miami attracted a number of international students in the top MBA programs similar to those in Los Angeles or Sydney, then these cities would rank amongst the top 25 in the world,” said Ivan Bofarull.
To this end, the authors explain that it is possible to establish and define an ‘operating system’ for transforming cities into talent magnets and enabling them to create the ecosystems and companies of the future, on the basis of global talent, venture capital investment and public incentives.
