• Albert Fernández, professor in the Entrepreneurship and Accounting and Control departments, takes over from Jose Maria Rosanas, who held the Crèdit Andorrà Chair of Markets, Organizations and Humanism for fourteen years• The aim is to promote the generation of value from knowledge through conferences and projects that are already underway, such as Scale Lab Andorra, and to open new collaboration and research projects in the educational sphere• Montse Guardia, General Manager of Alastria Blockchain Ecosystem, offers the inaugural conference for the new Chair, “Blockchain, a new vision of the internet for generating value”Crèdit Andorrà presents the new Chair of Entrepreneurship and Banking at the IESE Business School, under the leadership of professor Albert Fernández. The Crèdit Andorrà Chair of Entrepreneurship and Banking reflects the desire to respond to the new reality for companies, whereby the generation of value extends beyond the pure scope of business and contributes to the generation of wealth for society as a whole.Albert Fernández, holder of the Crèdit Andorrà Chair of Entrepreneurship and Banking at IESE, takes over from Jose Maria Rosanas, who held the Crèdit Andorrà Chair of Markets, Organizations and Humanism for fourteen years.Xavier Cornella, CEO of Crèdit Andorrà, stated that “the new Chair brings together the values that define us and the essence of our business”. Cornella recalled that “Crèdit Andorrà was born of the efforts and bravery of a group of entrepreneurs who saw the need to set up a bank in the country, a bank for the country. In this same spirit, we have sustained the trajectory of an enterprising bank in terms of initiating projects, being pioneers in proposing cutting-edge and valuable solutions for our clients. That is why we are convinced that entrepreneurship and banking are the two best attributes to serve as the focus of the new Chair”.Franz Heukamp, Dean of IESE Business School, said that the new Chair must serve to promote knowledge to Andorra and from within Andorra, and to put this knowledge at the service of businesses and people. “IESE is a management school at the forefront of training business leaders, but also in the creation and upkeep of relationship networks between business leaders, entrepreneurs, investors and researchers... And this is where the new Crèdit Andorrà Chair of Entrepreneurship and Banking can play an important role as a catalyst for valuable projects and initiatives”, added Heukamp.Albert Fernández, holder of the new Crèdit Andorrà Chair of Entrepreneurship and Banking, explained that they are still working on defining the specific lines of action, which will generally meet three main objectives.From the business perspective, “both Crèdit Andorrà and IESE share a common desire to launch initiatives that contribute to the new economy”. In this regard Fernández talked about “the boost that IESE can give to initiatives like Scale Lab Andorra, Crèdit Andorrà’s business hyperaccleration programme for start-ups, thanks to the business school’s entrepreneur support platform Finaves”. According to Fernández, Finaves “offers educational tools to entrepreneurs so they can create their business plans, but, above all, it brings together investors, entrepreneurs and the experience of IESE to promote new businesses”.Albert Fernández also believes it is essential to support research in Andorra that is associated with entrepreneurship. “The Chair must serve as a catalyst to promote knowledge from the academic sphere. Discovering the reality of businesses in the country, their needs, concerns and aspirations must enable us to be more specific when proposing how to help, both in terms of finding investors and exploring new business opportunities”.Finally, the dissemination of knowledge and information will be another of the foundations of the Chair, with conferences and events aimed at spreading knowledge of the main working areas, such as entrepreneurship, new technologies and the current economic situation. A particular emphasis will be placed on commerce and tourism due to their importance in the country.The inaugural event for the new Chair is the online conference “Blockchain, a new vision of the internet for generating value” led by Montse Guardia, General Manager of Alastria Blockchain Ecosystem. The online session will take place this evening at 7 p.m., and it will focus on discovering the potential of using blockchain technology transversally across multiples economic activities as a tool for innovation.Albert Fernández Albert Fernández is a professor in IESE Business School’s Entrepreneurship and Accounting and Control departments. He also teaches courses on the analysis of business situations and the management of SMEs. He is the holder of the Crèdit Andorrà Chair of Entrepreneurship and Banking.Since 2009, he has been the director of Finaves, the venture capital fund that invests in IESE alumni business projects.He has been one of the academic directors of the Programa de Desarrollo Directivo (PDD) programme since 2016, and he has been the director of the Accounting and Control Department since 2018. He is also the academic director of a programme for executives of micro-enterprises.His areas of interest include entrepreneurship, the keys to growth of SMEs, corporate governance in SMEs and family businesses, the use and application of management processes such as planning, budgeting, evaluation and compensation.About IESEIESE is the business management school of the University of Navarra. With campuses in Barcelona, Madrid, Munich, New York and São Paulo, IESE is adding new projects to its already innovative learning ecosystem, which allows it to offer training for business leaders in Europe, Asia, America and Africa. Since 1958, the school has educated over 50,000 executives and leaders, offering them a personalised and transformational experience. IESE is striving to continue building tomorrow, educating leaders who can have a positive and lasting impact on people, businesses and society. This endeavour has been recognised in the Financial Times rankings, which, for the sixth year running, has placed IESE as the top school in the world for training programmes for business leaders.
