SEAT and IESE promote the creation of a Chair in Innovation for future executives

IESE and SEAT have signed an agreement to create the SEAT Chair in Innovation, which will be led by IESE Professor Antonio Dávila. The creation of the Chair reflects IESE and SEAT’s commitment to researching into innovation, as it applies to different business models, and disseminating their findings among executives and entrepreneurs. The goal of this collaboration is to generate useful, valuable knowledge, with academic insight, that at the same time is relevant to business.

Among other actions, the Chair will foster a study on innovation aimed at analysing current innovative actions and detecting future trends. Likewise, it will be responsible for sharing this knowledge via seminars, lectures and articles, among others.

The agreement with one of the leading academic institutions follows several other initiatives that SEAT is promoting in Barcelona. The company further intensifies its connection with the city and strongly supports the promotion of innovation and excellence in Barcelona.

The agreement has been signed by SEAT President Luca de Meo; the company’s Vice-president for Human Resources Xavier Ros; IESE general secretary Jaime Alonso Stuyck, and the President of the IESE International Foundation Carlos Cavallé. During the agreement signing ceremony, IESE and SEAT unitedly stressed the importance of bringing the academic and business environments closer together in order to improve the performance of senior managers.

“At SEAT we firmly believe that through their actions, future managers should effectively contribute to the progress of the company as well as of society”, said Luca de Meo. “In this context, the exchange of experiences between business and academic environments and the harmonisation of their viewpoints are absolutely crucial”.

Furthermore, IESE general director Professor Franz Heukamp stated that “companies and universities must do their part to research and disseminate new discoveries that will shape the technical capacity, management skills and ethical values of future generations”.