About the advisors
A-board Chairman - Eythor Ivar Jonsson, Associate Professor in Entrepreneurship, Copenhagen Business School
Europe. The many years of experience within the work of research, degree programs and networks place CBS as an active and innovative actor in the global market.
MBA st entrepre the Boa their co decisio
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difficult decisions. Te focus is on growth and the sustainability of the companies. Some 70 companies have participated in the program and around 250 MBAs since 2006. Te MBA program at CBS has been creating an army of effective advisors for growth companies.
Dr. Eythor Ivar Jonsson is responsible for the Entrepreneurship courses in the MBA program at Copenhagen Business School. His first book about entrepreneurship was published in 1998 and he has written hundreds of articles about related subjects. Eythor is currently the CEO of Klak – Innovation Centre and the chairman of Seed Forum Iceland. He has started several programs for entrepreneurs in Iceland among those the Business Accelerator, which focuses on fast growing companies, and Iceland Angels, the first business angels network in Iceland. He holds Master‘s degrees in finance, marketing and international business and a doctorate degree in corporate governance. His fields of research are: Start-ups and growth firms, opportunity recognition, the role of boards and governance systems, internationalisation and transformation strategy. Eythor founded the A-Board program in 2006.
THE CONFIDENCE OF
PROGRESS Te A-board program was started as a research project in 2006 at Copenhagen Business School. It was designed to meet the needs of entrepreneurs and start-up companies. Research on start-ups indicates that a critical factor in their failure to survive or grow is lack of basic management and strategic understanding. Te quest of the research program was to determine if a model based on research within the corporate governance and the consulting literature could help to decrease the errors of entrepreneurship with advice based on experience and expertise. Five companies participated in the research project for the first year. Te results from the study were promising as all the companies advanced in some important aspect, mostly in terms of seeing the big picture of the organization
ey are helping the companies to create better business models, form strategies and helping them to make
rather than being stuck in details. Te A-board facilitated important strategic decisions and even more importantly helped the entrepreneurs to gain confidence in their venture and to take decisions that are progressive, both regarding problems and opportunities. Te program was expanded in 2007 to twenty companies and it was made part of the fulltime-MBA curriculum at CBS.
Where university means business The business side of innovation is central to CBS. Diversity, risk acceptance and the desire to experiment are crucial to CBS. The guiding principles of all our development initiatives are to be daring and innovative in a changing society and to educate graduates who are dynamic thinkers that will ensure value creation for the Danish society.
EXPERIENCE AND EXPERTISE Te ‘A’ stands for advisory as the role of the board
is to advice entrepreneurs or help them make important advise. Knowledge within the consulting industry is sometimes described as being grounded in experience - tacit knowledge that people acquire by doing things over and over again – and expertise – articulate or explicit knowledge that people acquire with more formal education. Te composition of each A-board addresses the two types of knowledge. One or two of the members of each board are experienced board members and/or consultants. Some of the boards have had directors who is called ‘the grand old man’ (or ‘the wise guy’ as they like to call themselves) who is someone which has been on boards of big corporations or been consulting SMEs for years. As the title indicates the members taking this role are usually people who are semi-retired but like to contribute and use their expertise and experience. Te first ‘grand old man’ of the program was Steen Langebæk, the former chairman of Bang&Olufsen A/S, Ejendomsselskaber Norden A/S and other companies, who has supported the program from
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The Pr Three A then Fe MBA st for the n importa mission
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