Teaching and meeting friends in Alcalá
Once again, Prof. Dr. Kai-Ingo Voigt, Dr. Christian Baccarella and Lukas Maier took up the invitation of the tradition-rich Universidad de Alcalá, nearby Madrid. This year, ca. 25 MBA and master students passionately participated the lecture on “Technology and Innovation Management“. We discussed contemporary topics regarding exciting innovations and emerging digital technologies. Moreover, the participants themselves analyzed promising new digital technologies and presented us some great examples of innovative business models.
Besides teaching, we had the opportunity to meet Prof. Dr. Dr. Dr. h.c. Santiago Garcia Echevarría. Born in 1935, Prof. Echevarría completed his first PhD in Germany under the famous German Professor Erich Gutenberg in Cologne, but when he returned to Spain, his German degree wasn’t accepted by the fascist government – so he did another PhD in Madrid. During Franco’s dictatorship, Prof. Echevarría was one of the driving forces leading the liberalization of the Spanish economy. In 1975, he was co-founder of the Universidad de Alcalá with the goal to rebuild the university. Although they had not even an office or phone, he had quit his professorship at the University of Barcelona. At that time, Alcalá was basically a big military base, but after Franco’s death, the military moved out and left many historical buildings abandoned. Prof. Echevarría joined forces with the people of Alcalá and they were able to avoid the destruction of many of these beautiful historical buildings, which today host the university’s students and staff and attract visitors from all over the world.
We thank Prof. Echevarría for his fascinating insights and we thank the Universidad de Alcalá for their outstanding hospitality! We are already looking forward to next year in Alcalá!