BMI Institute, founded in Lithuania, is strengthening its international footprint and expanding to Brussels. The BMI Brussels branch will deliver a 12-month Executive MBA programme together with Belgium’s Louvain School of Management, one of the founders of BMI. The first cohort of 20 diverse middle and high-level managers has begun the programme. BMI Institute is thus the first educational institution in Lithuania to have opened a branch in a foreign country, according to a press release.
According to BMI Director-General Jurgita Bendikaitė-Ursavas, expansion to Brussels was an ambitious move, particularly amid the pandemic, but was necessary and followed several years of preparations to enter the market.
“The founders of BMI were not afraid over 20 years ago, aiming to boost the region’s management culture, to fly in professors from the world’s top universities to a little-known country that had recently broken free of the Soviet grip. Nor are we afraid now. We felt that BMI had outgrown the national market. And even if each year the programme has participants from foreign countries, now we can officially declare the institute’s international status. Of big importance is that by expanding we can also offer added value for existing participants in Lithuania,” Jurgita Bendikaitė-Ursavas says.
The participants of the programmes in Vilnius and Brussels will be able to share experience and learn together. EMBA study modules will be held both in Vilnius and in Brussels, with a variety of other training sessions, meetings and initiatives for participants of both groups also planned.
The 20 managers now enrolled in the UCLouvain BMI International EMBA programme represent 11 industries: services, pharmaceuticals, consulting, IT and telecommunication, wholesale trading, and so on. Among them, 30% are business owners. The Brussels cohort also shows greater cultural diversity, with managers from 6 countries.
On 19 April, the selection and admissions process is also starting for a new Vilnius-based EMBA cohort, already the 23rd at BMI. The new cohort will begin studies in late November.
According to BMI’s Director General, the plan of EMBA studies is enhanced every year based on the market’s situation and need. Thus, new professors are joining the institute’s faculty and increasing attention is being given to developing so-called deep skills like emotional intelligence, driving innovations, managing digital transformation projects, and social responsibility. Modules are led by lecturers and business practitioners from Chile, France, the USA, Switzerland, Denmark, Spain, UAE, and other countries.
“The team we’ve built of lecturer-practitioners from all over the world enables us to always feel the pulse of and provide programme participants with studies of the highest level, which develop the know-now not just for successfully operating today, but also for being able to work successfully tomorrow in any country of the world and any industry,” Jurgita Bendikaitė-Ursavas emphasizes.
Besides the longer executive programmes, BMI also offers shorter programmes on innovation, digital transformation and leadership, as well as custom in-company training.
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