Business gurus ‘must be enticed here’

IRELAND could play host to a European equivalent of America’s heavyweight Harvard Business School if the Government invests wisely, a leading academic said yesterday.

Professor Mary Lambkin, who heads up the Smurfit Business School that runs University College Dublin’s postgraduate business courses, said the country needed to pump money into recruiting top-ranking business lecturers and researchers, as well as building state-of-the-art teaching and learning facilities.

Professor Lambkin was speaking after Smurfit school was ranked among the top 100 business schools in the world by the London-based Financial Times newspaper. “Smurfit school has been ranked for the last six years among the top 100 business schools globally and among the top 20 in Europe,” said the professor, who added that the school had been “continuously benchmarked” against the best in the world and had the potential to become Europe’s Harvard equivalent. “If this goal is to be achieved, the Government and the business community must invest heavily in producing the business leaders of tomorrow,” said Professor Lambkin. “We cannot afford to become complacent about our position in the world rankings.”