CEU Business School celebrated its 25th anniversary by presenting a vision for management education with the publication of "Free Market in Its Twenties: Modern Business Decision Making in Central and Eastern Europe," a peer-reviewed, faculty-authored book with a foreword by George Soros, founder of CEU. Soros hosted a book launch in Budapest June 21 with CEU Business School Dean Mel Horwitch and special guest Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria.

“Our school aims to be a pacesetter in understanding and teaching management by capitalizing on and being in sync with the forces changing the face of management today,” Horwitch said. “We’re in a good position to do this, to be entrepreneurial, to embrace the values of sustainability and creating a better world.”
CEU Business School, founded in 1989 as communism was crumbling, played an important role in guiding the region toward a free market economy and democracy. The world is again at a new crossroads economically and politically, and very much part of the region but with a direct American connection and a global perspective, CEU is well-placed to lead again, participants said.
“We have very deep roots here – we played an important role in the transition from closed to open society,” Soros told CEU Business School faculty, alumni and honored guests at a gala event at the Four Seasons Gresham hotel in Budapest. “In the last decade, we have become global. The Business School brings something very specific… an emphasis on entrepreneurship.”
Harvard’s Nohria agreed that CEUBusinessSchool is well placed to lead.

“You have an advantage as a young school in a very exciting part of the world, between east and west, in formerly socialist societies transitioning to capitalism, in a place committed to knowledge and intellectual advancement,” said Nohria. “You have the opportunity to have a next 25 years that are even better.”
In Free Market in Its Twenties, CEU Business School faculty experts outline a new model for business education in a region that needs revitalization and a new outlook in order to secure a value-added role in the global economy, according to Maciej Kisilowski, editor of the book and assistant professor of law and public management. The era of separate professional and entrepreneurial paths is over, Kisilowski said.

“At this point in the Business School’s career, we are saying that these two paths can meet and merge into creative managerial professionalism,” Kisilowski said. “We want to be the place that makes professionals more entrepreneurial and entrepreneurs more professional.”
The book’s chapters, providing broad-ranging supporting analysis, outline concrete steps toward that goal, such as being realistic about the challenges to competitiveness, pushing for transparent, flat organizations without waiting for a more positive political climate, and going beyond borders, Kisilowski said. The agenda is “ambitious, innovative, and relevant,” he said.
Free Market in Its Twenties is published by CEU Press.
About CEU BusinessSchool
CEU Business School educates leaders and entrepreneurs who transform the organizations they work with, or in, into innovative, responsible entities that bring value to the world, and who make these organizations engines of jobs and market growth in emerging and established economies and in underserved regions. CEUBusinessSchool was founded in 1988 in Budapest, Hungary by a group of visionary leaders headed by legendary investor and philanthropist George Soros. It was the first educational institution to offer American MBA degrees in Central-Eastern Europe. It is now the region’s leading business school, and part of Central European University. Visit ceubusiness.org to learn more.






