Building the Future with an EMBA: Gian Franco Murrone’s Experience
9 July 2024Gian Franco Murrone, alumnus of the Executive MBA at Bologna Business School and Project Portfolio Manager at Credem Banca, has managed to transform his professional journey thanks to the tools and skills acquired during the master’s program. In this interview, he shares how the EMBA has enabled him to tackle the challenges of the financial sector with new tools and an open mind towards innovation. And for those considering the same path, he offers some valuable advice.
How has the EMBA at Bologna Business School helped you build the professional path you wanted in general, and specifically manage complex projects?
Over the years, I have been fortunate enough to take on many roles within the company and deal with increasing responsibilities and complexities. I am part of a company that strongly believes in job rotation as a tool for professional development. I had consolidated significant experience in sales at various levels, both in the network and in management, and I was looking for an experience that would allow me to expand my understanding and influence to other organizational areas to continue contributing to the group’s evolution from different angles. The EMBA sparked many curiosities in me, particularly in the fields of innovation and strategy, which found a certain convergence in the company right in the middle of the master’s course.
I work in a sector impacted by significant evolving scenarios that will need to be managed and guided – I think of open banking in a broad sense and its intersections with the fintech world and innovative startups, or the entire change process that banking and financial services will bring to fruition in the coming years. The EMBA provided me with a set of tools useful for quickly reading and interpreting these scenarios, essential keys to intercept trends and generate value for the organization and people. To sum it up in one sentence: its potential is in full expansion.
We often say that at BBS it is possible to build your ideal “toolbox” for professional growth. Are there tools, methodologies, hard or soft skills learned during the master that you consciously use in your work as a Project Portfolio Manager?
It is an intense and dense journey, punctuated by international-level inspiration talks, and my toolbox has two main tags: breadth and depth. There is no dichotomy because the EMBA trains you to broaden your perspective for inspiration, to listen actively and draw useful elements even from seemingly distant worlds. This way, it becomes easier to quickly go in-depth, grasping what is necessary to make informed decisions in VUCA by design scenarios.
It is a gym – at times very challenging – that continues even after completing this fascinating yet demanding journey, thanks to the ongoing exchange with fellow alumni.
Why pursue an Executive MBA and why do it at BBS?
An old poem says, “Our playing small does not serve the world,” and pursuing an Executive MBA answered my desire to play big. An EMBA is a transformative experience, a true empowering migration. To put it in a nutshell: it means proving to yourself and the world around you that you are up to your dreams, being the pilot of your personal flight and not just a passenger.
Why do it at BBS? There are many reasons, some of which are well known and easy to find in a brochure, so I will focus on what is seemingly an intangible asset that I find distinctive, having observed other business schools up close and knowing very well the region where BBS is located. Here at Bologna Business School, you can find one of the distinctive traits that have made Emilia Romagna a land of excellence recognized worldwide: the ability to combine a long-term vision, healthy pragmatism, and a human-oriented approach that makes the journey very contemporary. In an era of high complexity, where interdependencies dominate, the Executive MBA program at BBS is a path where you build a new vocabulary to interpret and guide organizations, a map whose coordinates open up very fascinating and stimulating horizons.
To conclude, can you share with us and future students three key words to keep in mind when starting the EMBA at BBS?
I leave you with 3Cs: curiosity, change, and collaboration. An Executive MBA is an act of awareness that starts as an individual action but then takes on collective relevance because its effects resonate with others. In this regard, I borrow a phrase that well expresses the essence of this journey: “If you dream alone, it’s only a dream. If you dream together, it’s the beginning of reality.”
