AGSM star shines at MBA World Summit

What does it take to be recognised as one of the world's leading MBA talents? Just ask Frederik Mayeres.

In March, the 26-year-old AGSM MBA candidate was one of only 100 international students selected to take part in the prestigious 2015 MBA World Summit in Barcelona.

Now in its second year, the event brings together the world's most inspiring and visionary MBA students from business schools around the globe, enabling participants to co-create innovative strategies, solutions and experimental ideas.

"It was quite unique to meet with 100 MBAs from different universities and backgrounds and get some inspiring, challenging discussions going about business and economy problems," says Mayeres, currently on exchange at NYU Stern School of Business. "For sure it was one of the highlights of my MBA and I was quite happy and excited to be selected."

Born in Hamburg, Germany, Mayeres commended his MBA at AGSM last year and was selected to attend the 2015 summit following a rigorous selection process involving 3000 applicants. An expert in finance and strategy, he believes one of the keys to being a standout MBA candidate is an unwavering desire to constantly search for new business possibilities.

"I think especially in today's world of big disruption in every industry, you can't stick to old models and strategies, so for me curiosity and being open-minded in regards to new ideas is very important," he says. "From a personal perspective I'm very curious. I love to debate and I love to spark discussions."

Mayeres says the Barcelona summit provided ample opportunities to engage in many such discussions and idea exchanges.

"The most interesting experience for me was a crowd sourcing discussion that I had with about 20 MBA students," he recalls. "Pretty soon we got into an idea pitching discussion about what can be done. I took a lot of ideas away from it and I'm actually still discussing two of them with two of the people. One idea was crowd sourcing in regards to a peer-to-peer lending business, and the other was about marketing analytics. Just imagine big consumer companies in developing countries actually incentivising shoppers to take pictures and write little reports to contribute to market research."

Currently in the final weeks of his MBA program and scheduled to return to Australia in June, Mayeres (who will also take up a ​consulting role at Boston Consulting Group​  (BCG) in Sydney) says the AGSM MBA experience has been extremely rewarding.

"I've really loved it," he says. "AGSM is small compared to internationally, but it punches way above its weight. You meet a lot of inspiring people and the network you take out of the MBA is just amazing. I'm really looking forward to coming back to Australia and being part of the AGSM community again."