The Forum was opened by the Minister for Education and Science of Latvia, Mārīte Seile, who came forward with the presentation "How to become a clever country?" The speaker underlined that the education system in Latvia is good, but does not prepare the new generation of Latvians for real life and is not instrumental in forming analytical thinking. "Nobody knows what professions will be of value in 20 years. Clearly it’s necessary to prepare young people for real life from kindergarten: to develop analytical thinking and the ability to face challenges and difficulties."
Representatives of large companies such as Statoil, airBaltic, Microsoft, as well as students and professors from RBS participated in the panel discussion.
Rietumu at the Forum was represented by the HR managers. Member of the Board and senior vice president of the Rietumu Bank, Yevgeny Dyugayev, said: "Rietumu is a constantly developing bank, therefore we value young talents, and such experts are always necessary here. We have established long-term cooperation with Riga Business School, and there are students who graduated from this school among our employees. I think that close collaboration between business and educational establishments should be developed, as it allows competitive professionals to be prepared who will fulfil their potential in their future work to the full extent."
The Minister and business representatives came to the conclusion that today it is quite difficult to find people who can analyse and promptly accept decisions. Participants of the Forum also noted that in the current situation not only knowledge is of value, but also skills and capabilities. Important qualities are creativity, ability to work in a team, and to find the balance between received knowledge and the ability to apply knowledge in practice.
The idea of organizing the Forum is Claudio Rivera’s, the director of the baccalaureate program for Business Management. "I often hear complaints from businesspersons that they cannot find the personnel, they don’t know how to attract and retain young experts. But as a teacher I see that students feel disconnected from the business sphere. These are two sides that need to be brought together. Therefore for this event we have chosen the forum format – where participants could ask questions and discuss important issues with each other; thus new ideas appear and opportunities arise."
The Business School opened in 1991 as a collaboration of Riga Technical University, State University of New York (Buffalo, USA) and University of Ottawa (Canada).
Riga Business School was the first higher educational establishment in the Baltic countries that offered the internationally acknowledged MBA program in English. Since 2012 the school has run the program "Management bachelor in the area of international business" with the opportunity of a double diploma.