Berlin School of Business and Innovation

Berlin School of Business and Innovation (BSBI) is a business school run by private, for-profit education company Global University Systems in Berlin, Germany. The dominant approach for the provided programmes is to encourage participants to effectively shape the future through an entrepreneurial mindframe which is formulated with three concepts in sight, enterprise, leadership, and the digital world, where theory is combined with practice to keep students up-to-date with the latest industry trends.

History
Berlin School of Business and Innovation was founded in 2014 by Global University Systems (GUS), a for-profit education company. According to Berlin Senate, "The Berlin School of Business and Innovation (BSBI) is a franchise institution operated by Global University Systems (GUS), which was reported in 2014 in accordance with §124a BerlHG in the state of Berlin." BSBI does not hold degree-awarding powers in Germany and its programmes are validated by private Italian distance learning institution UniNettuno International Telematic University. In November 2019, BSBI announced that it had partnered with Concordia University Chicago to deliver programmes at its Berlin campus. BSBI also offers courses from the University for the Creative Arts in the United Kingdom. The institution is headed by Sagi Hartov, Israeli cellist and BSBI Executive Chairman, and Aaron Etingen, British-Russian businessman and Global University Systems CEO.

In June 2020, BSBI became an official signatory of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (UN-PRME) initiative. It is also a member of the "Business Graduates Association" and "The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)". Webometrics, a ranking for university web visibility, ranks BSBI 10,725th worldwide.

Academics
Programs are designed with all the knowledge and skills needed for attendees to make an impact on the modern business world. It offers industry-relevant programs that focus on developing the practical business skills required for professional success.

As of 2023, BSBI has multiple additional campuses in Paris, Athens, Hamburg, and Barcelona, besides its main campus in Berlin with students from more than 80 countries, which secures its status in academic excellence.

It is a member of several organizations including the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the United Nations - Principles for Responsible Management Education (UN-PRME), and the Business Graduates Association (BGA). Memberships demonstrate academic prevalence, enriching students' learning experience and providing them with access to a growing industry network.

BSBI has integrated the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) within the scope of their teaching and e-learning practices, where students are able to access a "virtual room" as either a duplicate or an extension of their physical classroom. BSBI's paid-partner university UniNettuno is additionally currently implementing a metaverse based university system called "Island of Knowledge".

As the current priority, BSBI is pioneering further attempts to revolutionize traditional means of education either by change in structural hierarchy or the medium of collaboration. In BSBI Dialogues, the goal of creating an exotic virtual platform where students and experts could share knowledge reconsidered, while for having balanced degrees, BSBI provost, in UN Chronicle brought forth the idea of having a Global Degree Project, where accompanying degrees be awarded by an "International Academic Treaty" based on "International Academic Credit" (IAC).

As a private university, BSBI awards scholarships to relevant candidates based on either merit or financial need, or both. Classes are held in English, but to assist students' integration into German society, BSBI offers German study support to all students, even though English is widely spoken in Berlin.

Criticisms and controversies
In 2018, an MBA Journal article report claimed that BSBI's admission requirements were "extremely low" and that the institution was cooperating with a university of "very low standards", but in turn BSBI's parent company Global University Systems’ chief academic officer Maurits van Rooijen defended BSBI, saying, "We want to offer different access options (academic and financial) and different learning formats for different target groups."

In November 2018, BSBI appointed Prince Paul of Romania and Princess Lia of Romania as the school's Patrons, and Princess Madeleine of Bentheim and Steinfurt as Honorary Patron. In December 2020, BSBI's patron Prince Paul was sentenced to 3 years and 4 months in prison by the Supreme Court of Romania. He is no longer listed as one of its patrons.

Poets & Quants revealed that the BSBI campus in Berlin was a shared floor having most of their inventory on the campus, while the respective institution moved out a year after BSBI's launch and took all its inventory with it. On 22 May 2019, MBA Journal reported that students had told the publication that they had written to BSBI management accusing the institution of impaired "quality of teachers and teaching, learning materials and assignments." In July 2019, BSBI students wrote to Poets & Quants, sharing with the education publication that they had written to the institution's management in March 2019 calling their attention to "substandard classes and coursework".