Enlighten. Lead. Change.
Infusing leadership with meaning to prepare a better future
As these past few months have reminded us, we are collectively facing major economic, environmental, health, and social challenges that call for action. In this complex period of rapid and profound change, companies, organizations and their leaders have a key role to play in responding to the questions that lie ahead. The business schools that train many of these leaders and influence their practices through research must transform themselves to be aligned with these new needs. In light of this, and true to its pioneering spirit, ESSEC is committed to becoming a business school of reference in its support of organizations, and positively influencing the way we address the major challenges facing businesses, organizations and society.
This transformation is in keeping with the expectations of our students and executive education participants, who seek to undertake and create projects that are economically viable but also inclusive, innovative, sustainable, environmentally-sound, and respectful of all stakeholders. They also expect businesses to demonstrate ethical practices and their school to act responsibly towards the planet and society. They are well aware of the importance of the digital revolution, data, and artificial intelligence, all of which provide exceptional opportunities for value creation, but which also carry ethical, social and environmental risks. They expect their school to reflect seriously on how to support, engage with, and work for the common good.
True to the humanist values ingrained in our French roots, our global business school must now, more than ever, infuse tomorrow’s leadership with meaning, by producing relevant knowledge and preparing our students to create and run companies and organizations that can have a positive impact on the world. This ambition is reflected in our strategy, RISE, based on three strategic axes. We have named our 360-degree environmental and social transition plan “Together”. Its aim is to transform our training programs, our research, and life on our campuses in order to tackle environmental and social challenges. This requires innovation, experimentation, and the creation of new business and economic models. ESSEC is equally committed to investing in its entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem through Enlightening Entrepreneurship, which aims to strengthen our course content, our incubation tools, and our support procedures, making ESSEC a unique platform for entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and innovators where uncertainty is seen as an opportunity and an invitation to act. ESSEC is aware that cutting-edge technologies are increasingly required to achieve social progress and sustainable economic development. To this end, we have created the Metalab, a unique multidisciplinary ecosystem that combines expertise in hard sciences and social sciences to inform practices at the intersection of “Data, technology and society” and put people at the core of all decision-making processes.
To accomplish our mission of inspiring new forms of leadership that provide meaning and direction and have a positive impact on the world, ESSEC is committed to three central axes of development: ensure sustainable growth for ESSEC, reinforce our premium and pioneering positioning and provide all stakeholders with an excellent ESSEC experience.
The creation of a model of sustainable growth at ESSEC is based on both the strategic management of our current programs in order to fully cultivate their potential and on the creation of new ones, to respond to the new expectations of pre-experience students and post-experience participants. Our objective is also to offer our alumni relevant programs throughout their professional lives, notably by relying on the power of our augmented digital campus for a lifelong experience. In all of our programs we reaffirm our values of excellence, selectivity, customizability, social learning, educational innovation and internationalization as central elements of our pedagogical signature.
This guiding principle is coherent with the strengthening of our premium and pioneering positioning, which aims to reinforce our reputation as a higher education institution of excellence on a global level. This occurs through the recruitment of the best international professors and through our policy of supporting the most rigorous and relevant research in order to enlighten the public debate through our expertise.
Conscious that the complexity and challenges facing the world today require a multidisciplinary approach, ESSEC is developing ever stronger collaborations with prestigious institutions, drawing upon the complementarity of ESSEC and other institutions’ areas of expertise: Internationally, we offer a dual degree program with the Berkeley College of Engineering, and have partnered with four European business schools through the Corporate Programs Partnership to provide a unique offering of custom programs for businesses. We also offer an innovative joint program in the field of luxury with the New School’s Parsons School of Design in New York and are part of the global alliance COBS (Council on Business and Society).
In France, we are affiliated with CY Cergy Paris University, one of France’s youngest and most innovative universities. Together we are shaping a new institution, perfectly aligned with the ambition of RISE, in which the humanities, social sciences and technology are integrated around a common vision: become a place where solutions are found and skill sets are developed, creating maximum positive impact for future generations. We are also actively involved in our local community and committed to achieving a positive regional impact through our initiatives. We are the number one beneficiary in France of the French Excellence Program in terms of the number of research laureates. We have raised more than 100 million euros in four years, enabling us to create an international visiting scholars program, recruit eight international professors, finance several chairs, and collaborate on more than 30 research projects. These funds have also allowed us to join EUTOPIA, a European university initiative, that includes universities such as Warwick, Gothenburg, Pompeu Fabra, VU Brussels and Ljubljana.
We also have a strong alliance with the engineering school, CentraleSupélec, with which we deliver two joint programs, the MSc in Data Sciences and Business Analytics, ranked third in the world by QS and the MS Centrale-ESSEC Entrepreneurs.
In order to make ESSEC a standard of international excellence, ESSEC is committed to guaranteeing the best possible experience for everyone: students and executive education participants, professors, personnel, alumni and corporate partners. The COVID-19 crisis reinforced the flexibility of our school and our capacity to maintain a high level of quality despite the unusual circumstances. Drawing strength from this experience, we have decided to invest even more in our digital transformation, putting digital tools at the service of our teaching staff, systems and management and by reinventing our teaching spaces. ESSEC also guarantees a quality experience for its business partners, many of whom count on ESSEC to train and recruit their talent but also to question their current models and to co-create our future world. New chairs such as “Shaping the Future of Finance” with Axa IM Alts around responsible finance, or the “ESSEC Sports Chair” with Allianz France, EDF, The French Basketball Federation and the Paris Saint Germain football club, demonstrate the relevance of the close collaboration in research and teaching between students, faculty and businesses.
ESSEC, as a World School, can count on its campuses in Singapore and Morocco to provide international influence, a multicultural environment, and reconcile global issues and local perspective. Additionally, its digital augmented campus makes this ESSEC offer accessible at any moment and everywhere in the world.
ESSEC’s international and multicultural approach favoring immersion over the long-term and local and regional recruitment is crucial to training inclusive leaders. We are facing huge challenges, but we are ready to play our part as a higher education institution of excellence to “Enlighten, Lead and Change” our world, to create more value, and to make it more sustainable, inclusive and fair.