ESSEC Business School

First you rise and then you transcend.

That’s the philosophy behind a major strategy shift at France’s ESSEC Business School. Home to 7,500 graduate and undergraduate students – along with 71,000 alumni members – ESSEC has developed a two-pronged strategic plan – RISE and Transcend – that pairs the school’s humanistic roots with its futurist ambitions. In the process, ESSEC is preparing a new generation of business leaders to act on the biggest issues.

When Vincenzo Vinzi took the reins as ESSEC’s dean in 2017, the school wasn’t ranked by The Financial Times. Today, the full-time MBA program sits at 54th, up 16 spots from 2023. At the same time, ESSEC boasts the Top 10 Masters in Management, Masters in Finance, and Executive Education programs according to The FT. Outside of its Cergy flagship, the school maintains campuses in Singapore, Morocco, and the La Défense corridor of Paris (along with an augmented digital campus). Couple all that with 30 dual degree programs and you could say ESSEC’s ascent and scale was a winning formula worthy of a business case. However, Vinzi also saw how business demands were shifting – and why ESSEC needed to adapt to prepare students for changing demands.

“Historically, during times of crisis or transitions, higher education often became a kind of refuge – a place where people believed knowledge would remain valuable forever,” Vinzi tells P&Q in a 2024 interview. “But that’s no longer the case. Today, we face the obsolescence of knowledge, skills, and competencies at an accelerated pace. This affects all sectors. The impact of digital transformation and technological advancements is driving this change. Students are arriving with new aspirations and expectations, and as a result, higher education itself is in a state of transition.”

Even more surreal, Vinzi adds, is that business schools aren’t just competing with each other for students. Now, there is the allure of players like EdTech companies and internal company training – not to mention the security of maintaining a job or the thrill of starting a venture.  Such realities spurred ESSEC to implement its RISE Strategy from 2020-2024. The heart of the strategy was broken into three objectives. First, the school focused on integrating programming to address societal challenges beyond simply business. Second, ESSEC invested heavily on bolstering its capabilities in artificial intelligence, technology, and data. Finally, the school set priorities around entrepreneurship and innovation.

To be successful, learning and reflection must be accompanied by action in the ESSEC model. Here, ESSEC lived up to its RISE ideals. The school established a Metalab for Data, Technology & Society, a multidisciplinary research center. It connects academics and leaders in economics, analytics, artificial intelligence, and humanities to create groundbreaking coursework and research to advance larger global solutions. The school also opened its ESSEC Momentum Studio, an incubator whose mission is “DeepTech for Good.” The studio supports startups in areas like ClimateTEech and eHealth that address larger social issues.  Another outgrowth of RISE is new degree programs, such as a Master of Science in Data Science and Business Analytics and a Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, and Management Science.

“On environmental and social transition issues, we’ve been ranked No. 1 in France for two consecutive years by Les Échos START, a journal that ranks business and engineering schools based on their engagement with those topics,” Venzi adds. “This recognition shows that we are “walking the talk” – following through on the ambitions outlined in our strategy.”

To build on the RISE strategy, ESSEC has also begun to roll out its Transcend strategy, which runs from 2024-2028. The centerpiece is the school’s Four Ambitions, a set of expectations meant to reflect the school’s progress towards preparing students for a future where they make an impact.

Going hand-in-hand with ESSEC’s Four Ambitions is a reimagination of the Global MBA curriculum, which is being shepherded by David Sluss, the academic director for the program. Arriving at ESSEC in 2021, Sluss believed the program was in strong shape. Like Vinzi, Sluss soon began asking the bigger questions. Namely, he worried the program was missing a narrative that pulled everything together.

“One key finding was that applicants increasingly value MBAs that focus on sustainability, digital transformation, innovation, and entrepreneurship,” Sluss tells P&Q in a 2024 interview. “These areas align with our strategic pillars. We already had courses covering these topics, but the program needed to be reimagined from the participant’s perspective. Previously, students chose from separate tracks, like luxury or digital leadership. Now, we have reorganized the program into three concentrations – sustainability, digital, and innovation/entrepreneurship – within a single, integrated MBA.”

Another innovation that Sluss has introduced is the Career Learning Labs. According to Sluss, the labs are led by industry professionals and cover four areas: luxury, finance, consulting, and product management.

“These labs feature dedicated workshops, learning expeditions, networking, and mentorship, and hands-on learning experiences… Each lab is led by an experienced professional or former executive,” he explains. “For example, one leader is a former CEO in the spirits industry. Another is a PhD product manager who has worked for Google and Spotify. Another is a rising star in sustainable finance and venture capital. These leaders curate immersive experiences with alumni-led workshops. Students gain practical knowledge, but these aren’t traditional, graded courses. Instead, the labs are hands-on experiences designed to prepare students for real-world executive roles.”

Sluss also credits the Career Learning Labs with helping to draw students, with applications to the last intake increasing by 54%. While the current Global MBA class has swelled to 49 students, he believes the sweet spot would be 55-60 students. Even more, he views the Career Learning Labs are a means for students to fulfill one of the main goals of the program.

“For us at ESSEC, employability is the capacity for the MBA participant to develop themselves to the point where they are ‘world-class’ for roles or jobs that align with their long-term career goals.”

The Career Learning Labs aren’t the only innovations that have come out of the Transcend strategy. Dean Vinzi points to its new Center for Geopolitics & Business, a research and learning hub where students can better understand how economic changes and political jolts reverberate in organizational decision-making. ESSEC has also partnered with the UCLA School of Law for a dual degree in management law while adding a five-year International Program in Business Administration (IPBA) on its Morocco campus. In June, the school will also start an 18-month Hybrid Executive MBA program, which takes place 70% online and includes a social class project and the international residency in Cape Town. In September, ESSEC announced that it would be opening hubs in both New York City and London.

“We already have a large community of alumni in North America, especially in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles,” adds Dean Vinzi on the school’s expanded footprint. “Many of our alumni are in fields like hospitality management, which is one of ESSEC’s long-standing areas of expertise. We also have a strong presence in finance and the luxury sector across Europe and North America. Our hubs will nurture relationships with these alumni and industry sectors.”

Transformation, innovation, global leadership, multidisciplinary collaboration: Out of the gate, ESSEC Business School is hitting every base on its Transcend strategy. In the end, execution always trumps strategy. As the tools are put into place, it will be up to the students to buy into the philosophy and deliver on its promise.

“They are the solution, so it’s important that these students, either MBA or other programs, once they get trained, hopefully they also get transformed within a school,” adds Dean Vinzi. “They need to represent the solution. They need to really be engaged in making the needed transformation. So, in other words, I feel like our mission at ESSEC — but I think all business schools should go in these directions — is not simply to transfer knowledge but also while they’re at school, get them more and more engaged so they say, ‘Okay, we are the actors of change.’ They need to undertake the responsibility of making it happen.”

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