GRENOBLE: The MBA In The Heart Of ‘The Silicon Valley Of France’

Grenoble Ecole de Management is based in one of France’s most beautiful cities

Pierre Jallon knew the science side of his work.

He wanted to know the business side, too.

Fortunately, he lived in the perfect place for both.

A research engineer for a government-funded tech organization who was looking to expand his knowledge as a project manager, Jallon enrolled in the MBA program at Grenoble Ecole de Management. He could not have found a better program if he’d traveled halfway round the world — something he didn’t have to do, since he’s also a native of Grenoble, a city known for technology, innovation, and sports, nestled at the base of the Alps in southeastern France.

EXPANDING ONE’S PROFILE

Pierre Jallon: “I started the MBA to have a much better understanding of the (tech) ecosystem globally — not only the research, but also startups, the financing, and how it works. So I chose Grenoble.”

Grenoble is the youngest of the nearly three dozen Business Schools in France, having been founded in 1984. This partly explains its MBA program’s energetic reputation: GEM is known for hands-on and experiential learning, with peerless tech and sustainability bona fides — an agile institution, where the new is quickly and skillfully adapted.

That made it the perfect landing place for Pierre Jallon, who started his career at French government-funded technological research organization CEA-Leti working in micro-electronic nanotechnologies, but who wanted to upskill on the business side of the equation. 

“I discovered a lot of things about how you run a business, about marketing, about finance,” Jallon says of his experience in the GEM MBA, from which he graduated in 2014. “But I think the most important learning for me were about management of innovation, negotiation, and strategy of innovation. And at a certain level of certain positions, you need to have a certain understanding of the finance and all this kind of stuff.

“Before the MBA, I used to have a very scientific profile. I used to be an expert in my field in the research center. There was a trend to develop new companies and new startups based on innovative technology, and actually, I started the MBA to have a much better understanding of the ecosystem globally — not only the research, but also startups, the financing, how it works, etc. So I chose Grenoble.”

CHOSEN BY THE SCHOOL 

Many choose Grenoble for similar reasons. Some, like Philippe Monin, are chosen by it.

Monin became dean of programs at Grenoble in March 2023. He spent more than 30 years at emlyon Business School in faculty and leadership positions, including the last three as Academic Dean, before joining SKEMA Business School in Paris in the fall of 2020 as Vice-Dean of faculty and research.

He had no intention of moving from there. “I moved to Paris at the age of 50 with my wife,” he says. “All three kids had grown up, so we were young enough to be in Paris, in the central city, old enough not to have our children at home, with some money. So, it was a big life.”

But GEM came calling. It had a new Dean in 2023, Fouziya Bouzerda, and she was looking for someone with experience to act as her “right arm.” With decades of experience at two of the top seven B-schools in France, Monin fit the bill.

“GEM called me,” he recalls. “I knew the school, and that was a very exciting challenge of getting a new flavor to the school. After 30 years’ experience in several domains, including at least two top-six, top-seven institutions in France, I have sufficient knowledge to share. And Grenoble — it’s an absolutely unique place.”

CLOSE PARTNERSHIPS 

Philippe Monin: “We want to attract scientists from all over the world to come and study for a year and stay here and take a job. The unemployment rate in Grenoble is less than 4%.”

In less than two years, Monin has overseen the transformation and relaunch of many elements of the school. This fall comes one of the biggest changes yet. 

In September, GEM officially launches a Tech EMBA, a part-time program including 18-months of coursework and a 12-month individualized capstone project, designed for engineers and tech professionals that the school is creating in partnership with CEA, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission that serves as the beating heart of France’s Silicon Valley. For the Tech EMBA students, the new program will be hybrid: 50% on site, 50% online, synchronous and asynchronous. It will also offer a deep-tech specialization with a focus on the microelectronics sector. A formal announcement of the program will occur at the tech&fest in Grenoble in February.

CEA and GEM are close partners of more than four decades. In the 1980s, the agency created what was then the world’s largest synchrotron, a type of particle accelerator useful for research in the sciences. That sparked the creation of a constellation of tech companies around the region. At around the same time, Grenoble’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry decided to create a business school. 

“Our campus sits 2.7 kilometers from this accelerator, and we are surrounded by startups, venture companies, industries in three tech domains: microelectronics, energy, and artificial intelligence applied to industry, to robotics,” Monin says. “These industries are the outcome of earlier industries from the Industrial Revolution because the continuity: There was free energy with hydroelectricity with the snow of the mountains, so it was a natural evolution to look at these atomic energy centers here.

“Grenoble is a roughly 150,000-inhabitant city. And with all the surrounding, it’s a bit less than half a million inhabitants. But this territory receives around 12% of all French public investment in R&D. So it’s kind of disproportionate. This is the reason why Grenoble is called, in France, the ‘Silicon Valley of France.’”

THE NEW PROGRAM

Grenoble offers an MBA, ranked 96th in the most recent Financial Times Global MBA list, with a focus on technology, innovation, sustainability, and hands-on learning converge in an international environment. It has a host of specialized master’s programs as well, including a Master in Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Advanced Master in Technology Management and Responsible Innovation. 

Its new Tech EMBA has even greater ambitions — and greater potential reward for its graduates. The program is divided into three parts: One-third is finance and leadership management; another third is a deep understanding of the scientific verticals, including energy — alternative energy and microelectronics, co-produced with heavyweights like CEA, Schneider Electric, and STMicro. “We will visit all the local infrastructures,” Philippe Monin says. “A lot of immersive training. 

The final third will be about business development, with a strong emphasis on negotiating large deals: franchising, patent, intellectual property management, because scientific companies keep negotiating and signing agreements on undefined technologies still under development. “And this,” Monin says, “is what those companies need.”

“You will not have the traditional corporate finance and investing classes, but you’ll have those private equity, venture capital and valuation, valuation of undefined technologies, or not fully understood technologies, so with real option evaluations,” he adds.

“We see this program and we see our school as a tool to support the development of the region,” Monin says, “and therefore, GEM needs to be a solution for talent retention and talent attractiveness. We want to retain the talents that are already in Grenoble in the region: for instance, engineers, scientists. We have hundreds of people who have doctoral degrees in math, in physics, astrophysics, engineering, and those people take managerial responsibilities. Nowadays, they don’t have appropriate offerings. So, an Executive MBA focused on technology would be primarily for those people. People from Geneva in Switzerland, one hour by car, people from all the Alpine arc, so possibly from Torin, from Milan, from all the Alps.

“And second, we want to attract scientists from all over the world to come and study for a year and stay here and take a job. The unemployment rate in Grenoble is less than 4%. Last year, STMicroelectronics recruited 300 engineers and 1,000 technicians, bachelor level, more than the supply of the engineering schools in the place. So, we are looking for people who would come to study a year and part of the next year, but the commitment is that we’ll do what we can. And either good students, full-time student, full-time MBA, for sure they will have job opportunities.”  

‘A VERY IMPORTANT STEP IN MY CAREER’

When he finished his MBA at Grenoble, Pierre Jallon’s employer found him a position leading a research lab. He stayed there for four years before joining a startup named eLichens that developed an innovative gas sensor. As CTO, his job was adding technology and everything related to strategic management and marketing.

“What I learned during the MBA is what is a good innovation, how to position innovation, how to communicate, and how to manage a team,” Jallon says. “Everything I’ve learned in the MBA is very useful to understand how to position a startup, how to do all kinds of studies that lead to a decision of choosing a development or not.”

In October 2024 he founded his own company, PAIRFS, which develops and markets VO2Max and ventilatory threshold measurement systems for sports.

“For me, it has been a very important step in my career to be able to understand innovation from a business perspective. I used to know it from a scientific perspective, but I’ve got the business perspective,” he says. “And I think in the Grenoble ecosystem — and more generally in the French ecosystem where you have a lot of traction on startup — it’s very useful, it’s very informative. 

“And then also, the people I’ve met during the MBA, some of them became friends. And it’s always useful to have these kinds of friends at this level, with whom you can have some conversation about the difficulties you are facing in your job, and they can give you some interesting points of view and interesting discussions. So it’s more about the ecosystem, understanding the ecosystem of Grenoble, of the innovation, and a network to leverage on for me.”

That leverage includes work on a new project, for which Grenoble is helping its 2014 alumnus.

“Now I’m working on a new project, and the school is helping me with this project as a live business case during the Innovation Master’s,” Jallon says. “And this is also something very useful for me and to be in touch with this ecosystem.”

Learn more about the Grenoble MBA program here.