ESSEC Business School

A pioneer of business-related learning since 1907, ESSEC’s mission is to respond to the challenges of the future. In an interconnected, technological, and uncertain world, where the tasks are increasingly complex, ESSEC offers a unique pedagogical approach. This approach is founded on the creation and dissemination of cutting- edge knowledge, a blend of academic learning and practical experience, and a multicultural openness and dialogue.

Since its creation in 1907, ESSEC Business School has built a reputation on high standards, a quest for excellence and a belief in intellectual freedom. A research driven academic institution, ESSEC has always tried to incarnate and transmit its five fundamental values of humanism, innovation, responsibility, excellence and diversity.

Founded in 1907 in Paris, ESSEC Business School is a centre of academic excellence underpinned by its faculty’s research. The School’s reputation is built on a pioneering spirit that shapes both its scientific ambitions and its pedagogical approach, and is reflected in its extensive alumni community.

The mission of ESSEC Business School is to create and disseminate cutting-edge knowledge, to train and develop bold pioneers and influential leaders for both the business world and society as a whole. ESSEC Business School encourages students and participants in its programmes to anticipate – and meet – the economic, managerial, social, environmental and ethical challenges of an increasingly uncertain world. The school helps them achieve more and more complex goals by leveraging technology with a human touch.

Through its undergraduate, graduate, executive education and PhD programs in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and beyond, ESSEC Business School trains agile, creative and open-minded professionals and fosters a spirit of lifelong learning. Our students learn to reconcile academic knowledge and cultural heritage with their own experience to develop individual and collective freedom and success.

ESSEC’s leadership in founded on its capacity to create new, relevant and high-impact knowledge that feeds into the school’s activities across the board: the Bachelor’s, Master’s and executive education programs, and the activites of businesses.

ESSEC is right at the very heart of a vast network above-all based on the dynamism of a tightly knit community counting 47,000 graduates. Striving to propose ever-rich experiences to its students, ESSEC is developing academic partnerships and continuously strengthening its links with companies and organisations. (source, brochure instit p. 18)

Humanism, openness and responsibility are among the founding values of the School. ESSEC has always been committed to societal responsibility and trains its students to combine managerial effectiveness and collective responsibility at the service of the common good.

Inviting students to use their imagination and get into the start-up mindset is central to ESSEC’s teaching philosophy. To encourage entrepreneurial creativity, we’ve implemented a comprehensive program including training and support networks as well as financing programs for those projects with the highest economic and social potential.
Students will master functional area concepts and integrate cutting-edge theories in order to successfully guide business practice. They will be able to push knowledge and practice further.

Students will demonstrate strong adaptative and anticipative abilities to understand and solve complex business situations in an uncertain and increasingly digitized environment . They will do so by applying analytical, creative and implementation skills taking into account the organization’s social context.

Students will be able to take the lead by mastering effective communication skills, by promoting empowerment and by inspiring cooperative behavior within diverse, multi-competencies and intercultural teams. They will be able to learn from failure and seize opportunities with an entrepreneurial mindset.

Students will understand social, environmental and ethical challenges and learn how to reconcile them with economic objectives in order to have a positive impact on the organizations that they manage and thereby build a more sustainable world.

Each year, ESSEC delivers 2,000 degrees of which 1,600 are at Master’s level. The quality of ESSEC’s programs is widely recognized by international recruiters: 98% of students in the Master of Science in Management program were recruited within the 6 months following graduation. For participants in ESSEC’s Executive Education program, studying at ESSEC provides them with an undeniable career boost.

The singularity of ESSEC’s learning model is based on the constant concern to blend academic learning with in-the-field experience, and a tradition of continuous innovation enabling individuals to design their own tracks.

ESSEC encourages all its students to create their own learning paths and offers significant flexibility in the development of their academic career. This “design learning” concept underpins the structure of ESSEC’s programs and helps students progressively assert their autonomy through constant dialog with the school - while defining their future career.

In January 2015, ESSEC gave students the opportunity, for the first time, to imagine the course of their dreams. “Build your own course” was a exchange session with professors which identified six courses, developed in dialogue with the students and approved as of summer 2015 as Small Private Online Courses (SPOC).

In Singapore, in partnership with Cap Gemini, ESSEC Grande Ecole students have the possibility to carry out consulting assignments over a period of 3 months with companies based in various countries around the Asia-Pacific region.

Today, innovation in learning and research is embodied in a single place:the Knowledge-Lab or K-Lab, inaugurated in December 2014 on ESSEC’s Cergy campus. A space for creativity and high-density technological learning, the K-Lab offers the opportunity to interact with experts and test, develop and model new ideas. Extensions of the K-Lab will open soon on the Singapore and La Défense campuses.