INSEAD at 50: the Defining Years

INSEAD at 50: The defining years

The enduring idea on which INSEAD was founded came from the man considered to be one of the founders of the venture capital industry, Georges Doriot, a French-born, naturalised American who had both studied and taught at Harvard Business School.

Gathering at the INSEAD Europe campus in Fontainebleau this September for a Founders’ Day event to launch INSEAD’s 50th anniversary celebrations, the school’s founders, early faculty and students from the first promotion shared their recollections with INSEAD Knowledge.

“When we started we were all young, except Doriot” remembers Claude Janssen, one of the original founders who served as Chairman of At the end of the Second World INSEAD’s Board of Directors from 1982 and is War, Doriot saw two clear but separate paths before presently Honorary Chairman of the Board. “We all him: an opportunity to raise capital for had gone through the Harvard Business School, so entrepreneurial ventures from public (that is, non- we had that as a model. I was convinced, after going familial) sources; and two, that France needed a to Harvard, that we needed something similar in business school like Harvard in order to contribute Europe and in France in particular … and all the to a rapidly-unifying Europe. He managed to follow three or four of us who were interested in the project both paths successfully: founding American all had the same conviction.” Research and Development Corp, one of the first venture capital firms (a $70,000 investment in Digital The Treaty of Rome had just been signed in 1957, Equipment Corp in 1957 yielded a $355 million making cross-border business a reality in Europe dollar return in 1968 after DEC’s IPO); and on the and creating an even greater need for management other hand, founding, with three of his former training. “Europe needed a special management (French) students from HBS the “Institut European education that did not exist (at that time) and that d’Administration des Affaires” (the European was the idea of Professor Doriot,” explains Roger Institute of Business Administration), which today, 50 Godino, one of INSEAD’s original professors and the years on, is known as INSEAD, the Business School first Dean of Faculty. “So INSEAD was established as for the World. a school for Europe, according to more or less American standards … but the American way of Visit INSEAD Knowledge http://knowledge.insead.edu 01

It was enough to attract a first class of some 50 young men. “Harvard was for us a kind of American dream,” recalls Jean-Marie d’Arjuzon, who started the school’s Alumni Association. “We wanted to create a link between us and the second promotion, because we hoped very much that there would be a second promotion.”

The founders realised very quickly that INSEAD had to have a different approach - and that there was no The time to waste. “We are a European institution; we debut of the school’s curriculum was equally cannot lose that,” points out Claude Rameau (MBA unorthodox in Europe at the time. “We had the case ‘62J), a former Dean and founder of the school’s method; not traditional courses,” says Giscard Executive Education department. “But at the same d’Estaing. In the classroom, professors were time, we had to be open to the world and to absorb facilitators rather than teachers. “The important all the phenomena from around the world, and so thing was what was happening between the from the beginning, the INSEAD culture was to cope participants; the professor was just helping the with the whole world and not with a particular part of discussion,” says Godino. the world.” “We were pushing to develop very quickly,” adds “It was not the original plan,” Godino remembers. Claude Rameau, referring to the school’s desire to “Europe needed a special management education keep pace with European integration. “We started that didn’t exist (at that time), so instead of going to with something like an MBA – we didn’t call it an the US, people from Europe would come to the MBA at that time – it was called a post-graduate school – a school in Europe for Europeans, which programme. The only thing we could do was to makes sense. We had three languages at the start: ensure that we could be credible as an institution. French, English and German - then we dropped the Then suddenly the period between 1968 and 1973 German. Today we are a world business school was a fabulous period when we creatively defined speaking English. I’m not against changing plans, the overall INSEAD strategy.” but this was not the original plan.” Godino was Dean of Faculty between 1964 and 1970, Clearly, there was a lot of creative thinking going on with a very clear agenda: “First of all, I set out to right at the start. “Our professors came from make the school more difficult than it was,” he says. business,” remembers Olivier Giscard-d’Estaing, “Second, I wanted full-time professors who had founding Director of INSEAD and today Chairman of graduated with PhDs in the US. Third, I wanted to the INSEAD Foundation. “We avoided having more develop research; fourth, to develop new courses than one-third of the students and professors from like the AMP (Executive Education’s Advanced any one country, so French was not dominant right Management Programme). And fifth, I wanted the at the beginning. We chose our students according school to take part in the European development to an interview process, not solely on the basis of which was taking place at that time.” past grades. We wanted to assess character, ability to communicate. Today this is normal, but I can This was the period in which Executive Education assure you that 50 years ago it was quite came into being, and INSEAD found itself “helping innovative.” companies internationally to create a critical mass of educated managers inside the same corporations,” Creating a campus outside Paris was also says Rameau. A few years later, the Alumni Fund - innovative. “The Chamber of Commerce of Paris, which allowed alumni to support the school which provided the seed money for the founding of financially - came into being, thanks to Michel INSEAD, said: ‘You will use some of our classrooms Gauthier (MBA ’61) and the Alumni Fund’s in Paris, yes?’ and I said ‘No, we need a campus.’ Founding Chairman. “It was a very modest start in And we looked around and found Fontainebleau.” 1976-77: 200,000 francs for the first year (approximately $40,000). So I’m very impressed when I see the present results after 33 years. My successors have done a very good job of continuing the Alumni Fund initiative.”

At about this time, the school took its first big risk: the move into Asia. “We started going into Asia in the late 1970s," remembers Claude Janssen. “One of

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Copyright © INSEAD 2021. All rights reserved. This article first appeared on INSEAD Knowledge (http://knowledge.insead.edu). our professors, Henri-Claude Bettignies, was very Find article at keen and started to develop programmes, and as we https://knowledge.insead.edu/entrepreneurship- were an entrepreneurial school we let him do it and innovation/insead-at-50-the-defining-years-1356 we opened the Euro-Asia Centre on the campus in Fontainebleau. It was very successful, and we began to realise that the future of the world economy would Download the Knowledge app for free be very much in the Pacific. And soon, INSEAD was the largest provider of Executive Education in Asia, without having a campus.”

That changed after 2000 with the inauguration of the Asia campus in Singapore – not a subsidiary, but a facility equal to the original campus in Fontainebleau. “This was probably the most important decision taken while I was chairman, the opening of the campus in Singapore,” remembers Janssen. “It means that the MBA given there would not be the Singapore MBA, it would be the INSEAD MBA. When students apply and are admitted; they can go to either campus, or to both, changing after four months. One school, two campuses.”

A third campus in Abu Dhabi is currently in the making, with a lot of local support. “The Abu Dhabi government has largely financed our implementation there,” notes Janssen.

For the future, “Asia is very interesting for us,” adds Janssen. “I think we will do more things in China, probably more things in India. But we’re not forgetting Latin America and we always think that North America is very important.”

“We have become successful in becoming multicultural,” Godino notes. “Next, I think that management and business faculty should put their noses into governmental problems … Business schools should be in a position to train public officers to be good public managers in their different sectors.”

Olivier Giscard d’Estaing takes a philosophical view of the role of business and of INSEAD in the next 50 years. “It’s not only a question of money and profit,” he opines. “It’s a question of adjusting the products to the needs of society; that means dealing with health, education and many other things than just industry. There is still research to be conducted to make the plant liveable.”

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