Insead makes big push to meet demand for sustainability-focused leaders

TAKE a glance at the leadership team at business school Insead, and some might say it resembles a mini United Nations, as it comprises people from France, Latvia, Portugal, Canada, Belgium, India, Hungary, China and elsewhere.

This diversity extends to the classrooms on each of its four campuses too. A deliberate effort is made to ensure that no single nationality makes up more than 15 per cent of students in a given course or programme.

In the eyes of Insead’s new dean Francisco Veloso, it is this international make-up that enables the school to stand out from its peers. “I met an MBA student from Belgium recently who has worked in China, Thailand and Japan, and now he’s at our campus in Singapore,” he told The Business Times in a recent interview. “In some ways, they find there are many others like them in the same classroom.”

The lack of a dominant culture means that everyone is different and they get to learn to live and embrace that diversity, he explained. “There’s no sense of conformity, and that contributes to a strong sense of community. You can be who you are because everyone around you is different.”

Global citizen

Professor Veloso, a 55-year-old who took over the top job at Insead last September, is himself something of a global citizen.

The Portuguese academic earned his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, became a full professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and went on to become the dean at Catolica Lisbon School of Business and Economics in his home country.

A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU

Friday, 12.30 pm

ESG Insights

An exclusive weekly report on the latest environmental, social and governance issues.

Sign Up

Before joining Insead, he spent six years as the dean of Imperial College Business School in London.

While he is based at Insead’s Europe campus in the French town of Fontainebleau, Prof Veloso said that he has already made numerous visits to the other three regions where the school has campuses – Asia (Singapore), the Middle East (Abu Dhabi) and North America (San Francisco).

He has flown to Singapore at least once a month on average in the six months since joining Insead; he was last in town on Valentine’s Day to attend meetings and to grace the school’s Chinese New Year celebrations.

“The Singapore campus is a very visible part of our global nature, with over 300 staff, nearly 60 faculty members, hundreds of students, and thousands of business executives who pass through here,” he said. “Singapore is a very important part of our commitment to this part of the world, with Asia being the fastest-moving continent in the last few decades and that’s going to continue in the future.”

Growing demand

The dean was asked to give his take on the business education landscape today, given that the global economy is not doing so well with China in a slowdown, continued concerns about job prospects in the tech sector, and people generally feeling less confident about the future.

“We need to think about this from different perspectives. Yes, people are wary about (the outlook), but you do have a situation where people go and pursue degrees when the market is not so good. So, on the degree side, there is greater demand when economic conditions are not so great,” he pointed out.

“On the executive education side, it’s not the same case because this is a time when companies cut budgets; they are more wary of the future and maybe investing less in education. But this is about the economic cycle.”

Even so, he shared that revenue from Insead’s executive education offerings grew by 21 per cent in the 2022/23 financial year compared with the previous year – a sign that more employers are seeing the need to ensure their key executives are equipped with the latest skills and insights.

“Some of the fundamental challenges we are going through, these make a very strong case for the critical importance of business education,” he noted. “The way we organise businesses, the way we do things is changing. The economic and geopolitical situation, the disruption caused by technology, the importance of sustainability – all these are changing companies and sectors very quickly.”

What this means, he added, is that more people these days – be it in Singapore, Abu Dhabi or elsewhere – realise they need to go back to school and reflect on these challenges and opportunities, “and be appropriately tooled to navigate and lead through these challenging times”.

Sustainability a core focus

Speaking of sustainability, Insead in January this year rolled out a refreshed MBA curriculum that now has sustainability embedded in all its 14 core courses. The school also introduced a mandatory capstone that integrates sustainability learnings across all management areas.

Prof Veloso said that the renewed curriculum would help meet the increasing demand for sustainability-focused leaders in the job market, and inspire more people to champion creative sustainable solutions.

“We don’t see sustainability as being separate from our teaching. Rather, it needs to be part of the way people think about their operations and strategies at the workplace,” he explained.

“We are curious to learn from the students, to see how this impacts their experience throughout their journey with us, and how it impacts the jobs they are in and how they tackle these jobs. Ultimately, we are training students, but we also want them to be successful professionals and go on to transform their companies.”