Design Thinking and Agile Methods

Essec Business School

Cergy, France

ESSEC Business School — formally the École Supérieure des Sciences Économiques et Commerciales — was founded in 1907 by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and is based in Cergy-Pontoise, in the greater Paris region, with additional campuses in La Défense (Paris), Singapore, and Rabat, Morocco. It is a private, non-profit grande école, independent of any state university, governed by an academic association with deep roots in the Ignatian tradition of rigorous inquiry and social responsibility. That founding ethos has evolved over more than a century into a philosophy that prizes intellectual pluralism: ESSEC deliberately positions economics, sociology, and quantitative methods as equally valid lenses on business problems rather than treating any single paradigm as canonical. Today the school is one of the most internationally oriented business schools in France, running programs across three continents and maintaining close institutional ties with industries — luxury, hospitality, finance, energy, and healthcare — that regard France as a global reference point. Accreditations and Rankings Triple Crown Accredited AACSB (accredited) EQUIS (accredited) AMBA (accredited) Selected Rankings Financial Times European Business Schools Ranking: #11 (2023) Financial Times Masters in Management: #8 globally (2023) Financial Times MBA Ranking: Top 90 globally (2023) QS World University Rankings – Business & Management Studies: Top 50 globally (2023) Bloomberg Businessweek MBA Ranking: Listed among global top programs (2023) Executive Education at a Glance ESSEC Executive Education operates across its Cergy, La Défense, Singapore, and Rabat sites, offering more than 70 open-enrollment programs alongside a substantial custom (tailored) portfolio for corporate clients. The open programs skew strongly toward leadership, strategy, luxury brand management, hospitality and services management, real estate, and supply chain — reflecting the school's distinctive academic DNA rather than a generic catalogue of business topics. Duration ranges from two-day intensive masterclasses to modular programs spanning several months, and a growing proportion of programs offer hybrid or fully online delivery, particularly for international participants based in Asia or Africa who draw on the Singapore and Rabat hubs respectively. Flagship open programs include the Executive Seminar in Luxury Brand Management, the Real Estate MBA, and the Advanced Management Program, with fees for multi-day open programs typically ranging from approximately €3,000 to €15,000 depending on duration and format. Corporate clients — including LVMH, Sephora, Accor, and TotalEnergies — commission bespoke executive programs, and ESSEC's LVMH partnership in particular has made it one of the most referenced institutions globally for luxury sector executive development. Partial scholarships and alumni preferential pricing are available on selected open programs. Campus and Facilities The main campus in Cergy-Pontoise, 30 kilometres northwest of central Paris, occupies a purpose-built site that has been substantially modernised over the past decade, including a dedicated executive education building with case-study amphitheatres, breakout suites, and residential accommodation for program participants. The La Défense campus places executives minutes from the headquarters of some of France's largest multinationals — BNP Paribas, Total, KPMG — making peer learning almost an extension of the classroom. Singapore's ESSEC Asia-Pacific campus, located within the National Library Building in the Bugis district, provides a genuinely different vantage point on global strategy: executives working through supply chain or luxury retail cases in Singapore are doing so in one of Asia's most active trading and retail hubs. Paris itself, as the global capital of luxury goods, fashion, gastronomy, and high-end services, is not incidental to the ESSEC experience — for any executive in those sectors, site visits, industry sessions, and alumni events in the city are a material part of what they are paying for. Faculty and Research ESSEC's permanent faculty numbers around 160 professors, drawn from more than 30 nationalities, with a significant proportion holding PhDs from North American and British universities alongside European institutions, giving the school an intellectual breadth unusual for a French grande école. Research strength is concentrated in several areas directly relevant to executive education: marketing and brand management (including one of Europe's most cited luxury research groups), operations and supply chain, finance and risk, real estate economics, and social innovation. The school houses notable research institutes including the ESSEC Metaluxe Chair — the leading academic chair on luxury management in France — and the ESSEC Real Estate and Urban Economics research cluster, both of which feed directly into open programs. Faculty are expected to maintain active industry relationships, and it is common in ESSEC executive classrooms to encounter professors who serve as board advisors or consultants to the same companies that send their executives to the programs. Student Body, Alumni, and Career Outcomes ESSEC's executive education cohorts are consistently international: in any given open program, participants typically represent 15 to 25 nationalities, with strong representation from Western Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. The broader ESSEC alumni network encompasses more than 55,000 graduates across 150 countries, with particularly dense clusters in France, Singapore, Morocco, and among the leadership ranks of the global luxury, hospitality, and retail industries. Notable alumni include executives at LVMH, Kering, L'Oréal, Accor, and Carrefour, as well as senior figures in European public policy and international finance. Participants in ESSEC executive programs consistently report that the peer network — built across campuses on three continents — is one of the program's most durable returns on investment, particularly for professionals looking to expand their presence in Asian or African markets.