Discerning and making choices

Today I am proud of the release of the second series of ESCP Impact papers, Better Business: Creating Sustainable Value. 

I am pleased to share with you the foreword I wrote for this book which gathers the expertise and commitment of our faculty. 

When the Covid crisis hit the world in 2020, the ESCP Faculty not only took up the challenge of carrying on their educational mission for our students, but they also collectively initiated a reflection on the post-crisis world. As researchers, it is their mission to help the students and the companies that ESCP serves every day, to see what may lie ahead.

Building the post-covid world, and aiming for it to be a new beginning and different from the world before, became an essential feature of the output generated by this collective thinking.

This second impact paper gathers more than 54 articles from Faculty across our six campuses. Our world has become more digital, more connected, more agile. Reactivity, innovation, and adaptability are the major forces demonstrated by ESCP throughout the recent crisis. They are key to the strong statement the School wants to make, though they are empty vessels if not at the service of a long-term vision and mission.

Discernment, commitment, and choices are key. Strong, sustainable, and measurable choices. 

Discerning has long been identified as a critical skill. Ignace of Loyola was already urging leaders back in the XVIth century to abide by seven attitudes to exert an authentic discernment, to be sensitive to three different moments in which decisions are made and even devised seven practical techniques helpful in the discernment process. With the momentum and speed of transformation to come, discerning is about deciphering signals and getting prepared better than the competition. Etymologically, discerning is about cutting.

Making choices is at the very heart of General Managers’ jobs. Making choices and discerning go together in the light of the digital transformation and big data, and are leadership competencies for the future.

These Impact Papers are not just a book that you will read with interest. They are a commitment by the school to help transform the world. They not only impart knowledge, they inspire change.

As a bicentenary European school, we have witnessed crises and transformations. The world of 2021 has nothing to do with that of 1819. But already JB Say, inventor of the term entrepreneur and co-founder of ESCP, was warning against speculation and short-termism. His disciple and successor Adolphe Blanqui was already putting the social issue at the heart of his economic thinking. This pioneering and humanist DNA is alive in all of us. 

Our Chairman Philippe Houzé regularly reminds our Board that more than ever, our mission is to train responsible leaders and entrepreneurs who will have a positive impact on businesses and the world. The expertise, creativity and ambition that drive every member of the ESCP community are nothing if they are not at the service of this common goal. 

On behalf of our Executive Committee, I would like to acknowledge and thank all the Professors who have contributed to this second edition of Impact Papers. I would particularly like to thank Professors Pramuan Bunkanwanicha, Associate Dean for Research, the main Co-editors, Professors Florian Lüdecke-Freund and Kamran Razmdoost, and of course Valérie Moatti, Dean of the Faculty,  Dimitri Champollion, Director of Brand and Communications and Sonia Ben Slimane, Editorial Coordinator. 

Professor Frank Bournois, Dean and Executive President, ESCP Business School

June 2021