In Grenoble Ecole de Management, More Than Terrific Views

Interview by Marc Ethier, published in Poets & Quants 07 2016

Grenoble Ecole de Management sits in a thriving city of half a million nestled in the rugged mountain country of eastern France. The Alps dominate the skyline. The school, founded in 1984 and currently home to some 6,500 students — 100 of whom are MBAs — is thriving, too, celebrating a new partnership with Columbia University and top-30 rankings in Europe from both The Financial Times and The Economist.

Grenoble may be the “Capital of the Alps,” but the Ecole de Management (GEM) has more to offer prospective students than a picturesque locale, Dean Loick Roche told Poets&Quants in an interview Friday (Aug. 5). “The research we do with companies on renewable energy, biohealth, biotech, etc., make GEM one of the first business schools in France,” Roche says.

GEM currently ranks sixth in France, and as high as 20th in Europe according to FT. Its recent rankings success is in line with its ambitions, the dean says.

‘SEEKING TO INSPIRE THE WORLD OF EDUCATION’

“What must be understood is that a student comes in a MBA program for the values of the school, its positioning, its ranking, the city, and the country,” says Roche, a graduate of ESSEC Business School, outside of Paris, who became GEM’s dean in 2012 after eight years as vice-dean. “And naturally the possibility to integrate the best network as possible. An MBA is an investment. Students want the best return on this investment.”

Of its 6,500 students, 80% are graduate students, Roche says, though only 100 are MBAs. (GEM also offers a master’s in international business degree and MSc’s in finance, business development, and more.) Its full-time MBA program is one year, followed by a “final management project.” The cost is approximately €31,300, or $34,430. The English-language program, whether full- or part-time, can be completed at the school’s Grenoble campus — in the shade of those striking snowcapped Alps — or in Moscow (part-time), Tbilisi (part-time), or Berlin (full-time).

Why so few MBAs? “The idea is not to massively increase promotions but to continually improve the quality of the candidates,” Roche says.

A GRAND VISION

GEM is one of 34 French Grandes Ecoles de Management with a common history and academic co-operation with such schools as Kedge business school, em lyon business school, Audencia, and HEC Paris.

Asked what sets GEM apart in the highly competitive European B-school arena, Roche points to its contributions to innovation and entrepreneurship. The school boasts what it calls its “GIANT campus” — Grenoble Innovation for Advanced New Technologies — a 250-hectare base for research, higher education, company collaboration, and “economic valorization.” Home to French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy, the National Center for Scientific Research, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, and more, its vision, according to the school’s website, “is to respond to the challenges our society faces in fields such as information and communication technology, micro, and nanotechnologies, renewable energy and environmental issues, and biosciences and biotechnologies. Through GIANT, GEM wants to “create and accompany technological changes that will impact our economies over the next decades.”

This grand vision — and other developments, like GEM’s new partnership with Columbia University — explains Roche’s enthusiasm for the future in Grenoble.

“Through our impact, we are seeking to inspire the world of education, the corporate world, and all of our stakeholders, with society being foremost among them,” Roche says. “Our higher ambition: Contribute to the well-being of society. And then contribute to its progress.”

What is the purpose of your impending New York visit (in early September)?

Loick Roche, dean of Grenoble Ecole de Management

Our international activities seek to respond to corporate recruitment needs, to develop talent, to promote faculty development, and to give our students a multicultural dimension. Our international growth is based primarily on partnerships with the best business schools and universities worldwide. Considering North America, after Pace University, Simon Fraser University, MIT, we signed a partnership with Columbia. It is in this context that we will be in New York the first week of September.

What makes Grenoble special for those seeking an MBA? Why choose Grenoble?

Firstly, at GEM we want to do more than teaching and research. We are actively working to become one of the most influential business schools.

Through our impact, we are seeking to inspire the world of education, the corporate world, and all of our stakeholders, with society being foremost among them. Our higher ambition: Contribute to the well-being of society. And then contribute to its progress.

From there we have a clear strategy: Succeed in evolving from a business school to a school for business for society.

The thing to understand is that a business school has a duty beyond its mission. Of course, we must always accompany the performance of companies. But compared to what we live, terrorism and the war against terrorism, our school must also engage and try to bring its own contributions — for instance by the values that we disseminate to our students: benevolence, openness to others, but also courage, commitment, responsibility.

Students must understand, besides their professional career, they’ll have to protect the world. Protect our democracies. It is on this program for GEM but also for French business schools that I was elected and reelected president of the association of the top French business schools.

Secondly, of course, GEM has a very strong identity in innovation, technology management, entrepreneurship.

Thirdly,  we believe it’s important to give to the students abilities not only in management sciences but also in geopolitics, in philosophy, in literature, condition for them to be able to develop an ethical attitude (inside the company but also outside).

What is Grenoble doing differently to attract MBA students? What new ideas and attractions do you offer? What new direction are you going in? 

Beyond our values, our commitment to live in a perfect alignment with the world around us, the imperative to take part in defence of our democracies, our positioning in innovation is crucial and unique in France. The research we do with companies on renewable energy, biohealth, biotech, etc., make GEM one of the first business schools in France and the 20th in Europe (FT ranking 2016).

We also have other strenghts. Research about the mindfulness, the relationship between well-being at work and sustainable performance, customer satisfaction, etc. All these areas are specialties that we offer to our MBA students.

Among our projects, our alliance with another French top business school is a strong point. We have some reflections to develop joint programs, including an MBA program with the ambition to make one of the world’s best MBAs.

What must be understood is that a student comes in a MBA program for the values of the school, its positioning, its ranking, the city, and the country, and naturally the possibility to integrate the best network as possible. An MBA is an investment. Students want the best return on this investment.