Geopolitical tensions have become a major factor impacting companies and organizations and influencing decision-making: rivalries between major trading blocs and protectionism, competition for access to resources, restrictions on international investment, international sanctions, the disruption of supply chains, and even armed conflict.
The Center will expand on the existing expertise of our faculty and establish new partnerships. ESSEC already works with major international companies and academic and diplomatic institutions all over the world. The Center will be an ecosystem bringing together researchers and practitioners, companies and public organizations on all ESSEC’s campuses: Paris-Cergy, Paris-La Défense, Singapore and Rabat.
For Vincenzo Vinzi, Dean and President of ESSEC Business School: “An “institution that is open to the world by going beyond physical and intangible borders” like ESSEC must have a robust, informed geopolitical strategy, consisting of the flow of international students, academic alliances, corporate partnerships, and programs located all over the world.”
The academic leadership of the new center has been entrusted to two professors: Aurélien Colson, based in France, who will continue to direct ESSEC IRENÉ, the Institute for Research and Teaching on Negotiation and the Geopolitics, Defense and Leadership Track, two entities that will contribute to the new center; and Cedomir Nestorovic, based in Singapore, the academic director of the Executive MBA ESSEC Asia-Pacific in Singapore.
By aiming to make ESSEC the benchmark for challenges at the intersection of geopolitics and business, this new center completes ESSEC’s strategic plan alongside the Center for Social and Environmental Innovation, the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and the Metalab Center for Data, Technology & Society.
