Flagship events and seminars are an integral part of the ESSEC Business School experience, and are just as important as coursework or work placements. These privileged moments that punctuate students' and participants' academic journey encourage them to open up to new horizons. It is also an opportunity for them to put into practice the numerous theoretical skills they have acquired throughout their program.
These experiences, sometimes shared across programs and campuses, bring different perspectives to the curriculum. Such learning environments prepare learners for the current and future global job market, where adaptability and cultural sensitivity are essential. This pedagogy is ingrained in ESSEC’s humanist DNA, which trains responsible, innovative and inclusive leaders, open to a world undergoing profound change.
Discover an overview of some of our key events and seminars!
In order to help you gain perspective and a better understanding of the challenges of the world, ESSEC offers various experiences and conferences designed specifically to build up your critical thinking. These experiences, which are offered throughout your academic journey, come in a variety of forms and challenge you and your view of the world, thereby helping you grow. This approach aims to help you to become leaders equipped with a global and unique vision.
This seminar enables you to deepen your understanding of the major contemporary socio-economic, environmental and geopolitical challenges, while highlighting ESSEC’s values, in particular promoting an ethical vision of the societal environment.
It aims to make you aware of the impact you can have on these issues as future experts, managers or entrepreneurs.
Supported and supervised by an ESSEC professor and divided into groups, you have 10 days to work on a major socio-economic or environmental challenge, to develop unique recommendations and proposals. Throughout the seminar, leading international speakers from the private and public sector offer inspiring lectures.
Quelques témoignages
This seminar is an intensive awareness seminar on entrepreneurship. Its objective is to help students understand the value of commitment and to illustrate one of the key markers of ESSEC’s DNA: its pioneering spirit. This “BootCamp” type experience, alternating presentations by professors/ entrepreneurs/ experts and group work in a very dynamic way. In teams and in only 33 hours, you will be asked to imagine the companies of the future that will challenge the major players of publicly traded companies. At the end of the seminar, you will present your ideas and concepts to a jury of investors and financiers.
The goal of iMagination week is to culturally enrich students by taking them out of their environment.
Throughout the event, students are exposed to transdisciplinary experts inspiring a “visionary spirit”. The objective of this event is to strengthen your awareness of the challenges that underpin the society you are going to build, and to make you think about what your own contribution might be. This week is designed to develop the critical skills you will need in your future career: creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, curiosity. Stimulating your imagination is the key to fostering a responsible future.
Like all first-year students in our Master in Management program, you will be sent into the field as part of your “Operational” internship. This is a full-time internship in a factory, supermarket, fast-food restaurant or in the field of social solidarity or health (refugees, social integration, support to senior citizens, drug addiction or mental impairment). This field experience is also offered to students from the BBA program, who are required to complete a four-week internship in the social or health field at the end of their second year.
The Social class project is a social or humanitarian project carried out collectively by the entire class. Collectively, the class defines the class project and carries it out, making the project a decisive step in building cohesiveness and a strong spirit of solidarity in the class.
The La Défense campus regularly hosts conferences open to all participants in an executive education program, upon registration. A great variety of leading speakers, from sector experts, industry managers, engineers, share their experience and insights during these privileged moments.
The learning by doing approach is a fundamental element of ESSEC’s DNA, to help our students become leaders capable of making relevant decisions in a challenging context. We offer students and participants a host of pedagogical experiences giving you the opportunity to delve into a concrete project to test your knowledge in real conditions.
ESSEC’s pedagogical know-how, which is based on the synergy between theory and practice with a particular focus on experience, is one of the driving forces of the Digital week competition. For one week, students from Advanced Masters come together to form interclass teams and work in the manner of digital agencies. The goal is to propose innovative solutions to current problems submitted by several dozen partner companies.
Each year (M1 & M2), students from the program participate in a Hackathon, a project spread over several days, organized and supported by a partner company, such as Ekimetrics or Artefact. This experience is designed to push students to develop innovative ideas for data analysis and visualization.
During the Consultancy project, students are invited to build on their two-year learning experience to develop a comprehensive business solution that takes into account all strategic dimensions. It is the opportunity for students to act as junior consultants on real-world projects commissioned by a hospitality business. Recent projects included assignments for independent hotels as well as major hotel operators, with investment, marketing and distribution dimensions. As part of this active learning experience, ESSEC has established a partnership with Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated (JLL), a world-leading financial and professional services company specialized in real estate.
Exclusively dedicated to ESSEC's MSc in Marketing Management and Digital program on the Asia-Pacific campus, the Digital marketing challenge (DMC) is a real-world consulting project that enables students to learn by doing. By bridging the gap between classroom learning and the world of work, it gives students the opportunity to collaborate with international companies and participate in the development of a strategy that meets real business needs.
Depending on their track, i.e. Luxury Brand Management or Strategy and Digital Leadership, participants complete consulting projects for prestigious, luxury companies, putting their classroom learning into practice.
Recent projects have included collaborations with Audemars Piguet, Cartier, Christian Louboutin, DFS, Firmenich, L'Oréal Luxe - Lancôme, Louis Vuitton, Moët Hennessy.
