A head for business

Jean-Michel Blanquer, dean of French business school ESSEC Asia-Pacific, aims to nurture a new breed of decision-maker for a complex world.迷你倉 By Teh Shi NingON any given morning, the dean of ESSEC Business School can be found reading a Greek classic one moment, and firing a tweet off to his 1,751 followers on Twitter the next. "It gives you another perception of time," says Jean-Michel Blanquer. "So, very early in the morning, I do that. I tweet and I read."There is as much in the ancient past to inform the future as there is in the present, he believes. And so it is with ESSEC, the 106-year-old institution he now leads: it is drawing on history to prepare for business education's uncertain future, and staying proud of its French identity even as it goes international."We have to have roots; we have to have openness. We have our old roots and we like them, we're proud of our roots. What we're doing right now in Singapore is having new roots, and we're proud of our new roots. This makes for a very strong tree," said Dr Blanquer, on a visit to Singapore in October, less than four months after he became the business school's new dean in July this year. The visit was important, because ESSEC Asia-Pacific - the school's third campus and the only one outside of France - is vital to its global ambitions.A year ago, ESSEC announced that it would build a new $40 million five-storey campus at Nepal Hill, in the one-north area and near the bustling research hubs of Biopolis and Fusionopolis, with funding support from the Singapore Economic Development Board. "It's in our interest to be in a place where there are a lot of actors, a lot of dynamism," says Dr Blanquer.The ground-breaking in February this year would have cheered Singapore's policymakers, whose efforts to turn the city into a "global schoolhouse" have not all been smooth sailing. Several other foreign higher education institutes which received government funding to come here, have since left. The Singapore campus of New York University's film school, the Tisch School of the Arts Asia, and the University of New South Wales both shut down due to financial losses or poor enrolment.Then, in July, there was a departure of a different sort. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business announced that after 13 years in Singapore, it would relocate its prestigious executive Master of Business Administration to Hong Kong, not for financial reasons, but a strategic one. It wants greater proximity to fast-growing China.This does not faze Dr Blanquer, nor ESSEC. "We are totally committed and we are going to stay here," he says.For now, the strategic reasons to develop a campus in Singapore trump any downsides. The advantages foreign investors often cite apply to the business school: Singapore's schooling and healthcare systems mean that talented faculty are more willing to take up posts here; the fact that it is a transport hub allows for staff to conduct research in China or India easily. For a business school, stability, a business-friendly climate and the abundance of companies with headquarters here count for a lot too, Dr Blanquer says."I think it's difficult to say that there are disadvantages, because in reality I don't see what they could be. What is important for us is to keep being in the same framework in terms of commercial conditions, circulation of people, and so on. That's what we need, for us to be structurally committed," he adds."It's not the kind of decision you take one day, and take the reverse decision after. I'm the new dean, and I assume totally what has been done. This shows that it's not a question of persons; it's not a question of events. It's a structural and strategic decision."By the time ESSEC Asia-Pacific opened here in 2005, fellow French business school Insead had already expanded its initial 12,000 sq m campus at Biopolis - opened five years earlier - by another 6,000 sq m.Acknowledging the competition, Dr Blanquer says: "Of course, there are competitors, but it's good. We are open to cooperation with other institutions. I think that we have the same approach of competition and cooperation."That approach has worked so far. ESSEC Asia-Pacific has outgrown its two storeys at the National Library Building on Victoria Street, and has had to rent extra space in neighbouring Odeon Towers. When the new campus opens in January 2015, ESSEC expects to be able to triple its enrolment of students and executive managers.In fact, the business school has ambitions that extend beyond Singapore and Asia. "We decided to be in Asia more deeply (with this new campus) because we think it's important to shape a new concept of what a world business school is."ESSEC wants to create a "multi-entry system" that will transform its faculty, alumni base and programmes into increasingly international ones. "It means that you can enter ESSEC by Asia, Europe, other parts of the world. We are going to have more Asian students in future, but a lot of Asian students want to go to Europe, and many European students want to go to Asia. So everyone will be in a mixed environment in future."He has already set his sights on Africa and Latin America as potential markets for ESSEC to explore. "Africa and Latin America are places of development for higher education. We will have to consolidate our Singapore development first. The idea is to be a world business school. We have multiple alliances with universities of America and other places in the world, but we can go further in the future," says Dr Blanquer.Again, it would not be the first French business school to go global. Insead has set a firm foot in the Middle East, adding its latest campus in Abu Dhabi to the two in Singapore and Fontainebleau, while Edhec Business School, which set up a part-time executive training campus in Singapore in 2010, has two other such campuses in Paris and London.Differentiation by building bridgesBut Dr Blanquer believes that ESSEC is able to differentiate itself from the rest. While he and his colleagues are still working out the details of a strategic plan for ESSEC's future, this can be summed up in its aim to "create decision-makers in a complex world", he says."We do that by building bridges, between different topics and different fields. So maybe, what can differentiate us from others is that we assume complexity, and we give the keys to understanding complexity."He believes business schools are in a very special position to address the problems of the future. They are education institutions - imparting a long-term view - but are by definition closely linked to the economy and hence reflect the new tendencies and the shorter-term view of "how it's working in finance, how it's working for the economy". "We have to combine those two dimensions of time," says Dr Blanquer."In the 21st century, we have to make links where in the past, we thought there were contradictions or frontiers. In other words, having the traditional skills, classical skills, is not contradictory to having practical, technical skills. "That's why I speak sometimes about the new humanities of the 21st Century, which means the ability of someone to make links between different knowledges. A good student in a good businmini storagess school has to have two things at once - a quite traditional, classical knowledge, and a technical competence." He cites examples: how the development of Italian cities in the Renaissance might shed insights on what's happening in the economy of Singapore right now, how knowledge of the Portugese empire's challenges with managing its dispersed colonies is useful in thinking through the problems of management."Of course, that's with other paradigms of time. We are no longer in colonial times, or imperialistic times. But we'll always be in human time, I hope, and so the same kind of questions about living together, managing people, having a philosophy of space and time, those are permanent problems."For students of ESSEC therefore, Dr Blanquer wants an education in the classical humanities, alongside the newer finance, business and management disciplines. "I think that in the future, I will underline the importance of geography. Because through geography, you have economy, industries and mapping is very important for the mind. So these are examples, of what it means to link the humanities to modern problems."In fact, over the course of the hour-long interview, Dr Blanquer speaks of philosophy, history and literature more frequently than might be expected of a business school dean. Then again, the professional path he has taken - from law professor to education policymaker in the French civil service- is one that is less than typical of a business school dean.In his last role in public service, as director-general for French schools, he oversaw the education of 12 million children. As ESSEC's dean, he now oversees 4,400 full-time students and 5,000 managers in executive education programmes across ESSEC's three campuses - Cergy and Paris-La Defense in France, and Singapore.He sees a strong congruence between his past and present roles. "I began with the university, followed with the schools, and then I came back to higher education, but with another focus. Half of what I have to do is very comparable to what I've done before - it's understanding the situation, in terms of education, and managing people. The other half is understanding what's going on in the economy, what are the needs of companies, what are the skills necessary for our students."Here too, it comes down to the idea of bridge-building. "One of the key bridges business schools build is between the public sector and the private sector. And it's in my culture. When I was a civil servant, I was advocating for more interaction with the private sector too - for example, to provide more courses on the economy, entrepreneurship in schools."These ideas of his, Dr Blanquer says, are in line with ESSEC's deep-rooted humanist values. In his view, only in a post-global financial crisis did many business schools realise the value of emphasising that the individual's success is not enough, and that collective success opens the doors for individual successes."Finance is not only a question for specialists. Everybody should have a culture about finance, to understand that it is the blood of the economy, and it has to be good blood, not bad blood," he says.But ESSEC was prepared. "Some of the things we were studying at ESSEC before 2008, are now consensual in the world. It's the same for corporate social responsibility for companies. It's been a very old question for ESSEC, and now it's very fashionable."Impact of technologyEven as ESSEC goes out into the world to build new campuses, technology is evolving in ways that are shrinking the world rapidly - thus posing a challenge to the internationalising business school."First, it has an impact on what we do. Because it is all the economy that is changing, our teaching is changing and our research is changing to take into account the realities. For example, here in Singapore we have some professors specialised in digital marketing and social networks. We give a lot of attention to these evolutions."But as, if not more, critically, ESSEC's future, and that of other universities and business schools, will have to take into account the swelling phenomenon of MOOCs, or massive open online courses.With more higher education institutes putting their lectures and tutorials online, allowing for unlimited participation over the Internet, could ESSEC's strategy of planting new physical campuses be rendered outdated?"I think the most important consequences of this are for our pedagogy. For instance, we talk sometimes of reverse pedagogy, which means that a student follows the course before the lesson, during which, he explains it. That's a good consequence for pedagogy," he says.However, campuses will remain important and physical classrooms will remain important, he says. "That's why we're building something in Singapore. We think it's important to have concrete points in the world.""I don't believe that in the future you will have everybody in his room all his life learning by Internet, without ever interacting with anyone. I don't think it's a good vision for the future. It'll be very sad, and not very probable. To the contrary, I think that in a world with a lot of interaction by Internet, we have to underline the importance of being present, of interacting physically. Very often, we interact by computers, but you never will replace the physical interaction."The scale of interaction taking place over the Internet, and the changing nature of social networks - these too are trends that business education has to take into account. For him, Twitter is a particularly interesting social media platform."It's quick, it's interactive, whereas other ways of social networking are sometimes more static, more narcissistic." He values the ability to set up his own information system: "Every day, I have a huge tranche of information that I wouldn't have otherwise." He values the ability to give information to his community, to share his different approaches or interests.But, in another bridge of seeming contradictions, he values reading classical literature too. "I think it's very important for everyone to have time to read something which has nothing to do with his work.""Hegel said that the newspaper is the everyday prayer of the modern man. Today, we could say that social networks are the everyday prayer of this man, but with a book on the other side," says Dr Blanquer.tshining@sph.com.sgJEAN-MICHEL BLANQUERDean and President, ESSEC Business School (Global)1964 Born in Paris1993 Obtained PhD in Law from University of Paris 21996 Professor of Public Law at the Institute of Political Studies of Lille and at the University of Lille 21998 Appointed Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Paris 32004 Appointed Superintendent of schools in French Guiana2004 (Till present) President of the Institute of the Americas2006 Appointed Deputy Head of Cabinet for the French Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Research2007 Appointed Superintendent of schools of the Academy of Creteil2008 Knight of the National Order of Merit2009 Appointed Managing Director, Primary and Secondary Education (Ministry of Education)2011 Knight of the French Legion of HonorJuly 2013 Appointed Dean and President of ESSEC Business Schoolself storage