Seven Years Strong: INSEAD and ChangeNOW's Ever Growing Partnership in 2025

For the seventh year INSEAD was ChangeNOW’s Academic Partner. This year’s partnership was the richest and biggest yet for INSEAD with a programme that included a BS4CL session with our Dean, the second year of the Board For Change Programme, and of course the 3rd Impact Entrepreneurship Forum by the Hoffmann Institute and INSEAD Africa Initiative.

In late April, under the immense glass barrel-vaulted roof of the newly refurbished Grand Palais, ChangeNOW hosted its annual 3-day summit of solutions for the planet. INSEAD, present as the academic partner, shared thought leadership, supported a dynamic impact entrepreneurship ecosystem and engaged INSEAD students. 

Katell Le Goulven, INSEAD Hoffmann Institute (centre) moderating the Large Scale Land Restoration panel 

INSEAD’s thought leadership at ChangeNOW kicked off with Katell Le Goulven, Founding Executive Director of the Hoffmann Institute moderating a panel on ‘Large Scale Land Restoration’. The two-part panel included a high level discussion on land degradation and restoration policy with Saldan Odontuya , Minister of Environment and Climate Change of Mongolia and Dr Osama Faqeeha , Deputy Minister of Environment, Saudi Arabia  as well as a more practitioner focused session with guests including Willem Ferwerda from Commonland. INSEAD Dean Francisco Veloso  took part in the panel ‘Thinking Long Term in a Short-Term World.’

In addition to individual contributions, INSEAD also collaborated on two major programmes within the summit. The first was INSEAD participating in the BS4CL run session titled “Learn, Lead, Transform: Business Schools for Climate Leadership” chaired by Concepción Galdon PhD. and Fernanda Accorsi. And for the second year in a row, INSEAD and INSEAD Centre for Corporate Governance partnered with ChangeNOW and Chapter Zero to bring its flagship programme the Board For Change Programme. The goal is to equip board members with the necessary tools to effectively integrate sustainability into corporate strategy. Dr Thomas Keusch, INSEAD Assistant Professor of Accounting and Control took part in this session. 

The INSEAD Hoffmann Institute in partnership with INSEAD Africa Initiative hosted its annual Impact Entrepreneurship Forum which this year was titled ‘Building Inclusive Futures’, spotlighting the power of impact entrepreneurship in emerging economies.  In the last decade, impact entrepreneurship has emerged as a driving force in addressing structural inequalities and climate challenges in emerging economies. This forum brought together 80 graduates, alumni and current participants of the 2025 Hans Wahl Impact Entrepreneurship Programme for a 3-hour session. While the main forum was held in person, the event was kicked off with a Virtual Gathering ‘Building Inclusive Futures’ on April 16th. 

During the virtual forum, Marcos Troyjo, former President of the New Development Bank and Hoffmann Institute Distinguished Fellow delivered the keynote. Troyjo highlighted how we have entered an era of geopolitics and trade wars. He spoke on the impact of major demographic shifts over the next 25 years, noting that the global population will rise by 2 billion people from 8 to 10 billion—driven by just 9 emerging markets. 

The keynote was followed by a panel with Professor Jaideep Prabhu, from Cambridge Judge Business School, Professor Claudia Zeisberger of INSEAD and Jadesola Adedeji, Co-Founder & CEO, STEM METS Resources (ISEP 2016), all moderated by Dr.Vinika Devasar Rao, Director, INSEAD Africa Initiative & Hoffmann Institute.  Professor Jaideep Prabhu spoke on 'Frugal Innovation'—a type of innovation conscious of resource constraints, tapping into local ingenuity. Frugal innovation is often born out of necessity and can drive scalable and sustainable solutions. It is designed to be inclusive, bringing marginalised people from outside the economy into formal economy.  Jadesola Adedeji continued on this theme by talking about social infrastructure. She that shared that in many emerging markets, ESG discussions do not focus on just the ‘E’ but are also heavily weighted towards the 'S' – social. She stressed there are real foundational social infrastructure gaps - like access to education, job creation, and gender equity - which need to be addressed and are critical to development. She shared that local innovations solve local challenges. She predicted that a shift towards local and regional partnerships will be a driving force for innovation and creativity across the continent of Africa. 

With such a rich background conversation at the virtual forum, the participants at ChangeNOW arrived ready to engage. The Master of Ceremony was Hoffmann Institute Partnership and Projects Manager Maria Fedorova. After Fedorova opened the forum, the Dean of INSEAD gave remarks before the first session noting “at INSEAD entrepreneurship is one of our founding values. This is in the DNA of the school. It is a filter for how we see the world. We are here at ChangeNOW as we realise we must change things. We must approach business and social systems in a different way.”

With the tone set the first session started. ‘Beyond Impact to Income: Sustainability for Social Entrepreneurs’ was a fireside chat of sorts with INSEAD’s Professor Subi Rangan, The Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Court Endowed Chair in Societal Progress answering key questions from participants which were moderated by Katell Le Goulven, Executive Director, Hoffmann Institute.  Professor Rangan spoke on the fundamental question ‘how do we integrate performance and progress?’ or in other words how can we reconcile impact and income. He shared that leadership is often overrated, and ownership underrated. He followed on to say that instead of ‘changing now’ we should look to ‘improve later’ as quick fixes and immediate change are often overhyped; true progress doesn't only come leadership or innovation but long-term commitment and ownership. To own a problem is to take responsibility, potentially for the next 50 years.

This engaged session was followed by ‘The Impact Dilemma: The Emerging Economies Context’ with INSEADs Jasjit Singh, Professor of Strategy and the Paul Dubrule Chaired Professor of Sustainable Development, Goulnara Aguiar, CEO and Founder, Ormex, Technical advisor on carbon markets (Article 6) UNFCCC, COP28 (GEMBA’19), Aline Sara, CEO & Co-Founder of Natakallam (ISEP’19), moderated again by Katell Le Goulven, Executive Director, Hoffmann Institute. The conversation ranged from funding structures of social enterprises working with the Global South to credible local presence to market creation. 

Aline Sara from Natakallam spoke on the funding structures. Natakallam is a for-profit social enterprise and relies on revenue generation. They have not gone for investments as a strategic choice. Sara shared that as female founder who works with Middle Eastern and African refugees, she shared she felt investor route would be challenging. She has seen big pressure generally for female entrepreneurs to search for investment despite globally only 2% of funding going to female founders. Sara shared how important it is to understand different capital and funding spaces, at Natakallam they are strategically focused on non-diluted grant capital and revenue generation. Professor Singh stressed that ‘"Investors must understand local dynamics. Simply extrapolating successful models to different countries and regions won’t work. Businesses, customers and employees operate differently. Entrepreneurs in emerging economies need a credible local presence." It was Aguiar, from Ormex, who brought up market creation. She spoke about the regional challenge of not only food security but food sovereignty in the Global South. In many regional economies the difficultly is not just to feed populations but to do it locally and sustainably without external imports and in very unstable markets. Benin, Zambia, and Egypt are examples of countries with enormous agriculture potential, but their profitability and agricultural yields are decreasing due to land degradation. Ormex works with governments and the private sector to change regular agricultural practices into sustainable and regenerative practices as well as creating a financial model to generate and monetise this method of working.

Aania Alam (MBA'12J)

Finally, Dr.Vinika Devasar Rao, Director, INSEAD Africa Initiative & the Hoffmann Institute chaired an honest and refreshing panel on ‘Creating Impactful Transformation at Scale: Challenges and Opportunities in the Emerging Markets’. This panel consisted of INSEAD’s Lite J. Nartey, Affiliate Professor of Strategy, Aania Alam, Managing Partner and CEO, Aeon Advisors (MBA’12J) and Golvine de Rochambeau, Economist in the Economic Policy Research group at International Finance Corporation, CEPR affiliate. Professor Nartey called for impact entrepreneurs be practical when working with and in the Global South and urged entrepreneurs not to copy solutions from Western economies but to instead tailor solutions for the local context. The Global South has unique economic, social, and political contexts. Further to this the Global South is nonhomogeneous and diverse, networks across countries can and should be leveraged to find synergies.  Aania Alam also spoke how the Global South is unique due to the ingrained adoption of frugal innovation. Alam said that frugal innovation ‘is more a state of being’ in emerging and developing economies because of financial constraints, bourgeoning populations, dire infrastructure and service gaps. Dr. de Rochambeau, shared that when it comes to innovation in emerging economies, there’s a comparative advantage in the Knowledge Economy value chain, especially when looking at green tech. 

Master of Ceremony - Maria Fedorova, Partnerships and Projects Manager at the Hoffmann Institute

With the sessions coming to an end Fedorova rallied the audience by stating “this forum served as an intellectual and physical space—a safe environment to meet, learn, challenge, and collaborate.  Now, more than ever, collective action matters. At a time when trust in institutions—governments, international organizations, even business—is at an all-time low, gatherings like this remind us that hope lies in convergence." As the conversations in a packed green bubble finished, the evening rounded off with the participants of the forum walking across the road to the Pavillion Elysee to join MBA and MiM students for a networking reception. And just like that, the partnership with ChangeNOW had been successfully delivered. The participants of the 2025 Hans Wahl Programme then boarded a bus for the journey to Fontainebleau to start their course and continue their journey as impact entrepreneurs.

We would like to thank the INSEAD Africa Initiative for their partnership with the Hoffmann Institute, along with all the departments and colleagues which made this a success. 

You can read the Impact Entrepreneurship Forum Content Report here

Watch the INSEAD wrap up video