Association of MBAs praises unique INSEAD strategy to ‘push the boundaries of the MBA’ and spur next-generation invention and leadership
INSEAD, the leading global business school, has received the Association of MBA’s 2012 Innovation Award for its ‘Sci-Tech Commercialiser’, an action-learning option, as part of its MBA programme, designed to accelerate scientific advances and bring new technology to market. The international accreditation organisation announced the prestigious honour at its annual gala ceremony in London on 17 October.
‘INSEAD’s Sci-Tech Commercialiser offering has pushed the boundaries of the MBA and introduced a truly innovative elective to educate and inspire,’ said Sir Paul Judge, President of the Association of MBAs and Chair of the Award’s jury panel that bestowed the distinction. ‘INSEAD recognised the need to support scientific innovation with its critical role in economic growth and created an option for its students that offers a unique learning experience.’
INSEAD’s Sci-Tech Commercialiser is a new addition to the school’s portfolio of approaches that bridge theory and practise to create social value. It provides INSEAD students with hands-on learning experiences while also advancing scientific innovation and developing effective strategies to bring these inventions to market. Launched by the INSEAD Centre for Entrepreneurship (ICE) in January 2012, the programme matches MBA students with scientists to partner on technology commercialisation. The student teams undergo a rigourous set of customised courses, workshops and bootcamps during the 10-month INSEAD MBA programme.
A key INSEAD partner in delivering this programme is SATT LUTECH, a technology accelerator that works closely with several Paris-based universities and the French government. Among its shareholders are the Pierre and Marie Curie University (UPMC), a leading French university of science and medicine, and the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), a French national research organisation with more than 11,450 researchers—including 17 Nobel laureates and 11 Fields Medalists, such as physicist Serge Haroche, a 2012 Nobel Prize winner. SATT LUTECH finances the Sci-Tech Commercialiser with an annual sponsoring gift and its labs provide a wealth of projects—from the life sciences and new materials research to renewable energy. As a result, INSEAD students benefit by gaining access to LUTECH scientists and promising technology from across a vast sweep of scientific disciplines. The projects offer considerable variability in terms of maturity: some are at the raw concept stage while others are in the final prototyping stage and close to market scaling. Bill Magill, INSEAD’s Director for Science Entrepreneurship, has served as the Commercialiser’s primary manager on the Europe Campus, bringing more than a quarter-century of Silicon Valley venture capital, investment banking and consulting to the role.
Accepting the MBA Innovation Award on behalf of INSEAD, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship Filipe Santos said that INSEAD was delighted to receive the honour. ‘This is an acknowledgement of INSEAD’s overall commitment to innovation in MBA teaching,’ said Santos, who is also Academic Director of INSEAD’s Social Entrepreneurship Initiative and Director of the Rudolf and Valeria Maag Centre for Entrepreneurship. ‘The award recognises the efforts of INSEAD and its MBA students to create broad social value by bringing new inventions to market in an entrepreneurial way. My colleagues and I thank our partner SATT LUTECH for their pioneering support in launching the Sci-Tech Commercialiser. We look forward to continuing our relationship with LUTECH in matching our students with their scientists.’
The initiative’s success on INSEAD’s Europe Campus has led to the Sci-Tech Commercialiser being introduced in the school’s Singapore campus too, added Professor Santos, who acknowledged the support of the National University of Singapore and SMART (Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology) to launch the programme on the Asia Campus in October 2012. Paul Kewene-Hite, Executive Director of ICE and an accomplished industry practitioner with more than 20 years of experience in technology development, has spearheaded the initiative on that campus.
INSEAD earned the 2012 MBA Innovation Award by impressing a panel of high-profile judges led by Sir Paul Judge and including Peter Lacy, Managing Director, Accenture Sustainability Services, Asia Pacific Region and Professor Frank Scrimgeour, Dean of the Waikato Management School in New Zealand. Other finalists included the Arthur Lok Graduate School of Business' MBA in Sustainable Energy Management; IEDC-Bled School of Management's Arts and Leadership Programme; and Wuhan University Economics and Management School, Executive MBA.
About the Association of MBAs
The Association of MBAs is the international impartial authority on postgraduate business education. Established in 1967, it sets the global standard for accrediting MBA, DBA and MBM programmes. The Association currently accredits more than 700 MBA programmes in 199 schools in 75 countries worldwide and serves as a professional membership association connecting MBA students and graduates, accredited business schools and MBA employers in more than 110 countries. For more information, visit www.mbaworld.com.
For more information and photos of the Award winners, please contact:
Carol Turner, PR and Communications Manager, Association of MBAs
Tel: + 44 (020) 72462674 or Mob: 07795211892
Email: [email protected]
http://www.mbaworld.com/
