INSEAD

History

INSEAD was founded in 1957 by venture capitalist Georges Doriot, Claude Janssen, and Olivier Giscard d'Estaing. Original seed money was provided by the Paris Chamber of Commerce. The school was originally based in the Château de Fontainebleau before locating to its current Europe Campus in 1967. The original name of the school was "Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires’ which was later shortened to INSEAD.

In 2000, the school opened a second campus in Singapore, and in 2007, it established a Centre in Abu Dhabi primarily for research and executive education, which later achieved campus status in 2010. In 2020, INSEAD opened the INSEAD San Francisco Hub for Business Innovation.

In 2012, INSEAD joined the Sorbonne University Alliance as a founding member, collaborating with other specialized institutions to contribute to the development of a leading multidisciplinary university.

Campuses

INSEAD's founding campus (the Europe Campus) is located in Fontainebleau, near Paris, France. The second campus (the Asia Campus) is in the one-north district of Singapore next to one-north MRT station and the third campus (the Middle East Campus) is located in Abu Dhabi. INSEAD expanded its presence to North America in 2020 with the opening of the INSEAD San Francisco Hub for Business Innovation.

Grande école system

INSEAD is a grande école, a French institution of higher education that is separate from, but parallel and connected to the main framework of the French public university system. Similar to the Ivy League in the United States, Oxbridge in the UK, and the C9 League in China, grandes écoles are academic institutions that admit students through a competitive process.

Academics

Master programmes

Master in Management

Launched in May 2019, the INSEAD Master in Management (MIM) is a 14- to 16-month full-time programme for young graduates starting their careers in management. The average age of students on the INSEAD MIM is 23.

MBA

The INSEAD MBA programme welcomes approximately 1,000 participants every year who spend time between the INSEAD Europe and Asia Campuses. The INSEAD MBA lasts 10 months, with two cohorts joining per year, in September and January. The average age of students on the programme is 29 and a typical class has around 110 nationalities.

Global Executive MBA

INSEAD runs a modular Global Executive MBA programme for over 200 participants every year across its Asia, Europe and Middle East campuses. INSEAD also offers the Tsinghua-INSEAD EMBA (TIEMBA) programme which takes in around 40 participants per year. In November 2024, INSEAD announced the launch of a new GEMBA Flex programme.

Executive Master in Finance

Taught over six modules (five modules on the INSEAD Asia Campus and one module on the INSEAD Europe Campus), the 18-month INSEAD Executive Master in Finance programme draws over 30 participants for every cohort.

Executive Master in Change

The INSEAD Executive Master in Change degree programme spans over 18 months and eight modules of three to four days. Each intake – whether on the Asia or Europe Campus – typically welcomes more than 100 participants. The programme is accredited Mastère Spécialisé by CGE, Conférence des Grandes Ecoles.

Executive Education

INSEAD Executive Education incorporates over 60 Open Programmes, 15 Open Online Programmes and a portfolio of over 200 Customised Programmes. These programmes are attended by more than 10,000 participants from over 3,800 companies every year.

PhD

The INSEAD PhD programme contributes to the school's research and currently has 86 participants on its Europe and Asia Campuses. To date, over 278 students have graduated from the programme.

Rankings and reputation

QS World Universities Rankings has been ranking INSEAD #2 globally in the Subject Ranking for Business and Management since 2018, behind Harvard University.

INSEAD's MBA program was ranked first globally by the Financial Times in 2016, 2017, and 2021, and has ranked among the top five in subsequent years, including #2 in 2018 and #4 in 2025. INSEAD's MBA program was ranked third globally by Linkedin in 2025.

Alumni

Main article: List of INSEAD alumni

The INSEAD alumni community consists of 68,861 individuals across 179 countries with 171 nationalities.

The MBA programme has produced the second-highest number of Fortune 500 CEOs, behind Harvard Business School. It is amongst the largest 20 producers of ultra high-net-worth individuals across all educational institutions, and is also amongst the top 10 producers of billionaire alumni amongst global MBA programs. INSEAD's MBA alumni are fourth worldwide in terms of capital raised, founder count, and company count (only behind Harvard's, Stanford's, and Wharton's).

Partnerships and alliances

INSEAD is in alliance with several academic and business partners.

Notable faculty members

• Philippe Aghion, Professor of Economics and the Kurt Björklund Chaired Professor of Innovation and Growth at INSEAD, 2025 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences “for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction”
• W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, Professors of Strategy, co-authors of Blue Ocean Strategy
• Soumitra Dutta, former Roland Berger Professor of Business and Technology (1989–2012) at INSEAD, former Dean of Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford (2022–2025), founding dean of SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University (2012–2018)
• Christoph Loch, former Dean of the Cambridge Judge Business School from 2011 to 2021. Prior to this, he was a professor at INSEAD from 1994 to 2011, where he also served as Dean of the PhD Programme.
• Philip H. Gordon, former Affiliate Professor of Economic and Political Sciences at INSEAD, US National Security Advisor (2022-2025) to the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris , former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (2009–2011) and Special Assistant to the President Obama.
• Arnoud De Meyer, former President of Singapore Management University (2010-2019), former Dean of the Cambridge Judge Business School from 2006 to 2010. Prior to this, he was a professor at INSEAD for 23 years from 1983 to 2006, where he was Dean of MBA programme.
• António Borges, former Dean of INSEAD, former Director of the European Department of the International Monetary Fund during the European Debt Crisis, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs International.

References

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