Emlyon business school was founded in 1872 by the Lyon Chamber of Commerce and Industry in France. It has six campuses all over the world: Lyon, Shanghai, Saint-Etienne, Paris, Casablanca and Bhubaneswar, and belongs to the 1% of business schools in the world which have the triple accreditation – AACSB, EQUIS, and AMBA. It trains 5,750 students including 40% from abroad (83 nationalities) and 5,500 company managers in continuous professional development programmes.
One of the most eye-catching prospects for students is the EMBA programme, a course that promises to realign your professional direction and help you to adjust to the unpredictable world of contemporary business. The European spoke to Rhoda Davidson, the Director of the EMBA programme, to find out a little more about what makes the course so unique.
Please outline what the EMBA programme helps students to achieve
Rhoda Davidson: Basically, the EMBA is designed for senior managers who wish to enhance their skills in various fields of management while applying their knowledge to the strategy of their company.
However, one of the advantages of an Executive MBA programme is, above all, to give the rare gift of time. Time to take a step back from their career, to be introduced to unfamiliar situations, to expand their outlook on management and business and then realign their goals to take on another adventure.
At emlyon we place a strong emphasis on leadership development that helps executives to become much more certain about their career direction. This allows them to make better choices about the types of jobs that they will find fulfilling. Some of the graduates finally decide to set up their own company, or acquire one and use the EMBA as a springboard to help them accelerate this process.
The EMBA programme has a focus on experiential learning – why is this type of learning so effective?
RD: Executives come to us to build competencies that are critical for their future success. This demands experiential learning such as working in teams on projects with clients, playing serious games (real-world simulations), creating and testing prototypes, experiencing foreign business environments, or researching and writing case studies. All these types of experiences are designed to trigger the neural circuits of emotional memory. By creating salient learning events that leave a trace in their memories and by taking the time to reflect with each other on experiences, our managers can use learning to guide future thoughts and actions. This in turn provides our executives with the confidence to reapply knowledge and build long-lasting and relevant skills and competencies. Participants are prompted to develop positive and creative mindsets when trying to imagine solutions with peers and placed in a challenging situation.
What is next for emlyon business school?
RD: In January last year, emlyon launched its new plan, ‘early makers 2023’. The plan focuses on five key aspects: globalisation, accelerating our digital transformation, boosting our performance, cultivating the early maker mindset and developing the subject of joint intelligence. The plan will shore up our position in a rapidly changing market, allowing us to take our transformation further and reach our end goal faster. The latest Times Higher Education employability rankings show that this strategy has paid off. For the third year running, 7,000 employers and business leaders from around the world ranked us in the top 50 institutions worldwide and as France’s second-best business school.
Further information
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