Recently, Professor Tawhid CHTIOUI, Dean of emlyon business school, and Professor Wang Hua, Associate Dean of emlyon business school and Dean of emlyon business school Asia, gave an exclusive interview to jiemian.com, a well-known financial media in China. During this interview, professor William Hua Wang responded to questions about the challenges and opportunities faced by the business schools, the development of emlyon Asia, emlyon's future strategic development in Asia and the strategic layout of emlyon business school.

Prof. Dr. William Hua WANG

Associate Dean, emlyon business school

Dean, emlyon business school Asia

French Dean, Asia Europe Business School

From 1.0 to 3.0, Global education embracing new turning point

As an established business school with a history of nearly 150 years, emlyon business school has cooperated with over 1600 enterprises across the globe and has accumulated abundant experience. Back in 2007, emlyon business school entered Mainland China and worked with East China Normal University to launch courses through partnership. It was seen as a critical step in the internationalization strategy of the school, as well as the 1.0 version of emlyon business school Asia.

"Starting from 2015, we have shifted from internationalization strategy to globalization strategy, by allowing hundreds of students from all over the world to work and study at Asia campus every year to immerse them in the business environment of China." Professor Wang Hua pointed out that the globalization strategy is the true 2.0 version of emlyon Asia, which is more comprehensive integration to optimize the effectiveness of Asia campus than merely moving the French courses to Shanghai.

Meanwhile, with five global campuses of Lyon-Ecully, Paris, Saint-Etienne, Shanghai and Casablanca, emlyon business school is planning to set up Indian and South American campuses to move forward the globalization strategy. emlyon Asia will also embrace the unprecedented 3.0 version. Professor William Hua Wang remarked that the world is currently facing the third wave of globalization dominated by developing countries such as China. The rise of emerging economies such as BRICS countries have particularly provided new turning point for business education of emlyon business school.

School-enterprise cooperation to train "early makers"

Besides the globalization strategy, digitization and AI play important roles in 2023 Plan and education development goals of emlyon business school.

"China's entrepreneurship and innovation sparked unexpected vitality that China has taken the leading position especially in AI, industrial 4.0, IOT industries." Professor William Hua Wang commented that China's innovation development has been an epic impetus for emlyon business school's progress made in Shanghai. Under the background of business development in China, the school will continue the strategy to train "early makers" globally.

To achieve the goal, emlyon Asia has launched the In-company Consulting Project (ICP), offering multi-cultural groups of students to work on real business projects faced by the real company and come up with real proposals and real recommendations. ICP functions not only as a part of school-enterprise cooperation, but also as opportunities for students to combine theory with practice and for the school to train early makers.

In addition to school-enterprise cooperation on the education level, emlyon business school further promotes academic research partnership with enterprises. For example, professors of emlyon business school will join hands with Geely Group's experts in a series of academic studies to support Geely expanding their business across the world. Several innovation research centers will be established targeting different vertical area, which could contribute to industry development.

Driving Talent-training in emerging fields

From Professor William Hua Wang's perspective, talent training is the mission of business schools, yet he delivered concern about talent training in the future. According to Professor Wang, the competency model of management talent has been alternating as today's world is unceasingly changing. Business schools have been struggling to train talents in digitization, AI and other emerging industries.

"We can't afford to wait for years until we keep up with trend of talent demands in the market, by then it would be too late." Professor William Hua Wang suggested that emlyon business school has remained sufficient alert and introspection in this regard that it has embarked on developing interdisciplinary courses with a forward-thinking approach, which integrates industrial, programming and other courses into the business education landscape.

We can foresee that business universities in the future must be interactive and border-less, gathering global talents across majors and borders, which creates the network of integration and synergy of various disciplines.

"Integration of disciplines is the future tendency of talent training. We will break out of the narrow concept of business school and build emlyon business school into a genuine business university." We believe that there is no unchanging business school, only the business school of the time. emlyon business school will hold tight the vein of time and transform into a genuine business university.

emlyon business school Asia strives to improve the courses that adapts to the ever-changing business landscape and local environments. Now emlyon Asia provides undergraduate program, DBA, EMBA, EDP and other programs for senior industry leaders to satisfy their demands in different career stages. emlyon Asia will soon launch FTEMBA (Financial & Technological Entrepreneurship MBA) to equip entrepreneurs and senior management with the "early makers" gene, global mindsets, financial and capital thinking as well as innovation skills.