As highlighted by Patrick Molle, Managing Director of EM LYON, “this partnership is based on a joint vision of management teaching and the sharing of the same values: the spirit of enterprise, innovation and internationalisation. This partnership has three objectives:
- Making our institutions world leaders in research and entrepreneurial management teaching,
- Promoting intellectual, economic and social relations between France, Europe and China,
- Allowing the creation and development of Franco-Chinese start-ups”.
The first main theme of this cooperation is research with the introduction and coordination of a global discussion group on entrepreneurship, bringing together the best researchers in the discipline. A third partner – American, probably Babson College, a prestigious university specialised in entrepreneurship – is about to join them. The first joint event, already scheduled for autumn 2007, will be the International Entrepreneurial, a genuine think-tank involving professors, experts and representatives from the business world.
The project also covers the creation of bilateral entrepreneurship institutes:
EM LYON will create a European Entrepreneurship Institute within the “school of management” at Zhejiang University. Likewise, the Chinese university will establish its own research institute at EM LYON.
The development of joint research on specific subjects such as the training of business managers, management of small and family businesses or innovation are also core issues.
As far as teaching is concerned, the partnership will go immediately into action with the opening, in the autumn 2008, of a joint master's, quite unique in its genre, in international entrepreneurship. Aimed at students from all over the world, it aims to support the creation and development of major international projects. These pioneering institutions intend to involve other high profile partners in the future, making this diploma a genuine global master's.
EM LYON and Zhejiang University already implement this academic partnership in the sphere of in-service training, having set up specific training to accompany the SEB-SUPOR merger project, especially in the intercultural dimension. Other companies will then be able to benefit from the expertise developed by the two partners in mergers and acquisitions between foreign and Chinese companies.
Second partnership theme: exchanges. As of this year, professors and researchers at EM LYON will have the possibility of teaching and researching in China (and vice versa). Students will also be able to participate in exchanges on a half-yearly basis as of next year.
Finally, a specific executive board has been set up to implement this agreement, a new, major stage in EM LYON's mission to “educate entrepreneurs for the world”.
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