BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
“Social interaction is key to human beings and campuses bring people closer together, strengthening inclusion and diversity”
s far as higher education is concerned, the creation of online programmes brought the assumption that investment in campus facilities was outdated.
As a multi-campus, triple crown business school founded in 1909, ESSCA now operates in eight cities (six in France, one in China and one in Hungary) and will soon open two additional European campuses. There are two main aspects to explore: first, the role of campuses within the wider community, and second, campuses as places of innovation. Campuses within communities Higher education campuses should be seen as a physical bridge between academia and society. For business schools, campuses make the mission of education tangible through brick-and-mortar facilities, where different stakeholders (including students, alumni, companies, faculty and staff) can meet. Campuses are also places where major events take place. Education needs its rituals and symbolic moments such as induction weeks, corporate conferences, research colloquia and graduation ceremonies. All of these are tangible elements of the vibrant life that campuses offer to people. Business school experts provide a significant service to society, much of which is rooted in campus life. The participation of business school representatives (especially faculty) in everything from boards of
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Other industries have faced similar concerns in the past. If we remember the early
2000s, the development of business on the web brought some self-appointed experts to claim that car dealers would disappear, removing some of the fundamental items from the value chain. That did not come to pass. The Covid-19 outbreak, and its international instability, generated greater use of online learning but eventually revealed the deep need of people (whether students or staff) to go back to meeting ‘in person’. A major driver of this was the isolation felt by so many of the so-called ‘alone-together syndrome’. This is a major drawback of full-time digital learning. In this article, I look at how we can reimagine physical campuses as places at the service of people, local territories, and for generating opportunities for responsible innovation. Examples are drawn from the experience of ESSCA School of Management (ESSCA).
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