Fendt Jacqueline | ESCP Business School

Jacqueline Fendt

Campus : Paris

Jacqueline Fendt is emeritus professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at ESCP Europe and founder and former Scientific Director of the school’s Chair of Entrepreneurship (now JB Say Institute). She holds bachelors in organization science and business administration (distinction), an MBA from GSBA/Boston University, a Ph.D. in mathematics (cum laude) from Leiden University, Netherlands, a PhD in business administration from JCME Boston/Zurich and a Habilitation in Management Science from Strasbourg University, France. After teenage years as a national swimming champion Jacqueline Fendt founded and managed her first company at age 23 in Malta: a translation and interpretation service. Back in her native Switzerland she then embarked upon a corporate career with executive positions at Ciba-Geigy Basel (now Novartis), Digital Equipment Corporation (now HP) in Zurich and Siber Hegner Group (now DKSH) in Tokyo. In 1994 she was appointed CEO of Swiss Shipping and Neptune Co. Ltd (now Rhenus) in Basel, and radically restructured this mythical but deficitary European inland navigation group. In March 1997 Jacqueline Fendt was appointed by the Swiss Government to head Expo.01, a large once-in-a-generation national exhibition for which she raised several hundred million Euros before leaving the project in a highly mediated political clash. In 1999 she founded and chaired Business Angels Schweiz,www.businessangels.ch), an organization that identifies, finances and coaches promising seed and start-up companies, mainly in bio- and nanotech. From 2001-2004 she was Dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration (www.gsba.ch). Jacqueline also serves on the boards of international companies in the life sciences and transportation industries and is a long-standing expert to the European Commission in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

PUBLICATIONS

Relevance and creativity through design-driven action research: Introducing pragmatic adequacy

EUROPEAN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Vol. 29, Issue 3, pp.217-233 17 p.

Research and expertise

News & events

Events

Financial Institutions and Corporate Finance

04 June 2026 - 05 June 2025
07.00 am - 02.00 pm

Events

AI in Higher Education Summit 2026 – Paris, 17–18 March

17 - 18 March 2026
07.00 am - 05.20 pm

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Academic Articles

2020

Les entreprises se racontent-elles des histoires ?

Academic Articles

2018

Convincing Qualitative Research: What Constitutes Persuasive Writing?

Academic Articles

2017

Qualitative Inquiry in Management: Methodological Dilemmas and Concerns in Meta-Analysis

Other Intellectual Contributions

2016

Venture capital and its French exception: Explaining performance through human capital, policy and institutional failures

Working Papers

2014

Parents' OTC Medication Behavior with their Children: Toward a Conceptual Framework of Cognition, Affect and Behavior

Academic Articles

2012

Small firms and the growth stage: can entrepreneurship education programmes be supportive ?

Academic Articles

2012

La dérive situationniste. Le plus court chemin pour apprendre à entreprendre ?, in : Le management face à la complexité

Conference Presentations

2012

Qualitative Meta-Studies in Management Research: The Emergence of a Method

Conference Presentations

2012

Entrepreneurship Learning at the Edge - Radical Pedagogic Experimentations at a Paris Business School

Academic Articles

2011

Relevance and creativity through design-driven action research: Introducing pragmatic adequacy

Research and expertise

News & events

Events

Events