An Extraordinary Path

Out of all our graduates, Léon Cligman stands out because of his age (he was born in 1920) and also because of his out of the ordinary background.

Born in Moldava in 1920, he entered the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris at the age of 15, where he acquired the building blocks to become one of the leaders in the French textile sector.

His Career

He first became president of Indreco (Newman, Mendès…), and then took over Devanlay, which included Lacoste, Scandale, Jil and Orly.

In addition to being a major contributor to the development of the textile and clothing sector, Léon Cligman and his wife, an artist, are also avid art collectors.

Léon Cligman and his Love of the Arts

In 2020, he and his wife will sponsor the inauguration of a modern art museum at the Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud, which will house about 900 works of art (paintings, drawings, sculptures, antique objects, etc.), all from the Cligman collection.

Souvenirs

Léon Cligman will keep in his archives, on the other hand, some of his school notebooks and documents that he still has in his possession. These regularly written notebooks and papers, covered with the upstrokes and downstrokes of pen and ink, chart the history of a period when students learned chemistry, geography, as well as how to draw up a balance sheet.

Valentina Carbone & Aurélien Acquier: “The circular economy has its place in a business school”

According to the Scientific co-directors of the ESCP - Deloitte Circular Economy & Business Sustainable Models Chair, business schools have a key role to play in this transformation. ESCP has already initiated many innovations in this field, and in particular created a chair dedicated to this subject to promote the circular economy in society and facilitate its appropriation by companies.

According to the 2019 Circularity Gap Report, more than 90% of the raw materials we use are not re-injected into the economy: our planet is under enormous pressure on its natural resources and the climate, which must be quickly relieved.
The circular economy is a concept aimed at rethinking the economy, to produce goods and services while limiting the consumption and waste of raw materials, water and energy sources. It is a new economic model that aims to protect companies from the consumption and exploitation of natural resources. Companies, which hold the keys to their business model, are therefore obviously at the heart of the system.

ESCP has already initiated many innovations in this field: we have been teaching circular economics for more than four years in the school's various programmes, notably in our Master of Science (MSc) in International Sustainability (Paris - Berlin programme). The school also organizes the annual Conference for Sustainable Innovation on the Berlin campus. And during the next academic year, the 400 students of the Master in Management's new class will participate in a cross-curricular seminar devoted to the ecological and social transition.

An accelerator of innovation for the transition to the circular economy

Valentina Carbone & Aurélien Acquier To continue and strengthen this movement, we have created the ESCP - Deloitte in "Circular Economy & Business Sustainable Models" Chair. It seeks to study, identify and explain the levers and locks of the circular economy, wishing to position itself as an accelerator of innovation for the transition to the circular economy. Its fields of action concern research, teaching and the dissemination of good practices in the managerial world.

Our conviction is that the circular economy must be thought of in a collaborative way. While the invention of these new models is now a major challenge, the transition to the circular economy is a complex process, requiring concerted action and a joint effort by a range of stakeholders: companies, investors, public actors, citizens, think-tanks and experts, etc. As a result, our courses are built in partnership with entrepreneurs but also with public and institutional actors.

The circular economy is a managerial change but also a cultural one that transforms our relationship to value creation, progress and consumption patterns. This change implies a leadership role on the part of companies but also of business schools. For us, the circular economy challenges all of the company's activities and is located at the intersection between the roads of strategy, supply chain management, entrepreneurship, the environment, accounting, marketing, law and product design. It is also a fundamentally interdisciplinary issue, which leads business schools to open up to other fields such as engineering, natural sciences, political science or philosophy.

Campuses

Paris

Frank Bournois: “The world expects a European Renaissance”

As the United Kingdom continues its slow and time-consuming exit from the European Union, ESCP's Dean and Executive President considers it essential not to lose sight of the strong and compelling need to rethink Europe’s ambition in order to better relaunch its construction. The world will not wait!

Frank Bournois For those who interact daily with economic and institutional decision-makers around the world, it is striking to see how no one can seriously consider a world in which Europe has no place, for one simple reason: who would want the rebirth of a bipolar world?

Current economic debates underline that the relaunched economic war between the United States and China combined with the emergence of their digital champions, industrial giants of the 21st century, is not sustainable for the emergence of a stable world where prosperity would be fairly shared.

The world therefore needs Europe as much as the other way around. A Europe in which the Union would be a driving but not necessarily exclusive pillar. As such, I am firmly convinced that the United Kingdom will have to find a way of remaining European one way or another: a Europe deprived of this great nation would be a historical nonsense.

Europe is needed in several respects. First of all, it is still one of the main economic forces combined with a strong culture. Although it recently became the world's third largest economic power (it was the first one less than 10 years ago), it is still the leading exporter of goods and services ahead of the United States. The voices of its main countries are still heard on the international scene. Its main languages are vectors of economic, diplomatic and cultural exchanges in vast parts of the world.

Only these assets are in no way guarantees for the world to come. No one will be grateful to us for having invented capitalism, modern science, or even democracy if we can only be satisfied with our past successes.

In this context, Europe needs to be put at the forefront, not the remnant of our concerns, and at the heart of our actions. Europe was built to offer our weakened and devastated continent a new lasting peace, and it achieved this feat. It must now find a sanitized relationship with the notion of power.

If the industrial revolution is drawing its strength from knowledge and data, then let us invest massively in education, research and training, like China and the United States. Not only through bureaucratic projects involving only a minority of actors, but by promoting the creation of European champions through both public and private funding. Every trip to China is an opportunity to see that a new university has come into existence! We know about the billions invested by the major American universities, both public and private.
We should not be satisfied with national actors competing with each other. The debate is the same as the one that recently agitated the Commission with the merger between Alstom and Siemens: is it better to cultivate competition at all costs and let national players fall prey to non-European champions? Or promote the emergence of new institutions capable of expanding into the world?

It is not just about competing with the rest of the world. It is also about promoting a new European perspective on the two major challenges facing humanity today:

The first challenge is technological. Can we be satisfied today with two hegemonic powers (digital, but also biotechnologies, artificial intelligence...) colonizing the world according to their views? Does Europe have nothing to contribute, both in terms of innovation and respect for mankind in the face of these upheavals (private life, bioethics, etc.)? Before speaking on these subjects, it is therefore necessary to be a champion in this field, with its extraordinary potential for knowledge, skills, and jobs! Otherwise, we will transform into the Greeks when they were overtaken by the power of the Romans.

The second is related to corporate responsibility: environmental, societal and social. Far from restricting performance, taking into account these imperatives is critical, as they are essential to the harmonious articulation of the economy and society. And who can deny that Europe would have much to contribute against Trump's America and a China that is still not very aware of these issues?

While the political debates in the forthcoming elections are once again in danger of becoming bogged down in strictly national approaches, it is time for the guardians of the future, namely the new generations and all those who educate and train them, to take the lead in truly launching a European Renaissance. After all, European academia emerged and shone when the nation states that make it up today did not even exist!

Campuses

Hosted (Hospitality Service Tourism and Education)

ESCP Business School and FERRANDI Paris are to combine their expertise and launch a European institute promoting higher education and research in hospitality and tourism management.