For this 11th edition, the Innovative and Responsible Business prize of the MBS Foundation for Equal Opportunities was won by Jason Moses, a recent graduate of the Master of Science International Business programme, for his project of creating an application comparing the impact of international solidarity projects : PEOPLE TAPP.

Under the aegis of the Foundation of France, the Montpellier Business School Foundation for Equal Opportunities, which follows on form the MBS social policy, intervenes every year in the financing of excellence scholarships, international excellence scholarships and “Apptitude” scholarships for MBS apprenticeship students. The Innovative and Responsible Buinsess Prize is less well known but is still making a difference in MBS young entrepreneurs or recent graduates’ live. Worth € 10,000, this prize rewards an innovative business creation project in line with the MBS Foundation‘s global responsibility values.

Thus, during the Executive Committee meeting on June 1st, 5 preselected projects (among 12 proposed) were presented to the jury. The latter took its decision according to 3 essential criteria: the solidarity values included in the project, the innovative aspect and the financial viability.

Even though the 4 other projects presented were also of high quality, the lucky winner of the 2018 edition was Jason Moses, an architect by training and graduate of MSc International Business last March. After working for several years with NGOs in the development of public housing projects (hospitals, schools, orphanages) in disadvantaged areas of Africa, Jason has matured his new project during his year at Montpellier Business School : an application allowing project owners who are involved in community programmes to simply and easily measure the impact of their project on local community. PEOPLE TAPP will guide users with social, environmental and economic indicators. Investors will be able to filter and compare different projects, finance the best ones and create motivation to improve the quality in terms of the impact of each project.

“My dream is to prove that a collective of locals working together with their own resources can generate more sustainable social impact than the best solidarity project driven by people from outside the local community,” says Jason Moses. “We now have a tool, People Tapp, to demonstrate this and change the way we approach global development. I am deeply honoured to receive this noble award and would like to thank each and every member of the Foundation’s Executive Committee for their consideration”.

The Montpellier Business School Foundation for Equal Opportunities wishes Jason Moses good luck for the future and of course remains at his side in this great adventure that is entrepreneurship.

On Monday 2 July, MAN Truck & Bus France became Montpellier Business School’s 47th Major Corporate Partner and launched its vocational training programme with MBS as part of the development of the skills of its management teams. For the occasion, Marie-Anne Baeza, MAN Truck & Bus France HRD, Jean-Yves Kerbrat, MAN Truck & Bus France CEO, Didier Grino, Secretary General of MBS and Matthias Bauland, Deputy Dean in charge of development at MBS, were gathered in front of the 1st promotion of this BADGE Strategic Management programme.

In addition to the training undertaken on Monday 2 July by the head office and network managers and directors, MAN Truck & Bus France and MBS share values including the desire for continuous innovation. “For Montpellier Business School, Bringing our recruitment expertise to our major partners and, above all, enabling them to benefit from our Executive Education expertise is a major strategic focus,” says Matthias Bauland, Deputy Dean in charge of development at MBS. “We have started an exemplary collaboration with MAN France, constituting a tailor-made programme : the academic excellence of our programmes has enabled us to provide a response adapted to their high requirements in terms of skills acquisition. With the signing of this 47th major partnership, we are celebrating the start of this training and expressing a mutual willingness to go further in this collaboration”.  

Vocational training to get start

MAN Truck & Bus, a subsidiary of Volkswagen Truck & Bus GmbH, is one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of commercial vehicles and providers of transport solutions. The company employs more than 35,000 people worldwide and could count on a turnover of around 9 billion euros in 2016.

Jean-Yves Kerbrat, CEO of MAN Truck & Bus France, explains: “MAN Truck & Bus France is positioned on different markets, trucks of all types, cars and buses, commercial vehicles and the development of solutions linked to digital services which represent a major strategic challenge, on the same terms as energy developments, such as the arrival of electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles. Hence the need to be proactive and imaginative and to best prepare teams through an ambitious training policy”.

That is how the partnership with MBA has found its origin and now aims to deliver a qualifying vocational training to employees who occupy or wish to evolve towards other functions such as: service centre manager, sales team manager or profit centre manager.

Welcome to the 1st BADGE MAN France promotion

Through the programme designed by Montpellier Business School for MAN, the 13 managers and the head office and network directors throughout France will access 2 days a month for 2 years to the excellence of the training of a Grande Ecole of Management. Thanks to a personalised accompaniment (VAE Hybride), they will obtain, at the end of these 2 years, a BADGE Strategic Management certificate from the Conférence of Grandes Ecoles. The objective is to strengthen their strategic, collective and transversal skills in order to improve commercial performance such as their business profitability and their customers’ satisfaction.

A library project in Vietnam, actively supported this year by MBS and its students, was implemented a few months ago in the village of Hieu Thuan, allowing disadvantaged children to access reading. Bearing the name “Library Montpellier Business School”, it was inaugurated last March in the presence of the association behind the project Une Ecole pour Xich Tho and a highly committed MBS professor.

Contributing to equal opportunities

In order to help solidarity actions to see the light of day, the Human Resources, Diversity and CSR Department of MBS has for several years been supporting local, national or international associations via compulsory education projects in the 2nd year of the Bachelor and 1st year of the Grande Ecole Programme, called “Projets Prométhée & Alpha” (Prometheus & Alpha Projects). Since 2016, “Une école pour Xich Tho” (a school for Xich Tho) has been participating in these projects and this year, two groups of students have accompanied the association to raise the funds it needs in order to finance a library in northern Vietnam.

Cross-cutting actions

To help the association “Une école pour Xich Tho” to finance the restoration and development of a place dedicated to reading in a disadvantaged village of Vietnam, MBS students have put a lot of work for organising various operations on and off campus, as well as an internet crowdfunding campaign. At the same time, MBS had launched, in early 2017, an internal call for international solidarity projects, thus enabling the library project proposed by MBS professor Thi Hong Van HOANG to receive financial support. This global commitment has produced excellent results.

“Thanks to these actions, the children of the village of Hieu Thuan can now take advantage of this new space to escape through books and activities proposed by this new library” comments Thi Hong Van HOANG, professor at Montpellier Business School. “We thank all those who contributed to the opening of this library. We are very happy because in Vietnam, there are no libraries or documentation centres in the villages. Primary, secondary school and high school students are very much in demand and are extremely happy to be able to consult or borrow books. A large reading room is at their disposal. The association will complete this project with the installation of computer equipment,” adds Solange MICHEL, President of the association “A school for Xich Tho” which works to provide educational assistance to poor children in certain regions of Vietnam.

Jointly organised by the Career Centre and the Montpellier Business School Alumni Association, the 1st MBS Employment Forum took place on Thursday 14 June at the heart of the Pavillon Wagram in Paris. The aim of this exclusive meeting was to put MBS graduates and future graduates in privileged contact with recruiters from the 33 businesses that came to offer more than 500 job opportunities.

Business developer, business engineer, human resources manager, buyer, digital project manager, bank branch manager, marketing project manager, management controller… and much more! The quantity and variety of positions offered by businesses during this 1st MBS Employment Forum delighted the 200 MBS graduates and future graduates who came to participate in the event. An event that supplements the many actions carried out by Montpellier Business School in favour of the employability of its graduates who already have an employment rate of 96% at 6 months.

Among more than 30 businesses that were present, including Volkswagen, Gfi, Veolia, Vente-privee.com, Auchan, Sixt, Adecco and BNP Paribas, our Major Partner Decathlon was particularly active in meeting with MBS graduates and future graduates. Between two interviews, Manon Garcia shared with us her thoughts on the day. “Our goal was to meet them and show them the diversity of jobs they can get at Décathlon,” explains this MBS 2013 graduate, an IT team leader at Décathlon headquarters in Villeneuve d’Ascq. “We have a lot of positions to fill and we are convinced that MBS graduates are very good recruits!”

But what positions does Decathlon offer today?” For example department manager, finance and research, IT project manager… We are looking for sports enthusiasts, so if this is your case, do not hesitate to apply with us! Today, we have received many future 2018 graduates who are currently in apprenticeship. This affects us because the apprenticeship is extremely valued at Décathlon. We have already retained several CVs and we are very satisfied,” Manon Garcia, herself a top-level sportswoman as she is currently the 20th French tennis player.

Also on the same side of MBS alumni students who became recruiters for the space of a day, Benoît Desormeaux, 2016 graduate and business engineer at Extia, adds : “We are delighted to be here, in contact with the graduates of our Major Partner school. We are looking for business engineers, recruitment managers or communication managers… This is great because many of them already want to join us at Extia, a company that was ranked 2nd Great Place to Work”.

4 conferences to launch and boost your career

In addition to the business-graduates meetings, this 1st MBS Employment Forum also saw four strong moments in the guise of conferences. “Commencer sa carrière en freelance” (To start a career as a freelancer), led by Maud Frajenville, Brand & Communication manager at YOSS, thus opened the ball of these conferences.

The second speaker, Jean-Christophe Anna, CEO at #rmstouch and author of the book “Job & Réseaux sociaux, connectez-vous” (Job & Social Networks, stay connected) captivated his audience : “The objective was to explain to them how to have an innovative and effective job search approach through network and social media,” explains Jean-Christophe Anna. “For me, the 2 main qualities to have in this process are curiosity and audacity. This is important to boost your job search and boost your career. You have to take control of your destiny by being active and responsive. To come and take part in this Job Forum is a good example”.

In the afternoon, MBS graduates and future graduates were also able to attend two other conferences: “How to get your dream job!”, led by the Mobiskill team and “Le networking pour les étudiants et les jeunes diplômés” (Networking for Students and Young Graduates), moderated by Emilie Korchia, co-founder of My Job Classes.

Our thanks go to the businesses, speakers and the many participants who made this 1stMBS Job Forum a real success. Appointment is already made for a 2nd edition in 2019 !

On Friday 1st June, Boris Derichebourg, President of DERICHEBOURG Multiservices and Didier Grino, Secretary General of Montpellier Business School, signed a partnership agreement marking the merger of DERICHEBOURG Multiservices and Montpellier Business School around a managerial training programme.

DERICHEBOURG Multiservices has become Montpellier Business School’s 46th Major Corporate Partner. A major employer with nearly 29,500 employees, DERICHEBOURG Multiservices is committed to an ambitious training policy that meets, as closely as possible, the needs of its employees. Through this partnership, Montpellier Business School has set up a certifying and totally tailor-made training programme to train DERICHEBOURG Multiservices managers. This two-year training programme, named “Business Developer”, provides training for managerial practices and business development while being perfectly adapted to the challenges and problems of DERICHEBOURG. Each year, two 100% DERICHEBOURG graduating classes will be formed.

“For a service group like ours, our employees’ skills development is a key challenge to properly prepare for the future. We implement a training policy in everyday working life aimed at the individual development of our employees. Signing a partnership with a Grande Ecole of Management like Montpellier Business School is a great opportunity. Creating tailor-made training programmes for our teams is a major focus of our partnership,” says Boris Derichebourg, CEO of DERICHEBOURG Multiservices.

Employability and sharing of common values

This major partnership will also enable a privileged dissemination of DERICHEBOURG Multiservices’ job opportunities, as well as internship and apprenticeship offers to Montpellier Business School’s students and graduates. All this while sharing common values and mutual expertise across all their activities.

“At Montpellier Business School, the employability of our students and graduates is our first priority through our academic excellence, the wideness of our social footprint and our strong international prism. Bringing our recruitment expertise to our major partners and, above all, enabling them to benefit from our Executive Education expertise is a major strategic focus. It is so the case with the signing of this 46th major partnership and the start of a tailor-made training course for Derichebourg Group Managers. We are proud to associate MBS with DERICHEBOURG, which we have known for years and which shares with us the same values predicated on entrepreneurship and the absolute priority to human capital,” says Matthias Bauland, Deputy DEAN in charge of Development at Montpellier Business School.

DERICHEBOURG Multiservices also joins the Advisory Board of Montpellier Business School, a monitoring structure that watches over the entrepreneurial world changes and advises the School on global strategy and international development.

4 days, 10 themes, 40 teams, 760 participating students… and 3 winning teams. This is the concept of the Start-up Week organised once again this year at Montpellier Business School. From 15 to 18 May, this event was held in the form of a team “business game”, a common challenge to all of the Grande Ecole Programme final-year students completing their specialisation pathways.

The Start-Up Week results from MBS willingness to provide each student with a methodology to business creation and to develop their entrepreneurial spirit and awareness that each of them is a potential future entrepreneur.

“The engineering implemented this year within the school was aimed at creating a totally new start-up accelerator model in France,” says Joseph Perez-Pla, Start-Up Week organiser and responsible for the MBS “Start-Up” specialisation course. “The originality of this framework came especially from the large number of student-entrepreneurs involved, as well as the variety of workshops offered to them throughout the event. The mix of expert workshops, group work and coaching sessions simultaneously generated creativity and expertise”.

4 days of challenge

This year, each group of students was randomly assigned a problem and an innovation that addresses the problem and found itself dealing with various topics such as tourism, health, real estate, culture, environment or circular economy, identified as flagship sectors for the French economy in terms of GDP and employment. During 4 days, all of the students groups were supported by 6 coaches, experts in innovation and business development.

In addition to the coaching sessions, students also benefited from 30-minutes “flash” lectures led by speakers, experts in the field of entrepreneurship and startups. The latter thus shared their experiences and knowledge of the market while answering students’ questions.

At the end of the week, each group presented their entrepreneurial project during an Elevator Pitch in front of a final jury of professionals and teachers from the school who is then handing out prizes to the three best projects.

Also among the coaches and jury was Laurence Le Ny, Director of the Content Startup Ecosystem at Orange: “I was delighted to participate in this event! For the students, I think it is a difficult but essential exercise. Personally, during this Start-Up Week at MBS, I must say that I met many beautiful mixed teams. I have also discovered innovative projects with a lot of energy and kindness. Thank you for allowing me to contribute.”

After Orchestra, Dell, Eminence and Decathlon, it was the turn of our Major Partner Caisse d’Epargne Languedoc-Roussillon to take part in the 5th edition of the Mark’Up project. The aim was to submit a concrete case to more than 650 students in the 1st year of the MBS Grande Ecole Programme (M1).

Launched in 2013, this real simulation educational project aims at stimulating thoughts within the scope of the BtoB or BtoC marketing function based on a real issue. And this year, the issue that the case presented was: “Conquête et fidélisation des clients de 18 et 30 ans de la Caisse d’Epargne Languedoc-Roussillon (Winning over and retaining the 18-year-old and 30-year-old customers of the Caisse d’Epargne Languedoc-Roussillon)”.

Leading the Mark’Up project for the 5th consecutive year, Professors Cédrine Joly and Paul Chiambaretto coached during two and a half days 67 teams, each composed of 10 French and international students.

“The students had to put themselves in the shoes of future consultants whose mission is to submit their proposals to a customer,” explains Dr. Paul Chiambaretto. “This required them to put into practice what they had already learned in class. At the end of these two and a half days of joint work, the 10 best groups were selected to present their works through a showroom at Montpellier Business School. On that day, they had to convince 3 types of audiences: other students, professors and representatives of the Caisse d’Epargne Languedoc-Roussillon. It was the combination of the 3 votes that led to the election of the 3 best groups”.

“In conclusion, we know that our partner has appreciated the professionalism and realism of the proposals made by the students. They were surprised by their ability to cope with budgetary and time constraints. For our part, it was a real pleasure to collaborate with the Caisse d’Epargne Lnguedoc-Roussillon. They had thought about a very interesting issue and they also provided our students with very relevant documents to help them work well. Our partner has perfectly played the game and this was reflected in the quality of the projects achieved,” concludes Dr Paul Chiambaretto.

By renewing their collaboration initiated in 1993, Montpellier Business School and the Société Générale are celebrating in the most beautiful way 25 years of partnership under the sign of multiple commitments. Support for equal opportunities policy, recruitment, educational support or even students bank account offers are all areas of collaboration that will make it possible to move forward and strengthen an already strong and transversal partnership. The creation of a “disability scholarship” for the 2018 academic year added a further stone to this edifice.

On the occasion of the renewal of the major partnership agreement with Société Générale, Matthias Bauland, Deputy Dean in charge of Development at MBS, recalled the historical background of this collaboration: “Since 1993, Société Générale and MBS have shared values and commitments that concern in particular the school’s equal opportunities policy. Société Générale is a founding member and major donor of the MBS Foundation for Equal Opportunities since 2007. It also supports this policy by awarding three merit scholarships each year to the Bachelor and Grande Ecole Programmes students and by financing projects of MBS’s student associations.

Besides continuing its various financing and donation programmes, the Société Générale will support the MBS diversity policy at the start of the 2018 academic year with the creation of an annual 14,000 euro scholarship grant initiated by the Regional Directorate and signed at the national level. 28,000 euros of funding will be spread over 2 years to help students with disabilities going abroad for a year and financing their studies. “For us, this question is of vital concern and it represents a way of helping students with disabilities to pursue their studies at a leading management school”, says René Alary, Regional Director of Société Générale and Director of the MBS Foundation for Equal opportunities.

Towards an acceleration in the recruitment of apprenticeship candidates

Recruitment is another area of collaboration. It should be noted that 76 MBS graduates from all of the programmes are currently working at Société Générale and that the development of the collaboration “apprenticeship” is also part of this partnership renewal programme. But that’s not all. MBS students will also continue to benefit from the educational collaboration with this Major Partner, who is already leading the Métiers de la banque certificate (banking’s core businesses certificate) in the final year of the Grande Ecole programme. And of course, Société Générale will continue to be at their side to offer them banking services on the best terms.

“It is a pleasure to be here today”, concludes Stéphane Bourdonnec, Société Générale’s General Delegate in LR and PACA. “We have a very rich relationship and a partnership with a major school like MBS, which is an opportunity for us to reaffirm that a retail bank must remain connected to reality and to students. So we’ll try to keep doing great things together in the coming years!”

Montpellier Business School achieved the renewal of AMBA accreditation for a maximum period of 5 years. This renewal underlines the academic and professional quality of the MBS Executive MBA, because at the present time, only 2% of these programmes in the world earn this accreditation…

The AMBA accreditation (Association of MBAs), which is the oldest distinction of MBA programmes, is granted for the programme organisation and content and for the level and quality of the faculty. After an in-depth audit carried out last January, the Montpellier Business School’s Executive MBA programme has therefore received a very favourable evaluation, as illustrated by its validity for a maximum period of 5 years.

“The AMBA auditors, as well as the corporate members of the AMBA Association shared with us their positive assessment of our Executive MBA programme and various recommendations designed to enable us to continue to move forward,” commented Dr. Didier Jourdan, Dean of Montpellier Business School. “The quality of our research and our programme curriculum was particularly commended.”

A pillar of the MBS’s strategy of academic excellence, this AMBA re-accreditation has been awarded following the recent renewals of the AACSB, EFMD-EPAS international accreditations and the authorisation to deliver a master’s grade degree (high school diploma + 5 years of higher education).

AACSB, EFMD-EPAS and AMBA accredited, Montpellier Business School is among the 2% of Business Schools worldwide holding these three prestigious accreditations.

Yew Han Huey (MSc International Business), Haoyue Zheng (MSc Marketing) and Lutong Qi (Grande Ecole Program) from Team L’ORAGE represented MBS at L’Oréal Brandstorm Challenge 2018 France National Finals.

With around 25,000 participants from more than 60 countries every year, L’Oréal Brandstorm is one of the biggest international case-based competitions for students to make contribution improving their company’s brands. This year, the mission is to invent the professional salon experience of the future targeting Millennials. In France,  there were almost 900 participants registered to the competition, but only 20 teams of 3 were selected as National Finalists to pitch their projects to L’Oréal business and operational experts.

We congratulate upon the success of their promising project and encourage more MBS students to take the upcoming Brandstorm challenge!

For more information, feel free to check on the details at their official webpage.