In May 2025, participants in TBS Education’s Global Executive MBA experienced their second residency, marking a new immersive phase in their journey. After a successful first gathering in November 2024 on the Casablanca and Barcelona campuses, the learners flew to Asia for a week rich in discovery, learning and multiculturala encounters.
It was at Xiamen University in China that participants from the three partner institutions of the OneMBA program – FGV (Brazil), Xiamen University (China) and TBS Education (France) – came together. This reunion rekindled the spirit of promotion that began during the first residency, strengthening ties within the group and fostering an intense collaborative dynamic.
The first part of the week focused on courses in economics and data analysis, and visits to emblematic companies such as Xiamen Airlines, Schneider Electric and Genius Electronic Optical, which produces around a quarter of the world’s smartphone cameras, thanks to cutting-edge automation and robotics processes.
The second half of the residency took place in Seoul, at KUBS (Korea University Business School), where the students received a warm welcome and continued their exploration of Asia’s economic and technological fabric. The learners took part in modules on artificial intelligence, data analytics and visits to companies in the animated media sector with Naver Webtoon (digital platforms for manga and cartoon creators), as well as cosmetics with Amore Pacific.
This residency was shaped by a central theme: artificial intelligence, approached through academic, industrial and cultural prisms. Participants also benefited from a strong cultural immersion, discovering the richness of Chinese and Korean cultures through exchanges with local students and multiple visits.
After Asia, the next and final residency of the OneMBA 2024-2026 will take participants to Canada and Brazil, for a program conclusion that promises to be as inspiring as it is unique!
On June 6, 2025, the Executive DBA program organized its very first conference day on the Barcelona campus. A landmark event that brought together all current classes – from 1st to 4th year – including participants from the China-based program. Alongside them were several alumni and teacher-researchers from TBS-Education or visiting Catalonia. Last but not least, a number of chief or associate editors of academic journals had accepted the invitation, enriching the exchanges with their expert insights. Among the academic publications represented were the British Journal of Management, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Technology in Society, Journal of Small Business Management, International Journal of Entrepreneurship & Small Business, Management Decision, Strategic Change and Review of Accounting and Finance.
The day was filled with thematic presentations covering topics at the core of today’s business and management challenges:
These presentations were led by third- and fourth-year candidates or beyond. Each session was followed by structured discussions, encouraging participants and experts to engage, ask questions, share feedback, and fuel further debate. This approach supports both the ability to present research projects and the development of critical thinking skills—offering and receiving feedback, and asking the right questions.
Meanwhile, first- and second-year learners presented their work in the form of posters. Each of them set out their research questions, anchored in a specific context and managerial issue, as well as the methodology envisaged to answer them. This pedagogical exercise enables students to lay the foundations for their thinking, while practicing the popularization of complex content and encouraging peer exchange around the posters.
As a reminder, the Executive DBA thesis program is divided into three main stages:
1. The theoretical part: this consists of establishing the current state of scientific knowledge on the issue in question. In particular, this involves answering the following questions: what do we know and what do we not yet know about the phenomenon under study? Are there any gaps in current knowledge? What are the central concepts making up the phenomenon under study? How are they defined and measured? What is the theoretical framework, if any?
2. The empirical part: the aim here is either to verify the theory empirically, or to develop a new theory. This stage involves drawing up a research plan, choosing a method, collecting empirical data (interviews, surveys, case studies, register data, etc.) and finally analyzing the data once it has been collected and formatted.
3. Confrontation: Finally, learners will compare current knowledge (theory) with observations made in the field, in a specific context. This discussion between theory and practice enables theoretical and managerial implications to emerge, and then, based on these contributions, to propose new perspectives or recommendations.
This first Executive DBA conference illustrated the richness and diversity of the work being carried out by doctoral students and future doctoral students. In addition to presenting research of the highest standard, it was also an excellent opportunity for the community to interact, share experiences and build a collective dynamic around applied research.
The Master of Science (MSc) programs at TBS Education are designed to equip students with all the necessary skills to become experts in their field and position themselves as key assets in the job market.
The school offers 17 MSc programs, all recognized by the French government and awarding a Master’s degree. This diploma is not only recognized in France but also internationally, thanks to the school’s triple accreditation.
In addition to top-tier academic training, TBS Education promotes an immersive learning approach, allowing students to gain real-world professional experience.
This is exemplified by the MSc Aerospace Management, offered at the Toulouse campus, which participated in a 21-week project titled Cross Masters Air Travel Project.
This project focused on the theme: “Towards More Sustainable Tourism”, with a particular emphasis on enhancing Toulouse’s tourism appeal through the involvement of the region’s major airports: Toulouse-Blagnac Airport and Toulouse Francazal Airport.
In collaboration with these airport infrastructures and the University of Toulouse, 37 students from 18 different nationalities worked together to develop innovative and feasible recommendations. Topics covered included:
Students applied various research methodologies (site visits, qualitative and quantitative surveys, interviews, documentary research, etc.) to propose concrete and innovative solutions.
This project allowed them to address a real and relevant issue while developing their skills and professional networks.
In Barcelona, students from the MSc Digital Transformation & Business Innovation conducted a consulting mission for Noè Builders, a subsidiary of the Coco-Mat group, specializing in sustainable wooden house and hotel architecture and construction.
The goal was to perform a market analysis, assessing competition and proposing strategic recommendations to support the company’s market growth.
This two-week mission enabled students to:
They were mentored by Xavier Gasso, a university professor, and Júlia Farré Fernández, a professor and consultant in strategic and business development.
These two projects illustrate TBS Education’s commitment to training its students not only on the academic level but also on the professional level, equipping them with all the tools they need to stand out in the job market.
Congratulations to all teams and students for the successful completion of these ambitious projects!
The sports sector is experiencing a significant boom. The sector has been topping the news with physical activity and sport being named France’s Great National Cause 2024 (GCN2024). This initiative reflects the need to place sport and its benefits at the heart of society as essential elements of individual and collective well-being.
With this in mind, TBS Education’s Bachelor’s degree program has announced the opening of a new 3rd-year sports management program on the Toulouse campus. Designed to respond to the needs of the market, the Sports Management program is designed to introduce students to a range of professions linked to sports management, open up the sector’s possibilities, help them build a network and enable them to work in a sector they are passionate about.
“Sport has the ability to unite, bring people together, nurture their dreams and inspire them… By drawing on its values, its social impact and its power, we will be offering students the chance to immerse themselves in the world of sport by meeting professionals from the sector, learning the fundamentals of management through innovative and inspiring experiences, visits and role-playing,” explains Alexandra Le Mouel, Head of the Sports Management program.
Enhance student skills in the 3rd year and obtain a Bachelor’s degree in Management (Diploma Bac+3 / Grade de licence) with a specialization in sports management.
“We have chosen to launch a new sports management program to respond to the needs of this booming sector. As in all our courses, the program will be based on the acquisition of a solid knowledge base and real-life, immersive experiences. Using a teaching approach directly inspired by the world of sport, the keys to its success and its fundamental values, students will be fully immersed in this environment which prepares them to become enlightened experts, aware of the challenges facing the sector,” explains Patricia Bournet, Director of the Bachelor’s program at TBS Education.
Following the Bachelor’s degree, students can choose to continue their studies at a Grande Ecole, including TBS Education, or at a university in France or abroad.
This program will be available on the Toulouse campus, in French, in September 2024.
To apply, students must be under 28 years of age on September 1, 2024, and hold, or be likely to hold, a B+2 diploma or 120 ECTS in Management Studies at a French university.
Students studying outside France are eligible for the international distance-learning competitive entrance exam.
Application deadline: May 31, 2024
40 places available for Bachelor students and students recruited through parallel admission.
As COVID-19 has spread across the world it has had major impacts on supply chains. It is reasonable to assume that the impact on trade flows may be even greater than that for the GFC in 2009, where world trade fell by over 20%. Most of this is an entirely natural result of the closure of many production structures around the world. However, some trade impacts are the direct result of trade policy interventions by governments, which presage a more major and long-term impact from the current crisis. Discover more in the video below:
[Série – Face à la crise Covid-19] How will Covid-19 impact international trade policies ? from FNEGE MEDIAS on Vimeo.
Consumers in Western markets are increasingly critical towards globalization and re-embrace local values. Companies thus must decide whether to continue to pursue global branding strategies and/or rejuvenate local branding strategies. To explore the implications of market globalization for consumer preferences, we use signaling theory to investigate the role of perceived brand globalness and localness as signals of brand credibility, related downstream effects and boundary conditions, across two countries with differing levels of globalization. In globalized markets, brand globalness is a weaker signal of brand credibility than brand localness, whereas in globalizing markets, the two signals are of equal importance.
Building Credible Brands in (Post-)Globalizing Markets from FNEGE MEDIAS on Vimeo.
By Christina Theodoraki
Based on the article “A social capital approach to the development of sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems: an explorative study” published in Small Business Economics, 51(1), 153-170.
The creation of sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems is at the heart of public policy concerns. This type of ecosystem is composed of interconnected actors, within a territory, committed to facilitating the creation of new sustainable businesses. In this context, many questions need to be asked: Is it possible to replicate Silicon Valley’s success? Should governments continue to ‘infuse’ the ecosystem eternally with financial endowments or can the ecosystem reach a maturity threshold that allowed it to self-finance itself to evolve? What action plan must be considered to reach this maturity threshold? The social capital perspective is an interesting integrative framework that deserves to be analyzed to answer these questions.
The evolution of the entrepreneurial environment reinforces these questions. The economic crisis, the decline in public funding, the increase in the number of actors who revolve around the entrepreneur, competition between public, semi-public and private actors, the emergence of new entrants are new factors that threaten the survival of existing actors and force them to review their economic model or their contribution to the proper functioning of the ecosystem.
Thus, the university is one of the historical and founding actors of entrepreneurial ecosystems. The contribution of universities to the sustainability of the entrepreneurial ecosystem is important. They contribute to the creation of knowledge that they transfer to students in order to prepare them to integrate the entrepreneurial ecosystem. In parallel, the establishment of academic incubators promotes technology transfer, commercialization and value creation through the creation of spin-offs and young innovative companies. These incubators are intermediate actors who build the bridge between the supported companies and their external environment. Their objective is “to act as a neutral coordinator to promote the interests of academic entrepreneurs, remove barriers to their success, and connect them to entrepreneurship support mechanisms both inside and outside the university” (Hayter 2016, p. 651-652).
However, even if the role and contribution of some actors in the ecosystem seems obvious, current research fails to explain why some ecosystems are more “sustainable” than others. The synthesis of studies in this field distinguishes three characteristics to promote a sustainable ecosystem: (i) the consideration of territorial specificities; (ii) the effect of a supportive entrepreneurial culture; and (iii) the continuous interaction and interdependence of its components. The social capital perspective represents the configuration of a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Social capital is composed of tangible and intangible elements grouped into three dimensions: the structural one, the cognitive one and the relational one (see figure 1). The structural dimension describes the properties of the ecosystem (the number of ties between members, the configuration of these ties and their stability); the cognitive dimension refers to the shared culture within the ecosystem (shared goals and language, shared narratives); the relational dimension refers to the behavior of members (the norms to be respected, the members’ obligations, the identification of each member – who does what -, and the trust they build between them). Combining these dimensions promotes the optimal configuration of the ecosystem and contributes to its sustainability.
We can therefore assume that if we have devoted resources to structuring the ecosystem, creating a shared culture and languages, and fostering stakeholder relationships with norms and obligations of members, our ecosystem will be sustainable. Unfortunately, it is not enough to only build the structural, cognitive and relational dimensions of the ecosystem. These dimensions are interconnected, and their interactions promote the adaptation of the ecosystem to the specificities of each territory and each ecosystem.
The key ingredient for the well-functioning of the ecosystem is to consider the interactions of its dimensions. It is important to build bridges between these dimensions to promote exchanges and the interconnectivity of the elements. It is this interconnectivity that is the key to the success of a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Figure 1: The Social Capital Perspective of the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
This study provides a better understanding of the composition of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and proposes a framework (through the social capital perspective) for configuring a sustainable ecosystem. Despite the focus of this study on academic incubators, our results are applicable in different sectors and contexts. In order to build a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem, it is advisable to: 1) create dense and strong relationships between members to compensate for the scarcity of resources; 2) develop a common culture and values within the ecosystem to ensure solidarity among members; 3) develop trust and rules respected by members to strengthen a climate of security conducive to value co-construction; 4) create bridges between mechanisms to fluidize and make flexible the evolution of the ecosystem.
The qualitative method using multiple case studies was conducted in Montpellier between 2013 and 2014 on 3 academic incubators. The choice of these incubators met four selection criteria: (i) proximity and commitment to an academic university, (ii) access to university services, (iii) transfer of scientific knowledge and support for the creation of new innovative businesses, (iv) geographical area. In total, we conducted 48 semi-directive interviews with all members of the entrepreneurial ecosystem (incubator managers, staff, incubatees, academic partners, funding entities, other types of incubators, etc.). This collection of ecosystem data with various groups of stakeholders allowed us to have a holistic view of the observed phenomenon, to cross-reference different points of view and to generate results by triangulation. The interviews were conducted using an interview guide, recorded, transcribed and coded to provide a synthesis of the results.Co-authored by Christina Theodoraki (Professor, TBS Education), Karim Messeghem (Professor, University of Montpellier, co-director of the Jacques Cœur Chair at Labex Entreprendre), and Marc P. Rice (Provost at Babson College).
By Lambert Jerman and Evelyne Misiaszek
Successful companies like Sigfox, BricoPrivé or Hellocasa all belong to the world of scale-ups. Whether these companies are young or old, their hypergrowth phase is a highly critical period.
These days, the idea of « scale-up » includes businesses with an annual turnover greater than €5m, with growth of at least 10 to 20% over three years. After graduating from being a start-up and having validated its business model, the scale-up must transform rapidly on several levels : internationalization, recruitment, new business, technical or financial partnerships. Its internal piloting system must keep evolving so that the company can face new challenges, while at the same time the director has to ensure that any new management tools put in place are adapted for hypergrowth. It’s a situation that requires a delicate balance between short-term decisions and the company’s long-term strategy.
A loss of proximity and a delicate balance to be achieved
Recruitment needs being, by definition, substantial in companies in hypergrowth, employee numbers are inclined to increase so quickly that before long the director finds him or herself unable to directly supervise the workforce or get to know them personally. This loss of hierarchical proximity is often exacerbated by an ever greater geographical distancing. Information flow can be threatened within that structure, and jeopardise the business’s culture and cohesion. The director’s charisma, values and personal commitment are no longer enough.
To get to grips with this new reality, the director of a scale-up has to adapt and reinforce the way the company is governed and strengthen its piloting system, without curbing the creativity and innovation so vital so its development.
Achieving this delicate balance in a way that maintains responsiveness and the informal coordination inherited from the start-up alongside more formal and rationally-defined procedures necessary to a larger group, is anything but easy. Four drivers of action can nonetheless be identified to make transforming the company less complex, and to maintain as far as possible the proximity necessary for it to remain cohesive.
To tackle the two major risks associated with piloting hypergrowth – a more complex business environment and the loss of proximity to its teams – the director of a scale-up needs to let the company find a balance between the very informal piloting system of a start-up and the more formal control of the big groups.
This article has been written under the partnership “Scale UP – Gérer l’hypercroissance”
Ingrid Molderez and Kim Ceulemans
Will our future business managers be able to tackle sustainability challenges? Can art contribute to acquiring sustainability competencies in management education? Our study explored the power of art to foster systems thinking, one of the key competencies of sustainability, and to help business students think more creatively about divergent views on sustainability.
Thirty years after the Brundtland Commission popularized the concept of sustainable development, the issue has become more urgent than ever. Global challenges such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, poverty and migration are omnipresent and are affecting everybody in spite of place and time. There are no easy or instant solutions, but education plays an important role in raising awareness on sustainability and in how to respond to these challenges.
Paul Shrivastava, an influential management and sustainability scholar, argues that education for sustainability requires more than just cognitive understanding. We need alternative ways of teaching that incorporate physical and emotional engagement (Shrivastava, 2010). However, pedagogical approaches that combine head, heart and hand are rare in management education. Management students are used to studying topics that immediately impact the knowledge and skills that they will need in a business context. Spiritual and/or creative ways of teaching are nearly absent. Yet, this is what we focused on in our research. We used art as a pedagogical way to enrich the whole person, to encourage critical and creative thinking around sustainability and we explored how management students react to this.
The concept of sustainability brings the importance of interconnections between human beings and nature back to the surface. The boundaries that have been created as splitting forces between humans and their environment have to be perceived as binding again, so that we can see ourselves again as functioning in togetherness. Changing towards sustainability generates intense emotions and at the same time, intense emotions are needed to be able to make a change towards sustainability. Art generates and encourages emotions, triggers our criticism and challenges our comfort. In relation to systems thinking and sustainability, art can help us to regain focus on the connections and interdependences of our systems.
In our study, we exposed management students to paintings during their Master’s level corporate social responsibility course. We did not especially focus on artists that use their art to criticise the negative environmental impacts human beings have. We opted for painters who are not known for their ecological engagement, but whose artwork makes us reflect upon the role human beings have in society. René Magritte’s painting Les Jours Gigantesques was a source of inspiration and reflection to help them think about and discuss boundaries as connecting and disconnecting forces in a sustainability context.
After class, we surveyed the participating students to study their receptiveness towards art in a management course. We explored whether they found art relevant to study three aspects of systems thinking, i.e., the system/environment relationship, thinking in patterns and relationships, and understanding the interactions between system and environment. For each of these aspects, the majority of the surveyed students agreed that art can be very relevant to discuss such issues. The students noted that using art was helpful for showing different points of view, that it facilitated understanding the topic from another perspective, and that it helped them to see the importance of connections within sustainability.
In this study, the majority of the students were receptive for using art because it acts as an eye opener and makes them think differently about sustainability. Nevertheless, some students were also very critical, because they had a fixed idea about art, i.e. only being relevant for an exhibition about sustainability rather than in a more abstract way to understand or discuss sustainability. They thought that showing pictures about what is really happening in the world would be more effective. However, it has to be underlined that art cannot be used in a functional way, as this goes counter to the core concepts of what art is about. Hence, we were not looking for a causal relationship between using art and effectively learning about sustainability, but we intended to explore ways to connect head, hand and heart in management education.
What can we learn from this research?
While management education is known for its functionalist approach, we should remember that business students can be receptive to alternative learning methods. Using paintings can be a relevant method for explaining sustainability topics, encouraging critical thinking, and adopting a holistic approach by triggering their creativity. Art can help students to think critically about sustainability concepts addressed in class, and shows them that there is space for different approaches and interpretations of such complex concepts.
Higher education has an important role to play in sensitising students towards sustainable development, and in helping them to develop competencies for addressing sustainability issues. Art and artists have a gift to make people think in a critical way, to go beyond boundaries, to initiate emotions which are all very relevant if we want to change our mindset on a topic (such as sustainability). Higher education could consider no longer reserving art for students in art-related disciplines, but to surpass the strict boundaries between disciplines. Art can be inspirational for every discipline and is worthy of a place in every study programme, including disciplines that are perceived as less receptive, such as management, engineering, law among many others.
This article was originally published at Economists Talk Art, based on: Molderez, I. & Ceulemans, K. (2018). The power of art to foster systems thinking, one of the key competencies of education for sustainable development. Journal of Cleaner Production, 186, 758-770.
By Amadou LÔ
Order or disorder? Stability or flexibility? Control or ‘laissez faire’? Issues linked to the management of long-term collective action have long been presented in a binary logic where choice fell within the scope of exclusivity. Today more than ever, the development of competitive strategies involves a logic suited to economic dynamics whose trends appear contradictory at first glance. At the same time, the evolution of collaborative practices and spaces are playing an important role in the transformation of our ways of working. The company Fab Lab is a manifestation of this which is interesting to analyse.
What is a company Fab Lab?
Recently, a new collaborative workspace dedicated to exploration was born: the Fab Lab. The Fabrication Laboratory [1] – commonly abbreviated to Fab Lab – is a workshop given over to innovation and rapid prototyping. It’s a space where people are free to come and go, swap ideas in a non-formal setting. The Fab Lab was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by professor Neil Gershenfeld in the 2000s. It’s a place that’s open to all, complete with equipment ranging from simple – like a soldering iron – to very sophisticated – like a 3D printer or a laser cutter. Creative and prototyping activities emerge through the interactions of an active community made up of individuals with a range of skills. This all takes place without hierarchies or orders being given.
Originally, Fab Labs were open areas, free and independent facilities located in community settings, whether educational or open to the general public. Up until now, this type of facility existed only in this form. Today, though, big businesses are getting interested in the concept and wish to put it to use in their own organisations in order to stimulate innovation. By opening its exploratory activities to members of production teams, the company Fab Lab poses an interesting challenge: how to reconcile employee production activities and exploratory activities. We worked within the innovation directorate of the French car manufacturer Renault, which has been a pioneer of this process since 2011.
The company Fab Lab, a chance for employees to explore
The Renault Group operates an internal Fab Lab which is a carrier for the upstream phase of the innovation process which is transversal to Renault’s matrix organisation. This process is defined as a regulatory process for all the “vehicle projects,” using precise signposting and a formal distinction in the distribution of functions. However, the people belonging to units of this process dedicated to production activities have complained about poor access to exploration activities.
The Fab Lab was therefore developed within Renault with the aim of bringing new opportunities for employees to get involved in exploratory activities alongside their usual activities. Through its location, its charter, its activities and its digitally-operated machines and tools, the company Fab Lab aspires to be a codified space which is also inclusive and permissive. It was conceived to be directly accessible by employees, so that they can individually carry out exploration activities alongside their production activities, ie, develop their individual ambidexterity.
Practices promoting employee ambidexterity within the company Fab LabWe have been able to put forward four main practices (table) which characterise the Fab Lab and which explain the emergence of this dynamic: improvisation, innovative design, DIY and rapid prototyping.
Table – practices promoting employee ambidexterity within the company Fab Lab
Improvisation
DIY
By manipulating and reorganising what is available, individuals learn to cope with a lack of resources and surmount conceptual obstacles “by doing”
Rapid prototyping
Through activities that bring ideas to life and accelerate the development of innovative projects
Our results show that the company Fab Lab constitutes a space conducive to exploration which supports employees wishing to carry out innovative projects alongside their usual production tasks.
It’s a space conducive to social interaction, open to all and all occupations, giving employees the opportunity to organise their time as they wish, between their usual occupation and their exploratory projects. Through this structure, employees get support for their exploratory activities, in the form of the practices we have highlighted – DIY, improvisation, prototyping and innovative design. The Fab Lab acts as an additional support alongside ordinary work, thus rectifying the lack of exploratory activities for employees. It therefore constitutes a facility for the development of employee ambidexterity.
As a physical space lending itself to social interaction, it is open to all and to all types of occupations, offering employees the chance to freely organise their time between their usual production activities and their exploratory projects. This facility allows employees to avail of assistance for their exploratory activities in the form of the practices already highlighted – DIY, improvisation, prototyping and innovative design. So the Fab Lab offers support that complements the workers’ ordinary activity by fulfilling employees’ need for exploratory activities. It therefore constitutes a facility which allows employees to develop ambidexterity.
Conclusion
The in-house Fab Lab offers an opportunity for businesses to use the digital revolution to deal with and adapt to the ever-changing environment of the markets and innovative practice. By offering employees in production units the chance to carry out exploratory activities, we’ve seen that the in-house Fab Lab plays the role of a valuable tool and a support for emerging employee ambidexterity. It takes the form of a safe space for exploratory activities and offers every employee the chance to manage their own work, between production and exploration, and hence to become ambidextrous.
We saw that when offering employees in production roles the opportunity to carry out exploratory activities, the internal Fab Lab is a useful tool and a support to the emergence of employee ambidexterity.
Table – summarises our collection methodology and the analysis of our research.Synthesis of the methodological framework of our research