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INSEAD Announces Campus in San Francisco

INSEAD calls itself the “business school of the world,” and backs that title up with three campuses on different continents, in France, Singapore and Abu Dhabi.

Now the school is adding a fourth. INSEAD’s new “San Francisco Hub for Business Innovation,” slated to open in February 2020, will give the European school a presence in North America.

INSEAD initially intends to use the campus to host a range of executive education courses.

Appropriate to the new hub’s Bay Area location, many of the courses focus on tech. These offerings include “Leading Digital Transformation and Innovation” and “The Future of AI,” created in partnership with Singularity University.

However, also on offer are a variety of courses with a more general management focus. Examples include “Integrating Performance and Process” and “Transition to General Management.”

Beyond these courses, INSEAD plans to work with businesses to create “custom designed programs for US and international companies” that will be held at the new San Francisco Hub.

The San Francisco Hub, says the school, will bring together “participating executives and organizations from around the world.” And thanks to the new location, INSEAD emphasizes that those participants will enjoy “exposure to the companies and distinctive business culture of Silicon Valley.”

Peter Zemsky, INSEAD’s dean for innovation, framed the new campus as facilitating an exchange of ideas, offering companies around the world an opportunity to learn from the tech industry, but also offering the tech industry an opportunity to gain a wider perspective.

Zemsky explained that “As tech innovation goes global, business leaders everywhere need to rapidly transform their strategies and organizations.”

“At the same time,” he said, “tech leaders need to adapt to the dramatically shifting expectations about the impact of their products on societies worldwide. INSEAD is uniquely placed to facilitate this learning through our global faculty and network.”

For current MBA applicants, INSEAD’s new San Francisco Hub doesn’t appear to significantly change the range of possibilities offered by INSEAD’s MBA program, at least in the near future.

Still, the addition of a campus in North America does reinforce INSEAD’s international cred and its ability to provide a global network.

You might be wondering how your application stacks up at a top international business school like INSEAD. We’re happy to offer feedback on how adcoms might view our application, and what you can do to put forward a compelling personal brand.

If that sounds helpful, feel free to contact us and ask for a free MBA application assessment!