INSEAD

Legal status

INSEAD operates as a non-profit association under French law with the purpose of promoting education of management. This legal status positions it as a private higher education institution, emphasizing its focus on management education without profit motives.

Affiliation

INSEAD is a founding member of Sorbonne Universities Association, created in 2012, and remain associated with the public multi-disciplinary research-based Sorbonne University, created in 2018 from the merger of some member institutions of association.

Campuses

INSEAD's founding campus (the Europe Campus) is located in Fontainebleau, near Paris, France. The second campus (the Asia Campus) is in the one-north district of Singapore next to one-north MRT station, and the third campus (the Middle East Campus) is located in Abu Dhabi. INSEAD expanded its presence to North America in 2020 with the opening of the INSEAD San Francisco Hub for Business Innovation.

The European and Asian campuses are considered to be equal in terms of status. Professors are rotated between campuses; so are students.

Grande école system

At its inception, INSEAD was not originally a grande école, a French system of institution of higher education that is separate from, but parallel and connected to, the main framework of the French public university system. However, the school joined the Conférence des Grandes Écoles in 2017.

Grandes écoles are academic institutions that admit students through a competitive process.

Master programmes

PhD

The INSEAD PhD Programme is a five-year, full-time programme offered across the school's Asia and Europe Campuses, through which doctoral students contribute to the school's research while preparing for careers as management scholars and professors. Students specialise in one of the eight areas: accounting and control, decision sciences, entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, organisational behaviour, strategy or technology and operations management.

The programme is part of the INSEAD–Sorbonne University Alliance, which includes access to the Alliance’s Behavioural Lab in Paris and the possibility of a dual-degree PhD with Sorbonne University.

Research

INSEAD’s faculty comprises about 170 permanent members from over 40 nationalities, spanning fields such as strategy, organisational behaviour, marketing, finance, and economics. INSEAD ranked ninth in the University of Texas at Dallas's Top 100 Business School Research Rankings (2020–2024) and tenth in the Financial Times global business-school research ranking (2024). Faculty output includes journal articles, books, and teaching cases published through institutions such as The Case Centre.

Notable faculty members

• Philippe Aghion, Professor of Economics and the Kurt Björklund Chaired Professor of Innovation and Growth, 2025 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction"
• W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, Professors of Strategy, co-authors of Blue Ocean Strategy.
• Soumitra Dutta, former Professor of Business and Technology (1989–2012), former Dean of Oxford's Saïd Business School, founding dean of Cornell University's SC Johnson College of Business, pioneer of innovation rankings.
• Christoph Loch, former professor (1994-2011), former Dean of the Cambridge Judge Business School from 2011 to 2021.
• Philip H. Gordon, former Affiliate Professor of Economic and Political Sciences US National Security Advisor (2022-2025) to the Vice President Kamala Harris, former US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (2009-2011) and Special Assistant to the President Obama.
• Arnoud De Meyer, former professor (1983-2006) where he was Dean of MBA programme, former President of Singapore Management University (2010-2019), former Dean of the Cambridge Judge Business School from 2006 to 2010.
• António Borges, former Dean of INSEAD, former Director of the European Department of the International Monetary Fund during the European Debt Crisis, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs International.
• Bruce Kogut, former professor known for knowledge-based theory of the firm.
• Edith Penrose, former professor (1978-1984), known for resource-based view.
• Ronald Stuart Burt, former professor, known for structural holes.
• Lars-Hendrik Röller, former professor (1987-1999), former chief economic advisor to Chancellor Angela Merkel, founding president of the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin, known for his works on industrial economics.
• Sumantra Ghoshal, former professor (1985-1994), founding Dean of Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.