True to its tradition of being both humanist and entrepreneurial, ESSEC was the first French management grande école to create a skills centre for Social Entrepreneurship, in 2002, founded as a teaching Chair.

In 2009, drawing on the success of its work, the renewed support of its partners (MACIF, Caisse des Dépôts, Caisse d’Epargne Ile de France, MAIF, the Resideo Group and Eco Emballages) and financial backing from the ERDF, the Chair for Social Entrepreneurship decided to develop its initiatives by creating the Institute for Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship (“IIES”).

The IIES will experiment as an innovation laboratory for new tools and models for teaching and research activity on issues linked to social entrepreneurship, equal opportunities in training and education, CSR and "Base Of the Pyramid" (BOP) projects. As part of this work, ESSEC also offers social entrepreneurs and managers in social economy fields a unique centre of resources in addition to a new framework of expertise.

The Institute focuses on 3 main activities: :
Higher education programmes,
Research,
Various hands-on innovation projects.

Click here to download the complete IIES presentation file.