Georges F Doriot

T hroughout his life, Doriot endeavored to educate a global network of business leaders. "It was during the aftermath of World War I that Doriot became... a fervent globalist," journalist Udayan Gupta explains, "realizing well ahead of many of the businessmen of the time that there was a world economy in place—and that no nation could shield itself from the major trends that shaped this world economy."59 In this spirit, in the 1920s, Doriot began work on the founding of the Centre de Préparation aux Affaires (CPA), a business program for middle management. (CPA was later named the Centre de Perfectionnement aux Affaires.)

The program based its teaching on the case method, and HBS supplied case study material with the help of Edna Allen, then a research assistant at HBS, who later married Doriot. Located in Paris, the CPA opened in 1930. In his dedication address, HBS Dean Wallace Donham expressed his hope that CPA and HBS would "interest themselves in the ethical problem of industry; in the art of living together, both within business and with the community; both within our respective countries, and with our nationalities; for the world has become industrially one."60

Doriot at INSEAD. Courtesy of INSEAD.
"[Doriot] understood the need for a global organization much earlier than most of his contemporaries did."
Felipe Propper (HBS MBA '53), in The First Venture Capitalist:
Georges Doriot on Leadership, Capital & Business Organization, 2004
58

CPA represented a successful initiative by Doriot, HBS, and the Paris Chamber of Commerce that paved the way for Doriot's dream of an international graduate school of business administration. In 1957, the French General Association of Free Enterprise and the Paris Chamber of Commerce announced the establishment of the Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires (INSEAD). "CPA helped pave the way for the later creation of Insead," Jean-Louis Barsoux notes in INSEAD: From Intuition to Institution. "Insead was... a thoughtful development on a successful initiative."61

INSEAD occupied space in the Palais de Fontainebleau, located southeast of Paris. Doriot's former student Claude L. Janssen (HBS MBA '55) was a founder of the new institute. Olivier Giscard d'Estaing (HBS MBA '51), a former student of Doriot's and brother of the future French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, served as founding dean and Director General. Willem Christiaan Posthumus Meyjes, Director General from 1960 to 1963, elaborated, "Rather than educating future business executives along the lines of national circumscription, [INSEAD] strives to build on an entirely European concept of business by helping to provide Europe as well as other parts of the world, with men endowed with a truly European outlook and capable of appreciating the enormous, latent strength of the European economy."62

Like CPA, INSEAD used the case method, and Doriot worked with HBS to provide general support and access to its case studies. INSEAD's curriculum included marketing, production and industrial management, finance, control and accounting, human relations and organization, business policy, and the economic, social, and institutional framework of Europe. By 1960, 52 students from 14 countries attended the program. INSEAD encouraged its graduates to practice what they had learned in firms throughout Europe. The HBS Bulletin noted in 1964, "Those who have watched INSEAD evolve... feel that the Institute offers one positive way of developing a cadre of well-trained, up-to-date managers with a European outlook rather than a purely nationalistic one."63 INSEAD has continued to expand its global outreach as championed by Doriot with campuses opening in Singapore in 2000 and in Abu Dhabi in 2007. "[I]f Doriot had not come along, nothing vaguely resembling Insead would ever have materialized," Barsoux notes. "[I]nternational institutions would certainly have been created and so would new business schools— but the two notions would not have been merged."64

58 Felipe Propper quoted in Gupta, ed., First Venture Capitalist, 4.
59 Gupta, ed., First Venture Capitalist, 113.
60 Wallace Donham quoted in “Dean Donham honored by France. Delivers Speech at French School Dedication." Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin, 1 November 1930: 23. This issue of the Bulletin reprints Donham's speech in its entirety.
61 Barsoux, 6.
62 Posthumus Meyjes, "The Story," Institut Européen D?Adminstration des Affaires Year Book 1959-1960, 28. Archives Vertical Files: INSEAD, Baker Library, Harvard Business School.
63 "Evolution at Fontainebleau: The European Institute of Business Administration, with the help of some HBS men, seeks to train managers with professional skills," HBS Bulletin, September-October 1964: 26.
64 Barsoux, 4.