INSEAD's PhD programme has a clear strategy: Recruit the brightest, most creative minds. Train them to be innovative researchers. Place them at the best business schools in the world. We have been remarkably successful, given our formidable placement record, and we are on a strong upward trajectory.
INSEAD's unusual 50-year history is distinguished by its entrepreneurial nature and its international diversity. It was founded by faculty from different parts of the world who wanted to do something different - they took a US style academic model and infused it with international faculty and students, giving all programmes a uniquely global focus not connected to one particular nationality or perspective. An innovative institution that began as a European business school has now become The Business School for the world, largely in part, due to its entrepreneurial DNA. There is no other business school quite like it.
So today INSEAD trains many of tomorrow's leading entrepreneurs, and this includes our PhD candidates. Being a professor in a research institution is an exceptionally entrepreneurial activity. You get an office and other resources and are told to create knowledge that will be interesting and have impact --- whatever you like. Every now and then, your colleagues and other peers check in to ask: so, what interesting and innovative things have you done? The answer to this will determine your success (or failure!) in the profession.
The life of a professor activity is remarkably social as well. As a PhD student, you will spend some solitary time struggling (or making brilliant progress) in your office or at your kitchen table alone, as in the stereotype of the doctoral student. However, few papers are written without coauthors, and the sharing of ideas, whether in joint projects, seminars at universities, the exchanges that arise in teaching, conferences at far-flung places, or lunch and corridor conversations with colleagues, are a critical and day-to-day part of the process for the creating of knowledge.
Thus, at INSEAD you benefit from our entrepreneurial intellectualism and from the interaction with a culturally diverse and academically distinguished set of faculty, who do not merely come from different countries but who have chosen to live their lives as citizens of the world. The students and professors at INSEAD that you meet and learn from and share ideas with will form the core of the intellectual network you will develop, and that will develop you, in your professional life.
At INSEAD, you will better understand the world - and through this, expand your world.
Professor, Timothy Van Zandt
Academic Director, INSEAD PhD Programme
