Global Business Leaders Wrap-Up

INSEAD Professors offer summaries of the conference

Acting Dean of INSEAD Peter Zemsky
It is really dangerous when businesses disengage. You can see what happened in Greece on this front and this could be a harbinger of what can happen to the rest of Europe if we're not careful.

Deputy Dean of Faculty & Research Ilian Mihov - 
What Europe can do to find its own niche is to remove barriers so that people can create new businesses. It doesn't matter that Europe is smaller than China or India. Switzerland is a small country and it's successful. We are now in the same situation as the 1970s - and you cannot create growth by printing money to put into the economy; you only create inflation.

Deputy Dean for Executive Programs Miklos Savary - 
What can you do to change the situation in Europe today? There are roadblocks to be overcome. Dialogue and collaboration are the key here and the potential for human beings to collaborate will help overcome roadblocks. Social networks are catching on in this regard globally and helping create collaboration through dialogue. This kind of collaboration is helping to create innovation, too. Research shows most of it appears to be in the US, the Far East...but not much in Europe and that's a little scary. We're using social networks - but not for innovation.

Q&A
Zemsky comments on a question from audience on austerity vs growth..."Germany is still traumatized by inflation....We should keep in mind the (post World War One) Treaty of Versailles and the effect austerity had on Germany at that time." 

Does European Competitiveness Have a Future?

Senior international executives and INSEAD faculty discuss competitiveness vis a vis the future of the European economy and business.

European competitiveness is one of the issues INSEAD students are studying today, made more challenging by heavy debt burdens of companies and countries, digging the continent into a deepening crisis. "It would be easy for INSEAD to ignore these challenges," said INSEAD Acting Dean Peter Zemsky," but we do not. "INSEAD was born in Europe in the mid 1950's at a time of European integration...and INSEAD would not have been possible without this European context into which we were born."
Zemsky pointed out that INSEAD's founder, George Doriot, was the founder of venture capital and a graduate of Harvard who, with several other young Harvard graduates, decided Europe needed a different kind of business school. That became INSEAD.

"Half of our students are from Europe today," said Claude Janssen,  Chairman Emeritus of INSEAD and one of those students who founded the school with Georges Doriot more than 50 years ago. "At this time of crisis in Europe, where competitiveness is discussed it is important to spend a day like today on the topic. INSEAD wishes to continue to contribute to the understanding of European problems and we will do whatever we can to help solve these problems in Europe.""