INSEAD Will Expand Its U.S. Presence In 2026, Dean Says

In early February, INSEAD used the occasion of the biennial Americas Conference to celebrate its five-year anniversary in San Francisco — and to commit to a deeper investment in the city, the capital of Silicon Valley and the epicenter of innovation in artificial intelligence.

For the last five years, INSEAD’s San Francisco Hub for Business Innovation has been a space largely used for executive education offerings and conferences, as well as MBA and master in management courses of short durations — a week here and a week there for students, including those on experiential treks to visit tech companies based in the region. But beginning next year, students in INSEAD’s MBA program will have the option to spend a full period — two months — of the 10-month full-time program at the school’s Hub in the heart of the Northern California city.

It’s a major shift that will further cement INSEAD’s “connection to the spirit of innovation” in San Francisco, Dean Francisco Veloso says.

“The Hub has been a really interesting opportunity for us to connect to the region, to the innovation spirit there, and we want to take that to the next level,” he tells Poets&Quants. “And so we are planning next year to start offering an entire period of the MBA available here in Silicon Valley, similar to what we have, for example, with our Wharton exchange and in Abu Dhabi.”

INSEAD’S HEART IS IN SAN FRANCISCO 

Veloso was in San Francisco this month for the Americas Conference, a gathering of alumni, faculty, school leadership, authors, journalists, and tech luminaries for a series of discussions about the future. In an exclusive interview, he spoke to Poets&Quants about the rapid pace of growth in artificial intelligence, the ongoing curriculum overhaul that weaved sustainability into all of the school’s courses, the struggles the MBAs (including INSEAD’s) had on the job market in 2024, and about the politicization of sustainability and ESG in the U.S.

The topic of the day, however was the San Francisco Hub’s five-year anniversary and INSEAD’s big plans for its future. Beginning in 2026, INSEAD’s MBA students will have the option to spend one-fifth of the program in San Francisco, learning and studying from a base in the Mission Bay section of the city near Oracle Park, where the San Francisco Giants Major League Baseball team plays.

It’s a big shift for the school, and for its students — and a bit of a gamble.

“We would offer the opportunity for the students to stay here one period,” which is two months out of the full-time program’s 10, Veloso says.

“There is this ‘P’ lingo — P1, P2, P3, P4. This is our own lingo. So we would offer one of the P’s as a possibility for them to come here and spend the period which a two-month period here. And that would be a way to really engage with the AI environment here.

“We believe that the global epicenter of AI is here in the Valley, in San Francisco in particular, and we have now had this great trajectory already of engagement with the Hub, but that tended to be more shorter engagements. They would come here for one week, and that was true for the master’s in management. It’s true for the MBA. It’s true for the executive MBA.

“We now want to extend that and provide a deeper opportunity here — to try to understand first, is this interesting for our students? Do they want this? I mean, we will continue to have the other options. They can spend more time in Singapore. They can go to Abu Dhabi. But we’re going to create this opportunity here. And so it’s going to be interesting to understand what our students think. Is this interesting as an option? So are we going to have a lot of demand, little demand? We’ll see.”

It seems like a solid bet: In 2024, U.S.-based companies were the fastest-growing market for INSEAD graduates, Veloso says. Being a global B-school with a U.S. location shows those companies that they an trust INSEAD’s commitment to the U.S. market.

“And so we want to double down on the original idea of the Hub and deepen it, especially leveraging this big transformation around AI,” he says. “And we think that this is going to be an interesting opportunity. We will explore that more. We will continue to expand on our executive education as well. It’s part of this idea of deepening our connection here and exploring the opportunities, and we will be continuing to do so.”

‘IT’S ABOUT HOW TO LEAD INTO A BETTER WORLD’

Unsurprisingly, the 2025 Americas Conference was largely focused on AI, which has become the thing everyone talks about — these days topping even sustainability, which INSEAD made its raison d’etre beginning in early 2024, weaving it into every aspect of its MBA program. That was part of the reason P&Q named INSEAD its 2023 Program of the Year.

Though the 2025 conference included Sustainability Awards and some panel discussions devoted to the topic, AI was on everyone’s minds, Veloso acknowledges, because it has exploded with such enormous potential — and because it carries a lot of questions for business schools. He is enthusiastic about INSEAD leading that conversation — now, and into the future.

“It’s perhaps not surprising being here in San Francisco that a lot of the discussion is around some of the important technological shifts that are taking place around us, and maybe not surprisingly AI at the heart of it,” he says. “What does it mean? What does it imply? How do we work with it? How do we prepare? What’s the role of business schools on that? So there’s an important set of discussions.

“It is about change. It’s about how to lead into a better world, understanding how and what is happening with this important disruption related to AI. And so it is also an opportunity to mobilize, of course, our alumni base here in North America, in particular, and connect with them, learn from them, share with them, and also create opportunities for them to connect between themselves, and this is also very valuable.

“So it’s a substantive element that’s important: that’s meaningful tech, particularly AI and sustainability being two important angles of that. But it’s also celebrating with our amazing community the five years of our presence here in San Francisco.”

THE P&Q INTERVIEW WITH INSEAD DEAN FRANCISCO VELOSO

Edited for length and clarity

Poets&Quants: 2024 was a really important year for INSEAD. You had a curriculum overhaul, integrating sustainability into the curriculum in the way that you did. More than a year later, what’s your view on how things have gone? 

Francisco Veloso: I think it’s been going quite well. I think it’s been going very well in different ways, actually. First, it’s clear, at least for us, that the approach that we decided to take, that sustainability is not something that is kind of confined in a particular course, but something that has B2E integrated and weaved through the business function as an important element that any level strategy, marketing, operations, is certainly something that we are now completely convinced that that’s in our way. It’s the only way to think about this. And so we’re very happy with that.

We also think that there is a lot of value in this idea of combining that element of the capstone project to also have an important sustainability component, so that that is seen in a solution business-oriented context rather than just something that you have to understand. We think that it’s important to think this is as part of the business set of solutions that are amazing opportunities to do things better, to do things differently. I think that can be very powerful because that’s the way that they should approach it. This is not about corporate social responsibility. This is about finding business solutions that drive results and have an impact.

And that’s been very interesting also from the point of view that we’re actually internally putting different faculty working together in this capstone, because they themselves have been thinking about it, in the context of accounting or finance or in the context of operations: “But now, let’s work together to develop a case that actually brings these things all together.”

And so I’ve had some very interesting conversations with students about how they value it, but also with faculty about their own learning journey about working together to create this case. But of course, it’s the first time that we’re doing it and so it was also valuable to hear from the students to say, “Here’s some things that I think we can do better that perhaps we need to improve, change.” And you also have the entire distribution, students that then come to you and say, “Oh, I thought we would have much more sustainability than we did.” And the students that said, “Oh, there were some things there, but I don’t think it really brings value. Perhaps we shouldn’t do it.” So you of course have the whole spectrum and that’s the value of diversity that we encourage and that we value it.

But by and large, I think people are very happy with the sets of decisions and the trajectory we learned. We will continue our improvement every time we have a major curricular review. I think it is important to recognize that not everything works perfect and that there are things that we can streamline better, which is just part of doing major changes. You think about that — but a lot of very, very positive feedback.

And significant feedback from your corporate partners and recruiters as well?

Yes and no. In Davos, we had a very interesting panel that I was a part of about that, which is I think that we have this dichotomy of situations: One is you have students, graduates, and companies that have that very clear as part of their mission and their vision, and then they are very happy that we’re bringing this to the students and that this is part of the portfolio and this is part of the capabilities that they bring. And this becomes then part of also the “selling proposition” for the student because of the nature of the company that they’re looking for.

But I think that if you ask me about, I would say, more the mainstream to say, “Okay, if your average employer in a FMFCG or in a consulting firm is asking about sustainability part of, say, the standard sets of questions and skills that the employers are primarily or are significantly including in their questions,” I don’t think we are there yet.

Are there areas of collaboration that come to mind with other business schools, maybe other schools in Europe or other U.S. schools, in a time where in the U.S., in particular, we’re in an interesting political environment and some things are being pushed back in the U.S.? Are there areas of collaboration where INSEAD could take the lead?

Yes. Certainly, I mean, this area of sustainability is one, and in ESG more generally, I think that it is important. This is an important commitment that we have as a school and that we’ll continue to have. And so I think it’s unfortunate that this has gotten politicized, because I don’t see it as a political decision, as a left-and-right discussion. And so I think it’s unhelpful that we went into that direction and that we went into that rabbit hole, unfortunately.

But now that we’re in it, you can’t get out of it.

I know, I know. But that’s the difficulty. So we will continue to be pushing this because it has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with business. It has to do with the world and what the world needs regardless of the political spectrum, and that’s why we will continue to certainly advocate that.

I think that there’s a lot to be done in these areas of AI because I think each of us are thinking about what to do. But I think the nature of the changes is so profound that having that exchanges between business schools and what the different faculty, the different solutions, approaches, organizations are taking place is and will be quite significant, and so I think this is another area that I think it would benefit a lot.

For example, we have a very strong collaboration with Wharton. And we were having a discussion on how we could, without restricting the academic freedom that is important, create the focus point around AI so that the faculty between the two places could exchange, learn, share what they’re doing and how they’re looking at that world, and there was a lot of enthusiasm to try to do that, so we’re trying to find a way to make that happen as part of our collaboration. That is one example, but I think more can be done. So that’s certainly another area that I think there’s a lot of opportunities to learn across different business rules.

How do you think business schools in Europe should respond to what’s going on in the United States? Do you think that they should continue to push for, make investments in sustainability, and do you think that they will?

I think the reaction is only to the extent that people feel that there are, I would say, attacks on freedom of speech or something like that that become more salient, and though that’s a different story because if this becomes important, then we can have a different role there.

But the reason why we’re doing this, as I said, is not political. So I don’t think it’s changing course either to now that if this is not important, we’re going to double down on these or if this is less important, we don’t have to do less. I think that the journey that many of them are in, which is our own journey, is a journey that we’ve identified because of what we think are the needs of businesses and society, and we will continue to press on that. We’re not going to diminish it or heighten it because the administration in the U.S. has or doesn’t have a certain position in relation to these. And I believe that many of the other schools are going to continue as well. What I don’t think is we should dampen it, right?

I think that there may be some movement to dampen some elements here because of political pressures, but I hope that the schools here will find a way to navigate this more politically charged environment. But I think in Europe and in other parts of the world, we will continue the journey because it’s an important journey, but not as a way to try to politicize it as well because that should not be our goal and our contribution.

Late last year, you contributed to us with a New Year’s resolution, which you’ve done, I believe, a couple of years now. And thank you for that. One line from that was in this year’s contribution: “We will bring further innovation through AI-driven approaches and solutions.” You’ve talked a lot about AI. We’re going to continue to talk a lot about AI, I think, for the foreseeable future. But do you have any concerns about AI? Do you think there are any downsides to AI? I’m not talking about robots taking over the world. I’m talking about the tech not quite being ready for the things that we think that it’s ready for.

Well, I don’t think it’s the tech that’s not ready. It’s the organizations and the people that are not ready. Because I think the tech is evolving quite rapidly. I made this comment in a session just now, which was to say, “I think that both the level and the trajectory that we are in, the position and the speed is already significant. So they’re both so significant that we are going to have difficulty adapting as individuals and organizations just catching up. That connects to the downside in the sense that I do think it is quite significant and quite profound, which means that if we don’t seriously reflect on how it affects the way that we do things, then it can be an immense source of frustration. It can be an immense source of tension also if we don’t steward it properly, and this goes to your point: Are some of my faculty worried? I think they are in the sense that you can drive this technology like all technologies in many different directions. Nuclear fission has led the creation of nuclear reactors that power thousands of homes and businesses, but it led also to the atomic bomb. And so all technologies have these. Drones are nice tools, but as we’ve seen are also now key war machines that didn’t exist before. So those are everywhere and that’s certainly true for AI.

So the stewardship of AI is going to be quite important. And I’m not even talking about malevolent use, right? There are criminals out there that would be using these for malevolent use.

Competent use.

Exactly. Competent use or even how you direct it because one of the issues that appears all the time is this notion that we’re going to direct AI to replace jobs, for example. So how you leverage this tool in an organization in a productive way versus a way that is about, say, automating tasks for the sake of it because you want to reduce the number of employees. That could be quite damaging for society. So there is an element of stewardship and governance that I think is quite important, about how we do it in a way that enhances human value and augments human value, rather than detracts and diminishes human value.

So we do have many faculty concerned about these at the high level, but then you also have more micro level, which is how do you create trust in people to embrace it even at the more fundamental level, because then people are afraid to leak data. They’re afraid that they’re doing something bad. They’re afraid that they are, for example, misattributing things because they wrote a text with AI. “Now it’s not my text. This is my text.”

And so all of these are things that we need to do. And if you don’t take this thing seriously in an organization, be it a business school, be it a company, or if you take it also haphazardly it can be an immense source of frustration and very damaging. So these are the concerns that I see that are important at a different level.

But we, as a school, we are taking it quite seriously in different ways. I mean, we have, fortunately, faculty members that are really at the cutting edge of leveraging and learning about AI from people that are studying how OpenAI organized their own systems, how entrepreneurs are leveraging AI, and how strategic processes are being reshaped because of that. I mean, we have people studying how can you deploy some of these technologies to automate learning for underserved languages, for example. We have the whole gamut going on, which is wonderful to see, and just like we looked at the curriculum for the sustainability elements, we’re also taking a serious look about how do we integrate it in deep ways in the curriculum. My dean of the degree programs told me last semester, one of the last elective periods, he had to now restrict the number of AI electives because there were too many already going on, and so the students could not possibly take all of them. And so that is already completely populated precisely because of all the wonderful work that our academics are doing in this area.

2024 was a rough year for MBAs coming out of just about every business school, INSEAD included. Are you encouraged that 2025 is going to be a better year, that 2026 will be a better year, and that 2024 will perhaps be remembered as a down year?

I think it was a combination of elements. We are known, for example, as a school that produces a lot of graduates that go into consulting jobs in general. We know what happened that post-’21, post-Covid, a lot of hiring occurred and then there was a little bit of having to deal with perhaps too much and then having to readjust some of that. So I think that realignment of the cycles in the consulting sector is probably going to occur. I think talking to some of the leaders it is readjusting onto a more stable journey. I think that’s already occurring. That’s the sense that I have.

The co-founders of Indeed.com, the global finance jobs platform, are alums from INSEAD, and I met one of them in Davos and we were having a conversation and he was telling me that they were seeing the plateauing and perhaps some early signs of a movement up. So there was another nice example and as you know, if there are people that have a very good sense of where the market is, it is the job platforms. They see the listings, they hear it first before any of the official job statistics. So I thought that that was also encouraging.

Talking to a couple of the leaders of Google in Europe that are alums as well, they were telling me that they were starting to see internally the number of job offers starting to move up. One of the leaders of Google was telling me that he was seeing some movement, that he had seen the initial movement first in the jobs that they have in their Ireland hub that was very large, but he was starting to again see it in other parts.
So all of these instances are suggesting that we may have turned the corner in terms of the difficult market that exists, but we will see the proof is in the pudding and our students will let us know.

I can’t tell you how difficult or how easy that market will be, but I think we’re going to be in better shape. I was talking to students and several of them were telling me that they were starting to see some movement on some of the applications and stuff that they had not seen a few months before. And so again, it’s the combination of elements that suggest that we are going to be probably on a better trajectory.

DON’T MISS POETS&QUANTS 2024-2025 INTERNATIONAL MBA RANKING: IT’S INSEAD AGAIN! and POETS&QUANTS’ MBA PROGRAM OF THE YEAR FOR 2023: INSEAD