During an interview with Le Figaro, Fleur Pellerin announced that she wants to create a school for entrepreneurs.
The minister, in charge of small businesses, innovation and digital economy wants to make the founding of a company easier and accessible to anyone. It is for now only an announcement, but the general idea is good. Making classes related to management, law and accounting or e-commerce can only benefit the French tech ecosystem. The thing is, such schools or curriculums already exist.
EEMI (Ecole Européenne des Métiers de l’internet – European Internet School) Created by Marc Simoncini, Jacques-Antoine Granjon and Xavier Niel, offers web related curriculums, and emphasizes on e-trade, e-business and e-marketing. The school recently expanded its offices in Paris.
HEC is the historical and prestigious Parisian school which offers different MBA cursus. It is organised as all standard universities or high schools, and has formed many actual founders of the French tech scene. Its former students association, HEC Alumni, is very active worlwide. It is one of the biggest reference for MBA in France right now.
INSEEC is to the private sector what HEC is to the public sector. The group has schools in Bordeaux, Paris, Lyon, Chambéry, London, Monaco and Chicago. Its cursus range covers Business, but not only.
I could have written about EDHEC, ENPC, or any other French university proposing a master of MBA. To sum it up, there are already a lot of good schools offering MBA masters. in France.
Fleur Pellerin’s school would be a good idea, but it shouldn’t copy what already exists. It should aim at helping people found the companies they have in mind, and most importantly, inspire and motivate them. Masters of entrepreneurship already exist, and creating a similar curriculum would be less relevant. It should help improve self-made skills of entrepreneurs, and allow them to be more successful, and to develop e-commerce and exportation, notably. France has the highest company founding rate among the G7 countries (Source : RSM), thanks to the auto-entrepreneur status, and if all these founders could actually go to a school to be better entrepreneurs, the French economy would benefit from it on a large scale.