News
SKEMA and Malongo: contributing to local innovation with a global outlook
Alice Guilhon, Executive President and Dean of SKEMA Business School, and Jean-Pierre Blanc, Managing Director of Malongo, signed an agreement on SKEMA’s Sophia Antipolis campus on 21 January, sealing a partnership between the two entities. Major contributors to innovation in the Provence-Alpes Côte d’Azur region, both SKEMA and Malongo share numerous similarities, starting with their international outlook.
Established
in Carros in 1934, just 35 kilometres away from SKEMA’s Sophia Antipolis
campus, Malongo was founded on the same Provençal lands as SKEMA. At the
instigation of their respective leaders, both SKEMA and Malongo are expanding
abroad.
A "glocal" positioning
SKEMA now has campuses on five continents. In 2021, the school celebrated the tenth anniversary of its American campus in Raleigh, North Carolina. A year earlier, it celebrated the tenth anniversary of its Suzhou campus in China. While purposefully pursuing its glocal development, the school has not turned its back on its French roots: in 2021, it was the turn of the Grand Paris campus in Suresnes to open its doors to thousands of students.
In parallel, Malongo remains a pioneer in fair trade and organic farming and shares with SKEMA a strong strategy of openness to the world. Today, this coffee roaster with an EPV certification – a French label denoting a company with excellent artisanal and industrial expertise – works with small coffee growers in Laos, Mexico, and the Congo. Through these different projects around the Fairtrade/Max Havelaar label, the company supports local cooperatives and communities by drawing on the values underpinning the brand: quality, ethics, and innovation.
Two contributors to innovation
A pioneer in the pedagogical hybridisation of its programmes, SKEMA trains students across the world in management, finance and marketing. Each programme now includes lessons on artificial intelligence and the new practices resulting from it. Malongo shares this spirit of innovation. In the same way, the company is pursuing this ambitious aim in France: driven by the vision of Jean-Pierre Blanc, its Managing Director, Malongo has developed and produced its new espresso machine "EOH" in France.
