Known as the Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Lyon until 1997, EMLYON is one of the oldest business schools in France, founded by the city¡¯s business community in 1872.
Its main campus, in the suburb of Ecully, was purpose-built to celebrate the institution¡¯s centenary in 1972. It has other French campuses at St Etienne and, since 2016, in Paris along with collaborative agreements with other universities in Lyon, Sciences-Po in Paris and the highly prestigious Ecole des Mines.
A Triple Crown-accredited institution, it places a strong emphasis on what it terms "Early Makers", favouring entrepreneurial students over aspirant corporate executives. The Entrepreneur Centre created in 1984 is reckoned to have incubated more than 1,400 start-up companies of which around 85 per cent survived for five years or more.
International activities have had a strong Chinese influence since the mid 1990s. A French-medium MBA in partnership with Jean Moulin University and Lingnan College, part of Sun-Yat Sen University, has run since 1997. A Shanghai office was opened in 2000, followed in 2007 by a campus at East China National University.
A newly-created Global DBA programme incorporating a doctoral thesis, run in partnership with Durham University, will include modules taught in Durham, Lyon and Shanghai.
A Morocco campus was opened in Casablanca in 2015, while a new four-year bachelor in business administration course is being offered at Bhubaneshwar in India as a joint enterprise with Xavier University.
At the same time as pursuing cutting edge modernity with its ¡°Smarter Business School¡± partnership with IBM, EMLYON continues to reflect the deep-rooted epicurean heritage of its home city by hosting the annual Defi de Bacchus, claimed to be the largest wine-tasting competition in Europe.
