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INSEAD's Growth in China
June 2009
Ten years ago, INSEAD had very few alumni in China. Since then, we have steadily increased our alumni
population and presence in this part of the world. In 2006, we had 233 China-based alumni, in 2007, 308;
in 2008, 355; and today we have 428. We aspire to reach 1,000 alumni located in China and contributing
to business there within the next ten years.
To help us reach this target, a Steering Committee consisting of alumni, faculty and staff, has been
recently formed to coordinate INSEAD's activities in China. Three broad goals have been identified.
� Increase INSEAD's visibility and profile in China as one of the top global business schools
� Attract more academics who conduct original research on/in China and to increase our knowledge of
China
� Develop attractive and high impact management education programmes and events for China-based
executives – either locally in China, or on one of our campuses/centres – with an emphasis on
quality and impact
Our positioning
We aim to build on our positioning as 'The Business School for the World' to both add value to the Chinese
context and also to differentiate ourselves from our competition. With time, we aim to build our China
capabilities further while maintaining our global positioning.
Our Strategy
We are building our presence in China through:
� Our partnership with Tsinghua University which has produced a successful joint EMBA Programme
(attaining a 50% growth this year)
� Increased marketing and more China-based events with the support of our growing alumni
community in China (this year we are expecting to have over 1,400 people register for our
marketing events)
� A stronger online presence with the launch of INSEAD Knowledge in Chinese. Officially launched
in March 2009, our partner site now reaches 500,000 users. We are looking to grow the site very
quickly with help from alumni
In our second Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed with Tsinghua last year, we set aside
resources to encourage faculty exchange and to promote joint case writing on China related topics.
Tsinghua's Dean Yingyi Qian hosted our Dean Frank Brown at a press conference in September last
year, and has made several visits to both our Europe and Asia campuses.
We realise that much work needs to be done to achieve INSEAD's goals in China. Further strengthening
our brand and presence in China is vital for not only being credible in Asia, but also for our global
positioning.
INSEAD's name in Chinese
As part of our institutional goal to standardise the use of our brand world-wide, we decided to examine
how best to present INSEAD in the Chinese language. In China we were faced with a situation where
INSEAD was translated – the European Business School - by the local press which created a number of
issues. It made brand building problematic because it clashed with our tagline 'The Business School for the
World' and the translation could not be protected legally as it is too generic. Also other business schools
were already using 'the European Business School' or similar sounding names in Chinese.
The school established a transliteration of INSEAD by way of a consultative process with the 440 Chinese
nationals who are alumni. Over 50 suggested transliterations were submitted by alumni and these were
narrowed down to 18 by a committee made up of native Chinese speakers who were either faculty or
alumni. The same 440 alumni were then asked via an online questionnaire to rank the 18 suggestions. The
six most popular transliterations were then rated in a second round and ???? (Ying si ya de) was
chosen as the preferred transliteration. It comes close to the pronunciation in English and can be used in
parentheses along side our brand - INSEAD - enabling Chinese readers to pronounce the name of our
school accurately.