Nicolas Mottis is a Full Professor in the Management of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Department at École Polytechnique Paris, where his research centres on strategic control and innovation management. In addition, he holds the position of President of the Fondation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors Without Borders Foundation).

Prof. Mottis is also an expert in the Business School Impact System (BSIS) assessment, bringing substantial insight into evaluating the influence of academic institutions on their surrounding communities. Hence, it is our pleasure to include him in this series, where he discusses the importance of societal impact in business education, the BSIS tool and his experience in academia and the non-governmental (NGO) world.

Can you please introduce yourself and share your background in the sphere of business education?

I have worked for more than 20 years in the business school world as a faculty member, Dean, director of many Executive Education programs, chair of accreditation teams, or member of diverse committees and organisations. For the last 10 years, I have been a professor at an engineering school (École Polytechnique, France) working on innovation management and sustainable finance.

How many BSIS visits have you completed thus far, and could you highlight some memorable experiences or insights gained during these visits? To respect the confidentiality agreement, please do not use specific names or information to reveal the school’s identity.

I have done five so far, and it has always been extremely stimulating. These visits give us unique occasions to discuss very openly with colleagues from other institutions about the challenges of higher education and innovations we should consider.

Can you share any specific instances where BSIS recommendations or insights led to specific tangible improvements or innovations for a school?

In one case, for example, our discussions significantly changed the vision of the visited institution on how to organise an innovation ecosystem and better mobilise its alumni. In many cases, alumni are only seen as fund-raising opportunities or contacts for internships or job placement. If your objective is to help your students create fast-growing companies, inviting groups of alumni experts in the field targeted by each student-led startup can be extremely efficient to help them identify the good options and the optimal growth levels. For alumni, it is also much more rewarding than just being asked to sign a check…

Looking back on your journey as a BSIS expert, what are the key lessons or takeaways that you would like to highlight to other institutions considering participating in the BSIS process?

An excellent “Return on Time Spent!” The open exchanges between experienced peers that BSIS is generating can create a lot of value. Time being one of the scarcest resources, having the opportunity to debate with people who have tried to understand your institution through lots of readings and who come on site with curiosity, no conflict of interest, and a deep will to make things progress is not that frequent.

As an expert in field, what do you believe are the most pressing issues facing society today, and how are you addressing them through your work?

The number of pressing issues our society faces is enormous. They can be related to political tensions in our democracies, major technological challenges, environmental or health crisis we have to anticipate, the comeback of wars in different parts of the world, etc. Higher education, including business schools, have a major role to play in better understanding the roots of these issues, inventing solutions, and finding ways to deploy them rapidly.

In what ways do you see your work contributing to sustainable business practices, and how do you integrate these principles into your daily activities?

Beyond my faculty position, I am also President of the Doctors Without Borders Foundation (MSF in French). MSF is an international organisation with more than 60.000 employees active in 70+ countries, trying to bring health solutions to populations in distress. The foundation is developing innovations to support these operations. And very often, we do it with state of the art technological developments. Contributing to innovation in this context can clearly have a big impact in the fields.

How do you measure the impact of your work on society, and what indicators do you find most valuable in assessing your contributions?

For example, the number of start-ups or jobs created by my students or the number of successful innovations deployed by the MSF Foundation internationally.

How do you ensure that your work has a lasting impact beyond your immediate scope of influence, and what strategies do you employ to scale your efforts for a broader reach?

Partly as a joke, I have always explained to the teams or organisations I was in charge of that my goal was to become useless and go sailing in Brittany (the west of France, where I come from; note of the author). At the beginning, people do not believe it, but if you define a good strategy, help them acquire the necessary skills, and develop an organisation based on trust, they end up being really autonomous and impactful, and then you can go sailing.

Finally, how do you envision the future of societal development and the role that professionals in your field can play in shaping it, in line with the values and objectives of the Business School Impact System?

One of the purposes of BSIS is to push individuals and organisations to think about their impact on society for the long term, not only about publication metrics, which are often quite meaningless. The more we promote this way of thinking, the more our institutions will fulfil their real mission.

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