Purposeful Ecosystem Orchestration

Introduction

A corporate purpose is usually understood to be a ‘higher’ objective to improve social welfare, rather than just to maximize profit. This emphasis on ‘doing good’ is not intended to replace the company’s aim of ‘doing well’ financially, but to support it. In most organizations, the corporate purpose seems mainly to have been developed with an internal focus, seeking to engage employees by investing them with a more meaningful objective than profit. Yet corporate purpose is first and foremost about making a positive social impact on communities outside rather than inside the corporation. This chapter proposes the strategic activity of business ecosystem orchestration (BEO) as a means of enabling a corporation to carry out its higher purpose while also capturing new opportunities for value creation and profit.

A business ecosystem is a network of organizations that are involved (through collaboration but also sometimes through competition) in the delivery of a product or service. Essentially, businesses have always worked within ecosystems that include their suppliers, customers, competitors, and other stakeholders. However, increasing digitization has led to a more deliberate pooling of resources to allow the different stakeholders to face change and access new business opportunities. In other words, the stakeholders within the ecosystem are actively co-creating value.

A broad corporate purpose—i.e. one that has an impact beyond the boundaries of the firm itself—will by definition touch organizations other than the traditional primary stakeholders that include shareholders, employees, customers, and suppliers. It can involve non-profits, for example, or affect communities. Similarly, business ecosystems bring together stakeholders from different industries or of a different type, in addition to primary stakeholders. The purposeful corporation can potentially engage with these new stakeholders and orchestrate the business ecosystem both to deliver its purpose and co-create shared value.

This chapter explores how a corporate purpose is typically meant to empower organizations internally yet can fail to do so if the purpose does not achieve social impact externally. In addition, we explain why business ecosystems are useful to better understand how the many different stakeholders involved and co-creation interact. We conclude by discussing how business ecosystem orchestration (BEO) supports a corporate purpose concretely and thereby achieves a real social impact without compromising profit.

Corporate Purpose Inside and Outside the Organization

As Colin Mayer and Bruno Roche discuss in the Introduction to this book, profit maximization is traditionally thought of as the alpha and the omega of doing business, but a corporate purpose comes from a broader understanding of how business engages with society. A single-minded focus on profit, i.e. doing well, does not address people’s need to feel inspired by higher social objectives, i.e. doing good. An organization that fails to inspire employees and other stakeholders can end up underperforming. In contrast, an organization with a broader purpose is more likely to inspire its workforce to contribute significantly and creatively to its development.

An effective corporate purpose articulates a company’s ambition to contribute positively to society. For example, pharmaceutical company Sanofi’s stated purpose is ‘to understand and solve healthcare needs of people across the world’. The focus of this statement is not Sanofi itself, but a much broader segment of society. It is also not concentrated on financial performance, but on the fulfilment of more fundamental human needs. Contrast this with auto-manufacturer Nissan, which, while it does not claim to be preoccupied with profit, nevertheless appears to concentrate only on improving its own products: ‘Nissan provides unique and innovative automotive products and services that deliver superior measurable values to all stakeholders in alliance with Renault’. Such an inward-looking purpose means that its power to inspire employees is likely to be limited.

One of the perceived benefits of an ambitious corporate purpose is that it motivates employees with the prospect of making a positive contribution to a broader community than just the organization they work for. This motivation is linked to employees’ personal affinities with social communities and higher ideals outside work. Once they are united by a common purpose, employees may feel more affinity with the company and with colleagues too.

In addition, they are likely to feel empowered to take initiatives that are aligned with their employer’s overarching objectives. A focus on profit can often lead to a rather mechanical style of organization that confines employees to the roles they have been assigned. In contrast, a corporate purpose engages employees and gives them greater scope for responsively addressing new challenges by themselves: they are liberated to create more value.

Articulating and implementing a broad, positive social purpose is not without its challenges, however. Firstly, it is considerably more ambitious than the traditional business activity of efficiently producing and selling goods and services. In addition, social objectives can sometimes run directly counter to traditional business aims. For example, Sanofi’s purpose to improve the world’s health is not only a tall order, but, if pursued fully, it could entail actually selling less pharmaceuticals.

Secondly, a broad purpose aims to achieve social impact primarily outside the corporation, and only incidentally inside it. But, ironically, because so many organizations have embraced a social purpose primarily to inspire and galvanize employees, their managerial practices have mostly faced inwards. Yet if purpose is not authentically pursued on the outside, then it may fail to inspire and transform on the inside.

Therefore, the priorities derived from corporate purpose should shift from the inside to the outside and from boosting the corporation first to boosting social impact first. Only once a company has a valid outward approach for pursuing purpose should it turn inward to aligning the organization with this approach.

What kind of outward-facing managerial practices might advance a broader purpose? Traditionally, businesses used to interact with the world through simple market transactions (buy-and-sell contracts) and competition. For this, a business would need to rely only on its primary stakeholders (suppliers, employees, customers, and shareholders). A broader corporate purpose (than profit) implies an expansion, perhaps a transformation, of the ways in which business engages with the outside world. It requires looking beyond simple business transactions, primary stakeholders, and competitors, to other types of interaction and to other types of stakeholders.

External Transformation Starts with a Business Ecosystem

Business ecosystems embrace a broader scope of stakeholders and interactions than the traditional group of primary stakeholders, which are directly involved with an organization. Additional stakeholders tend to be organizations with aligned goals or complementary resources. They may share the same customers or users, but not as competitors. For example, aircraft manufacturers and airports both serve airlines, yet do not compete with each other. This is because aircrafts and airport services are complementary resources for airlines.

This wider network of stakeholders means that ecosystems can cut across traditional industries and sectors. Businesses, non-profits, communities, and governments can have related objectives, so these different sectors can overlap within a given ecosystem. For example, pharmaceutical companies are heavily involved with government health agencies, hospitals, and patient organizations, but not just in the role of supplier, customer, or competitor. At the same time, ecosystems still include suppliers, customers, and competitors alongside these new types of stakeholders, so that ecosystems present a broader view of the business environment.

These new types of stakeholders come into the picture because new types of interactions come into play, in addition to market transactions. Digitization has improved communications, which enable better coordination, so that value chains can be broken down into smaller pieces controlled by more numerous stakeholders. Digital goods and services are particularly amenable to splitting, recombining, and bundling, and thus can involve numerous stakeholders.

As value chains sub-divide ever more finely, stakeholders increasingly need to co-create competitive bundles of products and services. Stakeholders who co-create put assets in common in order to develop joint solutions, which can take the form of marketable products and services. This differs from the classical approach, where value is created independently by and for each stakeholder, who then exchanges products and services (i.e. created value) with others. Value co-creation takes place interdependently across stakeholders, before products and services are exchanged. Co-creation often takes the form of the exchange of knowledge or the joint development of new knowledge or solutions (i.e. co-innovation). For example, in order to drive electric mobility innovation, auto manufacturers need to work hand in hand with a slew of stakeholders, such as new technology providers, power utilities, city governments, and auto insurers, in addition to their traditional parts suppliers and sales partners.

Ecosystems also encompass value exchange through market transactions. For example, an aircraft manufacturer traditionally exchanges products or services with (upstream) component suppliers and (downstream) airlines, who are among its primary stakeholders. However, in order to remain competitive, it now needs also to co-create laterally with airports, airport industry associations, and providers of systems and services to airports and airlines (for aircraft and flight servicing), who are not primary stakeholders of aircraft manufacturers. Co-creation can also take place in addition to market transactions when corporations co-create with their own suppliers or customers. For example, it is quite common for software user communities to actively contribute to the improvement of software products, as in Microsoft’s beta-user programme.

From a corporation’s perspective, business ecosystems encompass more stakeholders because they include different types of interactions between different types of stakeholders (Figure 7.1). By definition, independent value creation involves only stakeholders within the corporation of focus (closed loop in the centre of Figure 7.1). Exchange of value (i.e. products and services) may take place only between the focal corporation and its primary stakeholders.1 Interdependent value co-creation is the only type of interaction which bridges the focal corporation with non-primary stakeholders (darker arrow in Figure 7.1), in addition to primary stakeholders. Thus, the ecosystem view extends the scope of value creation from independent (with primary stakeholders only) to interdependent (potentially with non-primary stakeholders).

Crucially, business ecosystems can extend to even more stakeholders if opportunities for co-creation are also considered. Some organizations can have aligned goals or complementary resources, even though they do not (yet) interact in any way. These affinities can form the basis of new opportunities for value co-creation. Furthermore, even initially weak affinities could lead to interesting opportunities if organizations strategically decide to work together. In other words, organizations can actively align their respective goals and resources. The same principle applies to stakeholders who already interact in some way and pursue further opportunities to interact even more. Moreover, business ecosystems also include classical opportunities for independent value creation. In a nutshell, business ecosystems describe the potential for further alignment among stakeholders, in addition to their existing alignment (Adner 2017). This potential for change means ecosystem stakeholders collectively respond and adapt to threats and opportunities. It also means that ecosystems change shape when and as stakeholders drop in and out of alignment because their respective goals and resources evolve.

Matching Business Ecosystem Stakeholders with Purpose Stakeholders

Co-creation opportunities are where business ecosystems and corporate purpose meet. However, ecosystem stakeholders are not necessarily the same as purpose stakeholders. How can they be matched?

Almost limitless numbers of actors might claim a ‘stake’ in a corporate purpose, especially a broad one. A purpose stakeholder is anyone who could affect or be affected by the purpose. For example, Sanofi’s claim ‘to understand and solve healthcare needs of people across the world’, taken at face value, touches myriads of organizations and people. Purpose is insufficient to prioritize among them. Indeed, the mere possibility of being affected by or affecting the corporate purpose is not enough to justify an interaction between the corporation and a stakeholder.

Very few purpose stakeholders present the opportunity to contribute to the purpose jointly with the corporation. This could be either because their respective goals diverge too much or because their resources have low complementarity with those of the purposeful corporation. Purpose stakeholders may be uncooperative because they consider corporate operations to be socially harmful. Resources might be located too far apart, for example in distant countries. Again, strategic decision-making can play a role in this. Stakeholders with low alignment might still decide, for strategic reasons, to work on reconciling their goals or developing more complementary resources.

Business ecosystems, however, comprise stakeholders with aligned goals and complementary resources. In fact, resources (e.g. aircrafts and airports) only appear complementary in the light of aligned goals (e.g. enabling air transport). More precisely, ecosystems emerge only where there is a need or an opportunity for co-creation between the organizations who control the resources. Certain resources can be complementary (e.g. pen and paper) yet not require co-creation between their respective producers. This what a ‘stake’ means in the context of business ecosystems. Ecosystem stakes are the stakeholders’ respective motivations to collaborate in order to combine their resources and co-create. So aligned goals are at the heart of business ecosystems. And goal and purpose are closely related concepts.

The business ecosystem view is a useful way to discriminate in practice between countless purpose stakeholders by evaluating opportunities for value co-creation with them. By definition, primary stakeholders are already engaged in independent value creation by the corporation, but non-primary stakeholders are not. The ecosystem alternative for non-primary stakeholders is interdependent value co-creation. At the same time, these co-creation opportunities should align with corporate purpose. Alignment is conceivable because non-primary stakeholders also have a stake in the purpose.

In summary, all ecosystem stakeholders should be purpose stakeholders, but the reverse is not true. Only some purpose stakeholders offer opportunities for value co-creation. Some of those are non-primary stakeholders, i.e. they are connected to the corporation only by opportunities for value co-creation. The others are the primary stakeholders who are joined with the corporation’s core of independent value creation but may also offer opportunities for value co-creation.

Purposeful Orchestration of Business Ecosystem Stakeholders

Business ecosystem stakeholders may each have a different corporate purpose to push. 2 In turn, each one of those corporate purposes may determine a different ecosystem. So how can differently purposed stakeholders team up in a single unified ecosystem? The first answer is that corporate purpose and ecosystem stakeholder goals are not the same thing, and the second answer is business ecosystem orchestration (BEO). The difference between purpose and goals explains how ecosystem stakeholders with potentially different corporate purposes can still find common ground for co-creation. Goal alignment is key to co-creation. In the world of market transactions, goal alignment is not required, as it is enough for a buyer and a seller to agree on an object and a price. However, in the world of co-creation, stakeholders need to agree to put resources in common and collaborate. This is even more true if the outcome is very uncertain, as in the case of co-innovation. Ecosystem stakeholders might have weakly overlapping corporate purposes at high level, but they should have some aligned goals at a lower level in order to reach that agreement.3 Thanks to goal alignment, stakeholders can all agree on a value co-creation opportunity.

Corporate purpose is by definition at the level of a corporation, but the size of ecosystem stakeholders can vary widely. Organizations could be of any size, from the nascent start-up to the mega-corporation (or the equivalent in the non-profit or government sectors). Furthermore, a stakeholder could be an entire organization (e.g. a corporation) or just one of its sub-units (e.g. a business unit). The relevant size corresponds with the relevant level of decision-making with regard to co-creation opportunities. This level varies from one stakeholder to another. For example, a business unit of a mega-corporation could decide to co-create with a relatively small start-up. In this case, the start-up might be driven to participate by its full corporate purpose, whereas the business unit participates to pursue lower-level goals aligned with the mega-corporation’s higher-level purpose.

Ecosystem stakeholders’ respective goals may be aligned already, but an agreement can just as well be reached through negotiation and mutual influence between stakeholders. This is where BEO plays a role, which is another way to reconcile ecosystem stakeholders. BEO is the coordination of multiple stakeholders in order to co-create, alongside more traditional buy-and-sell activities.

The coordination of value creation ordinarily requires leadership in order to prevent or to resolve disputes (Williamson 1991). In the contractual world of market transactions, disputes can be resolved through formal arbitration, e.g. by courts, but it is not so in the more informal world of value creation. Value creation necessarily entails some form of hierarchy in order to enforce myriads of unplanned choices about how to allocate resources along the way. This hierarchy is usually confined to the boundaries of organizations. In fact, the make-up of organizations can be defined as the result of a series of ‘make or buy’ decisions which depend on the desirability or undesirability of external arbitration. Some activities can be contracted out, and therefore resolved by formal arbitration in the event of a disagreement. Other activities need to be kept in-house (and therefore uncontracted as such), because external arbitration would be impossible or too costly. The latter commonly happens when the expected outcomes of the activity are difficult to define or highly uncertain, as is the case of innovation. It can also be because it is difficult or costly to safekeep the outcomes from outsiders, as is the case of most intellectual property.

The novelty of co-creation is to bring this decision-making outside any single organization and to make it happen across multiple organizations. It starts with two, as in ‘co-opetitive’ alliances between competing firms. The alliance between Renault and Nissan led to co-developing shared vehicle platforms which can compose models of either make. Co-creation comes more easily between non-competitors, increasing the potential for multiple organizations to co-create. Before the launch of a new Airbus aircraft, all major world airports make adjustments in coordination with Airbus, in order to ensure optimal interoperability. More formal co-creation allows many more co-creators to come together. For example, great technology platforms such as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android make specific resources (e.g. computer code) available to independent app developers and publishers. As a result, thousands co-create together with the platform.

As with value creation inside organizations, some form of hierarchy is required amongst co-creating organizations so that leadership can manifest and disagreements can be resolved at a low cost. Renault was the orchestrator in the Renault–Nissan alliance. Airbus takes the lead in coordinating with airports. The limit to this line of reasoning is the sheer number of co-creators and the consequent need for a degree of formality in interactions. Relations between Apple or Android and their app developers are regulated by formal contracts which are litigated in the judicial system. Even if Apple and Android can still be said to be orchestrators, the point is that coordination among co-creators is no longer informal in these cases.

How does an orchestrator emerge? Since an ecosystem of co-creators is a kind of informal organization, the orchestrator is not officially appointed by anyone. One of the stakeholders needs to rise to the occasion and play the role of orchestrator. How does the would-be orchestrator wield the requisite authority over other stakeholders? Within organizations, authority is propped up by the formality of employment contracts. Employees obey bosses within a formal hierarchy. A key difference of co-creation is that any authority among stakeholders is informal (except when co-creation itself becomes formalized as in the cases of iOS and Android). Orchestrators can draw informal authority from unique resources which they control (Gulati, Puranam, and Tushman 2012). Such resources could be tangible (e.g. a key technology) or intangible (e.g. reputation). For example, large firms can establish ecosystem leadership thanks to abundant assets or thanks to market dominance. However, even such resource-poor organizations as start-ups typically orchestrate new, albeit limited, ecosystems thanks to a key innovation or unique knowledge of a market or an industry. Precisely, it is because start-ups lack resources that they need to orchestrate stakeholders who control complementary resources.

Hence, orchestration does not imply continuous, overarching control over one’s partners and the totality of their resources, but a sporadic, opportunity-oriented form of control, in order to mobilize or develop specific, complementary resources. Beyond authority, the crux of the matter is whether a purposeful orchestrator is able concretely to exert influence over other ecosystem stakeholders to adjust their goals and align them with her own (Figure 7.2). Influence can come in many forms, e.g. through social connections, by lobbying authorities, by sharing high-value knowledge, by framing ideas. For example, Edison was able to build the momentum for deploying a large-scale electricity network by framing it as an analogue of the gas-lighting network. Mutual influence and coordinated adaptation are easier in the context of developing new co-creation opportunities. The inherent newness of opportunities means that participants are relatively unfettered by existing resources and set ways of doing things. This frees them to design their respective contributions, in coordination with others and under the leadership of an orchestrator. In turn, this can lead to the coordinated development by stakeholders of highly complementary resources for exploiting the opportunity (Figure 7.2). All in all, orchestration is a way for the corporation to align stakeholders with its purpose.

Earlier in the process, an orchestrator also has to decide who among purpose stakeholders are the best ecosystem stakeholders for pursuing a purposeful co-creation opportunity. This decision is based on how well stakeholders’ (including the orchestrator’s) initial resources complement each other. It can also be based on the stakeholders’ motivation to contribute to the corporate purpose. High motivation can compensate for inadequate resources to an extent. By selecting stakeholders or not, the orchestrator shapes the ecosystem to her purpose. Thus, an orchestrator can reconcile differently purposed ecosystem stakeholders through skilful selection and alignment. However, this depends on the quality of the leadership, so a less skilful orchestrator might instead disrupt stakeholders.

In summary, stakeholders’ respective corporate purposes can be broken down into goals which are better tailored to a given ecosystem. In turn, purposeful and skilful orchestration by a central stakeholder can make other stakeholders’ goals align even further into a unified ecosystem. Accordingly, ‘purposeful orchestration’ itself may not necessarily be pursuing the corporate purpose to its full extent, but only more specific goals aligned with the purpose.

Purposeful Orchestration Advances Corporate Purpose One Co-Creation Opportunity at a Time

As we have seen, co-creation is a way to integrate non-primary stakeholders into a system of value creation (the ‘ecosystem’) orchestrated by the purposeful corporation. Indeed, co-creation is the most effective way for a corporation to interact with unconventional stakeholders, because, at heart, a corporation’s role is to create value. Certain types of organizations, e.g. non-profits or communities, may not be in a position to act as (upstream) suppliers or (downstream) customers of the corporation. Instead, they can be engaged laterally through value co-creation.

Co-creation is a way to ensure that the broader purpose is concretely advanced. This is not just because co-creating stakeholders’ interests and goals are aligned with the corporate purpose. It is above all because co-creation provides the opportunity for stakeholders to keep some of the co-created value for themselves. Any value captured by stakeholders represents an actual piece of the social impact that corporate purpose intends. Ecosystem orchestration does not automatically generate positive social impact but is a credible approach for fulfilling a broader purpose authentically.

For example, pharmaceutical firm Novo Nordisk (see Chapter 33) was able to enrol multiple stakeholders in its global campaign against diabetes. Although just a medium-sized pharma by global standards, Novo Nordisk is successfully bringing the managers of major cities of the world (Copenhagen, Mexico City, Houston, Shanghai, etc.) on board thanks to judicious framing of its approach. Firstly, it has credibly clarified its corporate purpose as being victory over diabetes, even at the expense of selling more drugs. Authenticity of purpose is key to enlisting non-profit, social-issue-oriented stakeholders. Secondly, it has framed the urban scale as the most relevant to address diabetes, because cities combine population density, diabetes-promoting lifestyles, and unitary political governance. Once city management is mobilized, many more local stakeholders can be persuaded to follow suit, such as local social and health institutions with the requisite knowledge and reach to engage populations at risk. Novo Nordisk then participates in local co-creation initiatives by leveraging its leadership under its global campaign, and its expert knowledge on diabetes and its treatment, including a toolkit it provides cities to help identify cultural determinants and social factors to focus their initiatives on. Each new city partnership can use data frameworks and disaster relief models to do ‘vulnerability assessments’ for identifying individuals most in danger of diabetes in each location. Then the partnership organizations work to determine the most effective way to reach them, whether for example providing active lifestyle training through faith-based organizations or screening by discreet mobile units. Depending on the city, Novo Nordisk then facilitates wider activities than already planned or in the case of Shanghai, promotes achievement of existing goals through stronger cooperation between organizations.

Ecosystem orchestration does not imply that Novo Nordisk is the nominal leader in all these initiatives. In many cases, it could be more expedient for local governments to lead, as this strengthens the local ownership of the various activities. Ecosystem orchestration implies that Novo Nordisk successfully influences stakeholders and their resources to achieve its corporate purpose.

Conclusion

In conclusion, purposeful ecosystem orchestration presents many advantages by reconciling a broad corporate purpose with value creation, and thus ultimately also profit. It values stakeholders’ respective goals and resources by considering them as partners in co-creation in their own right. It empowers unconventional stakeholders to also take part in value creation alongside corporations. This role makes them active partners of the purposeful corporation rather than passive beneficiaries of CSR. It redefines a stakeholder’s ‘stake’ in the corporate purpose as a forward-looking opportunity to co-create value, instead of a backward-looking opportunity to capture value created by the corporation on its own. The co-created value captured by stakeholders embodies a piece of the social impact which the corporate purpose aims for.

Last but not least, ecosystem orchestration is a practical way for businesses to evaluate stakeholders according to value co-creation opportunities. Such opportunities are aligned with the purpose, yet can also be profitable. Purposeful ecosystem orchestration is an approach for advancing purpose one co-creation opportunity at a time. Ecosystem orchestration slices and dices the high ambition of a broad purpose into manageable steps. A broader purpose than profit can appear like a quasi-utopian vision for corporations more accustomed to shareholder value maximization and to traditional business goals. However, purposeful orchestration provides a realistic managerial practice for carrying out a broad purpose.

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Notes

1. If a non-primary stakeholder exchanges value with the focal corporation, it then becomes a primary stakeholder.

2. Or the equivalent of a corporate purpose for non-profits, government agencies, etc.

3. High or low level refers to the level of strategic decision-making.

Sylvain Remy has worked for twenty-five years as an economic and business analyst, researcher, teacher, and advisor in Europe and Asia. He was an information systems management consultant in Paris with leading service and financial multinationals. Later, he was posted in Seoul by the French Ministry of Finance, as an economic analyst and trade diplomat. With in-depth business and government experience, he turned to higher education in Singapore, where he has been involved in applied and academic research, course design and teaching, and programme development and direction around the topics of business networks and responsible business. He concurrently completed a PhD on the geography of entrepreneurship.

Julie Kolokotsa worked for over twenty-five years in public policy in Washington DC, Brussels, and Athens, including as a campaign and NGO organizer, a journalist for a sustainable business magazine, and as a guest and adjunct lecturer on subjects including creating value with stakeholders on sustainability. She has co-developed research on how purposeful corporations can use business ecosystem orchestration to create social value alongside shareholder value. She has published articles in academic journals on policymaking and practitioner magazines on sustainability with stakeholders, has an undergraduate degree in politics/international relations, a master’s in environmental management and sustainability, and is currently completing a PhD in politics and policymaking.

Jan Ondrus is an associate professor of information systems and currently serves as the associate dean of faculty, ESSEC Asia Pacific. Additionally, he is the director of research for the Center of Excellence in Digital Business. His interests cover digital business models and innovation, digital platforms and ecosystems strategy, mobile payment and FinTech, and strategy of IT. He currently serves as an associate editor of the journal Electronic Commerce Research and Applications (ECRA). In recent years, Jan has been visiting the University of Hawaii, Sungkyunkwan University, Mannheim University, University of Lausanne, Case Western Reserve University, Seoul National University, and Korea Development Institute (KDI). Professor Ondrus holds an MSc and a PhD in information systems from HEC Lausanne (University of Lausanne) in Switzerland.

Yassine El Ouarzazi has a background in engineering. He has fourteen years of experience in various business-analytics-related positions in the consumer finance, automotive, and FMCG industries. For seven years, he spearheaded Mars’ Evidence Based Marketing programme before turning to research in business model innovation. Since 2014, he has been developing and deploying Catalyst’s signature Economics of Mutuality process to help businesses bring purpose to life—from ecosystem mapping, to intervention design, to metrics. Yassine is from Morocco. He graduated from a French engineering school (Ecole des Mines de Paris) in 2000. He has a passion for technology and education (and has contributed as a volunteer to the French translation of https://www.khanacademy.org.

Nicolas Glady is a doctor in econometrics, and professor and executive vice president at ESSEC Business School. His research work has been published in Management Science, the International Journal of Research in Marketing and the Journal of Service Research among others, and in managerial journals such as the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, the Huffington Post, Slate, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Les Echos, etc. He advises companies in different sectors on these topics: banking and insurance, telecom, FMCG, distribution, pharmaceutics, and others. Poets&Quants identified him as one of the best forty under forty B-school professors in the world.

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