Vincent Dessain
Executive Director, Harvard Business School Europe Research Center
Harvard Business School
Vincent is the Executive Director of the Europe Research Center (ERC) of the Harvard Business School. He has extensive management and business education experience and is a co-author of two books in finance and co-author of a wide variety of articles in academic journals, cases and course development. He is a frequent guest speaker invited by academia, business and government to speak on topics in management and education.
Prior to his appointment at the HBS Europe Research Center, he was Senior Director of Corporate Relationships at INSEAD in Fontainebleau and elected as the representative of the INSEAD administration on the School’s Board of Directors. Earlier in his career, Vincent was active as a management consultant with Booz-Allen & Hamilton in New York and Paris. His field of consulting was international market entry strategies, financial products, strategy, negotiation and implementation of cross-border alliances, financial restructuring, mergers and acquisitions. He was also a Foreign Associate with the law firm Shearman & Sterling in New York and an Advisor to the President of the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium.
Vincent has won twice at The Case Centre Awards and Competitions. His case IKEA's Global Sourcing Challenge: Indian Rugs and Child Labor (A) won the Ethics and Social Responsibility category in 2011, and Roche’s Acquisition of Genentech won the Finance, Accounting and Control category in 2015.
Vincent's top bestselling cases
Browse Vincent's top three bestselling cases during the last year.By 2014, IKEA Group was the largest home furnishing company, with €28.5 billion of sales, and planned to reach €50 billion by 2020, mainly from emerging markets. At the same time, IKEA Group had adopted in 2012 a new sustainability strategy that focused the company's efforts on its entire value chain from its raw materials sourcing to the lifestyle of its end consumers.
Jean-Claude Le Grand just stepped into a new role as Executive Vice-President for Human Resources at the global cosmetics company, L'Oreal. The highly successful company has a strong culture, but the leadership is largely elite-educated, French males, and made up of bebe L'Oreal, executives who have spent their entire careers at the company. Le Grand strongly believes that to uphold the company's mission of 'Beauty for All', it needs top talent that reflects the diversity of the world itself. How can Jean-Claude Le Grand preserve the best aspects of the company's distinctive, tight-knit culture while also ensuring that it is open and inclusive to a changing workforce?
In 2018, Swedish furniture maker IKEA was undergoing a significant transformation. Challenged by the rise of online shopping and changing consumer behaviour, and mourning the death of its founder, the Company's top executives knew they had to step out of their comfort zones and embrace new strategic initiatives to stay relevant.