These are some examples of the pedagogic impact of research-related activities developed by the school’s Research centres since their founding.
Shared activity
- All four research centres have jointly developed a course for PGE1 (AE310) whose goal is to introduce to students the research being done in the various research centres. The course is jointly taught by the four centres.
Agribusiness
- Started an Rennes SB certificate for Executive Education about Food Transition Impact (Manager de la transition alimentaire) jointly with the largest competitive cluster in the agri-food industry (Valorial) and the ESA, a French School of Agricultural Engineering based in Angers
- Set up an annual seminar with all the PGE 1 and PGE 2 students about the Challenges in Agribusiness, featuring presentations from experts in this field such as Charles Collard (30 years of experience in the agri-food industry, former COO of Sopexa, one of the main international consulting agencies in food marketing & communication, and current Founder/President of consulting company SLOE – SaveLifeOnEarth)
AI-driven Business
- Developed a new Master based on AI techniques: the MSc in Financial Data Intelligence. The Master launches its first intake in September 2020 and focuses on the application of machine learning and AI techniques to modern finance
- Launched the AI Business Summer School aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students, with the second iteration of the school being held in Summer 2020 offering four modules.
Green, Digital & Demand-Driven Supply Chain Management (G3D)
- Dissemination of research centre in courses of Supply Chain Management, Information Systems and Data Analytics, such as the course of Green Supply Chain Management (Masters level), and the courses of Introduction to Supply Chain Management and Green Supply Chain Management (both at the EMBA level)
- Involvement in Executive education (e.g., contract with company Biomérieux for training sessions on production planning for four different groups of managers)
Examples of students’ theses
Examples of students’ theses or projects under Rennes SB faculty supervision who have had an impact on managerial practices in their environment:
- This is a testimony from Dr. Emerson Galina, who recently graduated with a DBA form our program (Rennes SB supervisors: Dr. Roman Matkovskyy, Dr. Taoufik Bouraoui). Dr. Galina is currently Chief Operating Officer (COO)/Managing Director at Benteler (Dr. Roman Matkovskyy)
- My life changed brutally after the DBA. Since Feb 2019 I became Board Member and Global COO of a business with 7 Billion Euro sales, 75 plants, and 25,000 employees. Effectively, I became the #2 person of BENTELER Automotive, while when I started the DBA in 2014 I was only the Commercial and Program Development Director for the South América region. It is a dramatic change and in fact, I became the first Brazilian/Italian to take over this position in a company existing since 1876. I can affirm that not only the academic background improvement but mainly the demonstrated results and management skills enhancement I received through my DBA at RennesSB led me to such a dramatic progress in my career. Such improvement was particularly strong in the following managerial practices: managing vision and purpose, dealing with ambiguities, and learning on the fly.”
- Published research with my former Master student, Jin Gewen. Further development of her Master thesis, which I supervised, led to the publication. The article has now more than 1,500 reads on ResearchGate (Dr. Petya Puncheva)
- Published research with my former EMBA student Gael Le Floch’h. Findings from this research enabled the firm where the research was conducted to better understand the post-acquisition situation of the mother company and to act accordingly (Dr. Laurent Scaringella)
- Research I conducted with my former EMBA student Valerie Allie on key success factors in technology collaboration was presented at the Science & Technology Week at Technicolor in the US and then at the R&D Conference at the Politecnico di Milano. Valerie has used the knowledge gained working on this project in her managerial activities as Research & Innovation Technical Area Leader at Technicolor. (Dr. Carole Bonanni)
- Jointly with my PhD students, I am currently developing based on my research several projects in collaboration with companies. With one of our PhD students (Romain Menier) we are developing mathematical and operational modelling of the soybean crush spread margin in the AVRIL group, the biggest French seed oil producer. This strategy aims at measuring the exposure of the group to the fluctuating level of dependence among the soybean and its by-product as described in the paper. Another PhD Student (Mickaël Pouliquen) is implementing a trading model in the company Feed Alliance, which trades grains in France.
With another PhD Student (Thibaud Garnier), we are currently developing in the largest Breton cooperative, Eureden, a brand new risk management software, which aims at improving the assessment and the hedging of the group exposure to the market fluctuations of grains prices. This model also aims at improving their purchasing and storage strategy. (Dr. Guillaume Bagnarosa) - Through several internships in the group Roullier (one of the biggest French fertilizer producer), under my supervision and coordination four of my Master students have implemented a risk management tool to measure the group exposure to the climate uncertainty. This credit risk model is based on a paper I am currently developing and that I have presented to the French National Research Centre in Agriculture (INRAe). (Dr. Guillaume Bagnarosa)