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Are you attracted to the world of business and tech? Do you want to acquire the fundamentals of these two fields without necessarily becoming a coding and development expert? Are you looking for a program taught in English, offering the opportunity to study abroad while graduating from two reputable schools recognized in France and internationally for their expertise and academic excellence? If so, the Bachelor in Management & Tech Design is what you’re looking for!

Meet Emmanuel DAUPHINÉ, Academic Director of this program launched in September 2024.

How would you define the Bachelor in Management & Tech Design in one word?

ED: The first word that comes to mind is interdisciplinarity. Indeed, from the outset, we designed this program with our partner RUBIKA to teach our students the fundamentals of management and Tech design, offering them the best of both worlds by leveraging the expertise of each of our schools.

We welcomed our first group of students in September last year, and they started with an exciting semester on our campus in Lille. At IÉSEG, they began immediately with courses on Project Management, Marketing, Accounting and User Experience, and Data Visualization. In January, students explored RUBIKA’s Valenciennes campus to deepen their knowledge in Tech Design, with courses in Design Thinking, Data Analytics, coding, and prototyping.

The program has been meticulously designed to foster interdisciplinary approaches and mutual enrichment of courses. Particularly, throughout this second semester, our students will embark on their interdisciplinary annual project, the highlight of the year, which will require them to apply all the knowledge acquired both at IÉSEG and RUBIKA. In a nutshell? With the support of business professionals, they will have to develop a CRM and sell it to customers, highlighting not only the seamless customer journey and its advantages, but also its UX design and technological features. This closely mirrors the tasks they might undertake in a web design agency or as software solution developers in a company. It’s a demanding project, as it requires mastering various concepts, and I am truly impressed by their dedication since the launch of this project, and their progress after only a few months in the Bachelor!

Who makes up this first cohort of the Bachelor in Management & Tech Design?

ED: Our first cohort exactly reflects the diversity we sought, and I am proud to say that this program thrives on the diversity it offers.

Firstly, there is diversity among students, as we have 11 students for this launch. These 11 students represent 6 nationalities from 3 continents (Asia, Europe, and America). This is a great opportunity for our students because during these 3 years, they will extensively collaborate in groups, learning firsthand what it means to work with people from different cultures and backgrounds. Tomorrow, in business, they will lead projects involving international teams, having already experienced how to work, communicate, and manage people from diverse cultures and nationalities.

Secondly, diversity among professors, as IÉSEG faculty members also come from different countries, enabling students to embrace new learning and working methods. At RUBIKA, guest speakers are business experts primarily come from various sectors such as automotive, Tech, and retail.

Lastly, there’s diversity in the disciplines studied, as mentioned earlier, with a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary learning.

All that diversity is a tremendous melting pot where our students have the opportunity to evolve. In this niche training, they will learn how to work in teams with people of different backgrounds (managers, coders, financiers, marketing and sales experts), yet all united by a common goal: the success of the company. A Python programmer views the world differently than a financial expert, or a salesperson who must meet customer expectations daily… yet they must all manage to work together, using a project-based approach, without forgetting that the customer must be at the forefront of their concerns.

For this reason, for example, at IÉSEG, we have developed two courses dedicated to project work: the first teaches them the fundamentals of project work, and the second involves a professional and immediate application of developed concepts through a “serious game.”

The diversity in this program is a real asset in terms of employability because not everyone in business knows how to embrace diversity, perceive an issue from different angles and approaches, and work with different cultures.

Employability: the ultimate goal of the Bachelor in Management & Tech Design?

ED: You enter a school with the aim of graduating, you choose a degree to increase your chances  in the workplace!  Therefore, the goal of the Bachelor in Management & Tech Design is to enable our students to immediately enter the workforce and succeed.

Consequently, we have adopted a very practical teaching method where the objective is not only to teach students the fundamentals and essential knowledge but also to quickly move into concrete implementation and practice. This is why we have chosen to expose them to professors or experts from the business world, so they can share their daily experiences, concrete anecdotes, real challenges they will face tomorrow in their careers.

We have chosen a pedagogy based on experience and business reality. Hence, they work on numerous business cases, serious games, and these interdisciplinary projects that will put them in real-life situations.

Hence, the significant importance given to internships throughout the program: a one-month internship at the end of the first year, a two-month internship at the end of the second year, and a four-to-six-month internship at the end of the Bachelor. Our students are currently in the midst of finding their first-year internship, which I consider crucial because they will experience (likely the only time in their careers) the product manufacturing phase… They will be immersed in every production phase, understanding all constraints and limits (in terms of production time, delivery time, resource reception time…). Later, there is a high probability that they will all work in digital project management, but regardless of the company, they will need to bear in mind that there is always a production phase, physical streams, customers, and so this mid-internship is highly enriching.