Shaping ethical, responsible artificial intelligence that creates value for business and society
The artificial intelligence revolution is profoundly redefining economic models, organizational operations, and global geopolitical balances. In a context of heightened competition between the United States and China, ESSEC asserts its role by establishing a benchmark impact hub for value-creating, ethical, and responsible AI for business and society.
Created in 2020 to support the rise of AI and analyze its societal repercussions, the former Metalab institute is now expanding its scope to fully integrate the business dimension and becomes the Institute for AI & Business. Operating under the Institute, Development, and Impact Directorate of ESSEC Business School, it marks a major strategic shift: evolving from a scientific and academic research laboratory into an impact-driven think & do tank at the core of concrete organizational transformations.
Our ambition: To make ESSEC the academic and managerial benchmark for AI applied to economic and societal challenges, by integrating value-creating, responsible, and ethical AI.
The Institute bridges technological experimentation and large-scale deployment within organizations through three main pillars:
- Generate cutting-edge interdisciplinary knowledge: Combining disruptive technologies, management sciences, law, and the humanities to look beyond media hype and provide rigorous, actionable insights.
- Train and empower today’s and tomorrow’s leaders: Equipping future and current managers and executives with the strategic, operational, and ethical skills essential in the AI era.
- Foster open dialogue and co-create value: Providing a neutral, rigorous platform for exchange and collaboration among researchers, business leaders, regulators, and the general public.
- AI Management & Job Transformation: Support for operational deployment, selection of suitable architectures and tools, change management, and in-depth analysis of the impacts of generative and agentic AI on productivity, work organization, and skills evolution.
- Geopolitics & Policy: Understanding European regulation (notably the AI Act), analyzing international technological rivalries (US, China, Europe), and developing strategies to ensure organizations' autonomy and critical independence.
- Resilience & Responsibility: Enhancing model robustness, ensuring data flow integrity, defending against adversarial threats, and building the operational resilience of vital infrastructures.
- Ethics, Democracy & Society: Preventing and detecting algorithmic bias, ensuring transparency and explainability in automated decision-making, safeguarding democratic debate, adapting educational and training systems, monitoring model energy consumption, and advancing sustainable AI.
To support this new phase of expansion, ESSEC Business School relies on a new executive and academic leadership team:
Constance Mickiewicz — Executive Director
A former collaborator of Anne Bouverot (Special Envoy of the President of the French Republic for AI), Constance Mickiewicz joins ESSEC with recognized expertise in multilateral diplomacy, international negotiation, and digital public policy. In 2025, she led the diplomatic component of the AI Action Summit under the high patronage of the French Presidency as lead negotiator of the Heads of State declaration. Previously a digital policy advisor for the G7 and G20 at the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, she also worked at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Rome and Palladium in London. She holds a master’s degree from University College London (UCL) and graduated from the Grande École program at NEOMA Business School.
"My ambition for the ESSEC Institute for AI & Business is to make it the mission control for ethical, responsible, and value-creating AI for organizations. In a highly competitive AI landscape dominated by China and the United States, Europe must make its voice heard. ESSEC aims to be at the heart of this challenge by championing a resolutely human-centric approach. At the crossroads of academic research, real-world economic impact, and public debate on governance and ethics, the institute will provide today's and tomorrow's leaders with the keys to understanding the societal and geopolitical challenges of AI."
Raoul V. Kübler — Academic Director
Professor of Marketing at ESSEC and a recognized expert in artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and digital marketing, Raoul V. Kübler has consistently ranked among the top 10% of management researchers in the German-speaking area since 2018. His research, published in leading peer-reviewed journals, focuses on generative and agentic AI, NLP, and business model transformation. He holds a PhD from the University of Kiel and has taught at Özyeğin University and the University of Münster, following over a decade in the advertising industry.
"We are witnessing a new wave of digital transformation. Generative AI is challenging, transforming, and enhancing long-established business practices. [...] At the Institute for AI & Business, our goal is to guide decision-makers through this transition: separating media hype from empirical evidence, building sustainable, value-generating business models, and managing disruption so that our partners emerge as leaders rather than followers—or worse, simply end up enduring these shifts."
Christoph Mueller-Bloch — Associate Academic Director
Associate Professor in the Information Systems, Decision Sciences and Statistics (IDS) Department at ESSEC since 2021, Christoph Mueller-Bloch holds a PhD in Information Systems from the IT University of Copenhagen. His research and teaching focus on the governance of disruptive technologies, blockchain, digital platforms, and organizational adoption of artificial intelligence.
"Artificial intelligence is arguably the most transformative technology since the advent of the internet, and we have the opportunity to shape its impact on business and society. I look forward to continuing to develop the institute as a platform for co-creating value with our stakeholders—whether by delivering top-tier learning programs or by fostering an environment conducive to research with direct, real-world impact."
Some research projects developed by the ESSEC Institute for AI & Business:
- Acceptability & Robustness of AI with BNPP
- Ethics of AI with One Point
- AI for Finance with AKO Capital
