EDHEC, partner of the ChangeNOW Summit 2025

Mid-way through this key decade for climate action, and to mark the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, the ChangeNOW Summit 2025 brought together start-ups and large corporations, public authorities, academic leaders, NGOs, not-for-profit associations, various media, and investors, all intent on activating practical solutions for the major challenges of the 21st century, whether climate-related or social or societal in nature. 

The 2025 edition welcomed over 40,000 participants who came to discover close to 1,000 solutions and to attend conferences, round tables and presentations.

Getting business and planetary limits to co-exist

On 25 April 2025, Emmanuel Métais, Dean of EDHEC Business School, took part in the “Business Unusual: Redefining Business Within Planetary Limits” conference, during which he exchanged with Thibaut Guilluy, Head of France Travail. Together, they shared details of how their respective institutions raise awareness of climate and societal challenges among their stakeholders (students, entrepreneurs and job seekers): “60% of our students hope to find a first job that incorporates sustainability matters”, says Emmanuel Métais. “We prepare them to put this objective into practice and give them the tools to change things”. 

During the discussion, Emmanuel Métais notably presented several of the School’s initiatives, including the Springboard for Diversity and Inclusion, the expansion of classes on planetary limits, or the EDHEC Transformation Leap workshop, designed to encourage students to consider the challenges facing companies tomorrow. He also explained the School’s RED methodology, the goal of which is to help start-ups incorporate total performance issues — economic, environmental and social — into the heart of their business models right from the outset.

The conference also featured the participation of Virginie Courtin (EDHEC Master 2009), Managing Director of Clarins, who underlined the need for companies to reconcile business development with climate issues. 

She exchanged with Sarah Schwimmer, Interim Executive Director of B Lab (the association representing the B Corp label). Drawing on her experience at Clarins, Virginie Courtin talked about her company’s decision to obtain B Corp certification and what it implied in practice, i.e. rethinking all the company’s practices to respond to demanding social, societal and environmental objectives.   

Launch of the Centre for Net Positive Business
 

Marking the occasion of the ChangeNOW 2025 summit, EDHEC Business School also presented its new research centre: the Centre for Net Positive Business, led by René Rohrbeck. 

Created as part of the new Generations 2050 strategic plan and inspired by the work of Paul Polman and Andrew Winston, the EDHEC Centre for Net Positive Business (CNPB) has been set up to pursue a core goal, i.e. enabling companies to have a net positive impact on people and the planet – in other words, giving (back) more than they take. “The Centre for Net Positive Business will be a genuine hub for strategic thinking, research and action”, underlines René Rohrbeck. “It will act as a catalyst to foster the emergence of economic models geared toward positive impact, by leveraging forward-looking strategic methodologies to anticipate, steer and accelerate systemic transformations”.

Consistent with this approach, the new centre also plans to work closely with the Centre for Responsible Entrepreneurship (CRE), which consolidates all of EDHEC’s entrepreneurship-related initiatives. 

 
Link (Youtube) to the "Business Unusual: Redefining Business within Planetary Limits" conference