The Sanofi Transformation: How 2,200+ Executives Are Driving a Data-Driven Revolution
To become the first biopharma powered by data and AI at scale, Sanofi made a deliberate choice: start with the people who make decisions. With HEC Paris Executive Education, the group co-created an upskilling initiative for its top executives, then for the next tier of leadership, so that each of them would own a share of the company's data-driven transformation. By 2026, the programs had engaged 2.240 senior leaders and generated 224 AI use cases. That same year, the partnership received the EFMD Excellence in Practice Silver Award in the Organisational Development category.
Partnering with HEC Paris led to co-creating two ambitious customized programs: Drive Digital in 2023 to upskill Sanofi’s Top 150 executives, followed by Drive Digital@Scale from 2024 to bring in the second tier of leadership until 2026.
From Strategic Question to Executive Action
Sanofi senior leaders during and executive learning session at Station F, with HEC Paris, the first step in building a shared language and mindset for the company's data-driven transformation
“Do we have the necessary skills and capabilities in data and AI to lead our digital transformation?” This question, raised in 2021 by Sanofi’s Leadership Team, led them to acknowledge the urgent need to upskill their entire executive base in data and AI. The group needed an approachbuilt for the whole company, focusing on the capabilities required to deliver the company's strategy, both from a strategic perspective and from a foundational one.
The ambition was set, and it was high: Sanofi needed more than just a development program; they expected a learning experience that would change the way they lead, putting each senior executive and leader in the driving seat of their Data and AI transformation, led by their Chief Digital Officer Emmanuel Frenehard.
Embedding Leadership at the Core of Transformation
Dialogue and accountability in action: Sanofi executives exchange perspectives during an HEC Paris session, a necessary step in shaping the mindset and behaviors needed to drive transformation from the top.
For the transformation to take hold at every level, the first step was to prepare the Top 150 executives to act as role models in the transformation process and to meet three objectives:
Accountability: Making sure that all executives grasp their role in shaping Sanofi’s strategy & digital transformation.
Enablement: Supporting all executives to apply agile working methodologies, create consumer & user-centric innovations, shape data-driven decisions, and reflect on digital transformation.
- Delivery: Creating and delivering tangible outcomes, collaborating with leadership peers and technical partners across the organization, and leading their teams as internal sponsors to scale use cases.
With these objectives in mind, both entities co-created two flagship programs built to encourage collaborative learning, establish unified technical foundations, implement data-driven decision-making, and, above all, guide teams in developing use cases with measurable impact.
Two Custom Paths, One Strategic Vision
Drive Digital
- Target audience: 150 Top executives, spread over 4 cohorts of 30-40 leaders in 2023
- Format: 6 weeks of Theory Learning + 6 weeks of Learning by Driving, including a 3-day bootcamp at HEC Paris to develop and pitch a group Value Theory.
- Outcome: 24 value theories and ideas
Drive Digital@Scale
- Target audience: over 1,500 executives split into 3 cohorts of up to 250 executives in 2024, 2025 and 2026
- Format: 6 weeks of Theory Learning followed by 3 weeks of Learning by Driving, including an Ideation workshop, an ExCom Shark Tank and a one day face-to-face event in Boston and in HEC Paris
- Outcome: 40 valuable ideas per cohort
We selected HEC Paris because they were number one in this space from an academic perspective. We also felt a great chemistry with HEC Paris Professor Julien Schirmer, the Academic Director of the program. We appreciated the team’s collaborative approach to designing a very innovative program, using data and AI in the learning program itself to help us to transform – Joanne Beardsley, Global Executive Development Program Director at Sanofi
Julien Schirmer (right), Academic Director at HEC Paris, leads a session during the Drive Digital program, translating strategic goals into learning experiences with real business impact.
A Learning Model Built Around Real Business Projects
Small groups, big ideas: Sanofi executives engage in peer-to-peer collaboration as they turn new knowledge into actionable innovation during the Drive Digital program.
Once equipped with the necessary knowledge and inspiration, participants collaborate in small groups to develop innovative projects, with the best of them coming to life. These use cases directly serve the mains pillars of Sanofi’s strategy and data and AI to work. Some of them are even built into the strategy of some of the functions and GBUs around R&D.
One illustration is Blockbuster Booster, an R&D project using data and AI to predict Sanofi’s next blockbuster drug and product. Once presented to the Executive Committee (ExCom), the project became part of Sanofi’s R&D strategic planning and gained dedicated resources and investments.
Other projects initiated before the program, such as the Turing Project, received central visibility and boost right after the training. Turing uses data and AI to help Sanofi’s commercial teams personalize their approach to meet the patient’s needs by connecting the right customers to the right physicians at the right time.
How does this happen? The top five projects from each cohort of DriveDigital@Scale get to pitch their idea to a jury, with the top two teams pitching to Sanofi’s ExCom jury. As the use case development generated many brilliant ideas, Sanofi and HEC Paris are collaborating to share them across organization and potentially develop them further.
Executive Sponsorship Carried the Program
“We couldn't have had the program success without the sponsorship group, who has been a key enabler for the program” – Ryan Eagar, Global Head of Executive & Leader Development.
The program's success is driven by its sponsorship at two levels. First, through the business advisory group sponsorship board, including Sanofi’s senior business leaders and a number of ExCom members, who helped Sanofi’s HR team and HEC Paris with the program design and delivery. This leadership engagement made sure the use cases integrated into the programs reflected Sanofi’s actual challenges. Second, the active sponsorship of CEO Paul Hudson and ExCom, who participated in kick-offs, face-to-face sessions, and open discussions, contributed directly to the program's success.
Creating a Shared Language to Drive Change
One vision, one language: Sanofi leaders celebrate the collective learning journey at Station F — a symbol of shared ambition, cultural shift, and organizational alignment.
Sharing a common language plays a central role in the program: it connects strategy with execution possible and turns a change of mindset shift into action. The entire Executive Committee underwent a condensed version of the Drive Digital program, demonstrating their commitment to Sanofi's digital transformation and setting clear expectations for the initiative.
Ultimately you want to create One Sanofi glue and build; the digital transformation is really about the way we work. It's not about data and digital. It's about the people and ways of working.
EFMD Rewards a Program Built on Ownership
In 2026, the partnership between Sanofi and HEC Paris Executive Education received the EFMD Excellence in Practice (EiP) Silver Award in the Organisational Development category.
The case submitted to EFMD, From Vision to Adoption: Putting leaders in the driver's seat of data & AI transformation, retraces how Drive Digital and Drive Digital @Scale turned data and AI from a strategic ambition into part of each leader's mandate.
The recognition rests on a diagnostic made early on. Sanofi was not short of digital learning content, which was widely accessible across the company, yet completion rates for broader digital learning initiatives hovered around 3%. Access was never the obstacle; ownership was. The programs were built on that premise: data and AI would scale once business leaders, and not specialists alone, treated them as their own responsibility.
By 2026, the initiative had engaged 2.240 senior leaders and generated 224 AI use cases, with a Net Promoter Score of 97%. Several projects progressed into portfolio-level decisions, and selected commercial initiatives contributed to double-digit sales uplift.
The behavioral shift is harder to quantify, and probably more telling. Leaders grew more comfortable discussing the opportunities, limits and risks of AI, and project teams found executive sponsors more easily. Julien Durand, Senior Vice President and Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer at Sanofi, singles out one effect in particular: "reducing the fear around AI".
For HEC Paris, the award confirms a conviction that shapes its custom programs for organizations: in a large organization, transformation stalls less often for lack of technology than in the distance between those who set the strategy and those who must carry it into their teams.
From Sanofi's executive committee to its future-facing teams, this transformation shows that strategic learning, when it is built around real business decisions, can accelerate innovation and bring an entire organization around a common goal.
Looking to equip your teams with the mindset, skills, and confidence to lead your next transformation? Let’s build your custom program together. Discover HEC Paris Executive Education Custom Programs.