HEC Paris Named 2026 Business School of the Year by Poets&Quants
Poets&Quants has named HEC Paris its 2026 Business School of the Year, highlighting the School’s commitment to expanding opportunity, making research accessible and preparing students to shape a changing world. The recognition puts the spotlight on the vision driving HEC Paris’s strategic roadmap, New Responsibilities.
In an article published on October 19, Poets&Quants explores how HEC Paris is building on its academic excellence to strengthen its contribution to business and society. Through an interview with Dean Éloïc Peyrache, the publication examines a conviction at the heart of the School’s strategy: a business school’s success must also be measured by its impact.
Brad Harris, Dean of the HEC Paris MBA, accepted the award on behalf of the School over the weekend.
Expanding opportunity and sharing knowledge
The article highlights HEC Paris’s work to support social mobility, including initiatives that reach beyond its own student community. Programs for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds develop entrepreneurial skills and confidence in public speaking, while entrepreneurship training supports women from those communities.
Making knowledge more widely available is another central commitment. Through accessible articles, podcasts and research insights, HEC Paris helps bring academic findings into public debate and inform decisions across business and society.
“Research is a public good, so let’s make it one, accessible, for free, and make sure it inspires people,” Peyrache explains.
Preparing students for a world transformed by AI
Poets&Quants also examines how HEC Paris is responding to the transformation of work. Research at the School’s LIFT lab investigates how people use AI in their daily activities, which tasks they want to automate and how their roles are evolving.
These changes raise fundamental questions for management education. Alongside analytical expertise, students need the ability to define problems, exercise judgment and turn ideas into action. Connecting technological understanding with creativity and entrepreneurial initiative is increasingly essential.
This interdisciplinary approach also informs the Bachelor of Arts and Science developed with Bocconi University, which combines mathematics, data and AI with the social sciences.
Creating spaces for collaboration
The Campus of the Future project gives physical expression to this vision. With a planned investment of €230 million, it places interaction and collaboration at the heart of the learning environment.
A central agora, flexible teaching spaces and areas dedicated to innovation are designed to encourage exchanges across disciplines and cultures. For a campus bringing together 135 nationalities, these encounters are an essential part of the educational experience.
The Poets&Quants distinction recognizes both HEC Paris’s achievements and the direction it is taking: advancing knowledge, revealing talent and enabling people to develop solutions to shared challenges.
LLM-assisted writing