Today (Nov. 22, 2010), the Financial Times, in its section on business education, had an article entitled: “Insead resorts to the law“. Insead is one of the world’s leading business schools. It operates on various campuses (Paris, Singapore, etc.) under the motto: “The Business School for the World” (this motto is of course a registered trademark!).
The article in the FT was about a new masters-level law degree for which Insead would provide business know-how, while the law school of Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas would provide the rest. It seems those joint programs are now en vogue, but the the link between the Insead business school and the Paris 2 law school is one of the most high profile. According to the FT:
“From competition to negotiation and regulation to intellectual property, the boundaries between business school and law school are blurring and the result is an increasing number of masters-level LLM degrees with a business bent”Even if law schools are talking more and more to business schools, it is clear that the blurring will be limited to certain areas of the law: where the law meets the needs of businesses. This new collaboration has been incentivized by the promise of public funding under the Investissements d’Avenir program of the French State.
Other top schools such as the Harvard Business School are already providing joint programs which include for instance “Intellectual Property and Business Strategy”. Have a look here at the new 2011 program which is described as follows:
Managing intellectual property (IP) rights is of first-order importance in many organizations. To set the right strategic direction, senior executives must have an in-depth understanding of the tools and techniques that enable companies to protect their innovative products, creative works, designs, and brands. This unique program brings together leading faculty from Harvard Business School (HBS) and Harvard Law School to discuss how IP law has evolved in recent years, where critical international differences persist, and how managers and legal counsel can exploit evolving IP regimes to better protect company assetsSomething to learn from those joint programs? Probably. As IPdigIT, we are of course excited!
