“EXPLORE, INVENT, UNITE”

It is easier to say what the Alliance is not, than to describe it in rectilinear terms, or with a chalk line. Just as in a chemistry experiment in which each element is well known, we may have an intuition about the future reactions, but by no means be certain about the final product.
That’s what makes research so exciting.
And this is the value of the Centrale-Audencia-Ensa Nantes Alliance.
We know that it is not a marriage of convenience. One of those hastily arranged weddings, designed to combine costs and create the illusion of power.
Nor is it a fixed system with a well-plotted path or pre-determined fate.
No.
The Alliance is first and foremost a concept that draws its inspiration from the idea that exchange and porosity between disciplines are the only realistic ways of tackling the great changes in the world.
In this way we can understand and master them.
The paradigm shift at work is an intellectual challenge that is far too complex for us to honestly say, “I alone understand what is going on and I alone know how to create order.”
We need the contributions of others unlike us in order to apprehend a society that is changing extremely quickly with a very dense lattice structure.
Cooperation, collaboration, listening and open analysis lie at the core of our method of training students capable of conscientiously creating and leading in tomorrow’s world.
The components of the Centrale-Audencia-Ensa Nantes Alliance – our three schools – are all melting pots of academic excellence in the fields of engineering sciences, management and architecture, of course. But a networked society has no use for vertical specialists. For those who aspire to play the role of decision-maker, manager, engineer or creator in tomorrow’s world, the horizontal understanding of problems is becoming the norm; an obligation to think wide and act right.
The Centrale-Audencia-Ensa Nantes Alliance is a response to complexity, a unique and ambitious experiment to counter the intellectual cramp that could logically seize future decision-makers confronted with a system of connected changes.
It has already produced some remarkable reactions, as you will see – in terms of educational innovation, collaborative projects between students, answers to societal questions, collaborative economy – and there is no doubt that it will produce others.
But to say today what it will be in five years would have no meaning and would be contrary to the very philosophy that prevailed at its creation.
The Centrale-Audencia-Ensa Nantes Alliance is a dynamic structure in perpetual movement that will give our students the ability to adapt, remain flexible and be confident. They will have the means to conceive action in its various dimensions thanks to a certain overarching vision and an intellectual capital enriched with new experiences and friendships outside their speciality.
That is its only purpose and our sole ambition; and we shall not forsake it.