Centre for Unframed Thinking (CUT)

The Centre for Unframed Thinking (CUT) is an initiative of Rennes School of Business (Rennes SB) and its partners to foster interdisciplinary research at the highest international level. It contributes to the global effort to analyze the many complex issues raised by the current crises. CUT is the first business school-based Institute for Advanced Study. Launched in March 2022 by Rennes School of Business, it’s interdisciplinary and intersectoral, also involving partners and fellows from the corporate and institutional spheres.

CUT is entirely devoted to the incubation of research projects on the ongoing transitions. To this end, it counts on a cohort of world leading academic senior fellows and distinguished personalities from relevant socioeconomic areas.

The CUT is the world’s first Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) based in a business school. 

It is innovative in several ways:

• It places ecology (and other life sciences), environmental and energy sciences, and technology studies at the heart of its scientific program. This choice is informed by the nature of the transitions underway and the associated strategic trends (e.g., decarbonization and digitization). This does not mean that the role of the social sciences and humanities will be minimized, as they will be mobilized to develop much-needed interdisciplinary research on management, leadership, learning, public policy, ethics, economic development, and geopolitics.
• It welcomes practitioners and non-academics with relevant experience from national and international organizations, the public and private sectors, and the socio-economic spheres involved in the processes at hand. The CUT is also open to high-level independent intellectuals and avant-garde artists working on issues compatible with its (broad) agenda.
• One of the particularities of the CUT as an institute of advanced studies is that it only hosts fellows in residence for relatively short periods of time, generally two weeks and no more than three months, in order to be as close as possible to the dynamics of the research projects underway at Rennes SB and its partners. Senior fellows, generally world-renowned researchers or senior managers, are appointed for three years and are involved in the incubation and development of long-term research projects at Rennes SB and with its partners.