Highlights from DARE EllesVMH, a special event to improve gender balance in top management positions
LVMH
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The DARE EllesVMH event brought together 60 intrapreneurs from LVMH and its Maisons, selected from nearly 750 candidates to find innovative solutions to achieve gender balance in top management positions at LVMH by 2020. A look at some of the highlights from three intensive days of co-creation at H-Farm, an entrepreneurial campus near Venice, Italy.
Blending open innovation and professional development, the DARE LVMH program – Disrupt, Act, Risk to be an Entrepreneur – challenges intrapreneurs from the Group to transform new ideas into concrete projects. The latest edition, “DARE EllesVMH”, integrated two founding initiatives for the LVMH Group, DARE LVMH and the EllesVMH program, which has supported the professional growth of women in all positions and at all levels of the organization for more than a decade.
Beyond the event, DARE EllesVMH opens up new perspectives for the Group and its Maisons, says Pascal Jouvin, Director of LVMH House & Executive Development: “At LVMH we believe that gender diversity brings different perspectives and different behaviors, and different ways of understanding clients. This lets us imagine the future of LVMH and the future of our Maisons.”
For three days, LVMH applied the collective intelligence of 60 international talents to address the challenge of gender parity, a key priority for the Group. “The reason gender equality is important is obvious,” says Caroline, a participant from Christian Dior Couture. “If we lose our talented women, we lose an important component in our value creation.”
They dared for #EllesVMH! Congrats to all participants. The jury will soon announce the 3 winning projects but you all helped us today to push the boundaries for gender representativeness!#DARELVMH #LVMHtalents #8mars #iwd pic.twitter.com/pYDpM67aIh
— LVMH (@LVMH) March 8, 2018
Assisted by 12 mentors, senior executives from LVMH Maisons and entrepreneurs from outside the Group, the 12 teams, representing a wide range of skillsets, challenged their ideas and applied a methodology inspired by the startup model. Lively discussions, sharing of expertise and discovery all shaped this experience, summed up by Renato, a participant from Loro Piana: “DARE EllesVMH let me see that the question of gender balance can be treated differently with a disruptive approach. Pascale Lepoivre, CEO of Loewe and one of the mentors, added: “DARE EllesVMH was a tremendously inspiring experience. I was really impressed by the energy and passion the groups brought to their projects.”
With DARE EllesVMH, LVMH reaffirms its values of creativity, innovation, excellence and entrepreneurial spirit, applying them to build the future of the Group. The three projects selected will now enter the development phase. The winning teams will receive support and mentoring to transform their ideas into concrete initiatives.
“DARE is concrete proof that talent development can be supported by disruptive approaches that encourage our teams to dare to go further, resonating perfectly with the founding values of LVMH. This is even more essential when, as is the case with DARE EllesVMH, we are addressing an issue as fundamental as gender equality,” says Chantal Gaemperle, Group EVP Human Resources & Synergies, LVMH.