Chief Instinctual Officer Wanted

April 15, 2008, Jouy-en Josas, France—Twenty minutes south of Paris, in the beautiful Bièvres River valley not far from the Chateau de Versailles, a sparkling slate grey Citroën C6 slows down at the entrance gate of HEC, Europe's leading business school. The luxury sedan moves through the open gate and parks in front of the conference hall. Jean René Fourtou gets out of the car and proceeds swiftly to the auditorium, where he is going to tell an unusual story to two hundred MBA students from fifty-five countries around the world.2

Six years earlier, Fourtou, then sixty-three, had retired after sixteen years as CEO of Rhône Poulenc, the global pharmaceutical company. His only plan in life was a Mediterranean sailing vacation with his family. But first he had dinner with two old friends: Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, former president of France, and Claude Bébéar, founder of insurance giant AXA, as of 2010 the ninth largest company in the world.3