In the beginning, the focus was on providing training and professional development for bankers in Switzerland. Founder Professor Francis Kahn was approached by leading Swiss banks to create an intensive course for bank employees. The banks paid for the courses and the participants had to achieve a passing grade and owed their employers two years of fidelity after attaining their diploma.

In the early 2000s, the school developed new iterations of its offering and public persona, up until 2009 when the name Geneva Business School was made official. A focus on quality quickly led to a number of international accreditations to offer recognized degrees to its students. Over the course of the next decade, the structure of the school evolved to include undergraduate students, rising to meet the demands of a global business environment.

Professor Kahn decided to expand the business model further with his associates where each campus would be a niche institution hosting around 200 students, working with professionally active faculty members in major multinationals of prominent cities throughout Europe and other economically strong and diverse emerging business communities.

Soon, he partnered with other schools across the globe, and developed them according to the Geneva Business School model in Spain, UAE, and Myanmar.