Jain, a Dean Emeritus at Northwestern University's prestigious Kellogg School of Management, will succeed J Frank Brown, who will step down in 2011.
Among Jain's responsibilities would be to look for opportunities to build INSEAD programmes in China and India as the business school focuses on growing its global presence and attracting more students from the developing countries.
"I am pleased that someone of Dipak Jain's calibre and values will continue to develop the school. The Board chose Dipak Jain to lead INSEAD into what is fast becoming a new global economic climate – one in which emerging markets are growing at a faster rate than the industrialised mature economies of Europe and North America.
In this environment we need to teach solid business and management skills while being innovative, entrepreneurial and instilling a culture of true sustainability," Chairman of the INSEAD Board Franz Humer said.
Jain, a native of Assam, will be introduced at INSEAD's Leadership Summit Asia 2010 to be held on November 12 in Singapore and will assume his duties as Dean in March 2011.
Jain, who was Kellogg's Dean from 2001-2009, is part of a growing list of Indian-origin academicians assuming leading roles at foreign universities.
Harvard Business School got its first Indian-origin Dean Nitin Nohria this year while University of Chicago's Booth School of Business too named Stanford University professor Sunil Kumar as its new Dean in July this year.
At Kellogg, Jain was the Sandy and Morton Goldman Professor in Entrepreneurial Studies and Professor of Marketing, a Chair he held since 1994.
He stepped down from his Kellogg dean post last summer but remained a professor.
A graduate of Guwahati University, the Assam-native received a Masters in management science and a PhD in marketing from the University of Texas at Dallas.
"What attracts me to INSEAD is that it is a true global brand in management education, one with enduring passion and inspired vision.
The values that drive INSEAD — including a deep respect for the power of diversity; a desire to link theory and practise to address important managerial issues; and an entrepreneurial approach to teaching and research — are ideal to meet the opportunities and challenges facing organisations in the coming years," Jain said.
Jain is currently Executive Editor of the Sasin Journal of Management (Thailand) and a member of the Editorial Board of the Asian Journal of Marketing (Singapore).
Apart from teaching, Jain is currently involved creating a business school in Bangladesh that will focus on entrepreneurship and small business management for women from countries such as Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
The second project he is working on is to start a full-fledged university in Angola.
"Management education must include social and environmental elements of the ecosystem," Jain said.
"For global prosperity and peace to come in the world, we have to target women. These are all values that are central to INSEAD, which has always had a global approach, has emphasised diversity in its faculty, staff, and student body, and strives for innovation backed by intensive research."
A noted scholar in marketing and entrepreneurship, Jain has published about 60 articles in scholarly and professional journals and three books.
He has presented and lectured at universities throughout the world and is the recipient of numerous awards for teaching and scholarship.
He has been a member of review committees at Harvard, UCLA, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Northwestern.
He serves on international advisory boards and councils such as the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration (Chulalongkorn University), the Carey Business School (Johns Hopkins) and American University in Cairo.
Member of the American Marketing Association and The Institute of Management Sciences, Jain has consulted with companies such as IBM, AT&T, Nestle, Boeing, Accenture, Thompson Electronics and American Express.
Established in 1957, INSEAD - 'the Business School for the World' - has campuses in Europe (France), Asia (Singapore) and in the Middle East (Abu Dhabi), a research centre in Israel and an office in New York. Based in Europe, it is one of the world’s leading and largest graduate business schools and research institution.