PLATO Business School (PLATO NL, PLATO Edu or PBS) is a private business school in The Netherlands. Founded mid-1990s it targeted at educate small and medium enterprises (SMES) and is now known as a tried and tested Management Development programme (MD) for owner managers of SMES (leadership and business development). The original PLATO formula is from Belgium descending from the course of action of dr Paul Janssen, one of the 20th century's most innovative and inspiring scientists.

Paul Janssen studied physics, biology and chemistry at the Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix in Namur (Belgium). Throughout his lifetime, he received many awards, including 5 honorary professorships and 22 honorary doctorates. Being the founder of Janssen Pharmaceutica, a company with over 20,000 employees (now part of Johnson & Johnson), he was a pharmaceutical MD and above all entrepreneur – and as an entrepreneur he helped a lot of co-entrepreneurs: being the owner manager of a successful large company, he initiated a learning community for SME owner managers to learn from one another and these communities in fact were coached by large companies (his company). What he offered to SME owner managers was a business support forum with access to the expertise and knowledge of large companies. For PLATO large companies united in a Triple Helix framework (Industry-University-Government) to foster a knowledge-based management development tool for economic growth.

The PLATO MD Programme is now part of a dynamic European wide network, with over 100,000 participating SME companies and over 600 large companies (‘parent companies’) in a.o. Belgium, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Slovenia, France, Spain, England, Finland and The Netherlands. In The Netherlands after 20 years the MD programme has transitioned into a full business school: PLATO Business School™.