Global Family Business Center

Sameh Abadir is a Professor of Leadership and Negotiation at IMD. Abadir's fields of expertise are negotiation, conflict management, crisis management, and leadership. Before his academic career, he served in the Egyptian Special Forces and was an executive at a large multinational, and his military and corporate experience brings a unique perspective to his teaching.

Abadir says everything is subject to negotiation in the modern business world, so negotiation skills are vital – but managers often fall into some common traps. These include being overoptimistic, overconfident, or arrogant, and going into negotiations believing that you have to reach a deal. People who assume they have to close a deal set themselves up for a poor deal, he argues. Another mistake is to think that negotiation is a zero-sum game in which one side wins and the other loses, which misses the point that the process is about increasing the size of the pie and can therefore have a win-win outcome. Some negotiators also make the error of believing that the other party is out to get them, whereas both sides are quite reasonably looking to create and capture value.

In crisis management situations, leaders need a team with a range of skills, including not just people who are innately smart but also those who have made the behavioral choice to be emotionally smart by being kind and humble. In crisis negotiations, he says, you need a team that’s able to combine being confident, humble, smart, and kind, all at the same time.

Abadir believes the role of a leader has changed fundamentally, and that those who fail to grasp this are likely to be under the erroneous illusion that they are in control. Vertical hierarchical organizational structures have given way to complex systems in which people are working in teams in different locations around the globe and communicating in a language that is not their mother tongue, so the old way of giving orders on the shop floor has gone. Leaders therefore have to accept that they cannot control everything and find a new way of managing.

Abadir advises companies on negotiations and runs negotiation workshops in English, French and Arabic. He has recently directed custom programs for Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, Jerónimo Martins, ArcelorMittal, and Merck, and is Co-Director of IMD's signature Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP) and Negotiating for Value Creation (NVC) open programs.

He is also Chairman of his family business, which is based in Egypt with operations across the Middle East and Africa.

Prior to joining IMD in 2018, he was an Adjunct Professor at INSEAD for 15 years. He was previously an executive at Sodexo, one of the world's largest multinational corporations, and served in the Egyptian Special Forces between 1985 and 1988.

Selected publications

Toolkit for strategic leading through a crisis (I by IMD, 2022)

Questions to ask as you prepare to negotiate a deal (I by IMD, 2022)

Negotiation techniques for a global dealmaking frenzy (I by IMD, 2021)

The two roles leaders must play in a crisis (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)

The Innovative Business School: Mentoring Today’s Leaders for Tomorrow’s Global Challenges (Routledge, 2020)

From safety, through sustainability to stewardship (FFI Practitioner, 2020)

Bicultural managers leading multicultural teams (International Journal of Teaching and Case Studies, 2020)

e-Negotiations: Networking and Cross-Cultural Business Transactions (Routledge, 2012)

Recognition

INSEAD Best Program Director award (2018)

INSEAD Best Professor award (2018)

Education

MBA

Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po)

PhD (Economics)

University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Ben Bryant is a Professor of Leadership and Organization at IMD in Lausanne and the director of the IMD CEO Learning Center. He holds the Kristian Gerhard Jebsen Chair for Responsible Leadership. Ben is a highly skilled educator, executive team coach, and speaker. He works with a wide range of CEOs and their executive teams and presents his research at many leading academic institutions.

Through IMD’s CEO Learning Center, Ben leads an experienced faculty team that creates learning events for senior executives in trusting environments. The Center leverages the collective and individual potential of leaders by helping them to learn new ways of working together and to unlearn unhelpful patterns of beliefs and behaviors.

For more than 20 years, Ben has accumulated extensive experience in the facilitation and development of senior executives at IMD Lausanne, London Business School, and the Australian Graduate School of Management. He has worked globally in Europe, the US, Asia and Australia for a wide range of leading companies including Oracle, LVMH, Daimler, Maersk, Adecco, Mars, British Telecom, GlaxoSmithKline, Zurich Financial Services, Standard Chartered Bank, Emirates Airlines, Mahindra, and Danish Broadcasting. He has also worked closely with numerous smaller entrepreneurial businesses.

Ben’s models and frameworks of leadership have been used in the development of top teams, senior and mid-level executives, and in the development of strategy, execution and change. His research into cultures of innovation has been used to guide organizations to generate new sources of value creation.

Ben frequently works with senior teams to help them build a climate of trust, openness, challenge and commitment. He is passionate about helping managers to reduce boundaries created by functional silos and national borders and to manage conflict and tension. His research also focuses on the reflective capabilities and the “mindfulness” of leaders in complex organizations and the capacity of leaders to to learn from experience and context.

Ben has a PhD in Organizational Change from the University of London (London Business School) as well as an MBA from the University of NSW and undergraduate degrees and diplomas in Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, History of Education, French Language Literature and Culture, Music, and the Humanities..

Didier Cossin works with owners, boards, and senior leaders to help them improve organizational performance through best-in-class governance and decision making. He is the Founder and Director of the IMD Global Board Center and also holds the UBS Chair in Banking and Finance at IMD.

Cossin is the originator of the Four Pillars of Board Effectiveness methodology and an advocate of stewardship: the idea that leaders should aim to deliver positive long-term social and economic impact. More recently, he has turned his attention to the governance of investments, including how ESG can be integrated in the investment process all the way through to asset allocations and not only in asset selection and engagement.

The IMD Global Board Center aims to support long-term organizational success through a strong board and brings together world-class thought leadership and global best practices to help boards reach their full potential.

Cossin and his team work on real-world issues for boards to improve their performance and play a strategic role in their company’s success. The Center supports board members by providing unique and pertinent resources and tools to address current boardroom issues such as risk and opportunity optimization, investment selection, and strategy design, and works with boards to help improve board dynamics and effectiveness.

The Center also offers a combination of open enrollment and custom programs aimed at empowering board members and enhancing board performance, and Cossin is Director of its High Performance Boards program, Board Practice Series (BPS), and Board Director Diploma.

Cossin defines governance as the art of decision making at the top of organizations and says better-governed companies outperform their peers because they are better protected against downside risks and more agile and able to profit from upside opportunities. 

He favors an adaptive and interactive approach to find distinctive solutions for organizations based on the social, geopolitical, technological, and economic transformations in different regions of the world. Corporate boards also need to factor in geopolitical risks, social evolution, and the long-term instability of the world, which is something they often do not give sufficient thought to, he says.

His clinical work has enabled him to identify a number of essential elements for successful governance, which he calls the Four Pillars of Board Effectiveness. These are:

·        People quality, diversity, focus and dedication

·        Information architecture – internal and external, formal and informal

·        Structures and processes

·        Group dynamics and board culture

Cossin has worked as an advisor and executive teacher to supranational organizations (United Nations, European Central Bank, World Bank, IFC, International Olympic Committee) and sovereign wealth funds and state investors (PIF in Saudi Arabia, ADQ in Abu Dhabi, Temasek in Singapore), as well as ministries, central banks, wealthy families, and the boards or executive committees of corporations, financial institutions, and funds in Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East. He also advises non-profit organizations such as the Red Cross and IUCN (the International Union for Conservation of Nature) on governance. He is currently Senior Advisor in Governance to UNICEF and to the International Organization for Standardization.

He is the author of two books on governance (Inspiring Stewardship and High Performance Boards) and has published articles in leading journals such as Management Science, the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of Computational Finance, and MIT Sloan Management Review. He is also a columnist for CEOWORLD magazine.

Cossin is President of the Stewardship Institute, whose goal is to support projects with positive social impact through ESG research and advocacy, and Chairman of BERG Capital Management, which manages investment processes for large asset owners using governance principles. He is also a member of the American Finance Association, the Eastern Finance Association, and the European Finance Association.

Before joining IMD, he was Professor of Finance at HEC Lausanne. He previously taught at Harvard University, where he obtained two Derek Bok Awards for excellence in teaching and was a visiting professor at the University of California and INSEAD.

Selected publications

High Performance Boards: Improving and Energizing your Governance (John Wiley and Sons, 2020)

Inspiring Stewardship (John Wiley and Sons, 2016)

How to reconcile your shareholders with other stakeholders (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)

How strategic is your board? (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2014)

Credit risk in a network economy (Management Science, 2007)

Recognition

ECCH Case Award winner (2010)

International Business & Economics Research Journal Best Paper Award (1998)

ANBAR Citation of Excellence with Highest Quality Rating

Harvard University Derek Bok awards for excellence in teaching (1988 and 1989)

Education

MA (Social Sciences)

ENS (rue d’Ulm), Paris

MSc (Economics)

Sorbonne University, Paris

Diplôme d'études approfondies (MPhil) (Mathematical Economics)

EHESS-ENSAE, Paris

Fulbright Scholar

Department of Economics, MIT

PhD (Business Economics)

Harvard Business School

Alfredo De Massis is an award-winning expert in the management and governance of family enterprises. His research has advanced understanding of how family business leaders balance economic and non-economic goals in strategic decision making and manage the paradox of tradition and innovation. At IMD he provides intellectual contributions by working on collaboration and scientific advisory activities within the Wild Group Chair in Family Business.

De Massis is one of the world's leading family business academics. In February 2022 he was included in Family Capital’s 100 Family Business Influencers list for his thought leadership in the family business field. In 2020 he was ranked as the most influential and productive author of the decade in the family business research field in a bibliometric study published in the European Journal of Family Business, and in 2015 Family Capital named him as one of the world’s 25 star family business professors.

His research focuses on the management, governance and behavioral aspects of family enterprises and how to ensure their prosperity across generations. His work examines how they align economic goals with other objectives such as maintaining family harmony and control of the business, creating jobs for the next generation, succession planning, and nurturing the reputation of the family in its community. He shows that successful family firms excel at leveraging their tradition, history, and heritage as strategic resources to enable innovation.

He also works closely with large and small businesses in several countries to help them build rigorous and reliable knowledge to promote long-term prosperity across generations. He recently helped companies and institutions including the UK government to address the new challenges that COVID-19 created for family firms, such as the need for rapid and unexpected succession, the dehumanization of relationships due to remote working, the effects of emotional vulnerabilities, and the salience of patrimonial and liquidity issues for families in business.

De Massis' prolific writings include seven books, notably the Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for Family Business and Family Business Studies: An Annotated Bibliography, and more than 150 articles in leading academic and professional journals, including Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Academy of Management Perspectives, California Management Review, Family Business Review, Small Business Economics, Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Academy of Management Learning & Education, Research Policy and Global Strategy Journal.

Due to its economic and practical relevance, his research has been featured in numerous media outlets including the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, Il Sole 24 Ore, and RAI. He is also an in-demand public speaker and is regularly invited to give keynote speeches at conferences, lectures to professional and academic audiences, and media interviews.

He also serves as Chairman of the Scientific Board and member of the steering committee of FA.B.R.I., [AD1] a non-profit association dedicated to Italian family enterprises, as Co-Director and Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the Observatory on Italian Family Offices, and as member of the Scientific Board of the Italian Family Officer Association (AIFO). In addition, he has been Chair of the Strategic Interest Group on Family Business Research at the European Academy of Management (EURAM) and is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Institute for Family Business (IFB). He was previously Chairman of the European Leadership Council and a member of the Global Board of the STEP Project for Family Enterprising founded by Babson College.

In addition to his role at IMD, De Massis remains Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Business at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano in Italy, where he founded the Unibz Centre for Family Business Management, and he continues to support family business research projects at Lancaster University Management School’s Centre for Family Business in the UK, which he previously directed. He formerly served as a professor at the University of Bergamo, where he co-founded the Center for Young and Family Enterprise.

He is also Editor of Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice and Associate Editor of Family Business Review, two prestigious and influential journals in the field of family business, and Editor of FamilyBusiness.org, a US social media platform dedicated to sharing learning resources with family business practitioners.

He serves on the editorial boards of Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Management Studies, and Journal of Family Business Strategy, and has been guest editor of more than 20 leading journals’ special issues on family business topics.

Before embarking on his academic career, De Massis worked as a manager for SCS Consulting, a strategy consultant at Accenture, and as a financial analyst at the Italian Stock Exchange.

Selected publications

Are narcissistic CEOs good or bad for family firm innovation? (Human Relations, 2022)

Mining the past: History scripting strategies and competitive advantage in a family business (Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, 2022)

Entrepreneurial by design: How organizational design affects family and nonfamily firms’ opportunity exploitation (Journal of Management Studies, 2020)

Managing the tradition and innovation paradox in family firms: A family imprinting perspective (Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, 2019)

Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for Family Business (Edward Elgar, 2020)

Entrepreneurial orientation and innovation in family SMEs: Unveiling the (actual) impact of the Board of Directors (Journal of Business Venturing, 2018)

Financial wealth, socioemotional wealth and IPO underpricing in family firms: A two-stage gamble model (Academy of Management Journal, 2018)

Innovation through tradition: Lessons from innovative family businesses and directions for future research (Academy of Management Perspectives, 2016)

Recognition

Named on Family Capital’s 100 Family Business Influencers list (2022)

Ranked as most influential and productive family business author of the decade (2020)

Named by Family Capital as one of the world’s 25 star family business professors (2015)

Education

Master of Science (Management Engineering)

Politecnico di Milano

PhD (Management, Economics, and Industrial Engineering)

Politecnico di Milano

Stéphane Garelli is Professor Emeritus of World Competitiveness at IMD and Professor at the University of Lausanne.

He has founded the IMD World Competitiveness Centre and has pioneered research in this field for 30 years.

Professor Garelli is closely connected to the world of business. He is, among others, Chairman of the Board of Directors of "Le Temps", the leading French language Swiss newspaper. He was formerly Chairman of the Board of the Sandoz Financial and Banking Holding, and member of the board of the Banque Edouard Constant.

Professor Garelli was the Managing Director of the World Economic Forum and of the Davos Symposium for many years. For twelve years he was also permanent senior adviser to the European management of Hewlett-Packard.

He is a member of a number of institutes, such as: China Enterprise Management Association, Board of the ‘Fondation Jean Monet pour l'Europe’, The Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences, the Mexican Council for Competitiveness, etc. and an advisory committee member of the Thai Management Association. He is also a member of the International Olympic Committee commission on Sustainability and Legacy

He is the author of numerous publications on competitiveness and global business, and he published his best-selling book "Top Class Competitors - How Nations, Firms and Individuals Succeed in the New World of Competitiveness" with Wiley. His latest book in French is: “Etes-vous un tigre, un chat ou un dinosaure’, chez Slatkine, Genève.

He was a member of the Constitutional Assembly of his local state - Vaud, Switzerland from 1999 to 2002.

Stéphane Garelli holds a PhD in economics from the University of Lausanne.

As a former Olympic finalist, award-winning writer, executive coach, and speaker with more than 20 years of corporate experience with large multinationals, Susan Goldsworthy brings knowledge from the fields of sport, business and neuroscience to her leadership development work. She focuses on how leadership needs to change in an increasingly uncertain world, working with people and companies to turn knowledge into behavior to create the conditions for healthy high performance.

Goldsworthy believes that our current way of working and living is unsustainable – not only for ourselves, but for other species that share our planet – so the need for change with new narratives is critical. This includes a change in the style and type of leadership of organizations. No one person has all the answers, so the model of "power over" needs to be replaced by one of "power with" to cultivate conditions where people can flourish and co-create solutions to the challenges organizations face. This means uniting and working across departments, industries, cultures, and age groups, with a focus on inclusivity and diversity.

Goldsworthy has worked at senior management level in both publicly and privately owned companies in Japan, America and Europe, and has extensive experience in leading global communications, culture, brand management and diversity programs. She has also run her own successful business in leadership development, executive coaching and change communications for more than a decade. She is therefore able to offer expert guidance to individuals, teams, and companies on how organizations can develop clear, consistent, and credible narratives and instill a culture of sustainable high performance.

Notably, she has a long list of postgraduate qualifications and was one of the first people in the world to be awarded an Executive Masters in the Neuroscience of Leadership. Meanwhile, her doctoral research with Hult Ashridge International Business School explored how leaders have a responsibility to co-create conditions for hope and agency in the current world context. As a highly qualified C-suite executive coach, she is also trained in the use of a number of psychometric assessment tools.

Before embarking on her studies, Goldsworthy had a successful international swimming career during which she was an Olympic finalist, medal winner at the European Championships and Commonwealth Games and British record holder for five years.

She is co-author of three award-winning books. The recently released Where the Wild Things Were is a story for all ages about leadership, responsibility, hope and biodiversity loss, and won an Axiom Business Book Awards Bronze Medal in 2020. Meanwhile, Care to Dare: Unleashing Astonishing Potential through Secure Base Leadership, written with Duncan Coombe and George Kohlrieser in 2012, and Choosing Change: How Leaders and Organizations Drive Results One Person at a Time, co-authored with Walter McFarland in 2013, were both named among Soundview’s best business books of the year and won Axiom Business Book Award Silver Medals.

Goldsworthy works with a number of multinational clients across a wide range of industries. Her work with aviation technology group SITA won gold in the Excellence in Executive Education category of the 2021 Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards. The category is specifically for executive education providers delivering targeted programs for specific clients. Goldsworthy and her team were honored for their work on the SITA 5.0 Leadership Journey, an IMD custom program for the company's top 200 executives.

In addition, she is Associate Director of IMD's CLEAR (Cultivating leadership Energy through Awareness and Reflection) senior leadership program and Co-Director of the new IMD Executive Coaching Certificate.

She is a fellow of the Institute of Data & Marketing, a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, and the International Coaching Federation.

Selected publications

Can we have two golds? (Today's Manager, 2021)

Recovery: The forgotten aspect of high performance (Today's Manager, 2021)

Jan Van Hasenbroek: A 'red-pencil' leader at a crossroads (IMD, 2020)

Where the Wild Things Were (IMD, 2019)

Choosing Change: How Leaders and Organizations Drive Results One Person at a Time (McGraw Hill, 2013)

Care to Dare: Unleashing Astonishing Potential through Secure Base Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2012)

Recognition

Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards gold medal for Excellence in Executive Education (2021)

Axiom Business Book Awards bronze medal winner (2020)

Axiom Business Book Awards double silver medal winner (2014)

Named on Soundview best business books of the year list (2013 and 2014)

Education

BA (Hons) (Journalism and Industrial Psychology)

San Diego State University

MSc (Consulting and Coaching for Change)

HEC/University of Oxford

Executive Masters (Neuroscience of Leadership)

Middlesex University/NeuroLeadership Institute

PhD (Organizational Change)

Ashridge Hult International Business School

Jennifer Jordan is a social psychologist and a digital transformation and business ethics expert. Her teaching, research and consulting focus on ethics, digital leadership, influence and power. In 2019 she was named by Poets&Quants as one of the world’s leading business school professors under 40.

Jordan says leaders in today’s world are faced with massive changes that are disrupting organizations’ business models and society more generally, such as digitalization, the COVID-19 pandemic, and pressures to decarbonize and meet new ESG standards. They therefore have to find ways to manage uncertainty, while simultaneously leading transformations.

She believes the best approach is to create psychological safety by fostering an experimental mindset and empowering others, so that the value of team diversity is captured and responsibility is shared.

Leaders need to constantly “unlearn” old ways of doing things and “relearn” new behaviors in order to adapt to the perpetual change and disruption of today’s world, but at the same time they should also identify previous approaches that remain relevant, to ensure that they do not “throw out the leadership baby with the organizational bathwater” as they manage the transformation of their organizations, she says.

Jordan has received specialized training and certifications in lie and truthfulness detection, as well as in conflict resolution within organizations, and she has delivered custom programs and consultancy services for a wide range of companies, including Barilla, KONE, Shell, DSM, Cisco, Loomis, Pfizer, Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Rolls Royce, Zurich Insurance, Honda, Nexthink, UBS, Siemens, Electrolux and AIA Insurance.

At IMD, she is Director of the Leadership Skills for the Digital Age (LSDA), Leading in the Digital Age (LDA) and Leadership Essentials (LE) open programs, and she directs the leadership stream for the MBA program.

Her work has appeared in numerous scientific journals including Administrative Science Quarterly, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Management, Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, Psychological Science, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Applied Social Psychology and Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

She is also a member of the editorial boards of the journals Leadership Quarterly and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

When Poets&Quants included her on its ‘Best 40 under 40’ list in 2019, it said her research was in such demand that she had been cited almost 1,500 times by other academics.

She has also had several articles published in Harvard Business Review, and her work has been cited in mainstream publications, from The New York Times to Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant.

She co-edited one of the seminal scientific books on wisdom, Handbook of Wisdom: Psychological Perspectives, and was a contributor to the books Leadership at the Crossroads: Psychology and Leadership and The Handbook of Organizational and Managerial Wisdom.

Before joining IMD in 2016, Jordan was Associate Professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and a post-doctoral fellow at the Kellogg School of Management and Tuck School of Business in the United States. She served as a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin during her doctoral research.

Selected publications

Finding the right balance – and flexibility – in your leadership style (Harvard Business Review, 2022)

How shadow boards bridge generational divides (Harvard Business Review, 2022)

Every leader needs to navigate these 7 tensions (Harvard Business Review, 2020)

Antecedents of leaders’ power sharing: The roles of power instability and distrust (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2020)

Why you should create a “shadow board” of younger employees (Harvard Business Review, 2019)

Reaching the top and avoiding the bottom: How ranking motivates unethical intentions and behavior (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2016)

Someone to look up to: Executive-follower ethical reasoning and perceptions of ethical leadership (Journal of Management, 2013)

Striving for the moral self: The effects of recalling past moral actions on future moral behavior (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2011)

Something to lose and nothing to gain: The role of stress in the interactive effect of power and stability on risk taking (Administrative Science Quarterly (2011)

Recognition

Named on Poets&Quants ‘Best 40 under 40’ list of leading business school professors (2019)

Nominated for Thinkers50 Radar list of management thinkers to watch in the year ahead (2019)

Education

BS (Psychology)

Arizona State University

MS (Psychology)

Yale University

MPhil

Yale University

PhD (Psychology)

Yale University

Benoît Leleux is recognized as a leading specialist in entrepreneurship, venture capital, private equity, and corporate venturing, particularly in emerging markets, and is the winner of numerous case writing awards in categories relating to these topics.

His recent research and case writing activities have focused on sustainability as a source of entrepreneurial opportunities, and how entrepreneurs incorporate values into their projects for greater impact, as well as novel forms of financing for early and late-stage opportunities, from search funds to affinity financing, and innovative business models for corporate venturing such as open accelerators, venture clienting and corporate VC partnering.

He is the author of Winning Sustainability Strategies: Finding Purpose, Driving Innovation and Executing Change, published in 2019, which serves as the conceptual framework for a five-week IMD online course, Winning Sustainability Strategies (WSS), which he directs. The program targets general managers and executives in charge of sustainability efforts, equipping them with the tools required to analyze their firms’ sustainability footprint, investigate their materiality matrix, design an impactful transformation gameplan, and follow it through with proper metrics and communication strategy. The program highlights how to build solid business cases for sustainability strategies as a prerequisite to gain traction and ultimately achieve impact. He is also Co-Director of the Foundations for Business Leadership (FBL) program.

Leleux has published several other books, including Private Equity 4.0: Reinventing Value Creation, Investing Private Capital in Emerging and Frontier Market SMEs[AD1] , Nurturing Science-Based Startups: An International Case Perspective, From Microfinance to Small Business Finance and A European Casebook on Entrepreneurship and New Ventures.

In addition, he is a world-leading case writer and has consistently been ranked among The Case Centre’s best-selling case authors in the world. He has authored more than 30 award-winning cases at the crossroads of entrepreneurship, venture financing, emerging markets, and family business, most recently “Lionheart Farms (Philippines) and the tree of life”, winner of the 2022 HEC Montreal CSR Challenge Case Writing Competition, “Brown-Forman: Nothing better in the market”, which won the 2021 EFMD Case Writing Award in the Family Business category, and “EcoAlf: Because there is no planet B”, winner of the prestigious 2020 John Molson MBA International Case Writing Competition.

He is also actively involved in numerous startups and venture capital and private equity funds as a board member, advisor or in other capacities.

Leleux has been at IMD since 1999, serving as Director of the MBA program from 2006 to 2008 and Director of Research and Development from 2004 to 2008. He was previously Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD and Zubillaga Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at Babson College, Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Prior to his academic career, he was the head of corporate venturing for a leading agribusiness conglomerate in Southeast Asia.

Selected publications

Lionheart Farms (Philippines) and the tree of life (IMD, 2022)

Brown-Forman: Nothing better in the market (IMD, 2021)

Ecoalf: Because there is no planet B (IMD, 2020)

Winning Sustainability Strategies: Finding Purpose, Driving Innovation and Executing Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

Private Equity 4.0: Reinventing Value Creation (John Wiley & Sons, 2015)

Investing Private Capital in Emerging and Frontier Market SMEs (IFC, 2009)

Nurturing Science-Based Startups: An International Case Perspective (Springer Verlag, 2008)

From Microfinance to Small Business Finance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

A European Casebook on Entrepreneurship and New Ventures (Prentice Hall, 1996).

Recognition

Winner of HEC Montreal CSR Challenge Case Writing Competition (2022)

Winner of EFMD Case Writing Competition Award (2021)

Named on Case Centre list of best-selling case authors (2015/16 to 2020/21)

John Molson MBA International Case Writing Competition winner (2020)

Education

MSc (Agricultural Engineering)

Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium

MEd (Natural Sciences)

Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium

MBA (International Management)

Virginia Tech

PhD (Corporate Finance and Venture Capital)

INSEAD

Jean-François Manzoni’s research, teaching, and consulting activities are focused on leadership, the development of high-performance organizations, and corporate governance. In recent years, he has been concentrating increasingly on ways to ensure leadership programs have lasting impact, particularly through the use of technology-mediated approaches.

At the organizational level, Manzoni studies the content of change (including the use of levers such as strategy, structure, and systems), the management of the change process, and the role of leaders therein. His work in this area has appeared in several books, articles, and over 30 cases – four of which received Case of the Year awards from the European Foundation for Management Development or the European Case Clearing House (now called the Case Centre). He also acted as content expert in the development of a ground-breaking computer-based change management simulation, the Change Pro Simulation®.

At an individual level, he studies how leaders can create a caring, high-performance work environment. This stream of research has led to several articles and a book entitled The Set-Up to Fail Syndrome: How Good Managers Cause Great People to Fail (with Jean-Louis Barsoux). The book, which builds on Manzoni’s and Barsoux’s initial Harvard Business Review article introducing the term “set-up-to-fail syndrome”, received two Book of the Year awards, and is discussed in undergraduate, MBA and executive development programs all over the world.

On the corporate governance side, Manzoni focuses on interpersonal dynamics within the boardroom, and between management and the board. His research examining the impact of interpersonal dynamics on increasingly diverse boards of directors received the Research Award on Leadership & Corporate Governance from the Association of Executive Search Consultants. A Fellow of the Singapore Institute of Directors, he currently serves on the board of Keppel Corporation, an international diversified group listed on the Singapore stock exchange (where he also chairs the nominations committee and is a member of the remuneration committee). He previously served on the Boards of AACSB International (the world’s largest business education alliance) and Singapore’s Civil Service College, among others.

Alongside these lifelong interests, Manzoni has also been increasingly interested in closing the growing managerial “knowing-doing gap”, i.e., the gap between what managers kind of know they should be doing and the extent to which they actually behave that way in practice. One aspect of this quest, accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis, has been exploring the role that technology can play in helping to design and deliver interventions that a) produce significant and lasting individual impact, and b) can be scaled effectively and efficiently to large numbers of individuals in order to build a real capability within the organization.

The recipient of several awards for excellence in teaching, Manzoni is Co-director of IMD’s signature program Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP) and teaches on the High Performance Leadership (HPL) open program and Executive MBA (EMBA) course.

He re-joined IMD in 2016, having already served on the IMD faculty between 2004 and 2010, when he was Professor of Leadership and Organizational Development and Director of the their Breakthrough Program for Senior Executives (BPSE).

He previously served on the faculty of INSEAD in Singapore and Fontainebleau, where he founded, and for four years directed, the PwC Research Initiative on High Performance Organizations. He later directed their Global Leadership Centre, supporting the their leadership-related coaching, teaching, and research activities throughout the world.

A citizen of Canada and France, Manzoni received his doctorate from Harvard Business School. He had earlier graduated from L’École des hautes études commerciales de Montréal and worked with Ernst and Young in Montreal before receiving an MBA from McGill University.

Manzoni is a frequent keynote speaker and discussion partner for business leaders, including through the IMD CEO Dialogue Series in which he holds frank and insightful discussions with CEOs of various organizations. He has also performed consulting, top management team support, and leadership development work for several international organizations, which has led him to work in more than 30 countries over the years.

He currently serves on a number of International Advisory Panels of industry bodies (e.g., Digital Switzerland), academic institutions (e.g., EHL Hospitality Business School) and corporations (e.g., Novartis Culture Leadership Advisory Board).

Selected publications

Striving for meaningful impact in and through management education: The IMD perspective (Global Focus, forthcoming)

Executive education post-pandemic: Reflections on the role of technology-mediated interactions going forward, in Executive Education after the Pandemic: A Vision for the Future (Palgrave, 2022) pp. 245-256

Leading an (unusual) academic institution through a crisis: A personal reflection, in Business School Leadership and Crisis: Exit Planning (Cambridge University Press, 2022) pp. 311-330

Society needs to have the right conversations about the COVID-19 crisis (IMD, 2020)

The board-management relationship: How to achieve control and support (Singapore Institute of Directors Bulletin, 2017)

To get more feedback, act more coachable (Harvard Business Review, 2016)

Building and nurturing a high performance – high integrity corporate culture, in Performance Measurement and Management Control: Advancing Global Practice (Emerald, 2012) pp. 41-63

Widening the lens: The challenges of leveraging boardroom diversity (Rotman Magazine, 2011)

The Set-Up-To-Fail Syndrome: Overcoming the Undertow of Expectations (Harvard Business School Press, 2007)

A better way to deliver bad news (Harvard Business Review, 2002)

Implementing corporate strategy: from “tableaux de bord” to balanced scorecards (European Management Journal, 1998)

The set-up to fail syndrome: How bosses create their own poor performers (Harvard Business Review, 1998)

Selected Awards

Manzoni has received multiple awards for teaching and program direction, including:

Research Award on Leadership & Corporate Governance from the Association of Executive Search Consultants (2011)

ECCH Case of the Year Award, category Strategy and General Management (2007)

Book of the Year Awards for The Set-up-to-Fail Syndrome from the Society for Human Resource Management and HR.com

EFMD Case of the Year Awards in the categories Corporate Coaching (2004), Change Management (1998) and Public Sector Management (1998)

ANBAR Citation of Excellence for Understanding Organizational Dynamics of IT-Enabled Change: A Multimedia Simulation Approach (Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 14. No. 3).

Education

BBA

HEC Montréal

MBA

McGill University, Montreal

DBA

Harvard Business School

Schwass teaches family business and entrepreneurship with a focus on generational and owner-related issues. He has lectured and conducted family business programs around the globe and has advised many leading global family businesses.

Prior to joining IMD, he was managing director of several companies which were part of his own family’s business. He has led the startup of several international businesses as well as managing a number of industrial manufacturing businesses in Australia and the US. He has also managed in international trading business in Switzerland.

Educated in Germany, France, and Switzerland, Schwass attended graduate studies at Technische Universität Berlin and Université de Fribourg where he obtained a Lic rer pol and a Dr rer pol.

His 2005 book, Wise Growth Strategies in Leading Family Businesses, has been translated into German, Spanish, Mandarin, and Japanese. He is the lead author of the 2010 book Wise Wealth, which was published in Mandarin three years later, and of the 2016 book Wise Family Business, Family Identity Steering Brand Success.

Schwass directed the Annual Distinguished Family Business Award for 10 years. He also spent 10 years as Executive Director of the Family Business Network (FBN) and served on their board until 2010.

Paul Strebel works with boards of directors and top management teams as an educator and advisor on strategic vision and the resolution of boardroom conflicts. In addition to personal experience as a board director, he has facilitated interactive workshops and seminars on best in-class boards and strategic breakthroughs for multinationals in Europe, U.S., South Africa, the Middle East and S.E. Asia.

He is the originator of several managerial frameworks:

Outpacing Business Strategies (developed together with Xavier Gilbert): Companies shouldn’t opt exclusively for low delivered cost, or high perceived value, but rather deploy them in sequence to drive the industry’s evolution and beat the competition. 

Employee Compacts: To make organizational change effective, management must understand why employees resist change, take account of the forces of change and resistance and offer employees correspondingly tailored compacts.

Contingent Governance: Board directors are more effective when they are aware of the four basic roles of the board that reflect support and control, and how the board should shift focus between the roles to deal with internal and external challenges. 

Redefined Stakeholder Capitalism: Executives can reconcile shareholders with other stakeholders, by focusing rigorously on creating long-term shareholder value, based on win-win initiatives with value creating stakeholders, while avoiding the value-destroying traps and ESG risks associated with others.

Professor Strebel has twice received the Award for Research on Leadership from the Association of Executive Search Consultants and has won several case study awards from the European Foundation for Management Development. He has published articles in the MIT Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Long Range Planning, among numerous others and has contributed on governance issues to the business press.

Paul Strebel's books include, Breakpoints: How Managers Exploit Radical Business Change (Harvard Business School Press); The Change Pact: Building Commitment to Ongoing Change (FT Prentice Hall); Trajectory Management: Leading a Business over Time (Wiley); Smart Big Moves: The Story Behind Strategic Breakthroughs (FT Prentice Hall). He is the co-editor of IMD's guidebook on Mastering Executive Education: How to Combine Content with Context and Emotion (FT Prentice Hall)

Professor Strebel was IMD’s first Director of Research, held the Sandoz Family Foundation Chair in Strategic Change Management, sponsored the introduction of IMD’s Executive MBA program, directed several of IMD’s open and company-specific executive development programs, and developed the IMD online program, Strategic Thinking. 

Prior to joining IMEDE, one of the two founding institutes of IMD, he was Chairman of the Finance and Economics Group at the State University of New York in Binghamton, Director of the MBA Program at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and on the financial staff of W.R. Grace & Co. 

He was educated at the University of Cape Town where he was awarded a Master of Science degree for a thesis in nuclear chemistry, graduated from Columbia University in New York with an MBA specializing in finance, and received his doctorate with a dissertation in chemical physics from Princeton University.

Francisco Szekely is Adjunct Professor of Leadership and Sustainability at IMD.

His work contributes to the understanding of the interrelationships between the emergence of new social, economic and environmental trends as well as the development of long-term, sustainable business strategies. His research explores how companies can include sustainability as a key element of their business strategy; the link between sustainability and business performance; high performance leadership; the development of the leadership required by organizations to sustain long-term business performance over time, as well as the development and expectations of generations “Y" and "Next."

Prior to joining IMD, Professor Szekely served on the faculties of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, MIT, the International Academy of the Environment in Geneva, Switzerland and the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin, Germany where he taught sustainable development and responsible leadership. Additionally, he has worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company managing clients in Mexico, the US and Holland and has served as a Deputy Minister of Environment and Natural Resources for the Mexican government. Most recently, Professor Szekely was Professor of Business Sustainability and Director of the Center for Responsible Business and Sustainability at the School of Management of the University of Texas at Dallas.

He is the author of seven books, numerous articles and many case studies and is the recipient of the “2011 International Award on the Hot Topic Case Writing” from the European Case Clearing House (ECCH). His works have been published in the European Management Journal, Environmental Assessment Review (MIT), and other refereed journals.

Professor Szekely holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, an M.Sc in Engineering from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and an M.Sc in Technology & Human Affairs and a Ph.D in Environmental Sciences and Economics from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.

Named one of the top business school professors globally by Poets & Quants, which included her on its 'Best 40 under 40' list in 2021, Ina Toegel's work focuses on how to build and sustain high-performance teams. She started her career as an economist at the World Bank – an atypical background which means she adopts an interdisciplinary approach in her work. Meanwhile, her strong interest in the creative industries inspires her to incorporate interactive tools from the fields of film, sports, music, and the arts in her teaching.

Toegel says teams play a crucial role as vehicles for change in organizations seeking to make major transformations. Her approach when engaging with companies is to work with project teams or individual units in an agile way – looking at the individual make-up of the team, dynamics within the team, and how these relationships are embedded in the organizational context. Much of her work involves leading organizational change and aligning organizational culture with strategic priorities.

She is also keen on leveraging technology to enable executives to develop new ways of working, communicating, and collaborating. She uses virtual reality to explore how teams improve over time, and is investigating how AI can be used to recognize emotions – as well as its implications for an organization's business, how it structures its operations, and how it works with customers.

She has led and taught on customized leadership programs for a wide range of organizations, including Hilti, Pirelli, Tetra Pak, Beiersdorf, Société Générale, DNB, DENSO, Vontobel, Buehler, Legrand, UEFA, MANE, Siam Commercial Bank, Bank of Communications, Bayer, Electrolux, ASSA ABLOY, T-Systems, Carlsberg, JTI, Hydro, and Tenaris.

She also leads IMD's Teams Reimagined open program and the culture transformation stream of its MBA and EMBA courses.

Poets & Quants said her inclusion on its 'Best 40 under 40' list was a recognition of her structured and inspirational approach to working with team dynamics and organizational culture transformation. She received nearly 100 nominations for the honor, making her one of the most nominated professors in its history. Participants, alumni, and faculty colleagues who nominated her praised her energetic style and ability to get people thinking, with one describing her as "our Socrates".

She is also a member of the Academy of Management and of the Strategic Management Society, and she presents at the Organizational Development and Change division during the Academy of Management's Annual Meeting.

Prior to joining IMD in 2015, Toegel taught corporate strategy at the Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne. In her previous role at the World Bank, she was involved in projects on structuring public-private partnerships in the transport, energy, and waste sectors in southeast Europe.

Selected publications

Why every team needs a Ringo (I by IMD, 2021)

Secrecy in practice: How middle managers promote strategic initiatives behind the scenes (Organization Studies, 2021)

The role of inclusion in responsible global leadership (Routledge, 2020)

Pep (Guardiola) talks – tapping into collective emotions (IMD, 2020)

How to beat gender stereotypes: Learn, speak up and react (World Economic Forum, 2019)

Thrive as an LGBT+ executive or ally ([email protected], 2019) 

How to create a high-performance team: Top tips for better collaboration (HR Future, 2018)

How to create a high-performance team (Forbes, 2018)

Recognition

Named on Poets & Quants 'Best 40 under 40' list of the world’s leading business school professors (2021)

Education

BA (Economics)

Columbia University, New York

MSc (Management Research)

Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

PhD (Strategic Management)

INSEAD

Omar Toulan is Professor of Strategy and International Management and the Dean of the MBA program at IMD. Professor Toulan's areas of expertise include strategic management, international business, growth strategies, and managing the multinational. Among his areas of research are offshoring and outsourcing, global account management, emerging market multinationals, and the impact of the digital disruption on the retail sector. His research has appeared in a variety of academic and practitioner oriented journals including Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, California Management Review, Industrial and Corporate Change, Emerging Markets Review, and Journal of Latin American Studies.

Before joining IMD, Dr. Toulan spent 19 years at McGill University in Canada where he was a tenured professor and also served as Associate Dean Academic and Masters Programs of the business school, overseeing all faculty and leading the introduction and redesign of various masters programs. He has also spent time as a Visiting Professor at London Business School, INSEAD, Imperial College, Stockholm School of Economics, and Universidad Torcuato di Tella. He has been awarded various research and teaching grants, including a Teaching Chair from the Quebec Government. He has given executive seminars extensively not only in Europe and North America but also Latin America and Japan.

Prior to entering academia, Professor Toulan worked as a management consultant for McKinsey and Company in its New York office, as well as at its Global Institute in Washington, D.C. He has also worked as a researcher at the US President's Council of Economic Advisers.

Professor Toulan received his undergraduate degree in International Economics from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and went on to complete his PhD in Strategy at the Sloan School of Management at MIT.

Peter Vogel is an expert on family enterprises and leads IMD's work in this field as Director of the IMD Global Family Business Center. He was named by Poets&Quants as one of the world’s best business school professors under the age of 40 in 2022 and included in Family Capital’s Top 100 Family Business Influencers list in both 2020 and 2022.

He works with families, owners, boards, and executives of family enterprises and family offices around the world, focusing on transformations, governance, ownership and leadership succession, wealth management, fostering entrepreneurialism and innovation within the system, and on establishing professional boards and leadership teams. He does so through major transformation journeys that include custom programs, advisory work, and open programs, as well as tailored diagnostics and workshops.  

The IMD Global Family Business Center aims to be the world's leading center of excellence in the domain, and to act as a trusted learning partner for global enterprising families and a safe space where they can go for neutral advice and support. Its mission is to help enterprising families ensure family unity and business success across generations while also having a positive impact on society.

Vogel says long-term success and unity depend on having a healthy family enterprise ecosystem, so this requires a holistic approach covering the legacy family business, any new businesses, the family office and investment activities, and all aspects of what he calls “total family wealth” ­– human, social, financial and reputational capital.

He is Director of a suite of programs offered by the Center – Leading the Family Business (LFB), which was launched in 1988 as the world's first family business program, Navigating your Family Enterprise into the future (NFE), and Leading the Family Office (LFO).

Helping with the establishment of family offices accounts for a growing share of the Center's work, with many families now looking to transition from being a family in business to managing their private wealth through a family office structure. It is therefore working on the development of an advanced LFO program, which will act as a certification program for aspiring family officers.

Vogel is also Director of the IMD Global Family Business Award, which recognizes excellence in the art of building and managing a successful, sustainable and well-governed family-owned enterprise. The award was established in 1996 and is now seen as the most sought-after prize in the field of family business.

In addition, he is co-author of the award-winning book Family Philanthropy Navigator, the first in a planned trilogy on family businesses. The book will be followed by Family Office Navigator in 2022 and Family Enterprise Navigator in 2024.

Family Philanthropy Navigator, which offers a step-by-step guide that philanthropic families can use as they seek to make a real difference through their giving, earned praise from Beatrice Fihn, winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize and Executive Director of ICAN, and won an Axiom Business Book Awards Silver Medal in 2021.

Vogel has published articles in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and has written several books and book chapters as well as scientific and practitioner-oriented reports. His work is frequently referenced by leading newspapers and other media outlets such as Harvard Business Review, CNN, Huffington Post, Forbes, the Financial Times, and TechCrunch.

He is a regular conference speaker and has appeared at TEDxLausanne, the Global Economic Symposium, the Family Matters Forum, the Family Business Network Global Summit, the G20 Young Entrepreneurs’ Alliance Summit, and the St. Gallen Symposium, among others.

He is also an Associate Partner of the Cambridge Family Enterprise Group, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network, and an alumnus of the Forum’s Global Shapers Community.

Before joining IMD in 2017, he served as Director of Custom Programs and Business Development at the Executive School of University of St. Gallen. He was previously Assistant Professor of Technology Entrepreneurship at the University of St. Gallen, as well as Managing Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Director of the Swiss Start-up Monitor Foundation.

Before embarking on his academic career, Vogel was an entrepreneur. He launched several ventures in the software segment and remains Chairman of the investment firm Delta Venture Partners.

Selected publications

Family Office Navigator (IMD, 2022)

The Sika takeover battle (IMD, 2021)

Family Philanthropy Navigator (IMD, 2020)

From venture idea to venture opportunity (Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 2017)

Recognition

Named on Poets&Quants Best 40 under 40 list of leading business school professors (2022)

Axiom Business Book Awards Silver Medal winner (2021)

Named on Family Capital’s list of Top 100 Family Business Influencers (2020 and 2022)

Education

BSc (Mechanical Engineering)

ETH Zurich

MSc (Biomedical Engineering)

ETH Zurich

PhD (Entrepreneurship)

EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne)