Your Journey
The IMD MBA Program aims to develop leaders who challenge what is and inspire could be, while transforming organizations and contributing to society.
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Opening weeks
Core Courses
Business plays an increasingly important role in society. Discuss the global roles of key stakeholders such as NGOs, international organizations and governments with guest speakers.
Knut Haanaes' research and teaching focus on strategy, sustainability, strategic renewal and business models. He says these different pillars enable him to help companies think about their path for the future and take account of new trends like demands for greater sustainability.
Sustainability now plays an important part in his work. He was the driving force behind the creation of the Business Schools for Climate Leadership (BS4CL) alliance of eight leading European business schools, which was launched in 2021 to address the climate crisis. The schools plan to collaborate on research to identify and shape best practices and work across industries to accelerate the business community’s response to climate change, and Haanaes continues to play a leading role in the group’s activities.
He is also deeply involved in IMD's strategic partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), which aims to equip business leaders with the skills to accelerate the pace of sustainable business transformation and create the most sustainability-centered MBA program in the world.
At IMD, Haanaes is Director of the Leading Sustainable Business Transformation (LSBT) program and Co-Director of Driving Sustainability from the Boardroom (DSB), a program developed as part of IMD’s collaboration with WBCSD. He is also head of the sustainability stream in the MBA program and teaches in many of the school's key open programs, including the Advanced Management Program (AMP), Breakthrough Program for Senior Executives (BPSE) and Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP).
Through his work with clients, Haanaes has also accumulated extensive experience in a number of industries on issues of strategy. He believes that the secret to creating lasting, impactful companies is to find a balance between doing what you're good at (exploitation) and looking for new challenges to take on (exploration).
At IMD, he has helped run custom programs for Neste, CMS, Technip FMC, Coca-Cola Bottling, Mondelez, Maybank, Rio Tinto and Iberdrola.
Haanaes’ teaching on strategy is underpinned by his best-selling book Your Strategy Needs a Strategy. The book won praise from the likes of World Economic Forum founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab, Pfizer Chairman and CEO Ian C. Read and Benetton CEO Marco Airoldi after being published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015 and it has since been translated into seven other languages.
He is also a successful TED speaker. His TED talk "Two reasons companies fail – and how to avoid them" has attracted more than 2 million views.
Haanaes has published articles in top publications such as Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review and research reports for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), The World Economic Forum and MIT.
He joined IMD in 2016 from BCG, where he was a Senior Partner and Global Leader of the Strategy Practice. He also led BCG’s collaboration with MIT on sustainability, developing one of the largest databases globally of how executives address the topic, and founded the BCG global sustainability initiative.
Haanaes was Dean of the Global Leadership Institute at the World Economic Forum between 2018 and 2020. He is also a member of the CEO’s Sustainability Advisory Board at Carlsberg, and he previously served as Chairman of BI Norwegian Business School, a member of the Global Agenda Council on New Economic Growth Models at the World Economic Forum, Executive Director of the Research Council of Norway and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University.
Selected publications
Business schools must do more on climate change (Harvard Business Review, 2022)
How the university of the future must adapt to train future leaders (Forbes, 2020).
Your Strategy Needs a Strategy (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015)
Making sustainability profitable (Harvard Business Review, 2013)
How serious is climate change to business? (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2013).
Sustainability as adaptability (Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, 2012)
Sustainability nears a tipping point (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2012).
New sustainability study: The 'embracers' seize advantage (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2011)
Recognition
President’s Award, BCG
Expansion Management Review Best Article
BI Norwegian Business School best lecturer prize
Education
MSc (Economics)
Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH)
PhD (Strategy)
Copenhagen Business School
Examine the economic forces driving competition in industries and markets and cover concepts of standard micro- and macro-economics, trade theory and political economy.
Ralf Boscheck is Professor of Economics and Business Policy. Boscheck teaches strategy, economics, and regulation, as well as country analysis and macroeconomic policy. For 30 years, his research has focused on how to assess competitive advantage, either from having a superior offer or simply an abuse of a dominant position. He is currently working on the Business and The Human Prospect, a project which identifies the regulatory obstacles that effectively prevent companies from profitably addressing the fundamental challenges facing humanity.
He has worked with an extensive list of corporate clients and authorities including ABB, Allianz, Atkins, Aventis, Bayer, Bertelsmann, CLP Group, Chopard, Cisco, Clariant, De Mello, Danisco, DuPont, Eon, Grundfos, Henkel, Hoechst, Holcim, Metso, Nestlé, Nestlé Health Science, Novartis, Norske Shell, Oman Electricity Authority, PwC, Roche, Santander, TXU Europe, Thames Water and WorleyParsons.
Boscheck returned to IMD in September 2021 after a three-and-a-half-year leave of absence to serve as Dean of the Business School at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile. In that role, he undertook a fundamental reform of the school’s undergraduate program, changed the faculty and research policies, and built up a research-sharing network of 10 Latin American universities.
From 2014 to 2017 he was Dean of the IMD MBA program and launched the Navigating the Future conference at which MBA students gave presentations to an executive audience on trends shaping tomorrow's business environment. During that period, he was also Director of the school's International Consulting Projects.
Earlier, he directed the Managing Corporate Resources (MCR) open program, precursor to the current Advanced Management Program (AMP), and the Breakthrough Program for Senior Executives (BPSE), IMD’s most senior general management program. He currently teaches on the MBA and Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP) programs.
He has authored four books published by Palgrave Macmillan, Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and Difo-Druck, and has had more than 40 articles in refereed academic journals. Syntheses of his academic work have often been republished for a broader audience in various media outlets, and he has written articles for the Financial Times, Handelsblatt, Les Echos and other titles. During his time at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile, he had a monthly column in the business newspaper Diario Financiero. He has also served as a member of the editorial boards of World Competition, Intereconomics, and the International Journal of Energy Sector Management.
Before joining IMD in 1990, Boscheck was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University, research associate at the Swiss Institute for International Economics, and a consultant with The Monitor Company.
Selected publications
COVID-19 and the political economy of shared adjustment (Intereconomics, 2021)
Patent trolls: In search of efficient regulatory standards (World Competition: Law and Economics Review, 2016)
Intellectual property rights and the evergreening of pharmaceuticals (Intereconomics, 2015)
Strategies, Markets and Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
Energy Futures (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006)
Market Drive and Governance: Re-examining the Rules of Economic and Commercial Contest (Routledge, 2002)
Institutional Choice, Antitrust and Cooperative R&D (Difo-Druck, 1988)
Education
BA (Political Science and Economics)
Philipps University of Marburg, Germany/Central University of Iowa
MA (Public Policy)
Georgetown University, Washington DC
MBA (Finance and Industrial Economics)
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
PhD (Economics)
University of St. Gallen
Habilitation (Law and Economics)
University of St. Gallen
Explore core concepts in Finance and Capital Markets
- The trade-off between risk & return
- Project valuation and strategies to finance operations and growth
- M&A and behavioural finance
Arturo Bris (www.arturobris.org) ranks among the top one hundred most read finance academics in the world. He is the author of several books, a frequent speaker at international conferences, and appears regularly on international media outlets. He also leads the world-renowned IMD World Competitiveness Center (WCC) and is an award-winning teacher and program director.
His work has been published in the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Legal Studies and the Journal of Business, and he has had articles published in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Handelsblatt among others.
His areas of expertise include corporate finance, corporate governance, financial regulation, and competitiveness. As Director of the IMD World Competitiveness Center, he works with governments all over the world assessing, measuring, and managing the competitiveness of countries. The WCC produces trusted annual rankings on economies’ competitiveness, and under his leadership it has expanded its coverage by adding new rankings on talent, digital competitiveness, and smart cities.
In addition to leading the Center, Bris conducts research on the relationship between income inequality, social mobility, and competitiveness. His work on the international aspects of financial regulation focuses particularly on the effects of bankruptcy, short sales, insider trading and merger laws. He has also researched and lectured on the effects of the Euro on the corporate sector and the valuation impact of corporate governance changes.
His recent work includes a comprehensive study of 3,692 CEOs from 22 countries from 1991-2019, which found strong evidence that existing studies overestimate the impact of CEOs on the performance of the firms they lead, and an analysis of the outlook for globalization in the post-COVID-19 period.
At IMD he directs the Strategic Finance and Navigating Fintech Innovation and Disruption program. He also previously directed the flagship Advanced Strategic Management program between 2009 and 2013. He has led several custom programs for organizations operating in various industries, with a particular interest in the financial sector, and has extensive consulting experience with countries from across the world.
Bris' latest book The Right Place: How National Competitiveness Makes or Breaks Companies provides an analysis of countries’ competitive performance, typical mistakes that countries make, and the pillars necessary to build a truly competitive economy. He also co-authored Flex or Fail: The Future of Work and Pay and Sixteen Shades of Smart: How Cities Can Shape Their Own Future in 2019, and Blockchange!: How to Survive the Crypto Economy in 2018.
Bris is a member of the Strategic Committee of Debiopharm Investment and the International Advisory Council of the Wealth Management Institute in Singapore, and is academic advisor to the Blue Whale Foundation, a decentralized ecosystem enabling the self-employed to thrive by capturing a fair share of the value they create. He also serves as a member of the International Advisory Board of CENTRUM Graduate Business School in Peru, and of the Supervisory Board of the Kyiv International Economic Forum. He is also a research associate of the European Corporate Governance Institute and a research fellow of the Yale International Institute for Corporate Governance.
Prior to joining IMD in 2005, he was the Robert B & Candice J. Haas Associate Professor of Corporate Finance at the Yale School of Management.
Selected publications
The euro and corporate financing before the crisis (Journal of Financial Economics, 2014)
The euro and corporate valuations (Review of Financial Studies, 2009)
The value of investor protection: Firm evidence from cross-border mergers (Review of Financial Studies, 2008)
Good stewards, cheap talkers, or family men? The impact of mutual fund closures on fund managers, flows, fees, and performance (Review of Financial Studies, 2007)
Efficiency and the bear: Short sales and markets around the world (Journal of Finance, 2007)
The costs of bankrupty: Chapter 7 liquidations versus Chapter 11 reorganization (Journal of Finance, 2006)
The real effects of the euro: Evidence from corporate investments (Review of Finance, 2006)
The optimal concentration of creditors (Journal of Finance, 2005)
Who should pay for bankruptcy costs? (Journal of Legal Studies, 2005)
Corporate financial policies and performance around currency crises (Journal of Business, 2004)
Corporate leverage and currency crisis (Journal of Financial Economics, 2002)
Recognition
European Financial Management Best Paper Award (2006)
China International Conference in Finance Best Paper Award (2005)
Jaime Fernández de Araoz Corporate Finance Award (2005)
Yale School of Management Alumni Association Teaching Award (2001 and 2003)
FMA European Conference Best Paper Award (2001)
Education
BSc (Law and Economics)
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
MSc (Financial and Monetary Studies)
CEMFI, Madrid
PhD (Management)
INSEAD
Identify the guiding values that shape your leadership behavior and how to harness the value of diversity and trust for better team and organizational performance.
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
Understand how to use market knowledge, identify and analyse sources of sustainable competitive advantage, and design practical digital marketing strategies
Frédéric Dalsace focuses on two distinct areas – B2B issues such as customer centricity, buyer-seller relationships, and value management, and sustainability, inclusive business models, and alleviating poverty.
He is Co-Director of IMD’s new Leading Customer-Centric Strategies (LCCS) program and believes that companies need to rethink their approach to customer centricity. He says many organizations only consider customer centricity when they are defining their offers, but that they also need to incorporate it into the value delivery and value capture dimensions of their business models. One way of doing this is through risk-sharing business models including fully service-based offerings, such as Rolls Royce's Power by the Hour model, or performance-based and outcome-based contracts in which payments depend on the value created, with the result that the interests of suppliers and customers are aligned.
Risk-sharing business models are also relevant in Dalsace’s work on sustainability because they lead to more circular and more efficient solutions. He previously worked with 2006 Nobel prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus on inclusive business models, and is currently helping firms to integrate sustainability into their broader strategy by making the business case for sustainability, for example. Many companies have been naive about sustainability and have made the mistake of decoupling it from their overall strategy, he says.
He is also collaborating with IMD’s Professor of Strategy Arnaud Chevallier on a project to identify and evaluate the types of questions that leaders should be asking of those around them. As this is not something that is formally taught, leaders tend to learn by doing, which can lead to blind spots. Using a database of more than 600 executives, the pair have therefore developed a template for the types of questions that leaders need to ask – and how to ask them.
Dalsace has worked with a range of firms including Atlas Copco, UCB, Valmet, VAT Group, Grundfos, MANE, Porsche and STADA, and he has published in academic journals such as Harvard Business Review, Business Horizons, Strategic Management Journal and Revue Française de Gestion.
Before joining IMD in 2019, he was a Professor at HEC Paris for 16 years, holding the Social Business/Enterprise and Poverty Chair, and he has won numerous awards for his teaching, research, and publications.
Prior to his academic life, he held a series of senior positions in the business world, including marketing roles at Michelin and CarnaudMetalbox and as a strategy consultant with McKinsey.
Selected publications
Mindset drives success: Selling beneficial products at the base of the pyramid (Business Horizons, 2021)
The friend or foe fallacy: Why your best customers may not need your friendship (Business Horizons, 2017)
Reaching the rich world’s poorest consumers (Harvard Business Review, 2015)
Do make or buy decisions matter? The influence of organizational governance on technological performance (Strategic Management Journal, 2002)
L’entreprise contre la pauvreté (Fondation Jean Jaurès, 2011)
Recognition
HEC Montreal CSR Challenge Case Writing Competition Award (2022)
Named on Case Centre list of best-selling cases (2021)
Strategy Management Society (Strategy Process Interest Group) Best Paper Prize (2019)
Business Horizons Best Article Award (2017)
Named on Poets & Quants list of MBA graduates’ favorite professors (2017)
HEC Paris MBA Program Best Permanent Professor (Specialized Phase) (2016, 2017)
Case Centre Award for Best Marketing Case (2015)
Best Teacher Award, HEC (2006)
HEC Foundation Prize for best article published by HEC Faculty (2004)
Winner of Institute for the Study of Business Markets Doctoral Competition (2000)
Education
MSc (Business Administration)
HEC Paris
MBA
Harvard Business School
MSc (Management)
INSEAD
PhD (Management)
INSEAD
Augment your understanding of key concepts of supply chain management practice and gain appreciation of how the concepts can be successfully implemented
Ralf Seifert's primary research and teaching interests are operations management, supply chain strategy, and digital transformation. His work lies at the heart of one of the most important topics currently facing organizations as supply chains come under strain due to multiple global changes. He has also worked on industry analysis, competitive strategy, and new venture formation.
Seifert says supply chain management has grown tremendously in importance in recent years, and the agenda for supply chain executives has expanded massively. They must now address topics such as digital transformation, supply chain resilience, and sustainability in addition to worries around cost pressure, inflation, and new geopolitical constraints.
Recent supply chain tensions have been triggered by strong demand for goods at a time of significant supply chain disruptions. It is not clear if the world will ever return to a situation in which just-in-time inventory management is seen as the holy grail. Executives will have to master more profound supply chain transformations to safeguard future operations, he says.
Seifert is Director of IMD's Digital Supply Chain Management (DSCM) program, which addresses both traditional supply chain strategy and implementation issues concerning digitalization trends and new technologies. He also teaches in IMD’s MBA and Foundations for Business Leadership (FBL) programs and has designed and directed numerous company-specific general management programs.
He has actively coached more than 60 project teams and served as a consultant and speaker for various multinational companies. Based on his work with companies, he has co-authored more than 50 case studies on a wide range of organizations including adidas, Hema, Hilti, HP, LEGO, L'Oréal, Unilever, Sky Germany and Tetra Pak, and this work has been recognized by multiple international case awards.
Seifert has more than 100 articles and international conference presentations to his credit, including articles in prestigious journals such as Production and Operations Management, Operations Research, European Journal of Operational Research, IIE Transaction, Research Policy, and the International Journal of Production Economics.
He has also co-authored three managerial books. His most recent title The Digital Supply Chain Challenge: Breaking Through, published in 2020, acts as a handbook for supply chain executives faced with the challenges of being expected to understand all aspects of their companies' business while navigating the bewildering array of options presented by supply chain digitalization. His previous books focused on strategic supply chain management and on the obstacles encountered by technology start-ups.
Alongside his role at IMD, he is a tenured professor at EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, where he has held the Chair of Technology and Operations Management since 2003.
Before joining IMD, Seifert studied and worked in Germany, Japan, and the US. While in the US, he consulted for Hewlett-Packard and served as a teaching and research assistant at Stanford University. In Germany, he worked for Booz & Company (now Strategy&), McKinsey & Company, and Freudenberg & Co. His studies included one year as a visiting scholar at Waseda University in Tokyo.
Selected publications
Limiting the impact of supply chain disruptions in the face of distributional uncertainty in demand (Production and Operations Management, 2022)
What now for supply chains? Inflation, e-commerce and over-stocking are all driving change (I by IMD, 2022)
Supply chain: Cracking down on the bullwhip effect (Supply Chain Movement, 2022)
Tesla supply chain: From cautionary tale to role model (I by IMD, 2022)
Supply chains aren’t broken, it’s more a question of demand (I by IMD, 2021)
Can AI deliver tangible benefits to demand forecasting? (IMD, 2020)
The Digital Supply Chain Challenge: Breaking Through (IMD, 2020)
Strategic Supply Chain Management (Routledge, 2012)
Nurturing Science-Based Startups: An International Case Perspective (Springer Verlag, 2008)
Recognition
Winner of EFMD Case Writing Competition Awards (2003, 2009, 2012, 2018 and 2020)
ECCH Case Award winner (2006 and 2011)
Production and Operations Management Society award (2004)
Education
Diplom Ingenieur degree (Mechanical Engineering)
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Master's degree (Integrated Manufacturing Systems Engineering)
North Carolina State University
MS (Management Science)
Stanford University
PhD (Management Science)
Stanford University
Understand how to size up the external environment of a firm in its entirety, configure internal choices to attain a competitive advantage and sustain that advantage
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.
Courses throughout the year are designed to give you an integrative overview not only of the core courses themselves, but also of how they work together.
The majority of classes are taught using the Case Study method, often with additional input from guest speakers who have ideally been involved in the case itself. Faculty encourage participants to actively contribute to discussions so that you can provide examples from your own diverse experiences across functions, industries and geographies. Class participation is one component of your grade.
Teamwork also plays a strong role in course work, and for each module you will be assigned to a new group of 6 MBAs, where you will need to work together to complete assignments and produce presentations, while also completing individual work.
Competence in each subject is tested at each level and you need to pass all exams in order to continue with the program.
Integrative exercises are a traditional element of the program that combine your team skills and knowledge, giving you 48 hours to find solutions to an issue that covers multiple facets. An external jury will give you feedback and assess your success.
Watch the video to hear how the integrative exercises impacted MBA alumna, Liana Logiurato, MBA 1997
Entrepreneurship
More and more, big corporations are trying to harness the power of entrepreneurship. Leaders need to have the entrepreneurial drive and passion to adapt and respond to the digital revolution.
IMD was the first MBA program to integrate Entrepreneurship into the core curriculum, and the startup projects build on the knowledge you develop in the auditorium by exposing you to the real environment and mindset.
The course starts with an Introduction to Entrepreneurship and to Business Planning. How can you become a better venture capitalist? A better entrepreneur?
Working with case studies and a variety of entrepreneur guest speakers, you will also develop your understanding of the dilemma facing entrepreneurship in developing countries: sustainable development, managing the opportunity overload, prioritizing on the basis of the value chain and competitive advantages.
You will be introduced to your start-up projects and will work with them while you continue to develop your entrepreneurial mindset in class with topics such as Funding High Growth, High-Technology Companies and Contingent Valuations: Deal Contracting.
Working extensively with a wide range of case studies, you will explore entrepreneurship from a variety of angles including building a brand, financing growth, the fashion industry, managing growth globally, the ethics of business, managing luxury brands and harvesting the venture.
You will also address Emerging Market Entrepreneurship and develop an understanding of Lifestyle Entrepreneurship and Affinity Financing including entrepreneurial career tracks, managing the passion, finding the work / life balance, developing the sustainable value proposition, and operational excellence.
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
Nurturing our strong links to EPFL, projects cover diverse sectors and issues, such as developing the market entry strategy for a biomedical product; fine-tuning the value system for a SAP service company; or empowering smallholder farmers in Ghana to create value via cocoa fruit’s untapped social, environmental, and culinary potential.
Over the course of the projects you will provide a total support to your selected startup of 500-600 work hours, an average of 6-8 hours each week.
Results
In the most recent Swiss Top 100 report, IMD-supported startups captured 39 of the 100 places, including 3 out of the top 10, and five of the top 25 scaleups!
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
Project Example: Rethinking Recycling
Having developed an innovative technology and with the momentum of a successful fundraising round and a demonstration plant under construction to scale the concept, this startup was ready to begin securing critical partnerships and to develop a market entry strategy.
The IMD team decided to make a “market entry toolkit”. First helping to identify strategic market entry points, then for each one, building a toolkit to help the company position itself to secure critical partnerships.
To identify strategic market entry points, the MBA team developed a set of criteria. They worked to piece together the supply chains of various industries, find relevant players, and understand the sources of power and influence. Through extensive research and numerous iterations of criteria assessment, they then narrowed down the most critical entry points and began constructing the market entry toolkits.
After three months of hard work, the team delivered a comprehensive presentation and detailed market entry strategy toolkits. Beyond the initial market entry, the presentation included strategic considerations for staging the plan, with insights on timing, priorities, and organizational complexities. The company was pleased with the deliverables and surprised by some of the new insights and data that the MBA team uncovered.
Project Example: Disrupting the Media and Broadcasting Industry
One of the major challenges our MBA team faced was to understand an industry in which none of us had any experience and its value chain. Founders having more than 80 years of professional experience had difficulty in simplifying how they see the world of broadcasting.
The original scope of the project was twofold: help the company to optimize their cloud computing costs (a large portion of their overall costs) and to do a simple competitive analysis for their main technological substitutes.
Research made it clear that there was an opportunity for the company to position their key technology in the sports and events space to exploit their main technological differentiator more fully.
To validate our strategy, we needed to complement our market study with a financial analysis. However, doing this for a startup is a far different challenge due to the amount of uncertainty that the revenue and cost projections are based on. Thus, we had to make it as flexible as possible without compromising its simplicity.
The last piece of the puzzle was predicting the money required for the seed funding round. This was not part of the original scope nor was is it in our initial plan. However, upon understanding the financials of the company we believed that it was crucial for them to understand how much money they would need to move to where they wanted to be in the next 3 years.
We now realize that entrepreneurship cannot be taught, but it can be learned through experience. This project gave us a taste of the startup world and there’s yet much to learn about becoming an entrepreneur.
Project Example: A clothing retailer with a mission to do things differently
The startup company appeared to be well positioned – their products were sustainably sourced and fully recyclable. Their target: an ambitious growth plan, increasing sales significantly through all four of their headline brands, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 70%.
The scope of our project was to review and redefine the company’s value proposition within the premium end of the market and to identify a tangible action plan for improvement of the e-commerce website. As the project developed, the scope expanded to include developing an omni-channel presence and to identify key risks and mitigations to sustainable growth of the operations.
Research showed that many people who interacted with the brand did not fully understand the values or differentiate it from similar brands. It also confirmed the strength and value of two of the startup’s key differentiators: sustainability and Swiss-made.
The MBA team identified many possible improvement actions to aid the startup in their quest for growth, based on:
- A re-evaluation of the brand’s value proposition, based on market research compiled from survey data and benchmarking against key competitors.
- A detailed interview process which mapped the customer journey through the company’s e-commerce offering and identified key pain points and improvement opportunities.
- An analysis of the company’s social media offering, and investigation of additional physical and online marketplaces to enhance the number of touch points as part of a wider omnichannel strategy.
- A comprehensive risk management framework identifying mitigations to the most significant threats to the operations.
For a young startup, it is of course not possible to do everything. The challenge is to prioritise the highest value actions going forward. The sum total of the project was therefore distilled into a five-point implementable action plan which was presented to the company.
At IMD we attract diversity. This means that many of our applicants already have entrepreneurial experience, while others are thinking of their long term career path and planning to transition from the corporate world into their own venture. For some the stream will develop new approaches to challenges in large corporations, for others it can inspire new dreams.
Here are just a few examples of MBA alumni who have opted to work in the entrepreneurial world:
Serena Shamash, Kenyan, MBA 2007:
Eat Me – creating a restaurant business that inspires
Dan Perpich, American, MBA 2013:
Healthy produce gets a fresh start(up) for cold climates
Galina Antova, Bulgarian, MBA 2011:
Gender equality isn’t just a women’s issue, it’s a human one
Oliver Freiland, German, MBA 2009:
When the purest form of business is doing something on your own
Hans Petter Mellerud, Norwegian, MBA 1990: IMD MBA alumnus wins EY Entrepreneur of the Year award
Bea Knecht, Swiss, MBA 1995 :
Rewiring the brain to face the unexpected
Lara Pierce, American, MBA 2014
CEO, Auris Tech Limited – Auris Tech is pioneering automatic speech recognition (ASR) for children. Our first consumerproduct will change the way children use their tablets and improve how this and future generations become strong and avid readers from an early age.
Matthew Costello, Australian/British, MBA 2017
Co-Founder and CEO, Voyager – Voyager is a multi-party collaboration and workflow management solution for the bulk shippingvalue chain. We allow companies to work together in a single cloud based environment tocoordinate complex shipping operations, email free.
Ignacio Barrios, Spanish, MBA 2015
Co-Founder and CEO, Kido Dynamics – Our team is dedicated to generating deep knowledge about the mobility behavior of millions of people through big data and machine learning technologies leveraged by the science of social physics.
Projects & Labs
Today, organizations live in an increasingly disruptive and fast-paced environment that requires continuous innovation. Companies that remain relevant in the long-term are those that never stop innovating.
During the one week MBA Innovation & Leadership Lab, you will focus on honing your capacity to come up with ideas that offer better solutions to the complex problems we face.
Design thinking is a discipline that will improve the quality of your innovation efforts. It will help you explore the world you live in to better decipher the problems that need to be solved; it will let you move from concrete observations to rapid prototyping and constant experimentations that will turn any interesting insight into a set of workable solutions.
A leader today needs a global awareness of innovation opportunities, technology, business models and environments.
The discovery expeditions allow you to discover and explore innovative hubs with the rest of your class. You will increase your global perspective and understand together how challenges and opportunities are shaping the future of business.
Objectives
- Address the risks of the largest business transformation of our time
- Use learnings to reflect on the opportunities and challenges of innovation and globalization
- Develop a point of view on how to make a positive impact
Digital is changing our business environment. Today executives need to take bold – often irreversible – decisions on digital, such as establishing new businesses, reducing costs in traditional operations and making major platform investments.
However, while you are part of the most digitally savvy generation, we want to bring your understanding to a new level.
Our experience is that to make the right decisions you need to have some hands-on knowledge of programing and digital technologies. The Digital Analytics Lab is all about learning by doing.
Over one week, you will develop Python programming skills and put those skills into immediate practice as you complete a team assignment which will include Big Data, Machine Learning and AI.
Final results will be presented and the top teams selected by an external jury.
Amit Joshi, Professor of AI, Analytics and Marketing Strategy at IMD, specializes in helping organizations use artificial intelligence and develop their big data, analytics and AI capabilities. An award-winning professor and researcher, he has extensive experience of AI and analytics-driven transformations in industries such as banking, fintech, retail, automotive, telecoms, and pharma.
Joshi believes that no organization's digital transformation is complete until they really understand their data and how to upscale their analytical capabilities. He is currently focusing on how organizations can ensure that AI implementation occurs strategically and at scale rather than in small islands of excellence.
He has delivered customized programs for several companies including UBS, Sonova, Johnson & Johnson, Guardian Life, Mars Petcare, Securitas, Bank Danamon, Bayer, Ooredoo, Siam Commercial Bank, Abu Dhabi School of Governance, Hanover RE, and Migros. He also advises start-ups on their strategies.
At IMD, he is Director of the Digital Excellence Diploma and the Digital Analytics (DA) open program. He is also Co-Director of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Digital Strategy and Analytics (DSA) programs.
Joshi’s research, which focuses on long-run marketing strategy, analytics, and AI applications, has been published in top journals, including the Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Culture, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. He has twice won the MSI/H. Paul Root Award for the best paper in the Journal of Marketing and the Robert D. Buzzell Best Paper Award for the Marketing Science Institute publication with the most long-term impact.
His work and thought leadership have frequently been cited in the media and have been covered by outlets including NPR, CNN, NBC, Nikkei, the Financial Times, Fast Company, Business Standard, Fox News, Bloomberg, Forbes, Le Temps, Investor Relations Magazine, The Conversation, and Science Daily. He is frequently invited to give keynote speeches and led a panel discussion with marketing experts at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020.
Before joining IMD in 2017, Joshi was in academia in the US and prior to that worked as a sales manager at Cadbury India, now part of the Mondelez International group.
Selected publications
6 principles to build your company’s strategic agility (Harvard Business Review, 2021)
The building blocks of an AI strategy (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)
How intelligent is your AI? (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)
How CEO/CMO characteristics affect innovation and stock returns: findings and future directions (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2020)
A meta-analysis of electronic WOM elasticity (Journal of Marketing, 2015)
The direct and indirect effects of advertising spending on firm value (Journal of Marketing, 2010)
Advertising spending and market capitalization (Marketing Science Institute, 2004)
Recognition
Named as one of Switzerland's Digital Shapers by Bilanz, Handelszeitung, Le Temps and Digitalswitzerland (2020)
Winner of EFMD Case Writing Competition (2019)
MSI/H. Paul Root Award for best paper in Journal of Marketing (2015 and 2010)
Marketing Science Institute Robert D. Buzzell Best Paper Award (2006)
Education
- Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering
- University of Pune
- Post Graduate Diploma in Management
- Indian Institute of Management
- PhD in Management
- UCLA Anderson School of Management
Exploration
A leader today needs a global awareness of innovation opportunities, technology, business models and environments.
The discovery expeditions allow you to discover and explore innovative hubs with the rest of your class. You will increase your global perspective and understand together how challenges and opportunities are shaping the future of business.
Objectives
- Address the risks of the largest business transformation of our time
- Use learnings to reflect on the opportunities and challenges of innovation and globalization
- Develop a point of view on how to make a positive impact
Application
This is a critical part of your learning where you connect your new skills to practice in a global setting. It is an analytical and collaborative process, where each team is supported by a member of the Faculty to ensure you clearly set expectations with clients, plan your work appropriately and zoom in on the key issues.
IMD was the first MBA program ever to run International Consulting Projects. Since 1980, over 700 projects have been undertaken for 400 diverse companies worldwide.
Over seven-eight weeks, you help to resolve an issue being faced by a multinational, working with the top management in a team of 5-6. There are no classes during this time, so your focus is 100% on delivering results.
Phase 1 : Outside-in Context analysis – key factors for success
Phase 2 : Company analysis – strategy context and value creation
Phase 3 : Issue analysis – recommendations
Phase 4 : Implementation design
The funds generated from these projects keep expectations high and help source diversity for the following year’s program through the MBA Emerging Market Scholarships.
Interested in sponsoring an ICP project ? Please contact us.
Bettina Büchel is an expert on strategy implementation, new business development, and change management. Her work is focused on leading strategic transformation programs and working closely with CEOs to build capabilities to deliver strategic priorities.
She says that many strategic initiatives fail to generate commitment and deliver value for businesses because leaders do not adequately address underlying barriers to change, such as gaps in the organization’s capacity to execute strategic changes. Her work is therefore devoted to helping companies increase the likelihood of successful implementation of strategic initiatives.
Büchel has published several books on smarter strategy execution and related topics, and her latest book Strategy Execution Playbook: A Trusted Companion for Leading Initiatives is aimed at helping leaders of strategic initiatives increase the likelihood of successful implementation.
She has led custom programs for fast-moving consumer goods groups (Nestlé, Orkla, Barilla), B2B firms (AGC, Tetra Pak, Metso Outotec, Hydro, Nilfisk, TDK, OCP), and specialty chemicals companies (Evonik, Hempel). The custom program she developed for Moroccan state-owned mining and fertilizer firm OCP in partnership with Africa Business School won an EFMD Excellence in Practice Gold Award in 2022.
She also directs IMD’s Strategy Execution and Change Management open programs, as well as teaching on the flagship Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP) program.
A key pedagogical innovation in her portfolio of activities is the use of simulation games such as Strategic Feat, which she co-designed with technology company Ososim in 2009, as well as other board-based simulations on change and sustainability that have since been used in various MBA and executive education programs.
Her academic articles have appeared in leading journals such as the Journal of Management Studies, Journal of World Business, and MIT Sloan Management Review, and she has written numerous case studies based on her work with companies all over the world such as Nestlé, Barclays, SGS, Tetra Pak, Ooredoo Mobile Money, and Best Buy.
In addition to her work with multinational companies, she is currently an angel investor, sits on the board of a small private equity investor, and works with venture capital firms to evaluate and invest in startups.
Büchel was the first director of IMD’s hub in Singapore and previously served as Dean of Programs and Innovation. Before joining IMD in 2000, she worked as an Assistant Professor at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, where she taught MBA and PhD students from across Asia.
Selected publications
Strategy Execution Playbook: A Trusted Companion for Leading Initiatives (IMD, 2022 forthcoming)
Strategic Agility: The Art of Piloting Initiatives (IMD, 2019)
Smarter Execution: Seven Steps to Getting Results (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2008)
Facilitating Groups to Drive Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
Recognition
EFMD Excellence in Practice Gold Award (2022)
Winner of EFMD Case Writing Competition Award (2000)
Education
Bachelor’s degree (Economics and public administration)
University of Konstanz
Master’s degree (Human resources and industrial relations)
Rutgers University, USA
PhD (Business administration and management)
University of Geneva
Our dedicated Career Development team assists recruiters in identifying the best talent for their immediate and future business needs. They will also work closely with you as you focus on the first round of interviews, either on-campus, virtually or anywhere in the world.
We partner with companies from key industries, with diverse opportunities for our MBA graduates, while also encouraging you to use your own networks, those of your classmates and those of the entire IMD eco-system.
Your individual career advisor will continue to ensure that your job search strategy is on track and address any further issues or specific questions related to your search. Workshops will focus on the final stages of your recruitment, with topics such as salary negotiations.
Electives
2021: Corporate Governance & Boards
Professor Paul Strebel – IMD
In this elective we’ll be looking at power, priorities and the psychology at the top of companies, at the interaction between top management and the (supervisory) board of directors. To successfully manage their careers, executives need to have a sense for what is going on behind the closed doors of the company boardroom.
- Who is involved? Ownership, Governance & Power Structures
- How do they support value creation? Steering & Coaching
- How do they control the conduct of the business? Auditing & Supervising
- How do they work together? Board Governance & Dynamics
2021: Top team dynamics: decoding behavioral cues and unconscious drives
Professor Anand Narasimhan – IMD
This fast-paced course offers up a rich brew of concepts (from corporate governance, social psychology, and psychoanalytic theories), exercises, and contemporary case studies. The experiences created from this course that unfolds over two consecutive days (with a working dinner in between) enables participants to generate insights on playing the role of a top team executive effectively.
The content of this course, adapted especially for an MBA audience, is virtually identical to the IMD Open Program “Team Dynamics for Boards.” This course is the distillation of two decades of research and a decade of observation facilitating and educating top teams and boards.
2021: Resilient leadership
Professor Katharina Lange – IMD
- Leading Self – Before you lead others, know and lead yourself
What would you like to achieve in your life and how can your values help build more resilience? - How do you show up as a leader?
Understanding your own leadership preferences and how to enlarge the personal leadership style portfolio. - Working with teams
Discover and experience behavioural preferences that all of us have when working in teams and look at how they influence the dynamic of the teams you work in. - Leading high-performing teams
A simulation to see how well you perform as a team. We will discuss how to build, participate in, and lead effective teams, and how leaders shape team decision-making and performance in competitive and time-sensitive situations.
2021: Gamification of leadership and change management: learning by doing
Professor Winter Nie – IMD
Change is the only constant in life. Organizations are in a perpetual state of change. Despite its importance and prevalence, the leading authority on change management John Kotter states:
“From years of study, I estimate today more than 70 per cent of needed change either fails to be launched, even though some people clearly see the need, fails to be completed even though some people exhaust themselves trying, or finishes over budget, late and with initial aspirations unmet. “
That raises the question: can we learn to manage changes? The class aims to learn how to drive change successfully via gamification—learning by doing and experiencing.
2021: Accelerating innovation and driving business growth in times of disruption
Professor Louise Muhdi – IMD
In today’s business environment well-established organizations are being disrupted, industry boundaries are getting blurry and many organizations are redefining themselves and are in different stages of transformation. Global trends are no longer allowing business-as-usual and resources are limited. Thus, managing change, accelerating innovation and driving business growth is key to not only for survival but also to thrive and ensures differentiation and continuous business success on the long-term.
This elective is highly practical and is designed to help you think like a successful leader. A clear understanding of the business environment, principles to accelerate innovation and learning ways to identify barriers to change and prioritizing action will help you develop your leadership skills and make you succeed in your new role while helping your future organization to stay relevant in a dynamic business environment.
2021: Presenting with impact
Dramatic Resources
Speaking in public is, for many, a nerve-wracking experience. There is much to think about – you must not only get the content right, but you must also engage and inspire your audience so that they want to listen to – and will remember – what you have to say. This involves having the confidence to harness your voice, body and personality to maximum effect.
Following on from the MBA “Effective Communication” sessions with Richard Hahlo in February, this elective explores how the actor’s toolkit can help overcome nerves and create impact when communicating in public and under pressure. The aim is to help participants to get their message across with clarity, confidence and flair.
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.
Anand Narasimhan, Shell Professor of Global Leadership, focuses on the dynamics of boards and top teams, and their impact on transformation in organizations. Anand has worked with board directors and senior executives on how to enhance their leadership presence in order to create a positive impact on their followers and stakeholders.
Anand’s teaching, consulting and research highlight the importance of the specific contexts that top leaders operate in, and especially the tendency of successful individuals to accentuate their own abilities and discount the importance of supporting factors such as team members and institutional structures and process. His research shows how leaders need to understand their own powers of containment, and acquire literacy in reading conscious and unconscious cues to create aligning mechanisms that generate large-scale transformation.
Anand is currently working on a book on the unconscious dynamics of teams as an underappreciated factor in corporate governance failures. He is also co-author of Quest: Leading Transformation Journeys, a book summarizing IMD faculty's research on corporate transformations, which won the 2015 Axiom Business Books International Business Gold Medal.
Anand’s research has been published in top organizational, sociological and psychological journals such as Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management Journal, Organizational Science, Annual Review of Sociology, and Personnel Psychology. He has served on the editorial boards of Organization Studies and Human Relations.
Anand has led programs on board and top leadership effectiveness for clients from a wide range of industries such as Iberdrola, Borealis, Borouge, Qatar Petroleum, Shell and Holcim.
At IMD, Anand is Director of the Team Dynamics for Boards program. He serves on IMD’s Executive Committee as Dean of Research and was additionally Dean of Faculty until 2021. He is also a board member of the Case Center and the International School of Lausanne, and is currently qualifying to be a teacher of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy.
Before joining IMD in 2007, Anand served for a decade as organizational behavior faculty member at London Business School, and prior to his academic career he worked for Unilever.
Selected publications
What everyone gets wrong about change management (Harvard Business Review, 2017)
Quest: Leading Transformation Journeys (IMD, 2014)
Knowledge-based innovation (Academy of Management Review, 2008)
Emotion helpers (Personnel Psychology, 2007)
The production of culture perspective (Annual Review of Sociology, 2004)
Tournament rituals in the evolution of fields (Academy of Management Journal, 2004)
When market information constitutes fields (Organization Science, 2000)
Awards
Axiom Business Books, Gold Medal – International Business (2015)
Best Article, Small Group Research (2014)
EFMD, Best Public Sector Case Study (2012)
Reviewer of the Year, Human Relations (2005)
Education
After graduating from the Birla Institute of Science and Technology (Pilani, India), Anand earned a Post Graduate Diploma in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations at XLRI (Jamshedpur, India) and a PhD at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, USA). Anand is a graduate of the Financial Times Non Executive Director program and the Tavistock Institute’s Dynamics at Board Level program.
Katharina Lange specializes in teaching executives globally about leading self, leading teams, and leading organizations, and in building resilience at the individual, team, and organizational level as well as leading customer-centric organizations. She has a strong track record of designing and directing innovative executive education programs for virtual, face-to-face, and blended learning.
She currently directs IMD custom programs for Mondelez, BAE Systems and E&Y, and is Co-director of IMD’s signature program Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP). She also co-directs the new Leading Customer-Centric Strategies (LCCS) program, which takes a fresh approach to customer centricity, integrating strategic, digital, and leadership angles.
Lange’s teaching on self-leadership focuses on creating better awareness of a leader’s bright and dark sides. In her sessions, executives discover the key values that motivate and inspire them. Just as importantly, they discuss how to integrate their weaknesses with courage and humility into their (professional) lives and learn to speak from the heart.
Her work on leading teams focuses on psychodynamics, analyzing subconscious and conscious drivers, and building resilience, particularly in relation to boards.
Lange’s PhD in pharmacology adds the empirical lens of a natural scientist to her profile and she appreciates insights provided by data and assessments. She has certifications in all major assessment instruments and makes particular use of IMD’s newly developed 5s2 model. This model assesses leaders’ ability to transform their present business model for higher performance, and at the same time transform the organization for a successful future. These “dual transformations” require ambidextrous leadership in five behavioral dimensions: leading strategy, execution, stakeholders, people, and self.
Lange has held leadership positions herself, and what she teaches in class has been tested in reality. This ensures the real impact of her sessions. Before joining IMD in 2019, she led the Office of Executive Development at Singapore Management University (SMU). This role gave her valuable insights into leading cross-cultural teams. Previously, she was Program Director and Head of Life Science Industries and head of Open Enrollment Programs at the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin. Before embarking on her academic career, she worked for 10 years in senior roles with Arthur Andersen and Deloitte Consulting.
She also serves on the Board of UNICON, the global consortium for university-based executive education. She currently co-chairs its research committee, having previously headed its membership and benchmarking committee.
Selected publications
Courageous leadership is needed now to address systemic challenges (IMD, 2022)
Business on the move (IMD, 2022)
Why talent management is crucial in transforming business models (I by IMD, 2021)
Fuse soft skills and digital for customer centricity on steroids (I by IMD, 2021)
Zuellig Pharma: A case for transformation (IMD, 2020)
Education
Master’s degree (Pharmacy)
University of Freiburg
PhD (Pharmacology and toxicology)
Free University of Berlin
Profile
Winter Nie’s expertise lies at the intersection of change management and leadership, with a focus on strategy, team dynamics, and change initiatives. She has a deep understanding of how people at different levels in an organization react to change and how leaders can effectively manage resistance and organizational dynamics.
Nie says companies are always dealing with tensions in relation to their external environment, strategic direction or internal capabilities, and that there are no perfect answers that always apply – everything depends on the individual company’s situation, purpose, strategy, and positioning – but she is able to help leaders skillfully navigate through these tensions into the future.
She is trained in psychodynamics as well as business, holding a Tavistock Consulting Advanced Certificate in Decoding Group Dynamics and certifications in several psychometric instruments on leadership and organizational development, so a lot of her work focuses on top management team dynamics. She helps business leaders to improve team dynamics where necessary, but also to identify situations where problems may have their roots in the strategy or external environment rather than the dynamics of the team.
Nie is also able to guide companies through organizational transformation and change initiatives, believing that the only way to keep up with the unrelenting pace of change in the world is to constantly learn, unlearn and relearn, with openness, courage, and humility.
She is particularly well equipped to provide support on strategic initiatives in areas such as customer centricity, moving from products to solutions, and operational/service excellence, and she has in-depth knowledge of doing business in emerging markets, low-cost competition, and innovation culture.
Nie works with companies who want to embark on organizational transformation at the individual, team, and organizational levels, looking beyond surface rationality into the unconscious forces below that shape the direction and speed of change. She also supports companies with senior leadership development, including work with both Western and Chinese companies on CEO and senior executive succession. Her advice is always anchored in the organization's goals and business requirements and leverages her keen observations of team dynamics and individual behaviors and insights into human nature.
She has worked with many global companies in a wide range of industries, including engineering and technology, service and consulting professions, fast-moving consumer products, banking and finance, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, gaming, and the internet, and sits on the boards of Singaporean software company Opsis and Chinese e-commerce group Valuesense.
Nie teaches on IMD's flagship Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP) program and is Dean of IMD China with responsibility for the school's business development and client relationships in the country. She also served as IMD’s Regional Director of Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania until 2019.
She is the author of several books and articles in academic and practitioner-oriented journals.
Her 2021 book The Future of Global Retail: Learning from China's Retail Revolution provides a roadmap to help global retail executives prepare for the decade ahead, drawing on lessons on innovation, purpose and agility in emerging markets. Nie and co-authors Mark Greeven, Yunfei Fang and James Wang call this framework the “Beyond” Value Chain Model.
Her MIT Sloan Management Review article “Rethinking the East Asian Leadership Gap” showed how the difficulties experienced by many multinationals in identifying managers with leadership potential in East Asia are more to do with prevailing Western views of leadership than about available talent.
Nie’s 2012 book In the Shadow of the Dragon: The Global Expansion of Chinese Companies – and How It Will Change Business Forever provides insights into subtle yet powerful strategies used to gain market dominance, key players' approach to going global and the Chinese way of innovation, and her 2009 title Made in China – Secrets of China's Dynamic Entrepreneurs explains how multinationals can compete or work with Chinese entrepreneurs.
Before joining IMD in 2006, she was a tenured Associate Professor at Thunderbird School of Global Management in the United States.
Selected publications
The Future of Global Retail: Learning from China's Retail Revolution (Routledge, 2021)
Rethinking the East Asian Leadership Gap (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2017)
In the Shadow of the Dragon: The Global Expansion of Chinese Companies – and How It Will Change Business Forever (AMACOM, 2012)
Made in China: Secrets of China's Dynamic Entrepreneurs (John Wiley & Sons, 2009)
Recognition
John Molson MBA International Case Writing Competition award (2022)
Education
BS (Economics)
Zhejiang University, China
MBA
University of Montana
PhD (Operations Management)
University of Utah
Louise Muhdi helps organizations rapidly adapt to an uncertain and fast-changing business environment, drive innovation and growth, and sustain value creation for the long term. She enables executives to develop the capabilities, skills, tools, and mindsets needed to successfully lead and manage change and business transformation.
Using her extensive management experience working across different sectors, her multidisciplinary training in technology and innovation management, and as a biologist, she brings pedagogical innovation and a disruptive perspective to her research to create impactful learning journeys and educational content for clients.
Consequently, her approach is very hands-on and action oriented, guiding executives as they scope out the challenges they face and working out possible solutions in a human-centric, collaborative, disciplined and creative way. She specializes in designing novel tools and technology-enhanced programs that deliver measurable and immediate impact at the individual, team, and organizational level. Her focus is therefore on strategic innovation management, strategy execution, entrepreneurship, and implementation of organizational change.
Aware of the time constraints facing many executives, Muhdi is now developing and delivering the IMD BOOSTR[AD1] innovation program, which involves short-burst, virtual collaborative problem-solving modules which can be delivered as a stand-alone program or added on to other programs or learning journeys to address the specific needs and challenges of organizations. Broadly, it involves identifying a specific problem and then designing a high-intensity and immersive intervention in which geographically dispersed and diverse teams work out a potential solution in a short space of time.
IMD BOOSTR creates a safe space for teams to collaborate effectively and work on real-world strategic projects, build on existing abilities, and practice essential skills for the future. It helps dissolve workplace silos as participants learn to challenge the status quo, tackle disruptive challenges, cope with uncertainty, embrace diversity, think smarter, act faster and build the agility and resilience needed for long-term success.
Based on her work with organizations navigating change during the COVID-19 pandemic, she also developed a framework to help executives and their teams respond more effectively to the situation of constant, unpredictable upheaval that has become the norm in many areas of the business world, and which for many years has been referred to as a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) scenario. Muhdi's LACE framework is built on key pillars of action (learn, adapt, collaborate, experiment) and offers an action checklist for executives facing a VUCA business environment.
Her global portfolio of clients includes Oman LNG, Statkraft, Norlys, Indonesian bank Mandiri, Borealis, Borouge, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Romande Energie, Shell and a number of startups, and she also teaches on IMD's MBA and EMBA programs.
A natural innovator and an influential figure on the Swiss startup scene, she is a jury member at Venture Kick, which provides support for science-based technology startups from Swiss universities. She was also part of a team that was selected as a winner in the economic impact category of Switzerland's April 2020 Versus Virus hackathon.
Prior to joining IMD in 2019, Muhdi was Head of Innovation Strategy and Portfolio for Global Science and Technology at Givaudan International, where she led the development of the global innovation strategy and the implementation of multiple strategic initiatives to drive short, mid, and long-term growth. She previously spent several years in the pharmaceutical industry, where she developed emerging markets in Morocco and Tunisia and has held a strategic and scientific advisory role in the family office of a leading Swiss business personality.
Selected publications
How to jump-start innovation and organizational change (strategy+business, 2022)
The LACE framework: How to effectively respond to a rapidly changing business environment (I by IMD, 2021)
Learning to learn: Five steps to create a curious organization (IMD, 2021)
Trying to hack COVID: My experience hyperlooping teams into the future of remote innovation (IMD, 2020)
Understanding Crowdsourcing: The Process and the Contributors (Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften, 2012)
The crowdsourcing process: An intermediary mediated idea generation approach in the early phase of innovation (International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, 2011)
Motivational factors affecting participation and collaboration of members in two different Swiss innovation communities (International Journal of Innovation Management, 2011)
Recognition
Winner of Switzerland Versus Virus hackathon economic impact category (April 2020)
Education
MSc (Biology)
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
PhD (Technology and Innovation Management)
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
2021: Build your ecosystem of partners
Professor James Henderson – IMD
In 2025, McKinsey has estimated that approximately 30% of the global sales will come through ecosystems of partnerships. How can you take advantage of this megatrend that is rapidly reshaping industries? How can you build up a partnership capability?
Focusing on companies in high tech, healthcare, and financial services, you will learn how to:
- Strategize your ecosystem before you get started
- Scout the right strategic partners
- Structure the partnerships in the right manner
- Start partnerships on the right footing
- Steer your ecosystem for maximum advantage
2021: 5 digital pathways to create customer value
Professor Goutam Challagalla – IMD
Many companies have launched digital initiatives. Our research shows that vast majority of them make a company “play the current competitive game better” rather than “change the competitive game.” In this session, we provide a framework of five digital pathways to “change the competitive game” by bringing new value to customers.
These opportunities leverage digital technologies to:
- transform product offerings
- transform number of customers
- transform the purchase experience
2021: Business agility for the digital age
Professor Stephane Girod – IMD
Drawing from examples and cases from the banking, luxury, telecom, and industrial engineering industries, we will focus on new trends in strategy formulation and execution to respond to the disruptive forces of complexity and uncertainty in the digital age. At the end of this elective, you will develop the mindset and master the tools for designing agile strategies and organizations so that you can embrace, not fear, the complexity and higher unpredictability of today’s business world.
- Learn which strategic dilemmas need to be managed to create more strategic flexibility and how to manage them
- Understand how Western multinational companies can stay ahead of their fast-moving emerging-market competitors
- Unpack the promises and challenges of organizational agility so that you can go beyond the “agile” buzz word. Revisit the principles of organizational design for superior strategy execution.
2021: Digital resilience
Professor Öykü Işik – IMD
Today, it is a matter of when a company will be hacked, not a matter of if. Cyber-attacks are recognized as high-likelihood events that are also high-risk – as high as the risk posed by natural disasters (Source: WEF). Especially after the Covid-19 crisis hit and work-from-home need soared, 88% of organizations worldwide experienced phishing attempts, and the average cost of a data breach has increased up to 3.86 million US Dollars in 2020 (Source: ProofPoint).
This elective explores the role of business leaders in building digitally resilient organizations. The course also aims to equip leaders with critical tools to help them navigate the uncertainty associated with digital.
James Henderson is an expert on strategic agility, or the development and implementation of strategy under uncertainty. His research focuses on competitive strategy, corporate strategy, digital transformation, ecosystems, sustainability, and strategy execution.
Henderson says agility is all about an organization’s ability to respond to changing situations and to balance current performance with the exploration of opportunities for future growth. It may, therefore, involve an options-based approach in which small investments are made in projects with potential so they can be scaled up quickly if necessary, but without any major commitments if they don’t prove to be commercially viable. His research in this area has focused on investment timing, corporate venturing, strategic partnerships, and ecosystems.
He says agility takes different forms when applied to digital or sustainability transformation. Digital transformation initiatives usually incur rapid change cycles where getting it wrong can be quickly corrected. On the other hand, sustainability transformation initiatives often require long-term investments in physical infrastructure where companies need to be sure that the economics are right before making heavy commitments. However, he notes, conditions for sustainability transformations are now changing due to growing political will to support the transition to new sources of clean energy.
Henderson has also recently explored the topic of inclusive strategy, finding that giving employees and stakeholders a bigger say in strategy can foster greater engagement and understanding and thereby give firms a competitive edge.
He has helped many companies achieve and sustain their competitive advantage at a business unit, corporate, or global level through directing custom-specific executive programs, facilitating strategy workshops, or teaching MBAs and executives. He has designed, delivered, and directed programs for companies in a variety of industries including healthcare, aerospace and defense, capital-intensive industries, professional and financial services, high technology, consumer products, and economic development agencies.
At IMD, Henderson is Director of the Strategic Partnerships (SP) online course and Co-Director of the Leading Sustainable Business Transformation (LSBT) open program. He was also Director of the International Consulting Projects component of the MBA program between 2008 and 2021, and Dean of Programs and Innovation between 2012 and 2016, overseeing the doubling of the institute’s EMBA program, the redesign of its Program for Executive Development diploma, the launch of its Global Leadership in the Cloud portfolio of online programs, and the development of the Global Leader Index assessment tool.
He coedited the 2005 Strategic Management Society book Restructuring Strategy: New Networks and Industry Challenges, and his articles have been published in well-known journals such as the Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Business Venturing, and Journal of Operations Management. He also sits on the editorial board of the Strategic Management Journal. Furthermore, he has developed more than 50 published case studies, and won several research and teaching awards.
Before joining IMD in 2006, he was an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at Babson College and Babson School of Executive Education in Boston, Massachusetts.
Selected publications
Overcoming the seven concerns stopping you from building a more inclusive strategy (I by IMD, 2022)
Sustainability: From the drawing board into the business (I by IMD, 2021)
The influence of relational experience and contractual governance on negotiation strategies in buyer-supplier disputes (Journal of Operations Management, 2012)
Commitment versus flexibility: The role of resource accumulation lags (Academy of Management Journal, 2008)
From a hierarchy to a heterarchy of strategies: Adapting to a changing context (Management Decision, 2007)
Restructuring Strategy: New Networks and Industry Challenges (Blackwell Publishing, 2005)
Learning to time capacity expansion decisions: An empirical study of the global petrochemical industry (Strategic Management Journal, 2003)
Recognition
EFMD Excellence in Practice Gold Award (2018)
Management Decision Best Article award (2007)
ECCH Best Selling Case in Europe award (1993)
Academy of Management Conference Business Policy and Strategy Division Carolyn Dexter Award (2009)
Paper included in Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings (2003)
Nominations for Strategic Management Society Best Paper Prize (2003 and 2004)
Education
BA (Economics)
University of Western Ontario, Canada
MBA
Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, Canada
PhD (Strategic Management)
INSEAD
Goutam Challagalla, Professor of Strategy and Marketing, focuses on how digital advances and sustainability concerns are impacting companies' business strategies and approaches to marketing. Having helped companies to rethink their business models and build new capabilities in the face of the digital revolution, he is now helping to integrate into their strategy sustainability related challenges and opportunities.
Challagalla's teaching, consulting and research highlight the different challenges facing companies as a result of digital and sustainability transformations. While digital advances require the development of new business models in order to become more effective or efficient, taking on sustainability goals means that organizations have to rethink their whole raison d'être and their relationship with all stakeholders.
He is therefore well placed to help companies prepare for further acceleration in digital and sustainability transformations in the post-pandemic world, particularly by designing strategies that are resilient for today and tomorrow. His research shows how digital breakthroughs can derail businesses, as well as the steps they can take to protect themselves and leverage digital technologies for gain. It also provides insights on ways in which firms can exploit purpose and digital advances to drive sustainability priorities, on brand strategies for sustainability, customer centricity, and how to design and lead the modern sales organization in the wake of COVID-19.
He is currently working on a book on digital pathways for value creation, which examines six ways in which companies can use digital advances to drive customer value and loyalty. The book is due to be published later in 2022 or in early 2023.
His research has been published in top marketing and management journals including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, and the Journal of Applied Psychology, with a paper in Harvard Business Review forthcoming. He also served on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Marketing and Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management.
Challagalla has led programs on strategy and marketing issues for clients from a wide range of B2B and B2C industries, including AT&T, Bangkok Bank, Beiersdorf, Cargill, GE, Grundfos, Kone, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Reckitt, Tetra Pak, Turner Broadcasting and Zurich Insurance Group.
At IMD, he is Director of the Advanced Management Program (AMP), the Digital Marketing Strategies program (DMS) and Strategy Governance for Boards program. And until recently he ran an annual event for Chief Marketing Officers, which was attended by the CMOs of firms from across Europe (e.g. Tetra Pak, Dow, IBM Europe).
Before joining IMD in 2015, Challagalla served for 20 years as a marketing professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, where he was Associate Dean for Executive Education and head of the marketing department. He also worked as Principal at The Monitor Group, a strategy and marketing consulting company.
Selected publications
The joint and multilevel effects of training and incentives from upstream manufacturers on downstream salespeople's efforts (Journal of Marketing Research, 2020)
The online challengers threatening to disrupt the disrupters (Financial Times, 2020) How Coke, Apple and others use marketing doctrine (Forbes India, 2015)
Marketing doctrine: A principles-based approach to guiding marketing decision making in firms (Journal of Marketing, 2014)
Implementing changes in marketing strategy: The role of perceived outcome and process-oriented supervisory actions (Journal of Marketing Research, 2012)
Proactive postsales service: When and why does it pay off? (Journal of Marketing, 2009)
Awards
Outstanding Dissertation Award at UT-Austin (1994) Decision Sciences Institute Best Paper Award (2006)
American Marketing Association Best Services Paper award (2010) Maynard Award for best paper in Journal of Marketing (2015)
Education
After graduating from Osmania University in Hyderabad, India, Challagalla earned an MBA at Arizona State University and a PhD at the University of Texas in Austin.
Öykü Işık, Professor of Digital Strategy and Cybersecurity, is an expert on digital resilience and the ways in which disruptive technologies challenge our society and organizations. Named on the Thinkers50 Radar 2022 list of up-and-coming global thought leaders, she helps businesses to tackle cybersecurity, data privacy, and digital ethics challenges, and enables CEOs and other executives to understand these issues, which she believes are too important to be left to technical specialists alone.
Işık’s research explores ways in which emerging technologies can be exploited to foster responsible innovation. She has worked with organizations such as Mastercard, Ageas, KBC and BNP Paribas Fortis, Turkcell, and the European Union Intellectual Property Office to help them shape their responses to consumer concerns around cybersecurity, data privacy and digital ethics.
While digital transformation creates more opportunities for organizations, this is also accompanied by increasing risks, she says. Cyber attackers are becoming more sophisticated and cyber extortion is now a booming business that poses a serious threat, with major financial, reputational, and regulatory implications for organizations that are targeted. Many businesses fail to give enough attention to these risks, but Işık is able to provide practical advice to organizations on how to develop the digital capabilities they need to ensure that they can deal with such hazards.
Meanwhile, growing consumer worries about data privacy and protection mean that organizations are under pressure to build digital trust and transparency, and new regulations such as the EU’s GDPR regime have major ramifications for the way that businesses process consumer data. Işık therefore helps organizations to understand customer concerns and regulatory changes, and shape their privacy and data processing policies accordingly.
The emerging field of digital ethics is also growing in importance amid mounting anxieties over how organizations use digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence, for surveillance. Ethical considerations therefore need to be addressed as such technologies are deployed, she says.
Işık is currently looking at public sector organizations, which are traditionally seen as slow to implement new technologies, but may actually offer some examples of best practice that the private sector could learn from. She is also carrying out research on the behavior and attitudes of young people towards data protection and their readiness to exchange privacy for convenience or financial gains, and is developing a practical team simulation for how firms might respond to a ransomware attack. A future study will offer guidance for organizations on the considerations to bear in mind when engaging digital forensics experts.
Işık leads IMD’s Cybersecurity Risk and Strategy program, which helps businesses develop an action plan to identify, prepare for, and respond to emerging and imminent cyber threats.
A computer scientist by training, Işık’s work before joining IMD in 2020 focused on business intelligence, analytics, and technology and business process management. She was previously Assistant Professor of Information Systems Management at Vlerick Business School in Belgium and taught information systems courses at the University of North Texas and Istanbul Bilgi University.
Selected publications
Grassroots business intelligence as an enabler of change management: A case study at a large global manufacturing firm (Complex Systems Informatics and Modeling Quarterly, 2020)
Big data capabilities: an organizational information processing perspective (Analytics and Data Science, 2018)
How system quality influences mobile BI use: The mediating role of engagement (International Journal of Information Management, 2016)
Unlocking the potential of the process perspective in business transformation (International Conference on Business Process Management, 2016)
Repositioning business process management: Exploring key capabilities for successful business transformation (BPTrends, 2016)
Recognition
Named on the Thinkers50 Radar list of management thought leaders to watch in the year ahead (2022)
Named as one of Switzerland’s Digital Shapers by Bilanz, Handelszeitung, Le Temps, and Digitalswitzerland (2021)
Education
BSc (Computer Science and Mathematics)
Istanbul Bilgi University
MBA
Istanbul Bilgi University
PhD
University of North Texas
2021: Fintech and the new financial system
Professor Arturo Bris – IMD
Fintech refers to the use of technology to disrupt the business model of financial institutions. This elective provides an extensive overview of the current fintech landscape. We investigate the impact of AI and Data Analytics in banking and pay special attention to blockchain and the token economy. Topics explored include Open Banking, DeFi, Cryptocurrencies and ICOs, Digital Identity and Cybersecurity. We also pay attention to the regulatory aspect of Fintech, understanding that Fintech means different things in China and in Europe or the United States.
The elective is a necessary complement to our Finance classes. You will find out that many of the things that we discuss in the core Finance class are important but obsolete, and that new tools are needed to cope with one of the biggest revolutions in Management.
2021: M&A
Professor Patrick Reinmoeller – IMD
Winning in markets with business strategies that deliver new products and services to serve a customer segment better is clearly important. However, among the most important strategic decisions mergers and acquisitions stand out. The stakes are high, and the returns can be big. Unfortunately, most M&As fail. This elective focuses in five sessions on how to succeed with M&A and post-merger integration.
The elective focuses on M&A as critical part of corporate strategy and the sessions answer five main questions. Each session will feature case study discussions and the working through of real life situations. Two guest speakers bring in the perspectives of practice on the promise and peril associated with M&A.
2021: Late-stage entrepreneurship: buyout, expansion and turnaround opportunities
Professor Benoît Leleux – IMD
The elective focuses on late-stage entrepreneurship, i.e. buyouts, scale-ups and turnarounds, addressing the topic from different perspectives, such as the entrepreneur, investors, employees, corporate partners, etc. It emphasizes the cross-functional elements involved in acquiring, growing, rejuvenating, and harvesting entrepreneurial businesses. It is designed to help participants get a better understanding of the various issues relevant to the engineering of a buyout or turnaround, looking at business/financing plans, valuation techniques, alternative business models, possible sources of equity and loan financing, trade sales, deal structures, incentive management, etc.
The elective completes the coverage of startup entrepreneurship in Module 1 of the program.
2021: Options, futures, and other derivatives
Professor Salvatore Cantale – IMD
This course will cover a selected number of advanced topics in derivative markets. We will start our journey analyzing the options strategies available to investors, including Spreads, Strangles, Collars, and more. Once the use of these instruments are clear, we will tackle the challenging task of pricing options, understanding the variables that affect the price of an option, and finally, the Greeks.
A case study will help us put it all together. Linear contracts (forwards and futures) will come next. We will stress the possible uses in risk management, and the practical issues associated with their use. Another case study on a multi-million successful hedging program will be discussed in class. We will then conclude our analysis with credit risk its measurement, and its management.
Arturo Bris (www.arturobris.org) ranks among the top one hundred most read finance academics in the world. He is the author of several books, a frequent speaker at international conferences, and appears regularly on international media outlets. He also leads the world-renowned IMD World Competitiveness Center (WCC) and is an award-winning teacher and program director.
His work has been published in the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Legal Studies and the Journal of Business, and he has had articles published in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Handelsblatt among others.
His areas of expertise include corporate finance, corporate governance, financial regulation, and competitiveness. As Director of the IMD World Competitiveness Center, he works with governments all over the world assessing, measuring, and managing the competitiveness of countries. The WCC produces trusted annual rankings on economies’ competitiveness, and under his leadership it has expanded its coverage by adding new rankings on talent, digital competitiveness, and smart cities.
In addition to leading the Center, Bris conducts research on the relationship between income inequality, social mobility, and competitiveness. His work on the international aspects of financial regulation focuses particularly on the effects of bankruptcy, short sales, insider trading and merger laws. He has also researched and lectured on the effects of the Euro on the corporate sector and the valuation impact of corporate governance changes.
His recent work includes a comprehensive study of 3,692 CEOs from 22 countries from 1991-2019, which found strong evidence that existing studies overestimate the impact of CEOs on the performance of the firms they lead, and an analysis of the outlook for globalization in the post-COVID-19 period.
At IMD he directs the Strategic Finance and Navigating Fintech Innovation and Disruption program. He also previously directed the flagship Advanced Strategic Management program between 2009 and 2013. He has led several custom programs for organizations operating in various industries, with a particular interest in the financial sector, and has extensive consulting experience with countries from across the world.
Bris' latest book The Right Place: How National Competitiveness Makes or Breaks Companies provides an analysis of countries’ competitive performance, typical mistakes that countries make, and the pillars necessary to build a truly competitive economy. He also co-authored Flex or Fail: The Future of Work and Pay and Sixteen Shades of Smart: How Cities Can Shape Their Own Future in 2019, and Blockchange!: How to Survive the Crypto Economy in 2018.
Bris is a member of the Strategic Committee of Debiopharm Investment and the International Advisory Council of the Wealth Management Institute in Singapore, and is academic advisor to the Blue Whale Foundation, a decentralized ecosystem enabling the self-employed to thrive by capturing a fair share of the value they create. He also serves as a member of the International Advisory Board of CENTRUM Graduate Business School in Peru, and of the Supervisory Board of the Kyiv International Economic Forum. He is also a research associate of the European Corporate Governance Institute and a research fellow of the Yale International Institute for Corporate Governance.
Prior to joining IMD in 2005, he was the Robert B & Candice J. Haas Associate Professor of Corporate Finance at the Yale School of Management.
Selected publications
The euro and corporate financing before the crisis (Journal of Financial Economics, 2014)
The euro and corporate valuations (Review of Financial Studies, 2009)
The value of investor protection: Firm evidence from cross-border mergers (Review of Financial Studies, 2008)
Good stewards, cheap talkers, or family men? The impact of mutual fund closures on fund managers, flows, fees, and performance (Review of Financial Studies, 2007)
Efficiency and the bear: Short sales and markets around the world (Journal of Finance, 2007)
The costs of bankrupty: Chapter 7 liquidations versus Chapter 11 reorganization (Journal of Finance, 2006)
The real effects of the euro: Evidence from corporate investments (Review of Finance, 2006)
The optimal concentration of creditors (Journal of Finance, 2005)
Who should pay for bankruptcy costs? (Journal of Legal Studies, 2005)
Corporate financial policies and performance around currency crises (Journal of Business, 2004)
Corporate leverage and currency crisis (Journal of Financial Economics, 2002)
Recognition
European Financial Management Best Paper Award (2006)
China International Conference in Finance Best Paper Award (2005)
Jaime Fernández de Araoz Corporate Finance Award (2005)
Yale School of Management Alumni Association Teaching Award (2001 and 2003)
FMA European Conference Best Paper Award (2001)
Education
BSc (Law and Economics)
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
MSc (Financial and Monetary Studies)
CEMFI, Madrid
PhD (Management)
INSEAD
Patrick Reinmoeller’s teaching, research, and consulting focus on strategic thinking for senior executives, with a particular emphasis on customer-centric innovation. He has particular expertise in the Japanese business sector, having lived and worked in the country for several years.
Reinmoeller helps companies with the difficult decisions they have to make when developing and executing a strategy. He says strategic decisions often involve dilemmas, paradoxes, and alternatives that all have pros and cons, and the approaches to solutions can range from a rational decision-making method to adjustments in top management team dynamics.
He also works with companies on the strategic creation of knowledge for commercial benefit. Knowledge development fosters innovation and can lead to future commercial success, but many companies do not exploit opportunities to create and leverage knowledge and therefore miss out on potential gains, he says, finding that this is particularly true of larger organizations which tend to become self-absorbed.
His recent research has focused on crisis-driven innovation, including how companies have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and other unexpected developments. His second stream of work focuses on post-merger integration, which can be immensely difficult, with only 30% of mergers succeeding. He has been able to identify some patterns that can be used to help firms navigate the process.
He has led custom programs on developing strategic priorities, implementing strategic initiatives, and managing change for a wide range of companies including Bank Mandiri, Coca-Cola İçecek, DENSO, DNB, and Norlys, and he has written numerous case studies inspired by this work including ones on IKEA, Grammarly, Turkcell, Geely, GoJek, Sea, Stellapps, Urban Company, CCI, and NTT. He also teaches on IMD’s MBA and EMBA programs.
Reinmoeller has published two books on strategy development and strategic management, including his 2018 title Mapping a Winning Strategy: Developing and Executing a Successful Strategy in Turbulent Markets, and his 2011 work Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalization.
His academic articles have appeared in leading journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, British Journal of Management, European Management Journal, MIT Sloan Management Review, Organization Studies, R&D Management, and Strategic Organization.
In addition, he is a member of the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Discoveries, European Management Journal, and Strategic Organization, and a regular reviewer for the Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, Organization Studies, MIT Sloan Management Review, and the Journal of Management Studies.
Beyond his academic work, he is also an angel investor and non-executive director of a startup.
Reinmoeller has taught executives around the world and his working languages are Dutch, English, German, Italian, and Japanese. He joined IMD in 2020 after 11 years as a professor at Cranfield University in the UK and spells as an associate professor at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, and an assistant professor at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He carried out post-doctoral research at the Institute of Innovation Research at Hitotsubashi University in Japan after completing his academic studies in Germany and Italy.
Selected publications
Crisis-driven innovation of products new to firms: The sensitization response to COVID-19 (R&D Management, 2022)
Staying in a dying organisation: Stigmatisation and organisational identification (Academy of Management Proceedings, 2021)
Mapping a Winning Strategy: Developing and Executing a Successful Strategy in Turbulent Markets (Emerald Publishing, 2018)
Open-system orchestration as a relational source of sensing capabilities: Evidence from a venture association (Academy of Management Journal, 2018)
How to win a price war (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2014)
Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalization (Concepts and Cases) (Cengage Learning, 2011)
The link between diversity and resilience (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2005)
Recognition
Academy of Management outstanding reviewer awards (2006, 2015, 2020, 2022)
Strategic Management Society outstanding reviewer awards (2013, 2016-2018)
Erasmus University Rotterdam School of Management best teacher award (2009-2013, 2016-17)
Education
Master’s degree (Business Administration)
University of Cologne
PhD
University of Cologne
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
Salvatore Cantale is Professor of Finance. His academic and consulting work is divided into two different but complementary streams. First, he works at the intersection between strategy, business models, and financial results. He also sheds light on the relationship between ESG and finance, with the aim of increasing the understanding of how ESG policies impact both sustainability outcomes and financial results, and of helping companies navigate ESG ambitions and regulatory requirements.
In the area of strategy, business models, and financial results, Cantale helps class participants and companies to decipher financial results, determine the financial implications of business initiatives, and develop the business case for courses of action by putting numbers on proposed measures. He insists that a better understanding of the financial implications of a desired course of corporate action is a prerequisite for any aspiring value-enhancing executive at any level. As a certified leadership coach, he also provides guidance on ways to improve the performance of finance functions.
In the field of ESG and finance, he is interested in sustainable business models, climate tech, investor activism, and how financial tools such as green bonds, sustainability-linked bonds, and derivatives can help address challenges for corporations in financing their investments in this essential area. His work has been presented at the European Parliament Committee on Transport and Tourism (TRAN), and has had a powerful impact on how to translate regulation and policy directions into implementable actions for companies.
At IMD, his portfolio of activities covers a wide range of topics and participants. He directs the Finance for Boards (FFB) program and the newly designed Sustainability for Boards and Board Banking Program. He also teaches finance in the MBA program, delivers customized sessions on finance and strategy for general management programs such as the Advanced Management Program (AMP) and the flagship program Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP), and contributes to the Strategic Finance (SF) program.
In addition, he has carried out consultancy services or designed and delivered in-company programs for many organizations including financial companies such as APG, MUFG, Development Bank of Japan, China Development Bank, China Minsheng Bank, Bank of Communications, UniCredit and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, as well as strategy programs for non-financial companies such as Lacoste, Pernod Ricard, NCC, Bupa Arabia, Barilla, Seadrill, Unilever, Coca-Cola Hellenic, Tata Motors, Pirelli, Sibur, KPN, Honda, Kering and Maersk.
He has been published in a variety of international double-refereed journals on topics such as IPOs, security design, financial engineering, and dual listing. His work has also appeared in practitioner journals such as MIT Sloan Management Review, as well as in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and other media outlets.
Before joining IMD in 2011, he was a faculty director for the Master’s in finance at the AB Freeman School of Business at Tulane University in the US, where he won numerous teaching awards. Previously, he worked as an analyst with a large investment bank in London, and as a research fellow at New York University.
Selected publications
Solutions to ‘dirty’ bitcoin’s growing sustainability challenge (I by IMD, 2021)
ABP’s bold move strengthens the case for divesting fossil fuel stocks (I by IMD, 2021)
Low cost, high impact: the new ‘Barbarians at the Gate’ (I by IMD, 2021)
Danone’s damaging brush with activist investors (I by IMD, 2021)
Is your company addicted to value extraction? (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2014)
Recognition
Global Finance Association Best Paper Award
Southern Finance Association Outstanding Paper Award
Education
BA (Economics and Finance)
University of Catania, Italy
Master’s degree (Management)
INSEAD
PhD (Finance)
INSEAD
2021: A primer on impact investment and sustainable finance
Professor Vanina Farber – IMD
The ability to find the balance of risk-return-impact that meets organizational preferences is one of the most important catalysts to increase the scale of social innovation moving forward. Understand the benefits and challenges of integrating impact into investment analysis and decisions, which have traditionally been based on risk-return calculations:
- How can impact investors fill the private capital gap to finance SDGs?
- How can corporations play a role in the impact investment landscape?
- How can the financial sector deliver societal and environmental impact while still generating market rate returns?
- Why should firms take ESG issues into consideration in their corporate strategy?
- How can firms report and disclose ESG factors for investors?
- What are the different financing opportunities to finance business model transitions to a greener, more just and inclusive society?
2021: Reforming marketing for a sustainable future
Professor Frédéric Dalsace – IMD
Marketing has too often become a “dirty word” (e.g.: “is this true or is this (just) marketing”?). Most of the critique is unjustified…but when one takes a hard look at traditional marketing practices, it is difficult to ignore altogether marketers’ responsibility. This is all the more important as formidable environmental and societal challenges lie ahead of us at the level of the planet.
This elective aims at finding ways to transform marketing into a positive force of change for the future. Marketing “as-we-all-know-it” is the daughter of Globalization; marketing “as-some of-us-see-it” will be the mother of Sustainability.
The objective is to review current practices and systematically investigate possible avenues to develop new, or “alter”, marketing practices. Participants will become aware of the responsibility they have, as their own decisions will be shaping tomorrow’s world. They will develop a critical knowledge of new marketing thinking and practices in this area.
2021: Economics that matters
Professor Ralf Boscheck – IMD
A review of fundamental economics and its relevance for decision-making:
- Economics – The Big Themes
- Labor-Economics, the Future of Work & your own Future
- Designing incentives to reduce the need for monitoring others
- Human Geography, Economic Development & Sustainability
- Macroeconomic Outlook at the end of 2021
2021: Movers, Shakers, Preachers & Pragmatists
Professor Ralf Boscheck – IMD
The aim of this elective is to review the moral dimensions of everyday life and confirm your moral compass.
- Introduction: On the Need to Trust your Moral Intuition
- Confronting Dilemmas
- Philosophical Perspectives on 9 Everyday Issues
- Culture Matters – Personality or Culture?
- The Tree of Philosophy – 14 Perspectives throughout History
- One last video – One last Book
Vanina Farber is an award-winning economist and political scientist who specializes in social innovation and the mobilization of private capital for impact investing. Her research focuses on innovative, practical, sustainable, and inclusive market-oriented approaches that have the potential to change the world by eliminating the root causes of social ills. She is particularly interested in social innovation, social entrepreneurship, impact investing, sustainable finance and ESG, and applies a gender lens in all her research projects.
A key element of her work is to explore how the private sector can embed the idea of impact in the investment decision making process, particularly in relation to risk-adjusted return calculations and resource allocation. She seeks to understand the social innovation landscape through a holistic approach that examines both the supply of and demand for social innovation initiatives.
At IMD, she leads the elea Center for Social Innovation which is carrying out important research in this area. Among other topics, the Center is looking at how the private sector can deploy capital at scale for investments in projects with real social impact, and how private, public sector and philanthropic investors can collaborate effectively.
The Center was created by a donation from the family of Peter Wuffli with the aim of inspiring leaders in business, government, and civil society to create social innovation in their respective areas of responsibility.
In 2020, Farber co-authored the book The elea Way: A Learning Journey towards Sustainable Impact, with Peter Wuffli, the Founder and Chairman of the elea Foundation for Ethics and Globalization. The book summarizes insights from the foundation’s 15-year journey and is aimed at entrepreneurs, investors, executives, philanthropists, policymakers, and anyone curious about entrepreneurship and inclusive capitalism. Using real-life examples, it includes suggestions on how to lead impact enterprises in such areas as developing strategies, plans and models, building effective teams and organizations, managing resources, and handling crises.
Farber’s work involves collaboration with a range of financial institutions and corporate clients, and in 2022 she will launch IMD’s Driving Innovative Finance for Impact open program in partnership with the International Committee of the Red Cross, Lombard Odier, and the World Economic Forum. She also plays an active part in the Swiss Lab for Sustainable Finance and Gender Lens Initiative for Switzerland research networks, and is an advisory board member at the Impact Finance Forum and an international academic advisory board member at the Católica Porto Business School in Portugal.
She also teaches courses on impact investing in IMD’s MBA and Executive MBA programs and leads the pioneering Discovery Expedition to Peru for EMBA participants, where they perform due diligence on Peruvian social enterprises for Swiss and local impact investors.
Farber was named Outstanding Case Writer in the 2022 Case Centre Awards for her study on pay-as-you-go technology company Angaza. She has also been recognized as winner of the EFMD Case Writing Competition 2022 in two categories: African Business for Angaza, and Responsible Leadership for Nia Impact Capital. She also won the responsible leadership category in the 2019 EFMD Case Writing Competition for her case on Philip Morris International's vision of a smoke-free future.
Prior to joining IMD in 2018, Farber was Professor and Chair of Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Social Inclusion at Universidad del Pacífico, Peru. In January 2022 she was appointed as the fifth Dean of the IMD EMBA program.
Selected publications
Defining and conceptualizing impact investing: Attractive nuisance or catalyst? (Journal of Business Ethics, 2022 forthcoming)
Gender and entrepreneurial propensity: Risk-taking and prosocial preferences in labour market entry decisions (Social Enterprise Journal, 2021)
The elea Way: A Learning Journey Toward Sustainable Impact (Routledge, 2020)
Will Covid-19 pave the way for more business responsibility? Evidence from Switzerland (Enterprise for Society Center, 2020)
In Alain Gibb's footsteps: Evaluating alternative approaches to sustainable enterprise education (International Journal of Management Education, 2016)
Recognition
Winner of the Case Centre Outstanding Case Writer Competition (2022)
Global Business School Network Going Beyond Award finalist (2021)
Winner of EFMD Case Writing Competition Awards (2019 and 2022)
Education
Bachelor's degree (Political Science)
University of Buenos Aires
MA (Economics)
University of Memphis
Frédéric Dalsace focuses on two distinct areas – B2B issues such as customer centricity, buyer-seller relationships, and value management, and sustainability, inclusive business models, and alleviating poverty.
He is Co-Director of IMD’s new Leading Customer-Centric Strategies (LCCS) program and believes that companies need to rethink their approach to customer centricity. He says many organizations only consider customer centricity when they are defining their offers, but that they also need to incorporate it into the value delivery and value capture dimensions of their business models. One way of doing this is through risk-sharing business models including fully service-based offerings, such as Rolls Royce's Power by the Hour model, or performance-based and outcome-based contracts in which payments depend on the value created, with the result that the interests of suppliers and customers are aligned.
Risk-sharing business models are also relevant in Dalsace’s work on sustainability because they lead to more circular and more efficient solutions. He previously worked with 2006 Nobel prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus on inclusive business models, and is currently helping firms to integrate sustainability into their broader strategy by making the business case for sustainability, for example. Many companies have been naive about sustainability and have made the mistake of decoupling it from their overall strategy, he says.
He is also collaborating with IMD’s Professor of Strategy Arnaud Chevallier on a project to identify and evaluate the types of questions that leaders should be asking of those around them. As this is not something that is formally taught, leaders tend to learn by doing, which can lead to blind spots. Using a database of more than 600 executives, the pair have therefore developed a template for the types of questions that leaders need to ask – and how to ask them.
Dalsace has worked with a range of firms including Atlas Copco, UCB, Valmet, VAT Group, Grundfos, MANE, Porsche and STADA, and he has published in academic journals such as Harvard Business Review, Business Horizons, Strategic Management Journal and Revue Française de Gestion.
Before joining IMD in 2019, he was a Professor at HEC Paris for 16 years, holding the Social Business/Enterprise and Poverty Chair, and he has won numerous awards for his teaching, research, and publications.
Prior to his academic life, he held a series of senior positions in the business world, including marketing roles at Michelin and CarnaudMetalbox and as a strategy consultant with McKinsey.
Selected publications
Mindset drives success: Selling beneficial products at the base of the pyramid (Business Horizons, 2021)
The friend or foe fallacy: Why your best customers may not need your friendship (Business Horizons, 2017)
Reaching the rich world’s poorest consumers (Harvard Business Review, 2015)
Do make or buy decisions matter? The influence of organizational governance on technological performance (Strategic Management Journal, 2002)
L’entreprise contre la pauvreté (Fondation Jean Jaurès, 2011)
Recognition
HEC Montreal CSR Challenge Case Writing Competition Award (2022)
Named on Case Centre list of best-selling cases (2021)
Strategy Management Society (Strategy Process Interest Group) Best Paper Prize (2019)
Business Horizons Best Article Award (2017)
Named on Poets & Quants list of MBA graduates’ favorite professors (2017)
HEC Paris MBA Program Best Permanent Professor (Specialized Phase) (2016, 2017)
Case Centre Award for Best Marketing Case (2015)
Best Teacher Award, HEC (2006)
HEC Foundation Prize for best article published by HEC Faculty (2004)
Winner of Institute for the Study of Business Markets Doctoral Competition (2000)
Education
MSc (Business Administration)
HEC Paris
MBA
Harvard Business School
MSc (Management)
INSEAD
PhD (Management)
INSEAD
Ralf Boscheck is Professor of Economics and Business Policy. Boscheck teaches strategy, economics, and regulation, as well as country analysis and macroeconomic policy. For 30 years, his research has focused on how to assess competitive advantage, either from having a superior offer or simply an abuse of a dominant position. He is currently working on the Business and The Human Prospect, a project which identifies the regulatory obstacles that effectively prevent companies from profitably addressing the fundamental challenges facing humanity.
He has worked with an extensive list of corporate clients and authorities including ABB, Allianz, Atkins, Aventis, Bayer, Bertelsmann, CLP Group, Chopard, Cisco, Clariant, De Mello, Danisco, DuPont, Eon, Grundfos, Henkel, Hoechst, Holcim, Metso, Nestlé, Nestlé Health Science, Novartis, Norske Shell, Oman Electricity Authority, PwC, Roche, Santander, TXU Europe, Thames Water and WorleyParsons.
Boscheck returned to IMD in September 2021 after a three-and-a-half-year leave of absence to serve as Dean of the Business School at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile. In that role, he undertook a fundamental reform of the school’s undergraduate program, changed the faculty and research policies, and built up a research-sharing network of 10 Latin American universities.
From 2014 to 2017 he was Dean of the IMD MBA program and launched the Navigating the Future conference at which MBA students gave presentations to an executive audience on trends shaping tomorrow's business environment. During that period, he was also Director of the school's International Consulting Projects.
Earlier, he directed the Managing Corporate Resources (MCR) open program, precursor to the current Advanced Management Program (AMP), and the Breakthrough Program for Senior Executives (BPSE), IMD’s most senior general management program. He currently teaches on the MBA and Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP) programs.
He has authored four books published by Palgrave Macmillan, Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and Difo-Druck, and has had more than 40 articles in refereed academic journals. Syntheses of his academic work have often been republished for a broader audience in various media outlets, and he has written articles for the Financial Times, Handelsblatt, Les Echos and other titles. During his time at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile, he had a monthly column in the business newspaper Diario Financiero. He has also served as a member of the editorial boards of World Competition, Intereconomics, and the International Journal of Energy Sector Management.
Before joining IMD in 1990, Boscheck was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University, research associate at the Swiss Institute for International Economics, and a consultant with The Monitor Company.
Selected publications
COVID-19 and the political economy of shared adjustment (Intereconomics, 2021)
Patent trolls: In search of efficient regulatory standards (World Competition: Law and Economics Review, 2016)
Intellectual property rights and the evergreening of pharmaceuticals (Intereconomics, 2015)
Strategies, Markets and Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
Energy Futures (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006)
Market Drive and Governance: Re-examining the Rules of Economic and Commercial Contest (Routledge, 2002)
Institutional Choice, Antitrust and Cooperative R&D (Difo-Druck, 1988)
Education
BA (Political Science and Economics)
Philipps University of Marburg, Germany/Central University of Iowa
MA (Public Policy)
Georgetown University, Washington DC
MBA (Finance and Industrial Economics)
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
PhD (Economics)
University of St. Gallen
Habilitation (Law and Economics)
University of St. Gallen
2021: LEAP: strategic resilience in a disrupted world
Professor Howard Yu – IMD
The biggest danger of a crisis is distraction. Clarity matters. The best way to predict the future is to create it. I’ll show you how highly successful leaders “leap” during crises, how they manage to increase autonomy without sinking the organization into chaos, how they pursue new business opportunities when resources have to be preserved, and how they rapidly pivot and recover when everyone else falls on the side-lines. Through these actions, these leaders expand their scope of influence and their corresponding sense of control. They emerge stronger as individuals. Their companies come out more powerful than ever.
Howard Yu is the author of the award-winning book LEAP: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied. His work has been featured by CNBC, BBC, Fast Company Magazine, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Quartz at Work, MarketWatch, and numerous international outlets. Check out his latest thinking at https://www.howardyu.org/blog.
2021: Strategic thinking in practice: advanced problem solving
Professor Arnaud Chevallier – IMD
As a manager and executive, you need to solve a myriad of complex problems of different nature in constantly evolving environments.
In this elective, you’ll learn to extract more value out of the tools you’ve acquired and apply them to a problem of value to you. You’ll receive personalized feedback from your peers and me on your strong points and your weaknesses and actionable ways to work on them. And you’ll acquire additional tools to make you a more effective problem solver, including hypothesis mapping and analogical thinking.
2021: Good strategy, bad strategy
Professor Goutam Challagalla – IMD
The digital age is making many companies rethink their strategy. As companies attempt to do so, there is confusion about how to go about it. The reason for the confusion is the conflicting advice on strategy development. Some believe that the essence of strategy is to be adaptable and embrace the idea of adaptive capabilities. Further, others argue that classic approaches to strategy no longer work (e.g. Porter’s industry analysis – after all what is an industry)? Others vehemently disagree. This session will clarify what constitutes ‘good strategy’ in the digital age.
2021: Business-for-Business marketing strategies
Professor Frédéric Dalsace – IMD
This elective course is the logical follow-up of the core marketing class taught by Amit Joshi and myself, targeted at participants interested in a career in B2B.
The traditional B2B Marketing model still in use today originated in the early 60s and was by large a “by-product” of the B2C world. It was designed for individual firms who sought to sell products TO customers within a supply-chain in a mostly physical world.
By contrast, we will work on a new “B4B” model, which seeks to develop a phygital ecosystem aiming at selling outcomes FOR customers.
Howard Yu specializes in technological innovation, strategic transformation, and change management and heads IMD’s Center for Future Readiness. He is also author of the award-winning and best-selling book LEAP: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied. In 2015 he was named by Poets&Quants as one of the world’s leading business school professors under 40, and in 2018 he was included on the Thinkers50 Radar list of management thinkers to watch in the year ahead.
His work as Director of the IMD Center for Future Readiness focuses on firms’ capacity to sustain new growth. The Center, which was established in 2020 with the backing of a multi-million-dollar grant from the LEGO Brand Group, aims to help companies spur innovation and thrive amid uncertainty by quantifying which organizations are most ready for a changing future and exploring the lessons that other firms can learn from them. The Center produces Future Readiness Indicators for various sectors to measure how prepared industry incumbents are for coming challenges.
Yu’s work has been published in journals such as Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, The European Business Review, and Business History Review, and popular media outlets including the New York Times, Financial Times, Fortune, Forbes, Straits Times, South China Morning Post, and Shanghai Daily. He is also regularly interviewed and quoted by news organizations such as the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, the BBC, and China Daily.
He says businesses are experiencing a series of seismic shifts as a result of global developments such as the encroachment of emerging market firms, the onslaught of digital transformation, growth in the number of affluent consumers across the world, the COVID-19 crisis, and the expansion of e-commerce, and managers must align with the trends affecting their sectors to prosper. For carmakers, for instance, the most significant trend is the leap from the mechanical engineering of the internal combustion engine to electric vehicles that blend connectivity with self-driving capabilities based on software algorithms.
At IMD, he is Director of the Future Readiness Strategy (FRS) open program. He has also delivered customized training programs for major global companies in Asia and Europe including Bosch, OCBC Bank, COFCO, Mars, ASML, Sanofi, ABB, Novartis, Assa Abloy, Maersk, Daimler, Electrolux, Nitto, and LEGO.
Yu’s book LEAP shows how pioneering companies can endure and prosper in a world of constant change and inevitable copycats by harnessing new strategies and advancements in technology and leveraging shifts in markets. The book won widespread praise from top executives as well as several awards, including an Axiom Business Book Awards Gold Medal and a strategy+business Best Business Book award.
He has also written numerous case studies and won several case writing awards from the European Foundation for Management Development and The Case Centre.
He joined IMD in 2011 after completing a doctoral degree in management at Harvard Business School. He is a Hong Kong native and worked in the Hong Kong banking industry at the start of his career.
Selected publications
How future thinking can derail your company’s present (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2022)
What makes a company “future ready”? (Harvard Business Review, 2022)
Why companies must embrace microservices and modular thinking (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2021)
Why some retailers are thriving amid disruption (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)
How autonomy creates resilience in the face of crisis (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)
LEAP: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied (PublicAffairs, 2018)
Leopards sometimes change their spots: How established firms can transform themselves (Harvard Business School, 2010)
Recognition
Axiom Business Book Awards Gold Medal winner (2019)
strategy+business Best Business Book award (2018)
Named on Inc. 10 Best Business Books of the year list (2018)
Named on Thinkers50 Radar list of management thinkers to watch in the year ahead (2018)
Winner of Case Centre Outstanding Case Writer Hot Topic Competition (2017)
Shortlisted for Thinkers50 Innovation Award (2017 and 2019)
Named on Poets&Quants ‘Best 40 under 40’ list of leading business school professors (2015)
Winner of EFMD Case Writing Competition Award (2013 and 2015)
Education
BBA
The University of Hong Kong
DBA
Harvard Business School
Arnaud Chevallier helps executives solve complex problems and make better decisions under uncertainty. His research, teaching and consulting draw on empirical findings from diverse disciplines to provide concrete tools that prepare executives to manage the strategic challenges they face in today’s dynamic global marketplace.
Effective problem solvers are T-shaped – they are both generalists and specialists, combining depth and breadth of knowledge. Although traditional education and training cultivate specialist skills, they pay much less attention to the acquisition of generalist skills, including strategic thinking. Executives can use Chevallier’s tools to improve on the breadth dimension.
His initial 2016 book Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving, published by Oxford University Press, is now followed by his latest title, Solvable: A Simple Solution to Complex Problems, co-authored with Albrecht Enders. This book synthesizes the strategic thinking needed for complex problem solving into a simple three-step process: frame, explore, decide. It also shows practitioners how to follow these steps using highly applicable, concrete tools.
He has helped numerous organizations to identify breakthrough solutions to complex problems, including Shell, SAP, Lenovo, Cisco, Novo Nordisk, Statkraft and the United Nations. He recently helped the International Committee of the Red Cross identify innovative funding sources and assisted Gavi the Vaccine Alliance in its drive to have greater impact. He also helped Swiss company Agathon to make decisions under high uncertainty during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and supported Tetra Pak in improving its decision-making processes through the optimal engagement of stakeholders.
At IMD he is Director of the Global Management Foundations (GMF) program and the Master of Science in Sustainable Management and Technology (SMT) program offered jointly by IMD, the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and the University of Lausanne. He is also Co-Director of IMD’s Complex Problem Solving (CPS) program.
Before joining IMD in 2018, Chevallier served as Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at Rice University in Houston, Texas, where he taught strategic thinking in the engineering school. He was previously graduate dean of the University of Monterrey in Mexico, teaching engineering and business. He trained in mechanical engineering and his PhD from Rice focused on nonlinear stochastic mechanics. He then worked in Accenture’s strategy and business architecture division before joining academia.
Selected publications
Don’t let the AI hype undermine good decision making (Management and Business Review, 2022 forthcoming)
Solvable: A Simple Solution to Complex Problems (Pearson, 2022 forthcoming)
Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Oil and gas well drilling: A vibrations perspective (The Shock and Vibration Digest, 2003)
Nonlinear stochastic drill-string vibrations (The Journal of Vibration and Acoustics, 2002)
Education
BS (Mechanical Engineering)
Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
MS (Mechanical Engineering)
Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
MS (Mechanical Engineering)
Rice University
PhD (Mechanical Engineering)
Rice University
Frédéric Dalsace focuses on two distinct areas – B2B issues such as customer centricity, buyer-seller relationships, and value management, and sustainability, inclusive business models, and alleviating poverty.
He is Co-Director of IMD’s new Leading Customer-Centric Strategies (LCCS) program and believes that companies need to rethink their approach to customer centricity. He says many organizations only consider customer centricity when they are defining their offers, but that they also need to incorporate it into the value delivery and value capture dimensions of their business models. One way of doing this is through risk-sharing business models including fully service-based offerings, such as Rolls Royce's Power by the Hour model, or performance-based and outcome-based contracts in which payments depend on the value created, with the result that the interests of suppliers and customers are aligned.
Risk-sharing business models are also relevant in Dalsace’s work on sustainability because they lead to more circular and more efficient solutions. He previously worked with 2006 Nobel prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus on inclusive business models, and is currently helping firms to integrate sustainability into their broader strategy by making the business case for sustainability, for example. Many companies have been naive about sustainability and have made the mistake of decoupling it from their overall strategy, he says.
He is also collaborating with IMD’s Professor of Strategy Arnaud Chevallier on a project to identify and evaluate the types of questions that leaders should be asking of those around them. As this is not something that is formally taught, leaders tend to learn by doing, which can lead to blind spots. Using a database of more than 600 executives, the pair have therefore developed a template for the types of questions that leaders need to ask – and how to ask them.
Dalsace has worked with a range of firms including Atlas Copco, UCB, Valmet, VAT Group, Grundfos, MANE, Porsche and STADA, and he has published in academic journals such as Harvard Business Review, Business Horizons, Strategic Management Journal and Revue Française de Gestion.
Before joining IMD in 2019, he was a Professor at HEC Paris for 16 years, holding the Social Business/Enterprise and Poverty Chair, and he has won numerous awards for his teaching, research, and publications.
Prior to his academic life, he held a series of senior positions in the business world, including marketing roles at Michelin and CarnaudMetalbox and as a strategy consultant with McKinsey.
Selected publications
Mindset drives success: Selling beneficial products at the base of the pyramid (Business Horizons, 2021)
The friend or foe fallacy: Why your best customers may not need your friendship (Business Horizons, 2017)
Reaching the rich world’s poorest consumers (Harvard Business Review, 2015)
Do make or buy decisions matter? The influence of organizational governance on technological performance (Strategic Management Journal, 2002)
L’entreprise contre la pauvreté (Fondation Jean Jaurès, 2011)
Recognition
HEC Montreal CSR Challenge Case Writing Competition Award (2022)
Named on Case Centre list of best-selling cases (2021)
Strategy Management Society (Strategy Process Interest Group) Best Paper Prize (2019)
Business Horizons Best Article Award (2017)
Named on Poets & Quants list of MBA graduates’ favorite professors (2017)
HEC Paris MBA Program Best Permanent Professor (Specialized Phase) (2016, 2017)
Case Centre Award for Best Marketing Case (2015)
Best Teacher Award, HEC (2006)
HEC Foundation Prize for best article published by HEC Faculty (2004)
Winner of Institute for the Study of Business Markets Doctoral Competition (2000)
Education
MSc (Business Administration)
HEC Paris
MBA
Harvard Business School
MSc (Management)
INSEAD
PhD (Management)
INSEAD
Goutam Challagalla, Professor of Strategy and Marketing, focuses on how digital advances and sustainability concerns are impacting companies' business strategies and approaches to marketing. Having helped companies to rethink their business models and build new capabilities in the face of the digital revolution, he is now helping to integrate into their strategy sustainability related challenges and opportunities.
Challagalla's teaching, consulting and research highlight the different challenges facing companies as a result of digital and sustainability transformations. While digital advances require the development of new business models in order to become more effective or efficient, taking on sustainability goals means that organizations have to rethink their whole raison d'être and their relationship with all stakeholders.
He is therefore well placed to help companies prepare for further acceleration in digital and sustainability transformations in the post-pandemic world, particularly by designing strategies that are resilient for today and tomorrow. His research shows how digital breakthroughs can derail businesses, as well as the steps they can take to protect themselves and leverage digital technologies for gain. It also provides insights on ways in which firms can exploit purpose and digital advances to drive sustainability priorities, on brand strategies for sustainability, customer centricity, and how to design and lead the modern sales organization in the wake of COVID-19.
He is currently working on a book on digital pathways for value creation, which examines six ways in which companies can use digital advances to drive customer value and loyalty. The book is due to be published later in 2022 or in early 2023.
His research has been published in top marketing and management journals including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, and the Journal of Applied Psychology, with a paper in Harvard Business Review forthcoming. He also served on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Marketing and Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management.
Challagalla has led programs on strategy and marketing issues for clients from a wide range of B2B and B2C industries, including AT&T, Bangkok Bank, Beiersdorf, Cargill, GE, Grundfos, Kone, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Reckitt, Tetra Pak, Turner Broadcasting and Zurich Insurance Group.
At IMD, he is Director of the Advanced Management Program (AMP), the Digital Marketing Strategies program (DMS) and Strategy Governance for Boards program. And until recently he ran an annual event for Chief Marketing Officers, which was attended by the CMOs of firms from across Europe (e.g. Tetra Pak, Dow, IBM Europe).
Before joining IMD in 2015, Challagalla served for 20 years as a marketing professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, where he was Associate Dean for Executive Education and head of the marketing department. He also worked as Principal at The Monitor Group, a strategy and marketing consulting company.
Selected publications
The joint and multilevel effects of training and incentives from upstream manufacturers on downstream salespeople's efforts (Journal of Marketing Research, 2020)
The online challengers threatening to disrupt the disrupters (Financial Times, 2020) How Coke, Apple and others use marketing doctrine (Forbes India, 2015)
Marketing doctrine: A principles-based approach to guiding marketing decision making in firms (Journal of Marketing, 2014)
Implementing changes in marketing strategy: The role of perceived outcome and process-oriented supervisory actions (Journal of Marketing Research, 2012)
Proactive postsales service: When and why does it pay off? (Journal of Marketing, 2009)
Awards
Outstanding Dissertation Award at UT-Austin (1994) Decision Sciences Institute Best Paper Award (2006)
American Marketing Association Best Services Paper award (2010) Maynard Award for best paper in Journal of Marketing (2015)
Education
After graduating from Osmania University in Hyderabad, India, Challagalla earned an MBA at Arizona State University and a PhD at the University of Texas in Austin.
2021 – The global business of sports
Professor Niccolò Pisani – IMD
Gain the industry-specific knowledge and frameworks that are needed to analyse and understand the way in which sports entities and professional leagues generate revenues and compete amongst themselves.
The global business of sports was already in the midst of a radical transformation before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus disruption has accelerated profound changes. One of them is the aggressive influx of institutional capital, with private equity firms defying the pandemic to dash into the business of sports.
The way global sports entities compete in this multi-billion industry offers valuable lessons, which can also serve well firms in other sectors.
2021 – Business analytics: stories and traps vs realistic case studies
Professor Karl Schmedders – IMD
“Digital transformation”, “data science”, and “business analytics” are leading modern buzzwords in business. But what can we really learn from data and analytical methods?
Modern managers need to develop a healthy skepticism towards data-based insights and have a solid understanding of the power, requirements, and limitations of the application of analytical methods in business. In this MBA elective, we will learn how to:
- Perform basic reality checks on data-based reports
- Critique flawed studies
- Apply analytical methods, mainly regressions, to business case studies
- Derive qualitative and quantitative business insights
2021 – Business analytics with Monte Carlo simulations
Professor Karl Schmedders – IMD
The Monte Carlo simulation comprises a large set of computerized techniques that allow people to account for risk in quantitative analysis and decision making. Such techniques have found many applications in business, finance, and management, because they can provide valuable insights to managers facing difficult and high-stakes decision situations.
- Improve your understanding of risk and uncertainty
- Learn how to generate uncertain input to business models
- Run Monte Carlo simulations
- Analyze the effect of uncertainty on business decisions
2021 – Marketing analytics for strategic decision making
Professor Amit Joshi – IMD
In today’s business world, managers who are not comfortable making data analytics-based decisions are at a significant disadvantage. While there are a variety of software tools available for managers to conduct the statistical analysis, the actual interpretation and decision-making is what differentiates a successful executive. Therefore, in this course, we shall learn about data analytics and its applications to marketing strategy.
We shall then go through several cases that require students to perform basic data analysis, but then interpret the output and make decisions based on these interpretations. This course is thus designed to provide you with a glimpse of data-based decision making.
Amit Joshi, Professor of AI, Analytics and Marketing Strategy at IMD, specializes in helping organizations use artificial intelligence and develop their big data, analytics and AI capabilities. An award-winning professor and researcher, he has extensive experience of AI and analytics-driven transformations in industries such as banking, fintech, retail, automotive, telecoms, and pharma.
Joshi believes that no organization's digital transformation is complete until they really understand their data and how to upscale their analytical capabilities. He is currently focusing on how organizations can ensure that AI implementation occurs strategically and at scale rather than in small islands of excellence.
He has delivered customized programs for several companies including UBS, Sonova, Johnson & Johnson, Guardian Life, Mars Petcare, Securitas, Bank Danamon, Bayer, Ooredoo, Siam Commercial Bank, Abu Dhabi School of Governance, Hanover RE, and Migros. He also advises start-ups on their strategies.
At IMD, he is Director of the Digital Excellence Diploma and the Digital Analytics (DA) open program. He is also Co-Director of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Digital Strategy and Analytics (DSA) programs.
Joshi’s research, which focuses on long-run marketing strategy, analytics, and AI applications, has been published in top journals, including the Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Culture, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. He has twice won the MSI/H. Paul Root Award for the best paper in the Journal of Marketing and the Robert D. Buzzell Best Paper Award for the Marketing Science Institute publication with the most long-term impact.
His work and thought leadership have frequently been cited in the media and have been covered by outlets including NPR, CNN, NBC, Nikkei, the Financial Times, Fast Company, Business Standard, Fox News, Bloomberg, Forbes, Le Temps, Investor Relations Magazine, The Conversation, and Science Daily. He is frequently invited to give keynote speeches and led a panel discussion with marketing experts at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020.
Before joining IMD in 2017, Joshi was in academia in the US and prior to that worked as a sales manager at Cadbury India, now part of the Mondelez International group.
Selected publications
6 principles to build your company’s strategic agility (Harvard Business Review, 2021)
The building blocks of an AI strategy (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)
How intelligent is your AI? (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)
How CEO/CMO characteristics affect innovation and stock returns: findings and future directions (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2020)
A meta-analysis of electronic WOM elasticity (Journal of Marketing, 2015)
The direct and indirect effects of advertising spending on firm value (Journal of Marketing, 2010)
Advertising spending and market capitalization (Marketing Science Institute, 2004)
Recognition
Named as one of Switzerland's Digital Shapers by Bilanz, Handelszeitung, Le Temps and Digitalswitzerland (2020)
Winner of EFMD Case Writing Competition (2019)
MSI/H. Paul Root Award for best paper in Journal of Marketing (2015 and 2010)
Marketing Science Institute Robert D. Buzzell Best Paper Award (2006)
Education
- Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering
- University of Pune
- Post Graduate Diploma in Management
- Indian Institute of Management
- PhD in Management
- UCLA Anderson School of Management
Karl Schmedders' research and teaching currently focus on sustainability and the economics of climate change. He is therefore able to provide key insights on the transition risk arising from the shift to a greener economy and help companies face up to the challenges of potential asset degradation and increasing carbon prices.
He says finance and economics offer many tools to combat climate change, and the power of incentives and markets can be employed to make progress, and argues that businesses and consumers need to take a leading role in the search for solutions to the climate crisis, and not just wait for governments and policy makers to introduce climate change mitigation and adaptation measures.
Schmedders is passionate about the importance of a "just transition" in which no one loses out as a result of action to tackle climate change. He believes that more attention needs to be paid to the S and G elements of the ESG (environmental, social and governance) equation, to ensure that action on the environmental component does not adversely affect poor people and those living in developing countries. In his view, humanity will fail in its fight against climate change and global warming if it does not also address inequality and ensure a just transition.
His expertise in computational methods in finance means that he is able to apply numerical solution techniques to complex economic and financial models and shed light on a range of topical market issues and industry problems for organizations. He was Director of IMD’s custom program for Malaysian bank Maybank and has worked with a range of clients such as ABB, Airbus, Eneva, Evonik, Orkla and Julius Bär.
He is also Director of IMD’s new online certification course for structured investment products in partnership with Swiss company Leonteq, teaches in the Advanced Management Concepts (AMC) and Executive MBA programs, and is an advisor on International Consulting Projects in the MBA program.
He has published numerous research articles in international academic journals such as Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Management Science and Operations Research.
Before joining IMD in 2019, Schmedders was Professor of Quantitative Business Administration at the University in Zurich and Associate Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He received his PhD from Stanford University and received several teaching awards from both Stanford and Kellogg.
He remains a Visiting Professor of Executive MBA Education at Kellogg School of Management and is a board member of Swiss firms LPX Group and SYLVA AG. He is also a fellow of the Game Theory Society.
Selected publications
A large-scale optimization model for replicating portfolios in the life insurance industry (Operations Research, 2021)
Asset pricing with heterogeneous agents and long-run risk (Journal of Financial Economics, 2021)
What managers need to know about data exchanges (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)
Higher-order effects in asset-pricing models with long-run risk (Journal of Finance, 2018)
Optimal and naive diversification in currency markets (Management Science, 2017)
A polynomial optimization approach to principal agent problems (Econometrica, 2015)
Bond ladders and optimal portfolios (Review of Financial Studies, 2011)
On price caps under uncertainty (Review of Economic Studies, 2007)
Recognition
Kellogg-HKUST EMBA program Best Faculty Award (2017)
Kellogg-WHU EMBA program Best Teacher Award (2008, 2009, 2011-2015, 2017, 2019)
Rochester-Bern EMBA program Superior Teaching Award (2014 and 2016)
Kellogg-Recanati EMBA program Best Teacher Award (2014)
Kellogg EMBA program Outstanding Professor Award (2009, 2011-2013, 2015)
WHU Koblenz Best Teacher Award (2002-2004)
L.G. Lavengood Professor of the Year, Kellogg School of Management (2002)
Walter J. Gores Award, Stanford University (1996)
Education
MS (Operations Research)
Stanford University
PhD (Operations Research)
Stanford University
My Future
Leadership Stream
The MBA leadership stream runs throughout the year with the goal to equip you with the tools, skills, and self-awareness necessary to develop into reflective and responsible leaders of today and tomorrow. These are the tools needed to navigate group dynamics, manage one’s own power in an organization, achieve interpersonal influence, foster diversity, successfully negotiate with others, and be leaders who possess integrity and stimulate trust.
Experiential exercises, one-on-one coaching, peer learning, and classroom activities are just a few of the many methods we will use to deliver these tools and to equip you with the skills needed to address the challenges and ambiguities of business in a fast-paced, evolving world.
- In-depth self-analysis and individual sessions with a psychoanalyst will help develop your self-awareness and enable you to better understand your personal leadership style
- On and off-campus team-building exercises with professional coaches improve your understanding of what makes effective leaders and how group dynamics impact performance
- Structured peer evaluations highlight the situations in which your strengths are most effective and where you need to further develop
- Projects and labs will combine your learnings with the necessary entrepreneurial, global and digital skills so that you can drive innovation and explore the impact you can have when faced with conflicting objectives across organizations and cultures
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
Sustainability Stream
Career Stream
Workshops and individual advice by the IMD MBA Career Development Team
The Career Development Stream runs throughout the year to help you define and achieve your career goals. To do this we work very closely with you, the entire IMD eco-system, and external consultants. You will also be assigned an individual career advisor who will guide and support you throughout the year.
The stream is as central to the program as functional core courses in which you need to demonstrate competence. Sessions and workshops cover a range of subjects from Elevator Pitch and Your Digital Identity through to Salary Negotiations and Career Management.
In particular, in the first module the key focus will be on :
- Personal branding and value proposition
- Career vision and strategy
- Elevator pitch
- In-depth self-reflection and self-assessment
With your strategy in mind, start preparing to meet recruiters and discover new opportunities:
- Effective Interviewing – workshops and industry-specific simulated interviews with consultants and experienced alumni
- Mentoring Program – start building your own Board of Mentors who can advise you on the different aspects of your career journey
- Career advice – continue to work with your career advisor on the process of your individual search
- Company presentations – learn about different companies and their cultures; discover current sector and company challenges and the career opportunities those challenges create; and meet with company representatives to expand your network, explore new options and fine-tune your career aspirations
Our dedicated Career Development team assists recruiters in identifying the best talent for their immediate and future business needs. They will also work closely with you as you focus on the first round of interviews, either on-campus, virtually or anywhere in the world.
We partner with companies from key industries, with diverse opportunities for our MBA graduates, while also encouraging you to use your own networks, those of your classmates and those of the entire IMD eco-system.
Your individual career advisor will continue to ensure that your job search strategy is on track and address any further issues or specific questions related to your search. Workshops will focus on the final stages of your recruitment, with topics such as salary negotiations.
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