- IMD Business School
 - IMD Business School
Benoit Leleux

Stephan Schmidheiny Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance

Benoit Leleux is Stephan Schmidheiny Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance. He 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. These range from search funds to affinity financing, and innovative business models for corporate venturing such as open accelerators, venture clienting, and corporate VC partnering.

The sustainability trend is increasingly driving new value propositions from entrepreneurs. Rather than regarding it as something to tackle for defensive reasons such as compliance, threats to their brand, or risk avoidance, they now see it as an opportunity to create new offerings for customers.

Leleux is the author of Winning Sustainability Strategies: Finding Purpose, Driving Innovation and Executing Change (2019), which serves as the conceptual framework for a five-week IMD online course, Winning Sustainability Strategies (WSS), which he co-directs. The program, which won gold at the 2022 Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Technology awards in the Best Advance for Education Delivered Through Technology category, 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.

He has published several other books including Private Equity 4.0: Reinventing Value Creation, Nurturing Science-Based Startups: An International Case PerspectiveFrom Microfinance to Small Business Finance and A European Casebook on Entrepreneurship and New Ventures.

In addition, Leleux 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 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
Book
Nurturing science-based ventures: An international case perspective

The number of students who wish to learn about entrepreneurship and actively engage in entrepreneurial activities - either by creating their own companies or by spurring innovation within a large o...

Technology Management Leadership Start-up Entrepreneurship
19 February 2008
Book
From microfinance to small business finance: The business case for private capital investments

Based on the proceedings of one of the most talked about events of the Year of Microfinance, this book makes a compelling business case for private capital investments in microfinance in developing...

Finance Emerging Market Entrepreneurship
26 November 2007
Academic publications
Insight for Executives
Article
Comment les entreprises peuvent à la fois être climatiques et rentables

According to the World Meteorological Organization, CO2 levels have peaked over the last 650'000 years, as have average temperatures, since the world has had its nine warmest years since 2005. The ...

Sustainability Strategy
23 November 2018
Article
Bavaria: Collaboration for the Common Good

Bavaria N.V. is the second largest brewery and one of the top ten oldest family businesses in the Netherlands. Headquartered in Lieshout, North Brabant, the company is fully owned by the Swinkels f...

Family Business
1 November 2017
Article
Pentland Group: Building a family brands, for the world to love, generation after generation

Pentland Group plc is a family-owned global company operating in the areas of sports, fashion and outdoors clothing and footwear via its three divisions. Its brand management business, Pentland Bra...

Family Business Branding Entrepreneurship
1 November 2017
Article
Portraits croisés sur l'innovation

Panorama succinct de qulques classements et indicateurs mesurant l'innovation en Belgique, au Luxembourg et en Suisse.

Strategy
1 September 2016
Article
Featured case: JM Huber: A family of solutions

The company in this case places equal importance on family and business. As can be imagined, both positives and negatives result from this. The positives are very clear, including fast decision-mak...

Family Business
19 November 2015
Article
Values affinity and beyond (part 2): Managing the partnership between HNWI and family business

In this article we review some important elements of the mutual attractions and the consequential key issues in managing the relationship over time. How do you keep the emotional flame alive over t...

Family Business
6 October 2015
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Finding purpose, driving innovation and executing change
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