Knut Haanaes is a Professor of Strategy at IMD and Dean of the Global Leadership Institute at the World Economic Forum. He has taught in numerous IMD programs, including the business and society module in the MBA.

His research interests are related to strategy, digital and sustainability. In the area of strategy, he focuses on strategy styles, corporate renewal and business models. In sustainability, he examines topics such as the role of boards and sustainability, how to drive effective collaboration and how to demonstrate proof of sustainability value. In the area of digital, he has developed a new approach for how to teach executives to learn programming and coding.

Professor Haanaes has published articles in top publications such as Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review and research reports for BCG and MIT. He is co-author of the bestselling book "Your Strategy Needs a Strategy" at Harvard Business Review Press, which has been translated into seven languages. He is also a recent TED speaker ("Two reasons companies fail – and how to avoid them").

Before joining IMD, Professor Haanaes was a senior partner at The Boston Consulting Group. At BCG he served as the global leader of the strategy practice and led the BCG offices in Geneva and Oslo. He established the BCG sustainability activity in BCG. Professor Haanaes has also been Executive Director of The Research Council of Norway, Chairman of BI Norwegian Business School and Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. He holds a MSc in Economics from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH), the IB program at Stockholm School of Economics and a PhD in Strategy from Copenhagen Business School (CBS).