Niccolò Pisani
Niccolò Pisani is Professor of Strategy and International Business at IMD. His areas of expertise include strategy design and execution as well as international business.
His work revolves around helping leaders to identify the strategic choices with the greatest impact and to develop the capabilities needed to excel in their execution. Drawing on his award-winning research on global business, he helps decision-makers appreciate the nuances of creating value across borders and formulate real impact strategies to thrive in today’s increasingly multifaceted international landscape.
Organizations fail for three reasons, often in combination: they misread what is happening, avoid the choices that hurt, or never turn decisions into orchestrated action. Five questions guard against all three: What is really going on? Which choices hurt? How do we orchestrate action? How do we get from here to there? Why are we doing what we are doing? Answered clearly and honestly, they produce a strategy. Answered better than competitors, a competitive advantage. Backed by disciplined execution and purpose, a winning organization.
His empirical research has been published in top-tier academic journals such as Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of International Business Studies, Research Policy, the Journal of Management, and the Journal of Management Studies. His article in the Journal of World Business won the International Association for Business and Society (IABS) Best Published Paper Award. His work has also been covered in the media across continents, including in The New York Times, the Financial Times, CNBC, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post, Forbes, Nikkei, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Le Monde, Valor Econômico, El País, Expansión, la Repubblica, and the World Economic Forum Agenda.
Meanwhile, his practitioner-oriented work has been featured in both Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. He has produced several popular case studies that have sold over 50,000 copies worldwide. In 2026, four of his case studies ranked as bestsellers among the over 30,000 cases globally distributed by Harvard Business Publishing. He won The Case Centre’s Overall Award in 2022 for “adidas: How to keep running fast in a post-COVID-19 world?”, which was the best-selling case out of the over 60,000 held by The Case Centre, one of the world’s leading case distributors. He also won both the EFMD’s Global Case Writing Competition Award (in 2023) and The Case Centre’s Strategy and General Management Award (in 2025) for his case “Future-proofing HEINEKEN: The EverGreen strategy.”
He is a member of the editorial review boards of the Journal of International Business Studies and the Journal of International Business Policy, and he has received the Best Reviewer Award from both in 2026.
At IMD, Pisani is the co-director of the C-Suite Program and teaches on both the MBA and EMBA degree programs. He has also directed or taught in custom programs for more than 50 organizations, including OCBC, HEINEKEN, Sandvik, SCG, Ipsen, Mondelez, Opella, Neste, Jerónimo Martins, Keppel, OCP, Telenor, ACWA Power, Mandarin Oriental, Coca-Cola, SAP, Midea, Bank Mandiri, BAE Systems, Honda, Velux, Valmet, ICBC, Red Sea Gateway Terminal, and Richemont.
He has more than 15 years of teaching experience at different program levels, including master’s degrees, executive education, and custom programs, and was a tenured associate professor at the University of Amsterdam before joining IMD in 2020.
In addition to his experience in academia, Pisani brings four years of industry experience gained at Sanlorenzo, a global leader in high-end luxury yachting, where he was responsible for international sales of tailor-made motor yachts up to 36 meters. Early in his career, he worked as a researcher in finance and investments for Merrill Lynch in its San Francisco office.
He speaks five languages – Italian, English, French, Spanish, and German.
