The rise of Runtastic

By Benoit F. Leleux

In 2006, three young Austrian had a brilliant idea: a tracking system for amateur runners to record runs and improve their times. They knew that more people were taking up running. They had the...

IMD business school and PwC Consulting to jointly host a leadership development program in Japan to nurture the next generation of business leaders

By Naoshi Takatsu

IMD business school and PwC Consulting (based in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Representative Executive Officer/CEO: Susumu Adachi) will jointly host a leadership development program in Japan to nurture the next...

Project supply chains – a different world

By Ralf W. Seifert with Richard Markoff.

Companies are increasingly investing in their sales and operation planning (S&OP) process and tools. Gartner, an American technology research and advisory firm, considers demand planning accuracy at t...

So you think your company is customer-led?

By Seán Meehan with Karine Avagyan, Charlie Dawson.

Customers matter. No one would argue with that. But so do finance, people, operations, innovation and lots more. What impact do all these competing priorities have on a company’s ability to remain tru...

New book by IMD MBA Alumna

IMD alumnae Alicia Micklethwait has co-authored a new book on the importance of corporate governance, board leadership and culture.     Driven to the Brink   is a collection of short stories about...

IOC Executive Board concludes meetings with governance report from IMD business school

LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND, (11 June 2017) - The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board wrapped up two days of meetings, ahead of the 2024 Candidate City Briefing and 130th Session, with a...

IMD brings Silicon Valley to Switzerland

The excitement of Silicon Valley, with its start-ups and entrepreneurs looking for their big break, and investors searching for the most innovative new ideas, was in the air at IMD in Lausanne last...

“The pedagogy all but guarantees success”

MTN is an Africa-based multinational mobile telecommunications company, which also operates in the Middle East. Challenge In 2014, MTN began working with IMD by signing up 10 high-potential executives...

Fear is galvanizing

Celebrated for her bullseye wit, Lucy Kellaway gives her last talk at IMD before leaving the Financial Times after 32 years to become a teacher. The final keynote speaker of IMD’s 2017 Orchestrating...

The World Economy in 2017: What to Expect (and not to expect)

Home to the World Competitiveness Center, IMD shares its findings every year with Orchestrating Winning Performance, its signature program attended by executives from around the world. The yearly...

Performing Under Pressure - Learning from F1

A wide variety of keynote speakers contributes to the excellence of IMD’s Orchestrating Winning Performance program and this year’s edition is no exception. Following an evening dedicated to industry...

IMD recognizes its Lifelong Learners

At a ceremony held during Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP), President Jean-François Manzoni and OWP Program co-Director Tawfik Jelassi recognized outstanding IMD alumni with Lifelong Learning...

Making globalization work for everyone

Lise Kingo, the CEO & Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact, a United Nations initiative dedicated to encouraging businesses worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible...

All MBA event brings Alumni across generations back to school

Recently IMD held its annual All MBA Alumni event which brought together more than 200 holders of IMD’s MBA from classes starting from 1976 all the way up to the present. The high energy of the event...

Transition traps

By Michael D. Watkins

Every year, thousands of managers enter new leadership positions. Their actions during the first few months on the job can determine their success or failure, yet little first-rate advice is available...

Two IMD MBA teams rewarded for innovation in the Debiopharm Inartis Challenge

Two IMD teams of IMD MBAs have been named among the winners of the Debiopharm Inartis Challenge, a competition organized to harness innovation to improve the lives of healthcare patients. One team’s...

Beware of success

The double billing of Bracken P. Darrell, CEO of Logitech and Gilbert Achermann, former CEO and current Chairman of Straumann, was the unlikely combination of a leader in computer peripherals and a...

Orchestrating Winning Performance 2017 kicks off

IMD's largest open enrolment program,  Orchestrating Winning Performance, kicked off for the 23rd consecutive year on Sunday, drawing over 350 participants from around the globe to the IMD campus in...

IMD Launches The First 90 Days, a new program to help leaders in career transition

IMD has recently launched The First 90 Days, a new program designed to help leaders in career transition get up to speed quickly and find ways to create positive momentum in their new role.  The first...

Abeer Hazboun-Sader: from technology and Ted Talks to impact investment

Positive action characterizes Abeer Hazboun-Sader’s every move. She has co-founded an intercultural leadership program, turned a company around, while co-organising a three stages Ted Talk – connectin...

Jana Valkovicova aims to lead change and transformation in consumer-focused innovation solutions

Jana obtained a BSc & MSc in Management and Marketing from RWTH Aachen University and the University of Economics Bratislava in Slovakia, her home country. After graduation, she joined Puma Group as a...

Ashish Singh hones his skills for future leadership roles

Ashish Singh comes to IMD from a highly technical background and intends to leverage his expertise within the oil and gas sector to pursue a role in corporate business strategy. Originally from...

Strategy 2020: IMD and the Hempel Custom Strategy Program

IMD and Hempel developed a custom strategy program for its top teams in order to optimize their strategy and make key decisions to optimize its global business. Learn how this custom strategy program...

Abhijat Chahal believes in the power of education and politics to transform societies and countries

When Abhijat Chahalgraduated from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India with a BS in Marine Engineering, he was immediately employed by Maersk Group, the integrated transport...

Does the quest for high status encourage misconduct?

By Jennifer Jordan with Tim Vriend, Onne Janssen.

Martin Winterkorn, the former CEO of Volkswagen, was leading his company on a course to surpass Toyota as the largest car maker in the world. And he succeeded. In July 2015, he achieved this pinnacle...

Patricia Nyberg relishes the learning experience after some years of working

Patricia first completed her MSc and BSc in Economics and Business Administration, at the Hanken School of Economics in her home city of Helsinki, Finland before working as Senior Origination Manager,...

Why less bad doesn’t equal good

By Francisco Szekely

Why does a company exist?  If you’d asked executives this in the 1970s, the most common answer would have been ‘to make money’. Consumers, employees and the natural environment didn’t really figure in...

Amazon buys Whole Foods – a grocery revolution?

By Ralf W. Seifert with Richard Markoff.

Right after we published an article on Amazon and its grocery business, Amazon announced the acquisition of the American grocery chain Whole Foods for nearly 14 billion USD. The impact of this move on...

Priya Mehra: developing business solutions for human created challenges

Priya Mehra radiates hope. She is confident that sustainable business practices can help power the under-served and address human-created challenges, including climate change. Her dedication to social...

Thibault Acolas: remodelling the value chain of defence spending

Corporate experience is not a requirement to get into the IMD MBA program, as Thibault Acolas discovered. A graduate of the French Naval Academy, he has been a naval officer for 10 years, and worked o...

Kuniyuki Furuta dives into the business world from the public sector

Born in Denver, Colorado, raised in Japan, Kuniyuki Furuta comes to IMD by way of Africa where he worked as an aid worker for the Japanese government. He aims to boost entrepreneurship by promoting an...

Tim Nai: leveraging technology and corporate strategy

Following a MSc & BSc in Mechanical Engineering, Cum Laude from Delft University of Technology, Tim joined Accenture in 2011, where he has been a Management Consulting Manager since 2015. He now aims...

IMD and Cisco unveil telepresence technology to connect campuses in Lausanne and Singapore

IMD Business School and Cisco have announced the completion of the Connected Classroom — a two-year-long initiative to virtually connect classrooms and boardrooms thousands of kilometres apart with...

Amazon fresh and the disruption of the supply chain

By Ralf W. Seifert with Richard Markoff.

The omni-channel supply chain is in our headlines and on our lips. Retailers are experimenting with different ways to meet growing consumer expectation to interact with products in different ways. The...

Sea change: how to make a sustainable global culture shift

By Carlos Cordon with Michael Leck.

In September 2013, shipping giant Maersk Line was facing an unprecedented organizational challenge. The company was about to enter into an alliance, dubbed the P3 network, with two other container...

MP and HPL “The perfect combination”

Guy Chatillon, a key figure in the luxury industry, attended IMD two years running and now explains why he will soon return. President Europe, CIS & ME of the exclusive high jewellery and watch maker...

New book on sustainability

Many recent books make the case for businesses to become more sustainable, but few explain the specifics. In a new book titled “Beyond the Triple Bottom Line Eight Steps Toward a Sustainable Business...

2017 Best EMBAs: Andreu Torregrosa Martinez, IMD

“An enthusiastic and energetic visionary that loves the journey, especially when surrounded by amazing people.” Age: 35 Hometown: Not sure anymore! I currently live in Uruguay, just having relocated...

Déjà vu: Is the film industry’s sequel and remake addiction a sign of the end?

By Knut Haanaes, Michael Sorell

The US film industry has been immensely successful and has overshadowed its rivals around the world, but are we starting to see signs of its decline? Is it a victim of the success trap? 2017 has been ...

New Study Finds Executives See Digital Disruption as Opportunity to Transform Their Companies

A major study by the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation, an IMD and Cisco initiative, has revealed that executives are increasingly recognizing the positive aspects of digital disruptio...

Lessons from the front

It’s been a tumultuous time in the agribusiness and a busy time for Liana Logiurato, Global Head of M&A at Syngenta International AG, who has just seen through the Syngenta / ChemChina deal. Working a...

How transition coaches accelerate executive onboarding

By Michael D. Watkins

In “ Onboarding Isn’t Enough,” a recent Harvard Business Review article co-authored with Mark Byford and Lena Triantogiannis from Egon Zehnder, we showed that many companies think they are doing a goo...

Does your company really do a good job of onboarding new hires?

By Michael D. Watkins

In “ Onboarding Isn’t Enough,” a recent Harvard Business Review article I co-authored with Mark Byford and Lena Triantogiannis from Egon Zehnder, we showed that many companies think they are doing a...

IMD and EPFL announce TransformTECH, a new joint program for creating business value through artificial intelligence, robotics and IoT

LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND, (6 June 2017) — IMD business school and EPFL announced today a collaboration to establish TransformTECH. The new program, which is scheduled to begin in January 2018, will focus...

Remembering the first IMD MBA class

Finnish entrepreneur, Jan M Koivurinta and Australian Private Equity guru, Greg Minton, took a trip down memory lane together, visiting friends around the world and catching up with IMD where the...

What Mr. Trump didn’t say about leaving the Paris Agreement

By Francisco Szekely

The US President announced on June 1^st that his country will leave the Paris Accord and leave behind an international effort of diplomacy that took 20 years to develop, and...

IMD President Jean-François Manzoni at the St. Petersburg International Forum 2017

This month IMD president Jean-François Manzoni joins CEOs, global business leaders and decision and policy makers at the St. Petersburg International Forum 2017 organized under the auspices of the...

An inside look at the 2017 World Competitiveness Rankings

The world’s most competitive countries continue to jostle for the top positions in the 2017 IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, as the USA is pushed out of the top three.  Hong Kong has consolidated i...

An impactful EMBA journey celebrated

On Friday, June 2 an amazing group of global leaders graduate the IMD Executive MBA program.  The group of 46 participants represent 21 industries and 24 different nationalities including Canada,...

IMD team wins in EFMD Case Writing Competition

EFMD, a not for profit association of business schools known for publishing and awarding cases used all over the world by the most prestigious business schools, has just announced the winners of its...

New competitive global elite emerges in IMD business school’s latest world competitiveness ranking

The world’s most competitive countries continue to jostle for the top positions in the 2017 IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, as the USA is pushed out of the top three.  Hong Kong has consolidated i...

Why VUCA business leaders end up paralyzed, blind and deaf

By Marco Mancesti

Leaders cannot orchestrate in a vacuum. In fact, they depend on others in at least three important ways:  1]     Leaders guide, they do not execute. Therefore, they rely on others to take care of...

2017 Best MBAs: Andrea Michahelles Barreno, IMD

Andrea Michahelles Barreno IMD “Energetic and analytical engineer. Volunteer by heart, true friend and action driven. Loves to smile and ask questions.” Age: 32 Hometown: Lima, Peru Fun fact about...

IMD Alumnus publishes new book analysing decline of UK engineering industry

Tom Brown, an IMD MBA alumnus and engineering expert who has chaired 15 companies, has authored and successfully published a new book which explores the decline of the UK engineering industry.  “Trage...

Is Switzerland headed for a crisis?

By Arturo Bris

Switzerland is heavily integrated into international markets and therefore some of the biggest risks looming on the financial horizon have potential to affect the country. IMD Professor Arturo Bris...

What is the future of the European Union?

By Arturo Bris

After Brexit and other recent anti-Europe sentiment rearing its head in national elections around Europe, is there reason to be optimistic about the Union? IMD Professor Arturo Bris answers looks at t...

Keeping the momentum of High Performance Leadership

Adrian Zwingli is a self-professed entrepreneur and as well as founder and chairman of SwissQ, a Zurich-based tech company. Adrian has done a number of programs at IMD including High Performance...

EMBA graduate says IMD helped build his career and seal a record deal

Paul Krell just experienced the most bitter-sweet success of his career. He was involved in selling a company, Sequent Medical, which he helped grow from scratch and that he considered his “baby”, for...

Building on unfamiliar turf

By Goutam Challagalla

The liberalization of the Indian economy in the 1990s led to a chaotic housing boom in Mumbai. Thousands of real estate developers jostled for space in a sellers’ market, throwing up apartment blocks...

IMD ranked #1 in open programs by the Financial Times for sixth straight year

15 May 2017 – IMD has been recognized once again among the world’s best business schools by the Financial Times in its 2017 Executive Education Rankings. IMD came in at #1 in open programs for the six...

Corporate governance experts at IMD For annual conference

Fifty international academics and leading corporate governance practitioners have come together for an annual lecture at IMD with the IMD Global Board Center.  The event was part of the European...

New IMD digital series: bootcamp, strategy, leadership, execution and more

The pace of digital transformation continues to speed up dramatically. No industries have been left untouched any many business risk being left behind. That’s why IMD business school is launching a ne...

Can we calculate the future?

By Stéphane Garelli

The recent death of Kenneth Arrow, one of the greatest economists of our time, is a reminder that most of the Nobel Prize winners in economics were also brilliant mathematicians. In addition, a number...

IMD’s MBAs wrap up innovation week with exciting new projects

                                                                                                                                         IMD’s MBAs have just completed their whirlwind week of being...

The power and pitfalls of default settings

By Jayanth Narayanan

Organ donation rates in some countries are much higher than in others. Neighboring countries with similar cultures can have dramatically different levels of organ donation. For example, organ donation...

Why consumers should plan on paying more for medicine

By Ralf Boscheck

Healthcare spending, currently projected to grow by 5.8% annually in the U.S. and to represent 20.1% of the total economy by 2025, has made healthcare market reforms a critical and ongoing priority of...

Seven lessons from the digital media revolution

By Stéphane Garelli

Business is about change — but no CEO would like to face disruption on the scale seen in the newspaper business over the past 15 years.  I am chairman of the Swiss top tier newspaper, Le Temps . It wa...

Why powerful people should apologize more often and better

By Jayanth Narayanan

The recent scandal involving Ravindra Gaikwad, the Indian Member of Parliament who made headlines after an alleged assault on an Air India Employee for being asked to take an economy instead of a...

“As soon as I returned to my company, I started to apply what I learned”

Claudio D'Ettole is the School of Management and Learning Systems Manager at Pirelli. He recently participated in IMD’s Organizational Learning in Action program, which helps senior learning leaders...

IMD MBAs immersed in innovation

Can innovation be taught in a classroom? According to Cyril Bouquet, who’s currently leading the innovation module for IMD’s 2017 MBA class, the answer is probably not. That’s why he’s given the class...

What tech’s survivalist billionaires should be doing instead

By Howard H. Yu

Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, recently passed Warren Buffett to become the world’s second-richest person, behind only Bill Gates. And on Wednesday, Bezos revealed that he has been selling about $1 billion...

Smart Cities: Swisscom and IMD partner again to help cities digitize

Smart City initiatives generally lack an operational framework that would guide the process undertaken by the heads of public entities. It was on this basis that IMD and Swisscom joined forces two yea...

How to build an agile beast

By Bettina Büchel

The €10 billion food packaging business Tetra Pak once faced a dilemma familiar to most multinational corporations. The company was mired in a classic “strategic-agility conundrum” — it lacked the...

MBA alumnus authors new book on entrepreneurial management

A graduate of the MBA Class of 1989 at IMD, Anwar Jumabhoy, has successfully co-authored and published a new book exploring the concept of entrepreneurial management.  The book, 9 ENTREPRENEURisms:...

Agile vs. death-by-committee

By Carlos Cordon with Isaak Tsalicoglou.

The writing is on the wall: if you want to innovate in the digital world, you must be agile. Four of the top five companies by market cap (Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet and Amazon) use Agile methodologie...

TESLA becomes a model for sustainable leadership: David and Goliath revisited

By Francisco Szekely

Tesla recently reached a market value of USD $ 50.84 billion, briefly surpassing General Motors – which has a USD $ 50.79 billion market value – and thus becoming the most valuable car company in the...

What leaders can learn from hostage negotiation

When Professor George Kohlrieser encountered his first hostage situation, he knew he had to act fast; a perpetrator had a knife held to a nurse’s throat. Fortunately, by speaking to the knifeman and...

Welcome to Brazil

IMD’s EMBA participants recently headed to Brazil to meet with both domestic and multinational companies, academics and government officials to learn about the internationalization strategies of...

It’s time for Apple to buy these tech giants

By Michael R. Wade

As Apple’s stock climbed to its fifth record in March on Tuesday, and it’s 11^th record this year, it’s a good time to take a serious look at what the tech giant should take on...

IMD Startup News: Cognex acquires ViDi Systems

Cognex Corporation announced today that it has acquired ViDi Systems SA, a maker of deep learning software for industrial machine vision. ViDi's deep learning software uses artificial intelligence...

IMD is saddened by the loss of Bo Olsson, MBA 1993

IMD regrets to announce the passing away of Bo Olsson who graduated from the school in 1993 with an MBA and who kept close ties to IMD over the years.  Fellow classmate Alan Kallir had this to say:  “...

Boycotting Google: free PR

By Stefan Michel

Swiss companies, such as the soft cheese manufacturer Baer and Swiss Life, have announced that they will stop placing any advertising on Google because their ads have appeared alongside YouTube videos...

IMD hosts prestigious equestrian forum

This April for the sixth consecutive year, the International Federation for Equestrian Sports Forum will be held on IMD’s campus in Lausanne. The event will include an introduction by IMD Professor an...

How to learn from the past without getting stuck in it

By Knut Haanaes, Michael Sorell, Øystein D. Fjeldstad

Corporate mortality is a hot topic. Scholars and consultants keep cropping up in the news with reports on the decline of the lifespan of major corporations. The BCG Henderson Institute found that the...

On the front line of digital solutions

As European Lead for Digital Health at Amgen, the world’s largest biotechnology firm, Marcelo Duhalde is on the front line of digital solutions to help improve health care. He joined the company eight...

"An amazing leadership journey"

Despite not working in the equine field, in 2015 Megan Rock helped boost her leadership skills by interacting with a horse. The exercise was part of an IMD program on Strategies for Leadership for wom...

A revived WTO offers the best defence against Donald Trump’s assault on trade

By Jean-Pierre Lehmann

Though there is some flurry of activity for reviving certain trade initiatives – for example, a modified Trans-Pacific Partnership deal – the global outlook for trade remains stormy. The first thunder...

Ebay Marketplaces Director on IMD and investing

IMD interviewed Andrea Rota, eBay Marketplaces Senior Director on his relationship to IMD as an MBA alumni and a member of the IMD Alumni Community for Entrepreneurship as well as his role as a...

IMD’s first-ever EMBA Discovery Expedition to Vietnam

Last week IMD’s EMBA class experienced Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta in the first ever Executive MBA Discovery Expedition to Vietnam, one of the fastest-growing Asian economies. In partnership...

IMD Startup News: Gylcemicon going strong

Glycemicon develops novel nutraceuticals for managing prediabetes, diabetes and obesity. It announced the first closing of its Series A round, raising CHF 3.25 million from private individuals. It als...

Transformational EMBA Discovery Expedition to India

“One word: transformational ”. That’s what the IMD EMBA class had to say about their recent Discovery Expedition to India.  The group of 55 executives from diverse backgrounds, 30 nationalities, and a...

IMD Startup News: Adaptricity continues its success

Leoni, the leading European provider of cables and cable systems to the automotive sector and other industries, today secured a two-thirds holding in Adaptricity AG. The ETH spin-off will contribute...

IMD hosts X.Days Suisse Romande with NZZ

Digital disruption is like a vortex: It exerts a rotational force that draws everything that surrounds it, companies and entire sectors, into its center and drastically modifies processes, business...

Digitalization: a fresh idea for the fruit and veg supply chain

By Ralf W. Seifert with Mervegül Kirci.

The cost of global food waste and loss is estimated to be $940 billion a year. For businesses, this represents a significant proportion of shrinkage in retail supply chains and it has a direct impact ...

Upstart start-ups and agile disruptors – and what to do about them

By Dominique Turpin

Now is the age of market disruptors: of Uber, Deezer, Alipay, Rakuten and many others. These innovative start-ups and nimble brands are crashing into markets traditionally dominated by multinational...

Alumnus spotlight: Dermot O’Gorman

Today, Dermot O’Gorman is the Chief Executive Officer of the World Wide Fund for Nature Australia (WWF). But the IMD EMBA graduate’s environmental career started by getting his hands dirty in his home...

IMD hosts Indo-Swiss Investment and Innovation Forum

IMD recently hosted the Indo-Swiss Investment and Innovation Forum which brought together over 130 business leaders, government officials, entrepreneurs, and investors from Switzerland, Europe, and...

How disruption is redefining leadership

By Michael R. Wade

Imagine that you are an executive overseeing retail banking at a large financial services company. In addition to the normal challenges you face as one of the company’s leaders, you are confronted wit...

IMD alumnus leads in digital

The introduction of an innovative digital marketing culture at OneLife, a Luxembourg-based wealth management specialist, has earned Christophe Regnault the first ever Luxemburg “Digital Personality of...

IMD Startup News: OneVisage Secures Seed Funding

OneVisage was a winner in the IMD Startup Competition, and collaborated closely with a team of the school’s 2016 fulltime MBAs, and CEO Christophe Remillet continues to be connected to the school....