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IMD authored works recognized at two business book awards

Hacking Digital honored with Axiom Book Award in the networking category, while ALIEN Thinking is highly commended at The Business Book Awards in the Smart Thinking category.
May 2022

Hacking Digital: Best Practices to Implement and Accelerate Your Business Transformation by Michael Wade, Professor of Innovation and Strategy, Didier Bonnet, Professor of Strategy and Digital Transformation and IMD researcher Tomoko Yokoi has been awarded a bronze medal at the 2022 Axiom Business Books Awards in the Networking category.

The book draws on insights from more than 1,500 digital leaders to uncover the 30 most common challenges. The result is a compendium of practical hacks and tools for executives looking to innovate and transform their organizations. It was co-authored with Nikolaus Obwesgeser, formerly Associate Director and Research Fellow at the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation at IMD, and now Head of the Institute for Digital Technology Management at Berner Fachhochschule, the business school in Bern.

“We wrote this book as a direct response to the frustration we were hearing from managers and executives in the middle of digital transformations,” said Wade. “They needed practical answers to pressing problems and weren’t finding them in the existing collection of books and articles.”

Bonnet added: “For a decade, we’ve consistently heard digital leaders telling us that, while they can cope with the strategy definition and the technology choices, the main challenge of transformation is in the execution. Sharing best practices from digital leaders who have managed to overcome these challenges is what this book is about.”

Wade was also commended for a second book, ALIEN Thinking: The Unconventional Path to Breakthrough Ideas, co-authored with Cyril Bouquet, Professor of Innovation and Strategy and Jean-Louis Barsoux, a Research Professor at IMD, in the Smart Thinking category at The Business Book Awards.

In the book, the authors reveal the mindset that drives creativity and innovation and present a model that enables people to cultivate a fresh perspective and generate one breakthrough solution after another.

Barsoux said he had relished working with his co-authors on the book to explore the undiscussed psychological barriers to innovation – and to make the framework accessible to readers in all walks of life, not just people in business.

“I feel we’re in a context where we face so many pressing challenges that we need to encourage innovation from all quarters, not just from ‘experts’. Innovation has become a shared responsibility,” said Barsoux. “The world needs more original thinking, bigger ideas, and more radical solutions – and our book provides an overarching framework for how to unleash that creativity.”

Resetting Management by Stéphane J.G. Girod, Professor of Strategy and Organizational Innovation, and research associate Martin Králik was also shortlisted as a finalist at The Business Book Awards. The book, which was shortlisted in the Change & Sustainability category, gets behind the jargon associated with agility and offers detailed case studies from the likes of Lego, General Electric, LMVH and ING on their transformation paths.

The annual Axiom Business Book Award recognizes outstanding business books in 23 categories. The Business Book Awards, in partnership with Pathway Group, highlight leadership, change, and sustainability in business.

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