IMD Pathfinder®

Thomas W. Malnight is Professor of Strategy and General Management and Faculty Director of the Business Transformation Initiative (BTI) at IMD. His fields of interest are strategy, leading and accelerating transformational organizational change and the role of purpose in redefining businesses and their impact on society.

Professor Malnight works extensively with top leadership teams in challenging how they view their emerging volatile and uncertain competitive landscape, how they shape future strategies and organizations for moving forward, how they engage and align priorities and actions across their organizations and leadership teams. This work has led to the creation of the BTI at IMD, focused on partnering with senior business leaders as partners and provocateurs in addressing and co-creating responses to major challenges.

Professor Malnight’s research focus has been on trends reshaping the future of business strategies and organizations. He is the co-author of “Put Purpose at the Core of Your Strategy” (forthcoming in Harvard Business Review, September 2019).  He is also the co-author of “The 3Rs of Preparing Your Organization for the Future”, "Must Win Battles: How to Win Them, Again and Again" and "Accelerating International Growth." He co-authored the Global Trends Reports 2011, 2012, and 2013. He has written for the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Journal, McKinsey Quarterly, Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of International Business Studies, and the Academy of Management Journal. He has also authored more than 30 case studies on various aspects of global strategy and organization.

Prior to joining IMD, Professor Malnight was on the faculty of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania from 1992 to 1999. He has attended graduate studies at Harvard Business School, Boston, MA where he obtained a Doctorate of Business Administration and wrote a dissertation on "Managing the Globalization Process: An Exploratory Study". He obtained an MBA from The Wharton School in 1979 and a BA from Northwestern University in 1977. Prior to his doctoral studies, he worked for 10 years at Mitsubishi International Corporation, including two years working in Japan.

Professor Malnight also consults extensively with companies from around the world on the topic of emerging future strategies and organizations.

Ben Bryant is a Professor of Leadership and Organization at IMD in Lausanne and the director of the IMD CEO Learning Center. He holds the Kristian Gerhard Jebsen Chair for Responsible Leadership. Ben is a highly skilled educator, executive team coach, and speaker. He works with a wide range of CEOs and their executive teams and presents his research at many leading academic institutions.

Through IMD’s CEO Learning Center, Ben leads an experienced faculty team that creates learning events for senior executives in trusting environments. The Center leverages the collective and individual potential of leaders by helping them to learn new ways of working together and to unlearn unhelpful patterns of beliefs and behaviors.

For more than 20 years, Ben has accumulated extensive experience in the facilitation and development of senior executives at IMD Lausanne, London Business School, and the Australian Graduate School of Management. He has worked globally in Europe, the US, Asia and Australia for a wide range of leading companies including Oracle, LVMH, Daimler, Maersk, Adecco, Mars, British Telecom, GlaxoSmithKline, Zurich Financial Services, Standard Chartered Bank, Emirates Airlines, Mahindra, and Danish Broadcasting. He has also worked closely with numerous smaller entrepreneurial businesses.

Ben’s models and frameworks of leadership have been used in the development of top teams, senior and mid-level executives, and in the development of strategy, execution and change. His research into cultures of innovation has been used to guide organizations to generate new sources of value creation.

Ben frequently works with senior teams to help them build a climate of trust, openness, challenge and commitment. He is passionate about helping managers to reduce boundaries created by functional silos and national borders and to manage conflict and tension. His research also focuses on the reflective capabilities and the “mindfulness” of leaders in complex organizations and the capacity of leaders to to learn from experience and context.

Ben has a PhD in Organizational Change from the University of London (London Business School) as well as an MBA from the University of NSW and undergraduate degrees and diplomas in Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, History of Education, French Language Literature and Culture, Music, and the Humanities..

Goutam Challagalla, Professor of Strategy and Marketing, focuses on how digital advances and sustainability concerns are impacting companies' business strategies and approaches to marketing. Having helped companies to rethink their business models and build new capabilities in the face of the digital revolution, he is now helping to integrate into their strategy sustainability related challenges and opportunities.

Challagalla's teaching, consulting and research highlight the different challenges facing companies as a result of digital and sustainability transformations. While digital advances require the development of new business models in order to become more effective or efficient, taking on sustainability goals means that organizations have to rethink their whole raison d'être and their relationship with all stakeholders.

He is therefore well placed to help companies prepare for further acceleration in digital and sustainability transformations in the post-pandemic world, particularly by designing strategies that are resilient for today and tomorrow. His research shows how digital breakthroughs can derail businesses, as well as the steps they can take to protect themselves and leverage digital technologies for gain. It also provides insights on ways in which firms can exploit purpose and digital advances to drive sustainability priorities, on brand strategies for sustainability, customer centricity, and how to design and lead the modern sales organization in the wake of COVID-19.

He is currently working on a book on digital pathways for value creation, which examines six ways in which companies can use digital advances to drive customer value and loyalty. The book is due to be published later in 2022 or in early 2023.

His research has been published in top marketing and management journals including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, and the Journal of Applied Psychology, with a paper in Harvard Business Review forthcoming. He also served on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Marketing and Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management.

Challagalla has led programs on strategy and marketing issues for clients from a wide range of B2B and B2C industries, including AT&T, Bangkok Bank, Beiersdorf, Cargill, GE, Grundfos, Kone, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Reckitt, Tetra Pak, Turner Broadcasting and Zurich Insurance Group.

At IMD, he is Director of the Advanced Management Program (AMP), the Digital Marketing Strategies program (DMS) and Strategy Governance for Boards program. And until recently he ran an annual event for Chief Marketing Officers, which was attended by the CMOs of firms from across Europe (e.g. Tetra Pak, Dow, IBM Europe).

Before joining IMD in 2015, Challagalla served for 20 years as a marketing professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, where he was Associate Dean for Executive Education and head of the marketing department. He also worked as Principal at The Monitor Group, a strategy and marketing consulting company.

Selected publications

The joint and multilevel effects of training and incentives from upstream manufacturers on downstream salespeople's efforts (Journal of Marketing Research, 2020)

The online challengers threatening to disrupt the disrupters (Financial Times, 2020) How Coke, Apple and others use marketing doctrine (Forbes India, 2015)

Marketing doctrine: A principles-based approach to guiding marketing decision making in firms (Journal of Marketing, 2014)

Implementing changes in marketing strategy: The role of perceived outcome and process-oriented supervisory actions (Journal of Marketing Research, 2012)

Proactive postsales service: When and why does it pay off? (Journal of Marketing, 2009)

Awards

Outstanding Dissertation Award at UT-Austin (1994) Decision Sciences Institute Best Paper Award (2006)

American Marketing Association Best Services Paper award (2010) Maynard Award for best paper in Journal of Marketing (2015)

Education

After graduating from Osmania University in Hyderabad, India, Challagalla earned an MBA at Arizona State University and a PhD at the University of Texas in Austin.

Carlos Cordon is a Professor of Strategy and Supply Chain Management.

Professor Cordon's areas of interest are digital value chains, supply and demand chain management, digital lean and process management.

Carlos Cordon is currently developing research and cases in the following areas: the digital journey of traditional companies, digital innovation in value chains, industry 4.0, digital lean, applications of big data in different spaces (healthcare, transportation and FMCG). He is the author of numerous articles and case studies in these fields, and over the past few years has won various prizes for his cases and articles on supply chain management, outsourcing, and process management.

He has been listed among the Case Center's top-40 best-selling case authors for 2020/21

Professor Cordon is also a consultant to multinational companies in the electronics, food, chemical, pharmaceutical, car, and other industries. He has designed and directed numerous executive development programs in the areas of digital and strategy journeys, supply chain management and sourcing.

Professor Cordon studied civil engineering at the Escuela Politecnica de Barcelona and holds a PhD in Management from INSEAD. Prior to the completion of his schooling, he was Manager in the manufacturing and distribution consulting group of Accenture, and later MIS Manager of Grupo Español General Cable (now a subsidiary of BICC).

Frédéric Dalsace is a Professor of Marketing and Strategy at IMD. Prior to that, he spent 16 years as a Professor at HEC Paris, where he held the Social Business / Enterprise and Poverty Chair presided by Nobel Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus. Prior to his academic life, Frédéric accumulated more than 10 years of experience in the business world, both with industrial companies (Michelin and CarnaudMetalbox), and as a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company.

He has worked with more than 40 multinational firms in many sectors, such as Porsche, Traton (VW Truck & Bus), Lafarge-Holcim, Colas, Dassault, Renault, Rabobank, Santander, Orange, Bouygues, Atos and others.

His research covers two areas. The first part focuses on inter-organizational (B2B) issues such as customer-centricity, buyer-seller relationships and value management. Frédéric also has been doing research on the role of firms in alleviating poverty and developing inclusive business models, both in rich countries and at the BOP (Bottom of the Pyramid). He has published in academic journals such as the Strategic Management Journal, Harvard Business Review, Revue Française de Gestion and Business Horizons. His thesis work received the ISBM (Institute for the Study of Business Markets) 2000 Award, and he was awarded the HEC Foundation Prize for the best research piece published by the HEC Faculty in 2004, and the Best Article Prize published by Business Horizons in 2017.

Frédéric is an alumnus from HEC Paris, holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and both an MSc and a PhD in Management from INSEAD.

Albrecht Enders is Professor of Strategy and Innovation at IMD. His major research, teaching and consulting interests are in the areas of managing discontinuous change and top team strategy development processes.

Professor Enders has worked for range of clients from different industries, including ABB, Agathon, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, Siemens, Douglas Holding, Honda, ICBC, Novartis, MTR HongKong, Roland Berger, Safran, Skanska, Stora Enso, Telenor, Thyssen Krupp, TUI, Vodafone and VTT. In addition to running highly customized company-specific programs that focus on corporate transformation, he also directed the Advanced Strategic Management Program, one of IMD's core general management programs. Before coming to IMD, Professor Enders spent three years as a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group in the company's Cologne office where he worked on projects in the areas of financial services, energy and industrial goods. These projects focused on strategy development, reorganization and efficiency improvement.

Professor Enders' research has appeared in leading academic journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review and Research Policy, and practitioner-oriented outlets including Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review and The Financial Times. He has also authored numerous case studies on companies such as Nestle, Tesco.com, Nordea, XING and SonyBMG, as well as written a strategy textbook, "Strategies for e-business" (FT Prentice Hall). His research and case writing efforts have been recognized by awards from the BPS division of the Academy of Management, the EFMD, ECCH and SIM.

Albrecht Enders holds a PhD in strategic management from the Leipzig Graduate School of Management in Germany and a BA in economics from Dartmouth College in the USA..

Vanina Farber is an award-winning economist and political scientist who specializes in social innovation and the mobilization of private capital for impact investing. Her research focuses on innovative, practical, sustainable, and inclusive market-oriented approaches that have the potential to change the world by eliminating the root causes of social ills. She is particularly interested in social innovation, social entrepreneurship, impact investing, sustainable finance and ESG, and applies a gender lens in all her research projects.

A key element of her work is to explore how the private sector can embed the idea of impact in the investment decision making process, particularly in relation to risk-adjusted return calculations and resource allocation. She seeks to understand the social innovation landscape through a holistic approach that examines both the supply of and demand for social innovation initiatives.

At IMD, she leads the elea Center for Social Innovation which is carrying out important research in this area. Among other topics, the Center is looking at how the private sector can deploy capital at scale for investments in projects with real social impact, and how private, public sector and philanthropic investors can collaborate effectively.

The Center was created by a donation from the family of Peter Wuffli with the aim of inspiring leaders in business, government, and civil society to create social innovation in their respective areas of responsibility.

In 2020, Farber co-authored the book The elea Way: A Learning Journey towards Sustainable Impact, with Peter Wuffli, the Founder and Chairman of the elea Foundation for Ethics and Globalization. The book summarizes insights from the foundation’s 15-year journey and is aimed at entrepreneurs, investors, executives, philanthropists, policymakers, and anyone curious about entrepreneurship and inclusive capitalism. Using real-life examples, it includes suggestions on how to lead impact enterprises in such areas as developing strategies, plans and models, building effective teams and organizations, managing resources, and handling crises.

Farber’s work involves collaboration with a range of financial institutions and corporate clients, and in 2022 she will launch IMD’s Driving Innovative Finance for Impact open program in partnership with the International Committee of the Red Cross, Lombard Odier, and the World Economic Forum. She also plays an active part in the Swiss Lab for Sustainable Finance and Gender Lens Initiative for Switzerland research networks, and is an advisory board member at the Impact Finance Forum and an international academic advisory board member at the Católica Porto Business School in Portugal.

She also teaches courses on impact investing in IMD’s MBA and Executive MBA programs and leads the pioneering Discovery Expedition to Peru for EMBA participants, where they perform due diligence on Peruvian social enterprises for Swiss and local impact investors.

Farber was named Outstanding Case Writer in the 2022 Case Centre Awards for her study on pay-as-you-go technology company Angaza. She has also been recognized as winner of the EFMD Case Writing Competition 2022 in two categories: African Business for Angaza, and Responsible Leadership for Nia Impact Capital. She also won the responsible leadership category in the 2019 EFMD Case Writing Competition for her case on Philip Morris International's vision of a smoke-free future.

Prior to joining IMD in 2018, Farber was Professor and Chair of Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Social Inclusion at Universidad del Pacífico, Peru. In January 2022 she was appointed as the fifth Dean of the IMD EMBA program.

Selected publications

Defining and conceptualizing impact investing: Attractive nuisance or catalyst? (Journal of Business Ethics, 2022 forthcoming)

Gender and entrepreneurial propensity: Risk-taking and prosocial preferences in labour market entry decisions (Social Enterprise Journal, 2021)

The elea Way: A Learning Journey Toward Sustainable Impact (Routledge, 2020)

Will Covid-19 pave the way for more business responsibility? Evidence from Switzerland (Enterprise for Society Center, 2020)

In Alain Gibb's footsteps: Evaluating alternative approaches to sustainable enterprise education (International Journal of Management Education, 2016)

Recognition

Winner of the Case Centre Outstanding Case Writer Competition (2022)

Global Business School Network Going Beyond Award finalist (2021)

Winner of EFMD Case Writing Competition Awards (2019 and 2022)

Education

Bachelor's degree (Political Science)

University of Buenos Aires

MA (Economics)

University of Memphis

William A. Fischer is Emeritus Professor of Innovation Management. He co-founded and co-directs the IMD program on Driving Strategic Innovation, in cooperation with the Sloan School of Management at MIT and also authors a regular column for Forbes.com entitled "The Ideas Business".

An engineer by training, American by citizenship, Bill has lived much of his life in Asia and Europe. He held a full - professorship and endowed chair on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1976-1998), first moved to China in 1980, and later became the President of the China Europe International Business School [CEIBS], in Shanghai (1997-1999). He has been awarded the Silver Magnolia award, Shanghai's highest award for foreigners contributing to the city's development, in 1999. He first joined IMD in 1990, and was part of the IMD team that developed the Managerial Deep Dive process for improved innovation conversations. His most recent books include: Reinventing Giants: How Chinese Global Competitor Haier has Changed the Way that Big Companies Transform [with Umberto Lago & Fang Liu], The Idea Hunter (2011) and Virtuoso Teams (2005) [both coauthored with Andy Boynton]. All of these books address issues of innovation and talent development and expression in a variety of organizational settings.

Over the past few years, Bill has been recognized by a variety of sources for his professional presence on Twitter and as a leading innovation blogger.

William holds a DBA from George Washington University in the USA.

Knut Haanaes' research and teaching focuses on strategy, sustainability, strategic renewal and business models. He is co-author of the best-selling book Your Strategy Needs a Strategy and a successful TED speaker, and was until recently the Dean of the Global Leadership Institute at the World Economic Forum. He is a former Senior Partner and Global Leader of the Strategy Practice at the Boston Consulting Group.

Your Strategy Needs a Strategy was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015 and won praise from the likes of World Economic Forum founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab, Pfizer Chairman and CEO Ian C. Read and Benetton CEO Marco Airoldi. The book has since been translated into seven other languages and its findings have underpinned much of Haanaes' teaching since he joined IMD in 2015. Meanwhile, his TED talk "Two reasons companies fail – and how to avoid them" has attracted more than 2 million views.

Haanaes says the different pillars of his work enable him to help companies think about their path for the future and take account of new trends like demands for greater sustainability. He believes that the secret to creating lasting, impactful companies is to find a balance between doing what you're good at (exploitation) and looking for new challenges to take on (exploration).

Sustainability is also an important cornerstone of his work. At BCG he led a collaboration with MIT on the topic, developing one of the largest databases globally of how executives address sustainability, and founded the BCG global sustainability initiative. And at IMD he plays a coordinating role in the Business Schools for Climate Leadership (BS4CL) alliance of eight leading European business schools set up in 2021 to address the climate crisis. The schools plan to collaborate on research to identify and shape best practices, and work across industries to accelerate the business community’s response to climate change. He is also heavily involved in IMD's strategic partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, which aims to equip business leaders with the skills to accelerate the pace of sustainable business transformation and create the most sustainability-centered MBA program in the world.

Through his work with clients, Haanaes has accumulated extensive experience in a number of industries on issues of strategy. At IMD, he has helped run custom programs for Neste, CMS, Technip FMC, Coca-Cola Bottling, Mondelez, Maybank, Rio Tinto and Iberdrola. He is also Director of the Leading Sustainable Business Transformation (LSBT) program, head of the sustainability stream in the MBA program and teaches in many of the school's key open programs, including the Advanced Management Program (AMP), Breakthrough Program for Senior Executives (BPSE) and Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP).

Haanaes has published articles in top publications such as Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review and research reports for BCG, The World Economic Forum and MIT.

Haanaes is a member of the CEO’s Sustainability Advisory Board at Carlsberg and a board member at private bank Alpian. He has also served as Chairman of BI Norwegian Business School, a member of the Global Agenda Council on New Economic Growth Models at the World Economic Forum, Executive Director of the Research Council of Norway, and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University.

Selected publications

Business schools must do more on climate change (Harvard Business Review, 2022)

How the university of the future must adapt to train future leaders (Forbes, 2020).

Your Strategy Needs a Strategy (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015)

Making sustainability profitable (Harvard Business Review, 2013)

How serious is climate change to business? (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2013).

Sustainability as adaptability (Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, 2012)

Sustainability nears a tipping point (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2012).

New sustainability study: The 'embracers' seize advantage (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2011)

Recognition

President’s Award, BCG

Expansion Management Review Best Article

BI Norwegian Business School best lecturer prize

Education

MSc (Economics)

Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH)

PhD (Strategy)

Copenhagen Business School

Amit Joshi, Professor of AI, Analytics and Marketing Strategy at IMD, specializes in helping organizations use artificial intelligence and develop their big data, analytics and AI capabilities. An award-winning professor and researcher, he has extensive experience of AI and analytics-driven transformations in industries such as banking, fintech, retail, automotive, telecoms, and pharma.

Joshi believes that no organization's digital transformation is complete until they really understand their data and how to upscale their analytical capabilities. He is currently focusing on how organizations can ensure that AI implementation occurs strategically and at scale rather than in small islands of excellence.

He has delivered customized programs for several companies including UBS, Sonova, Johnson & Johnson, Guardian Life, Mars Petcare, Securitas, Bank Danamon, Bayer, Ooredoo, Siam Commercial Bank, Abu Dhabi School of Governance, Hanover RE, and Migros. He also advises start-ups on their strategies.

At IMD, he is Director of the Digital Excellence Diploma and the Digital Analytics (DA) open program. He is also Co-Director of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Digital Strategy and Analytics (DSA) programs.

Joshi’s research, which focuses on long-run marketing strategy, analytics, and AI applications, has been published in top journals, including the Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Culture, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. He has twice won the MSI/H. Paul Root Award for the best paper in the Journal of Marketing and the Robert D. Buzzell Best Paper Award for the Marketing Science Institute publication with the most long-term impact.

His work and thought leadership have frequently been cited in the media and have been covered by outlets including NPR, CNN, NBC, Nikkei, the Financial Times, Fast Company, Business Standard, Fox News, Bloomberg, Forbes, Le Temps, Investor Relations Magazine, The Conversation, and Science Daily. He is frequently invited to give keynote speeches and led a panel discussion with marketing experts at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020.

Before joining IMD in 2017, Joshi was in academia in the US and prior to that worked as a sales manager at Cadbury India, now part of the Mondelez International group.

Selected publications

6 principles to build your company’s strategic agility (Harvard Business Review, 2021)

The building blocks of an AI strategy (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)

How intelligent is your AI? (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)

How CEO/CMO characteristics affect innovation and stock returns: findings and future directions (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2020)

A meta-analysis of electronic WOM elasticity (Journal of Marketing, 2015)

The direct and indirect effects of advertising spending on firm value (Journal of Marketing, 2010)

Advertising spending and market capitalization (Marketing Science Institute, 2004)

Recognition

Named as one of Switzerland's Digital Shapers by Bilanz, Handelszeitung, Le Temps and Digitalswitzerland (2020)

Winner of EFMD Case Writing Competition (2019)

MSI/H. Paul Root Award for best paper in Journal of Marketing (2015 and 2010)

Marketing Science Institute Robert D. Buzzell Best Paper Award (2006)

Education

Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering

University of Pune

Post Graduate Diploma in Management

Indian Institute of Management

PhD in Management

UCLA Anderson School of Management

Jean-François Manzoni is the President of IMD, where he also serves as the Nestlé Professor. 

His research, teaching, and consulting activities are focused on leadership, the development of high-performance organizations and corporate governance.

At the organisational level, Professor Manzoni studies the content of change (including the use of levers such as strategy, structure and systems), the management of the change process and the role of leaders therein. His work in this area has appeared in several books, articles and over 30 cases, four of which received Case of the Year Awards from the European Foundation for Management Development or the European Case Clearing House. He also acted as content expert in the development of a ground-breaking computer-based change management simulation, the Change Pro Simulation®.

At the individual level, Professor Manzoni studies how leaders can create a high-performance work environment and what they can do to modify their leadership style in that direction. This stream of research has led to several articles and a book entitled The Set-Up to Fail Syndrome: How good managers cause great people to fail (with Jean-Louis Barsoux). This book, which is built on Manzoni's and Barsoux's initial Harvard Business Review article introducing the term "set-up-to-fail syndrome", received two Book of the Year awards and is being discussed in undergraduate, MBA and executive development programs all over the world.

On the corporate governance side, Professor Manzoni focuses on interpersonal dynamics within the Boardroom and between management and the Board. Ongoing research examining the impact of interpersonal dynamics on increasingly diverse Boards of Directors received the Research Award on Leadership & Corporate Governance from the Association of Executive Search Consultants. A Fellow of the Singapore Institute of Directors, Professor Manzoni is currently serving on the Board of Keppel Corp., an international diversified group listed on the Singapore stock exchange, and previously served on the Boards of Singapore's Civil Service College and of AACSB International, the world's largest business education alliance.

A citizen of Canada and France, Professor Manzoni received his Doctorate from Harvard Business School. He had earlier graduated from l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Montréal and worked with Ernst and Young in Montreal before receiving an MBA from McGill University.

Prior to re-joining IMD in 2016, Professor Manzoni had served on the IMD faculty between 2004 and 2010. He also previously served on the faculty of INSEAD, in Singapore and in Fontainebleau. While at INSEAD he founded and directed for four years the PwC Research Initiative on High Performance Organizations. He later directed the Global Leadership Centre supporting the school's leadership-related coaching, teaching and research activities throughout the world

The recipient of several awards for excellence in teaching, Professor Manzoni is a frequent keynote speaker. He also performed consulting, top management team support and leadership development work for several international organisations, which has led him to work in more than thirty countries over the years.

He currently serves or served on several International Advisory Panels, including Digital Switzerland, Singapore's Public Service Division and the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA).

PROFILE

Winter Nie’s expertise lies at the intersection of leadership and change management. She has a deep understanding of how people at different levels in an organization react to change and how leaders can effectively manage resistance and organizational dynamics. Her work focuses on the inherent tension between centralized power and localization, mature and emerging markets, technology push and market pull, internal and external focus, as well as short-term financial performance and long-term survival. Her work shows that the role of leadership is not to eliminate but skillfully navigate through these tensions into the future. She works with organizations on change at the individual, team, and organizational levels, looking beyond surface rationality into the unconscious forces below that shape the direction and speed of change.

Trained in business and psychodynamics, she uses both fields of knowledge to help the leadership team understand the team dynamics in the face of external and internal business challenges and how these forces affect organizational transformation.  

Winter also has in-depth knowledge of doing business in emerging markets, low-cost competition, innovation culture, and customer centricity.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Winter has worked with many global companies in different industries (engineering and technology, service and consulting professions, fast-moving consumer products, banking and financial sector, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, gaming, and the internet). She primarily works in three areas: Organizational transformational journeys; Strategic initiatives (such as customer-focused organization, moving from products to solutions, and operational/service excellence) and change initiatives that require senior executives’ engagement; Senior leadership development.

Winter primarily works with executive teams and senior leaders. In addition, she works with both western and Chinese companies on CEO and senior executive succession (with emphasis on development) by anchoring on the organizational goals and business requirements, leveraging her keen observations of the team dynamics and individual behaviors, deep insights into human nature, and skillful coaching. 

In addition to teaching and conducting research, Winter holds the position of the Dean of IMD China since 2016, responsible for business development and client relationships for the institute within the country. She has served as IMD’s regional director of Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Oceania (2016–2019). She sits on the boards of Opsis, Singapore and Valuesense Group, China. 

PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS AND RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Winter is well published in both academic and practitioner-oriented journals. Her forthcoming book, “The Future of Global Retail: Learning from China's Retail Revolution” (2021), provides both macro- and micro-perspectives for a deep insight into what is happening in China’s new retail market, including its latest digital innovations and new business models. The book provides a new retail framework as a roadmap for global retail executives: the “Beyond” Value Chain Model (More on: https://www.chinanewretail.org/).

“In the Shadow of the Dragon: The Global Expansion of Chinese Companies – and How It Will Change Business Forever” (2012), profiles key Chinese players and provides insights into subtle yet powerful strategies used to gain market dominance, their approach to going global, and the Chinese way of innovation. “Made in China – Secrets of China's Dynamic Entrepreneurs” (2009), takes an insider's look at Chinese entrepreneurs' path to success and offers insights on how MNCs could compete and/or work with them.  

Dr Vikas Tibrewala is Adjunct Professor of Management at IMD. His primary teaching and consulting interests centre around unlocking growth through outstanding strategy development and execution.

Over the last 30 years, Dr Tibrewala has designed, directed, and taught a number of top management workshops and senior executive seminars for companies across a large variety of industries. He has consulted with leading organizations in Europe, the US, and Asia (and to a lesser extent, Africa) on issues around competitive strategy, growth trajectories, marketing strategy, execution, and branding. This work has been across a breadth of sectors including heavy industry, construction, pharmaceuticals, financial services, luxury goods, packaging, IT, metals, automobiles, and consumer goods.

Previous affiliations include INSEAD, where Dr Tibrewala served for 20 years as Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing. During that time, he was involved in several senior executive development programs, including the Advanced Management Program. He was a core faculty member (and occasional Director) of AIMS (Advanced Industrial Marketing Strategies), focused upon B2B companies. He also developed, directed and/or taught in several top-level company-specific programs.

Dr. Tibrewala has also worked with a number of other academic institutions. In particular, he served for 15 years on the core faculty of CEDEP, a Management Development Consortium of about 20 leading global companies. He was a Visiting Professor of Marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management (2004-2005), and a founding faculty member of the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, where he was Professor of Management and President of the Skolkovo Leaders Forum from 2009-2012. He was an integral contributor to the Carnegie Bosch Institute of Carnegie Mellon University for 13 years. He continues to be closely involved with IEDC - Bled School of Management, located in Slovenia. 

Outside of academia, Dr. Tibrewala worked with the Monitor Group for two years (2006-2008) as Executive Director and Senior Faculty member of Monitor Executive Development. He has served on the Advisory Boards of NorthCap Partners, a Danish venture capital firm and eastone, a CIS-focused private equity firm.

Dr. Tibrewala’s case study “United Colors of Benetton” was awarded the 1999 “Best Marketing Case” award by the European Case Clearing House and Business Week. He has also published case studies on the leading-edge CSR philosophy of Tata Steel and the innovative social business model of Novartis.

Dr Tibrewala holds a Ph.D. from New York University, an MBA from Cornell and a B. Com. from the University of Bombay.

Expertise and interests: Marketing and management

Professor Weeks's unique approach to leadership, organizational culture, and change is reflected in his research, teaching, and over twenty years of working with executives worldwide. He helps leaders understand how they can manage themselves to lead others more effectively and to have a positive and intentional impact on the culture in their part of their organization.

In his book, Unpopular Culture, and in his writing in the Harvard Business Review and Financial Times, Weeks explains how, as leaders, we nudge culture every day - what people say and do when they think we are not looking - whether we mean to or not. As we get more senior, we are on stage all the time and the spotlight gets brighter. We are all role-models, for better or worse, even when we don't want to be. The essence of leadership is being your best self more often to have a consistent, insistent and persistent influence on the culture you want to create.

Before joining IMD in 2007, he spent 11 years at INSEAD (France), where he was nominated three times as "Best Teacher." An American who has lived on three continents, he served on the Board of Directors of LEO Pharma, and he has worked with clients in Europe, the Americas and Asia such as:

ABB, Actelion, Aggreko, Alcatel-Lucent, AXA, BAT, Bolton Group, Grosvenor, Group SEB, Firmenich, Georg Fischer, Hempel, Holcim, Iberdrola, Imerys, KPMG, Kone, LafargeHolcim, LDC, LEGO Group, Maersk, Mars, Mazda, Neste, Nestlé, Nokia, Novartis, Orion, Pon, PwC, SABIC, STADA, Tenaris, Tetra Pak, VAT, X5 and WWF.

He is co-director of the High Performance Leadership (HPL) Program, an intense six day IMD program for experienced senior leaders.

With a background in technology and training as an organizational ethnographer, Weeks holds a PhD in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management (USA), an MPhil in Management from Oxford University (UK), and a BA in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley (USA).

His work has been published in Harvard Business Review, The Financial Times, Academy of Management Review, and Organization Studies. His book, Unpopular Culture, received rave reviews from The Financial Times, The Economist, BBC Radio 4, The Guardian, The Spectator, The Times Higher Education Supplement, The Boston Globe, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, CIO Magazine, Business Digest (France), as well as American Journal of Sociology, Administrative Science Quarterly, Contemporary Sociology, and Work and Occupations.

Howard Yu is the LEGO® Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD. 

He is the author of the award-winning book LEAP: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied. 

In 2015, Professor Yu was selected by Poets&Quants as one of "The World's Top 40 Business Professors Under 40," and in 2018 he appeared on the Thinkers50 Radar list of thirty management thinkers "most likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led." 

He is also a two-times (2013-2015) prize-winning case writer awarded by the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) - Europe's largest network association in the field of management development, with more than eight hundred member organizations. In 2017, Yu was awarded for his work in the "outstanding case writer on the hot topic Big Data - Risks and Opportunities" category at the Case Centre Awards, which are called the business school Oscars by the Financial Times. 

He delivers customized training programs at IMD for major global companies in Asia and Europe including China's TravelSky, China Resources, COFCO, and Tencent; Japan's Nitto and Recruit Holdings; Singapore's Temasek, ASML, Daimler, Bosch, Electrolux, LEGO, Sanofi, and Novartis. 

Professor Yu is a Hong Kong native with a doctoral degree in management from Harvard Business School. Prior to his doctorate, he worked in the Hong Kong banking industry.