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 Thomas 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 (2019).  He is also 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 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, 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.

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. Cordon’s areas of expertise are supply chain management, digital, value chains, digital lean and process management, all of which are particularly relevant topics in the context of the supply chain challenges that businesses are facing. His research and teaching are currently focused on the reconfiguration of supply chains in the face of persistent disruptions, how supply chains are driving revenue, reshoring and onshoring, and digital strategies.

Cordon says supply chain constraints have become a driver of extraordinary growth in profits for some companies as a result of availability constraints, increased demand and higher prices. General Motors sold 20% fewer cars in 2021 than in 2019 as a result of a shortage of microchips, for example, but still managed to record a 48% rise in profits over the same period.

He is the author of numerous articles and case studies in his specialist fields and has won various awards for his work. He was named on the the Case Center list of the top 50 best-selling case authors globally in 2020/21 and was a winner in the 2017 EFMD Case Writing Competition with IMD colleagues Benoît Leleux and Beverley Lennox for a case study on Adidas.

He is also the author of four books, including the 2016 title Strategy is Digital, which explores how companies can use big data in their value chains. The book presents strategies and practices to allow companies to take advantage of the huge business opportunities arising from the advent of big data and guides them through their big data journey.

Cordon is a consultant to multinational companies in the electronics, food, chemical, pharmaceutical, and car industries, among others. He has designed and directed numerous executive development programs and has helped some of the world’s biggest companies to develop their supply chain and digital strategies, including Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Coca Cola, Merck, Mondelez, Unilever, Heineken, Philip Morris, Danone and Reckitt Benckiser among others. He is also a member of the Coca-Cola European Partners’ Digital Advisory Board.

He joined IMD in 1993 after completing a PhD in Management at INSEAD. He was previously a manager in Accenture’s manufacturing and distribution consulting group and MIS Manager at Grupo General Cable in Spain (now part of the Prysmian group).

Selected publications

Why sustainability targets are close to mission impossible (I by IMD, 2021)

Re-use or recycle? Designing a business model for the circular economy (I by IMD, 2021)

Physical stores' surprising comeback in the pandemic (Shanghai Daily-Shine, 2021)

The antibiotic ecosystem conundrum (IMD, 2020)

Sustainable adoption of digital health innovations: Perspectives from a stakeholder workshop (Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2019)

Strategy is Digital: How Companies Can Use Big Data in the Value Chain (Springer, 2016)

The Value Chain Shift: Seven Future Challenges Facing Top Executives (IMD, 2014)

Strategic Supply Chain Management (Routledge, 2012)

The Power of Two: How Smart Companies Create Win-Win Customer-Supplier Partnerships that Outperform the Competition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)

Recognition

Named on Case Centre list of top 50 best-selling case authors (2020/21)

Winner of EFMD Case Writing Competition (2017)

Education

Master's degree (Civil Engineering)

Escuela Politecnica de Barcelona

PhD (Management)

INSEAD

Frédéric Dalsace focuses on two distinct areas – B2B issues such as customer centricity, buyer-seller relationships, and value management, and sustainability, inclusive business models, and alleviating poverty.

He is Co-Director of IMD’s new Leading Customer-Centric Strategies (LCCS) program and believes that companies need to rethink their approach to customer centricity. He says many organizations only consider customer centricity when they are defining their offers, but that they also need to incorporate it into the value delivery and value capture dimensions of their business models. One way of doing this is through risk-sharing business models including fully service-based offerings, such as Rolls Royce's Power by the Hour model, or performance-based and outcome-based contracts in which payments depend on the value created, with the result that the interests of suppliers and customers are aligned.

Risk-sharing business models are also relevant in Dalsace’s work on sustainability because they lead to more circular and more efficient solutions. He previously worked with 2006 Nobel prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus on inclusive business models, and is currently helping firms to integrate sustainability into their broader strategy by making the business case for sustainability, for example. Many companies have been naive about sustainability and have made the mistake of decoupling it from their overall strategy, he says.

He is also collaborating with IMD’s Professor of Strategy Arnaud Chevallier on a project to identify and evaluate the types of questions that leaders should be asking of those around them. As this is not something that is formally taught, leaders tend to learn by doing, which can lead to blind spots. Using a database of more than 600 executives, the pair have therefore developed a template for the types of questions that leaders need to ask – and how to ask them.

Dalsace has worked with a range of firms including Atlas Copco, UCB, Valmet, VAT Group, Grundfos, MANE, Porsche and STADA, and he has published in academic journals such as Harvard Business Review, Business Horizons, Strategic Management Journal and Revue Française de Gestion.

Before joining IMD in 2019, he was a Professor at HEC Paris for 16 years, holding the Social Business/Enterprise and Poverty Chair, and he has won numerous awards for his teaching, research, and publications.

Prior to his academic life, he held a series of senior positions in the business world, including marketing roles at Michelin and CarnaudMetalbox and as a strategy consultant with McKinsey.

Selected publications

Mindset drives success: Selling beneficial products at the base of the pyramid (Business Horizons, 2021)

The friend or foe fallacy: Why your best customers may not need your friendship (Business Horizons, 2017)

Reaching the rich world’s poorest consumers (Harvard Business Review, 2015)

Do make or buy decisions matter? The influence of organizational governance on technological performance (Strategic Management Journal, 2002)

L’entreprise contre la pauvreté (Fondation Jean Jaurès, 2011)

Recognition

HEC Montreal CSR Challenge Case Writing Competition Award (2022)

Named on Case Centre list of best-selling cases (2021)

Strategy Management Society (Strategy Process Interest Group) Best Paper Prize (2019)

Business Horizons Best Article Award (2017)

Named on Poets & Quants list of MBA graduates’ favorite professors (2017)

HEC Paris MBA Program Best Permanent Professor (Specialized Phase) (2016, 2017)

Case Centre Award for Best Marketing Case (2015)

Best Teacher Award, HEC (2006)

HEC Foundation Prize for best article published by HEC Faculty (2004)

Winner of Institute for the Study of Business Markets Doctoral Competition (2000)

Education

MSc (Business Administration)

HEC Paris

MBA

Harvard Business School

MSc (Management)

INSEAD

PhD (Management)

INSEAD

Albrecht Enders' work focuses on strategic decision making. Through his teaching, consulting and writing, he helps companies make important strategic choices, and provides guidance on how to ensure that decision making is effective, and pitfalls are avoided.

He says leaders often fall into the trap of separating decision making from engaging with their stakeholders, only communicating, and seeking to bring stakeholders on board once they have made key strategic choices. Instead, they need to involve key stakeholders throughout the decision-making process, as this can often lead to better choices and create a sense of fair process for the people they lead.

Enders is the co-author with Arnaud Chevallier of Solvable: A Simple Solution to Complex Problems, which proposes a simple three-step process for the strategic thinking needed for complex problem solving: frame, explore, decide. They argue that it is important to avoid jumping to solutions and to work through each step of this process instead.

Framing consists of clearly specifying what the problem is and what it is not. Exploring involves an analysis of the full breadth of potential solutions, including innovative responses beyond those that are immediately obvious. And deciding then entails choosing the best available solution after weighing up all of the trade-offs involved.

In addition, Enders has been actively involved in Pathbuilder programs in which a diverse group of employees act as a sort of “shadow cabinet” and present top teams with new ideas for organizational transformation. This approach has been deployed at companies like Stora Enso and has led to impactful solutions, such as Stora Enso's Eco School concept.

Enders has worked with a range of clients from different industries, including ABB, Agathon, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, EHL, Siemens, Douglas Holding, Honda, ICBC, Novartis, MTR HongKong, Roland Berger, Safran, Skanska, Telenor, Thyssen Krupp, TUI, Vodafone and VTT.

He is also Co-Director of IMD's Transition to Business Leadership (TBL) open program, served as IMD Dean of Programs and Innovation until 2020 and previously directed the Advanced Strategic Management program, precursor to the current Advanced Management Program (AMP).

His 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 Nestlé, Tesco, Nordea, XING and SonyBMG, and his research and case writing have been recognized by awards from the Business Policy and Strategy division of the Academy of Management, the Society for Information Management, European Foundation for Management Development and European Case Clearing House.

He is a board member of Swiss precision tool company Agathon and a founding member of the executive committee of the Enterprise for Society (E4S) sustainability initiative launched by IMD,

the University of Lausanne, HEC Lausanne and EPFL.

Before joining IMD in 2009, Enders spent three years as a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group where he worked on projects relating to strategy development, reorganization and efficiency improvement in the financial services, energy and industrial goods sectors. 

Selected publications

Solvable: A Simple Solution to Complex Problems (Pearson, 2022)

Silver bullet or ricochet? CEOs’ use of metaphorical communication and infomediaries’ evaluations (Academy of Management Journal, 2018)

How the world’s oldest company reinvented itself (Harvard Business Review, 2018)

Stop jumping to solutions! (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2016)

CEO narcissism, audience engagement, and organizational adoption of technological discontinuities (Administrative Science Quarterly, 2013)

The family innovator's dilemma: How family influence affects the adoption of discontinuous technologies by incumbent firms (Academy of Management Review, 2013)

Strategies for E-business: Creating Value Through Electronic and Mobile Commerce (Pearson, 2005)

Recognition

EFMD Excellence in Practice Gold Award (2014)

Academy of Management Business Policy and Strategy Division Glueck Best Paper Award (2011 and 2013)

Academy of Management Business Policy and Strategy Division Distinguished Paper Award (2012)

Society for Information Management International Paper Competition First Prize (2005 and 2008)

Education

BA (Economics)

Dartmouth College, USA

Master's degree

Leipzig Graduate School of Management

PhD (Strategic Management)

Leipzig Graduate School of Management

Habilitation (Strategic Management)

University of Nuremberg

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 focus on strategy, sustainability, strategic renewal and business models. He says these different pillars enable him to help companies think about their path for the future and take account of new trends like demands for greater sustainability.

Sustainability now plays an important part in his work. He was the driving force behind the creation of the Business Schools for Climate Leadership (BS4CL) alliance of eight leading European business schools, which was launched 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, and Haanaes continues to play a leading role in the group’s activities.

He is also deeply involved in IMD's strategic partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), 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.

At IMD, Haanaes is Director of the Leading Sustainable Business Transformation (LSBT) program and Co-Director of Driving Sustainability from the Boardroom (DSB), a program developed as part of IMD’s collaboration with WBCSD. He is also 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).

Through his work with clients, Haanaes has also accumulated extensive experience in a number of industries on issues of strategy. 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).

At IMD, he has helped run custom programs for Neste, CMS, Technip FMC, Coca-Cola Bottling, Mondelez, Maybank, Rio Tinto and Iberdrola.

Haanaes’ teaching on strategy is underpinned by his best-selling book Your Strategy Needs a Strategy. The book 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 after being published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015 and it has since been translated into seven other languages.

He is also a successful TED speaker. His TED talk "Two reasons companies fail – and how to avoid them" has attracted more than 2 million views.

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

He joined IMD in 2016 from BCG, where he was a Senior Partner and Global Leader of the Strategy Practice. He also led BCG’s collaboration with MIT on sustainability, developing one of the largest databases globally of how executives address the topic, and founded the BCG global sustainability initiative.

Haanaes was Dean of the Global Leadership Institute at the World Economic Forum between 2018 and 2020. He is also a member of the CEO’s Sustainability Advisory Board at Carlsberg, and he previously 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’s research, teaching, and consulting activities are focused on leadership, the development of high-performance organizations, and corporate governance. In recent years, he has been concentrating increasingly on ways to ensure leadership programs have lasting impact, particularly through the use of technology-mediated approaches.

At the organizational level, 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 (now called the Case Centre). He also acted as content expert in the development of a ground-breaking computer-based change management simulation, the Change Pro Simulation®.

At an individual level, he studies how leaders can create a caring, high-performance work environment. 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). The book, which builds 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 discussed in undergraduate, MBA and executive development programs all over the world.

On the corporate governance side, Manzoni focuses on interpersonal dynamics within the boardroom, and between management and the board. His 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, he currently serves on the board of Keppel Corporation, an international diversified group listed on the Singapore stock exchange (where he also chairs the nominations committee and is a member of the remuneration committee). He previously served on the Boards of AACSB International (the world’s largest business education alliance) and Singapore’s Civil Service College, among others.

Alongside these lifelong interests, Manzoni has also been increasingly interested in closing the growing managerial “knowing-doing gap”, i.e., the gap between what managers kind of know they should be doing and the extent to which they actually behave that way in practice. One aspect of this quest, accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis, has been exploring the role that technology can play in helping to design and deliver interventions that a) produce significant and lasting individual impact, and b) can be scaled effectively and efficiently to large numbers of individuals in order to build a real capability within the organization.

The recipient of several awards for excellence in teaching, Manzoni is Co-director of IMD’s signature program Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP) and teaches on the High Performance Leadership (HPL) open program and Executive MBA (EMBA) course.

He re-joined IMD in 2016, having already served on the IMD faculty between 2004 and 2010, when he was Professor of Leadership and Organizational Development and Director of the their Breakthrough Program for Senior Executives (BPSE).

He previously served on the faculty of INSEAD in Singapore and Fontainebleau, where he founded, and for four years directed, the PwC Research Initiative on High Performance Organizations. He later directed their Global Leadership Centre, supporting the their leadership-related coaching, teaching, and research activities throughout the world.

A citizen of Canada and France, Manzoni received his doctorate from Harvard Business School. He had earlier graduated from L’École des hautes études commerciales de Montréal and worked with Ernst and Young in Montreal before receiving an MBA from McGill University.

Manzoni is a frequent keynote speaker and discussion partner for business leaders, including through the IMD CEO Dialogue Series in which he holds frank and insightful discussions with CEOs of various organizations. He has also performed consulting, top management team support, and leadership development work for several international organizations, which has led him to work in more than 30 countries over the years.

He currently serves on a number of International Advisory Panels of industry bodies (e.g., Digital Switzerland), academic institutions (e.g., EHL Hospitality Business School) and corporations (e.g., Novartis Culture Leadership Advisory Board).

Selected publications

Striving for meaningful impact in and through management education: The IMD perspective (Global Focus, forthcoming)

Executive education post-pandemic: Reflections on the role of technology-mediated interactions going forward, in Executive Education after the Pandemic: A Vision for the Future (Palgrave, 2022) pp. 245-256

Leading an (unusual) academic institution through a crisis: A personal reflection, in Business School Leadership and Crisis: Exit Planning (Cambridge University Press, 2022) pp. 311-330

Society needs to have the right conversations about the COVID-19 crisis (IMD, 2020)

The board-management relationship: How to achieve control and support (Singapore Institute of Directors Bulletin, 2017)

To get more feedback, act more coachable (Harvard Business Review, 2016)

Building and nurturing a high performance – high integrity corporate culture, in Performance Measurement and Management Control: Advancing Global Practice (Emerald, 2012) pp. 41-63

Widening the lens: The challenges of leveraging boardroom diversity (Rotman Magazine, 2011)

The Set-Up-To-Fail Syndrome: Overcoming the Undertow of Expectations (Harvard Business School Press, 2007)

A better way to deliver bad news (Harvard Business Review, 2002)

Implementing corporate strategy: from “tableaux de bord” to balanced scorecards (European Management Journal, 1998)

The set-up to fail syndrome: How bosses create their own poor performers (Harvard Business Review, 1998)

Selected Awards

Manzoni has received multiple awards for teaching and program direction, including:

Research Award on Leadership & Corporate Governance from the Association of Executive Search Consultants (2011)

ECCH Case of the Year Award, category Strategy and General Management (2007)

Book of the Year Awards for The Set-up-to-Fail Syndrome from the Society for Human Resource Management and HR.com

EFMD Case of the Year Awards in the categories Corporate Coaching (2004), Change Management (1998) and Public Sector Management (1998)

ANBAR Citation of Excellence for Understanding Organizational Dynamics of IT-Enabled Change: A Multimedia Simulation Approach (Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 14. No. 3).

Education

BBA

HEC Montréal

MBA

McGill University, Montreal

DBA

Harvard Business School

Profile

Winter Nie’s expertise lies at the intersection of change management and leadership, with a focus on strategy, team dynamics, and change initiatives. 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.

Nie says companies are always dealing with tensions in relation to their external environment, strategic direction or internal capabilities, and that there are no perfect answers that always apply – everything depends on the individual company’s situation, purpose, strategy, and positioning – but she is able to help leaders skillfully navigate through these tensions into the future.

She is trained in psychodynamics as well as business, holding a Tavistock Consulting Advanced Certificate in Decoding Group Dynamics and certifications in several psychometric instruments on leadership and organizational development, so a lot of her work focuses on top management team dynamics. She helps business leaders to improve team dynamics where necessary, but also to identify situations where problems may have their roots in the strategy or external environment rather than the dynamics of the team.

Nie is also able to guide companies through organizational transformation and change initiatives, believing that the only way to keep up with the unrelenting pace of change in the world is to constantly learn, unlearn and relearn, with openness, courage, and humility.

She is particularly well equipped to provide support on strategic initiatives in areas such as customer centricity, moving from products to solutions, and operational/service excellence, and she has in-depth knowledge of doing business in emerging markets, low-cost competition, and innovation culture.

Nie works with companies who want to embark on organizational transformation at the individual, team, and organizational levels, looking beyond surface rationality into the unconscious forces below that shape the direction and speed of change. She also supports companies with senior leadership development, including work with both Western and Chinese companies on CEO and senior executive succession. Her advice is always anchored in the organization's goals and business requirements and leverages her keen observations of team dynamics and individual behaviors and insights into human nature.

She has worked with many global companies in a wide range of industries, including engineering and technology, service and consulting professions, fast-moving consumer products, banking and finance, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, gaming, and the internet, and sits on the boards of Singaporean software company Opsis and Chinese e-commerce group Valuesense.

Nie teaches on IMD's flagship Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP) program and is Dean of IMD China with responsibility for the school's business development and client relationships in the country. She also served as IMD’s Regional Director of Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania until 2019.

She is the author of several books and articles in academic and practitioner-oriented journals.

Her 2021 book The Future of Global Retail: Learning from China's Retail Revolution provides a roadmap to help global retail executives prepare for the decade ahead, drawing on lessons on innovation, purpose and agility in emerging markets. Nie and co-authors Mark Greeven, Yunfei Fang and James Wang call this framework the “Beyond” Value Chain Model.

Her MIT Sloan Management Review article “Rethinking the East Asian Leadership Gap” showed how the difficulties experienced by many multinationals in identifying managers with leadership potential in East Asia are more to do with prevailing Western views of leadership than about available talent.

Nie’s 2012 book In the Shadow of the Dragon: The Global Expansion of Chinese Companies – and How It Will Change Business Forever provides insights into subtle yet powerful strategies used to gain market dominance, key players' approach to going global and the Chinese way of innovation, and her 2009 title Made in China – Secrets of China's Dynamic Entrepreneurs explains how multinationals can compete or work with Chinese entrepreneurs.

Before joining IMD in 2006, she was a tenured Associate Professor at Thunderbird School of Global Management in the United States.

Selected publications

The Future of Global Retail: Learning from China's Retail Revolution (Routledge, 2021)

Rethinking the East Asian Leadership Gap (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2017)

In the Shadow of the Dragon: The Global Expansion of Chinese Companies – and How It Will Change Business Forever (AMACOM, 2012)

Made in China: Secrets of China's Dynamic Entrepreneurs (John Wiley & Sons, 2009)

Recognition

John Molson MBA International Case Writing Competition award (2022)

Education

BS (Economics)

Zhejiang University, China

MBA

University of Montana

PhD (Operations Management)

University of Utah

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

John Weeks works at the intersection of leadership, organizational culture, and change. 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 of their organizations.

He believes leadership is about helping people to change their mindsets and that the most important legacy of a leader is the culture they help create around them. Defining organizational culture as what people say and do when they think their bosses are not looking, he argues that leaders influence culture even when they don’t mean to. Leaders are role models – even, or maybe especially, when they don’t intend to be. And the more senior we become, the more we are in the spotlight all the time. Weeks’ work helps leaders to be their best selves as often as possible in order to have a consistent, insistent, and persistent influence on the culture they want to create.

His recent work has focused on the future of the office in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, including a 2021 Harvard Business Review article on the topic. He concludes that although we have seen that, for many jobs, individual work and task-related meetings can be carried out well through remote working and without the need for a daily commute, the office retains an important role for functions that technology cannot easily replicate such as driving culture, strengthening relationships, and fostering learning. And this means that office design, technology, and management practices need to evolve so that offices can become equally effective as social, learning and innovation spaces.

Weeks has worked with a long list of clients in Europe, the Americas and Asia, including ABB, Actelion, Aggreko, Alcatel-Lucent, AXA, BAT, BMW, Bolton Group, Bühler, 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, Société Générale, STADA, Tenaris, Tetra Pak, Van Oord, VAT, X5 and WWF.

He is also Associate Director of IMD's High Performance Leadership (HPL) open program, an intensive six-day program for experienced senior leaders, and until recently served as a board member at LEO Pharma.

His book, Unpopular Culture, on the corporate culture of a British bank, won widespread praise from the Financial Times, The Economist, BBC Radio 4, The Guardian, The Spectator, Times Higher Education, The Boston Globe, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, CIO Magazine, and Business Digest (France), as well as the American Journal of Sociology, Administrative Science Quarterly, Contemporary Sociology, and Work and Occupations. The Financial Times said that the book’s thinking applies to all companies in all countries.

His work has also been published in Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, Academy of Management Review and Organization Studies, and he previously served as a senior editor at Organization Studies and as a member of the editorial board at the Journal of International Business Studies.

Before joining IMD in 2007, Weeks was Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD for 11 years. He has a background in technology and training as an organizational ethnographer, holding

a PhD in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management, an MPhil in management from the University of Oxford, and a BA in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Selected publications

Unpopular Culture: The Ritual of Complaint in a British Bank (University of Chicago Press, 2004)

Designing the hybrid office (Harvard Business Review, 2021)

Who moved my cubes? Creating workspaces that actually foster collaboration (Harvard Business Review, 2011)

Photocopiers and water-coolers: The affordances of informal interaction (Organization Studies, 2007)

Find the gold in toxic feedback (Harvard Business Review, 2007)

Recognition

Roland Calori Prize for Best Paper in Organization Studies (2007-2008)

Education

BA (Computer Science)

University of California, Berkeley

MPhil (Management)

University of Oxford

PhD (Management)

MIT Sloan School of Management

Howard Yu specializes in technological innovation, strategic transformation, and change management and heads IMD’s Center for Future Readiness. He is also author of the award-winning and best-selling book LEAP: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied. In 2015 he was named by Poets&Quants as one of the world’s leading business school professors under 40, and in 2018 he was included on the Thinkers50 Radar list of management thinkers to watch in the year ahead.

His work as Director of the IMD Center for Future Readiness focuses on firms’ capacity to sustain new growth. The Center, which was established in 2020 with the backing of a multi-million-dollar grant from the LEGO Brand Group, aims to help companies spur innovation and thrive amid uncertainty by quantifying which organizations are most ready for a changing future and exploring the lessons that other firms can learn from them. The Center produces Future Readiness Indicators for various sectors to measure how prepared industry incumbents are for coming challenges.

Yu’s work has been published in journals such as Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, The European Business Review, and Business History Review, and popular media outlets including the New York Times, Financial Times, Fortune, Forbes, Straits Times, South China Morning Post, and Shanghai Daily. He is also regularly interviewed and quoted by news organizations such as the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, the BBC, and China Daily.

He says businesses are experiencing a series of seismic shifts as a result of global developments such as the encroachment of emerging market firms, the onslaught of digital transformation, growth in the number of affluent consumers across the world, the COVID-19 crisis, and the expansion of e-commerce, and managers must align with the trends affecting their sectors to prosper. For carmakers, for instance, the most significant trend is the leap from the mechanical engineering of the internal combustion engine to electric vehicles that blend connectivity with self-driving capabilities based on software algorithms.

At IMD, he is Director of the Future Readiness Strategy (FRS) open program. He has also delivered customized training programs for major global companies in Asia and Europe including Bosch, OCBC Bank, COFCO, Mars, ASML, Sanofi, ABB, Novartis, Assa Abloy, Maersk, Daimler, Electrolux, Nitto, and LEGO.

Yu’s book LEAP shows how pioneering companies can endure and prosper in a world of constant change and inevitable copycats by harnessing new strategies and advancements in technology and leveraging shifts in markets. The book won widespread praise from top executives as well as several awards, including an Axiom Business Book Awards Gold Medal and a strategy+business Best Business Book award.

He has also written numerous case studies and won several case writing awards from the European Foundation for Management Development and The Case Centre.

He joined IMD in 2011 after completing a doctoral degree in management at Harvard Business School. He is a Hong Kong native and worked in the Hong Kong banking industry at the start of his career.

Selected publications

How future thinking can derail your company’s present (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2022)

What makes a company “future ready”? (Harvard Business Review, 2022)

Why companies must embrace microservices and modular thinking (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2021)

Why some retailers are thriving amid disruption (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)

How autonomy creates resilience in the face of crisis (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)

LEAP: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied (PublicAffairs, 2018)

Leopards sometimes change their spots: How established firms can transform themselves (Harvard Business School, 2010)

Recognition

Axiom Business Book Awards Gold Medal winner (2019)

strategy+business Best Business Book award (2018)

Named on Inc. 10 Best Business Books of the year list (2018)

Named on Thinkers50 Radar list of management thinkers to watch in the year ahead (2018)

Winner of Case Centre Outstanding Case Writer Hot Topic Competition (2017)

Shortlisted for Thinkers50 Innovation Award (2017 and 2019)

Named on Poets&Quants ‘Best 40 under 40’ list of leading business school professors (2015)

Winner of EFMD Case Writing Competition Award (2013 and 2015)

Education

BBA

The University of Hong Kong

DBA

Harvard Business School