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 is Professor of Strategy and Marketing at IMD. Prior to IMD, he spent 20 years as a professor at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Professor Challagalla also worked as Principal at The Monitor Group, a strategy consulting company founded by Michael Porter. His teaching, consulting, and research focuses on strategy with a focus on digital transformation, business-to-business commercial management, value-based pricing, sales management, distribution channels, and customer and service excellence. At IMD, he is Faculty Director of the Digital Marketing Strategy (DMS) program and several custom programs for B2B, B2C, and Pharmaceutical industry clients. In addition, he runs an annual event for Chief Marketing Officers, which is attended by the CMOs of firms across Europe.

He has worked with clients in a variety of industries including life sciences, agribusiness, technology/semi-conductors, manufacturing and chemicals industries, telecom, health care, FMCG, and professional services firms. The companies he has worked with include 3M, Accenture, Applied Materials, AT&T, AXA, Cargill, Cargotec, Coesia, Endress and Hauser, Ernst and Young, GE, Gea, HSBC, IBM, Illinois Tool Works, Kone, Novo Nordisk, Prudential, RHR International, Tetra Pak, thyssenkrupp, Turner Broadcasting, UPS, and Zurich. He worked with these clients on issues such as strategy issues, including digital strategy, market strategy, go-to-market channel design, marketing implementation, pricing, and sales effectiveness.

His research has been published in top marketing and management journals such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, and the Journal of Applied Psychology. He is a recipient of the Outstanding Dissertation Award at UT-Austin, the Decision Sciences Institute's best paper award, American Marketing Association's best Services Paper award, and the Maynard Award, which is given to the best paper in the Journal of Marketing (2015). He has won the E. Roe Stamps Excellence in Teaching Award and the Core MBA Professor Teaching Award at Georgia Tech. He serves on the editorial review board of the Journal of Marketing and Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management.

Professor Challagalla's undergraduate degree is from Osmania University in Hyderabad, India. His MBA is from Arizona State University and his Ph.D. is from 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 economist and political scientist specializing in social innovation, corporate social responsibility and sustainable finance with more than 20 years of consultancy, research and teaching experience, working with academic institutions, multinational corporations and international organizations. She is the holder of the elea Chair for Social Innovation.

In her research, Vanina is interested in studying and fostering the application of innovative, practical, sustainable and inclusive market-oriented approaches that aspire to change the world by eliminating the root causes of social ills. Her research focuses on social entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, impact investing and ESG Integration/sustainable finance. She also applies a gender lens in all her research projects. She seeks to understand the social innovation environment through a holistic approach that examines both the supply (entrepreneurs and corporates) and demand side of social innovation (society but also investors).

In November 2020, Farber co-authored with Peter Wuflli the book “The elea Way: a Learning Journey towards Sustainable impact,” Routledge. The book summarizes insights from elea’s 15-year pioneering journey, from creating an investment organization, choosing purposeful themes, and sourcing opportunities, to partnering with entrepreneurs for impact creation. This 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. Using real-life examples, the book is aimed at entrepreneurs, investors, executives, philanthropists, policymakers, and anyone curious about entrepreneurship and inclusive capitalism.

Prior to coming to IMD, Vanina was Professor and Chair of Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Social Inclusion at Universidad del Pacífico, Peru, where she also was the Dean of the Graduate School of Business from 2014 to 2016. From 2005 to 2017 she was also an Adjunct Professor for IE Business School, Spain, where she taught Economic Environment and Country Analysis in blended programs and designed and co-directed the training course for professors “Leadership in Blended Education”.

Vanina has worked as a researcher and consultant for different international organizations and national institutions in Switzerland, Spain and Peru.

Vanina holds a Bachelor in Political Science from Universidad de Buenos Aires and an M.A. in Economics and PhD in business administration (economics) from the University of Memphis in the USA.

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.

Professor Knut Haanaes is the Lundin Chair Professor of Sustainability at IMD. He was until recently the Dean of the Global Leadership Institute at the World Economic Forum. At IMD he teaches in many of the key programs, including the MBA, EMBA and other executive programs. His research interests are related to strategy, digital transformation and sustainability. In the area of strategy, he focuses on strategy styles, corporate renewal and business models. In sustainability, he examines topics such as the role of boards, effective cooperation for results and how to demonstrate proof of sustainability value. In the area of digital transformation, he has focused extensively on digital business models and developed a new approach for how to teach executives to learn programming and coding.

Professor 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. He is co-author of the bestselling book "Your Strategy Needs a Strategy" at Harvard Business Review Press, which has been translated into seven languages. He is also a TED speaker ("Two reasons companies fail – and how to avoid them") with more than 2 million views. 

Professor Haanaes was until 2016 a Senior Partner at The Boston Consulting Group. At BCG he served as the Global Leader of the Strategy Practice and at various times led the BCG offices in Geneva and Oslo. He also founded the BCG global sustainability initiative. Professor Haanaes has also been Executive Director of The Research Council of Norway, Chairman of BI Norwegian Business School and Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. He is a member of the CEO’s Sustainability Board at Carlsberg. He holds a MSc in Economics from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH) and a PhD in Strategy from Copenhagen Business School (CBS).

Amit Joshi joined IMD as Professor of AI, Analytics and Marketing Strategy. He brings IMD extensive expertise in marketing management and strategy, advertising, digital media, data analytics and marketing accountability. He is Program Director of the open program Digital Analytics and the Director of the Digital Excellence Diploma.

Amit regularly interacts with a variety of corporate clients in several industries, including fintech, pharma, telecom, media, manufacturing, retailing, education and automobiles. He was previously a professor in the USA and has also worked for Cadbury India Ltd., a company that is now a part of the Mondelez International group.

Amit’s research, which focuses on long-run marketing strategy, analytics and marketing effectiveness has been published in top journals, including Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Culture and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. His research has twice won the MSI / H. Paul Root Award, for the best paper in the Journal of Marketing (2010 and 2015), in addition to the Robert D. Buzzell Best Paper Award (2006) for the MSI publication with the most long-term impact. His dissertation won an honorable mention in the 2004 Alden G. Clayton Dissertation Proposal Competition.

His research has also been extensively covered in the popular press and media, including NPR, CNN, NBC, Fox News, Bloomberg, Investor Relations Magazine, Science Daily and the Orlando Sentinel. Amit earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pune, and then a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (P.G.D.M.) from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India. His Ph.D. is from the 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.