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During your year, you will explore the three key streams of leadership, sustainability, and career development through five different angles:
Your will take a deep dive into the fundamentals of business and leadership development. You will take part in a start-up project and tackle core courses in:
- Accounting
- Business & Society
- Economics
- Finance & Capital Markets
- Leadership
- Marketing
- Operations
- Strategy
Tap into innovative leadership skills by learning to develop and drive the strategies that will give you an edge in a rapidly changing marketplace.
- Innovation & Leadership Lab: explore new aspects of leadership and sustainability and experience how innovation really works in practice.
- Discovery expeditions: visit innovative technology hubs with your fellow students and develop your global awareness.
- Digital analytics lab: get hands-on programming experience on how to best address the world’s digital challenges and move from digital survival to digital innovation.
You will get the chance to embark on discovery expeditions and explore specialized courses to develop a deeper knowledge and understanding of business areas such as negotiations, international strategy and strategy beyond the market and finance.
International Consulting Project: you will spend 7 weeks working with multinational companies to apply your skills in a global environment and make specific recommendations to top management on current issues they are facing.
Career development coaching: from before you arrive on campus to beyond graduation, you will be mentored and advised by our team of experts to develop a sustainable career plan and strategy.
Recruitment coaching: we partner with companies from key industries with diverse opportunities for our MBA talent. Meet with your personal career advisor, solidify your job search strategy, attend recruitment workshops and collaborate with our team as you focus on your first round of interviews
Choose four areas of interest from a wide range of over 30 electives, adapted each year to take advantage of latest research and trends.
- Analysis
- Digital
- Finance
- Leadership & Communications
- Strategy
- Sustainability
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All IMD Alumni are eligible to join the Association.
Our online programs take place over either 5 or 8 weeks, depending on the topics. You must meet the weekly deadlines for submission of assignments to successfully complete the program.
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Each online program is offered up to four times per year. For precise dates please refer to the individual program.
On average, each week’s learning requires 4-6 hours of study.
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The IMD MBA Program aims to develop leaders who challenge what is and inspire could be, while transforming organizations and contributing to society.
Pre-program
Our Participant Services team will offer personal support and advice and introduce you to external partners for elements such as insurance and banking.
Pre-program
Off-campus housing, usually within walking distance, is available through our relocation partners for yourself, to share, or for your family.
Pre-program
Prepare for topics such as finance, leadership and accounting before the start of the program through Faculty-set assignments and readings.
Pre-program
Developing your personal brand and professional profile before you arrive on campus frees up time to focus on adapting to the learning environment of the MBA.
Pre-program
Our Partner Integration Advisor is on hand to offer practical advice for your partner and, where applicable, children and guide them through their different options.
Opening week
Start developing the bonds that will last you a lifetime, explore the campus, meet the MBA team, complete essential administrative tasks and arrival logistics. The journey begins!
Professor Florian Hoos
Gain a toolkit for understanding, interpreting and designing internal financial reports and public external financial statements as a sophisticated business manager.
Professor Knut Haanaes
Business plays an increasingly important role in society. Discuss the global roles of key stakeholders such as NGOs, international organizations and governments with guest speakers.
Professor Ralf Boscheck
Examine the economic forces driving competition in industries and markets and cover concepts of standard micro- and macro-economics, trade theory and political economy.
Professor Arturo Bris
Explore core concepts in Finance and Capital Markets: the trade-off between risk & return; project valuation and strategies to finance operations and growth; M&A and behavioural finance.
Professor Jennifer Jordan
Identify the guiding values that shape your leadership behavior and how to harness the value of diversity and trust for better team and organizational performance.
Professor Frédéric Dalsace
Understand how to use market knowledge, identify and analyse sources of sustainable competitive advantage, and design practical digital marketing strategies.
Professor Ralf Seifert
Augment your understanding of key concepts of supply chain management practice and gain appreciation of how the concepts can be successfully implemented.
Professor Omar Toulan
Understand how to size up the external environment of a firm in its entirety, configure internal choices to attain a competitive advantage and sustain that advantage.
A holistic overview
You will complete an end-of-module integrative exercise and in order to continue to the next level, you will need to pass exams in all core courses.
Professor Benoit Leleux
Why is entrepreneurship an important part of an MBA? The stream explores skills involved in starting, acquiring, growing, rejuvenating and harvesting entrepreneurial businesses.
Professor Benoit Leleux
From January to April, work in teams with early-stage, high-tech startup ventures to strengthen your understanding of this environment and its challenges.
3 case studies
Read about three examples of past startup projects and the actions each MBA team took to help their assigned company to reach their target.
Career impact
The career path of many of our alumni includes entrepreneurship, read about some of their different experiences.
Courses throughout the year are designed to give you an integrative overview not only of the core courses themselves, but also of how they work together.
The majority of classes are taught using the Case Study method, often with additional input from guest speakers who have ideally been involved in the case itself. Faculty encourage students to actively contribute to discussions so that you can provide examples from your own diverse experiences across functions, industries and geographies. Class participation is one component of your grade.
Teamwork also plays a strong role in course work, and for each module you will be assigned to a new group of 6 MBAs, where you will need to work together to complete assignments and produce presentations, while also completing individual work.
Competence in each subject is tested at each level and you need to pass all exams in order to continue with the program.
Integrative exercises are a traditional element of the program that combine your team skills and knowledge, giving you 48 hours to find solutions to an issue that covers multiple facets. An external jury will give you feedback and assess your success.
Hear more on how the integrative exercises impacted MBA alumna Liana Logiurato (MBA 1997).
More and more, big corporations are trying to harness the power of entrepreneurship. Leaders need to have the entrepreneurial drive and passion to adapt and respond to the digital revolution.
IMD was the first MBA program to integrate Entrepreneurship into the core curriculum, and the startup projects build on the knowledge you develop in the auditorium by exposing you to the real environment and mindset.
The course starts with an Introduction to Entrepreneurship and to Business Planning. How can you become a better venture capitalist? A better entrepreneur?
Working with case studies and a variety of entrepreneur guest speakers, you will also develop your understanding of the dilemma facing entrepreneurship in developing countries: sustainable development, managing the opportunity overload, prioritizing on the basis of the value chain and competitive advantages.
You will be introduced to your start-up projects and will work with them while you continue to develop your entrepreneurial mindset in class with topics such as Funding High Growth, High-Technology Companies and Contingent Valuations: Deal Contracting.
Working extensively with a wide range of case studies, you will explore entrepreneurship from a variety of angles including building a brand, financing growth, the fashion industry, managing growth globally, the ethics of business, managing luxury brands and harvesting the venture.
You will also address Emerging Market Entrepreneurship and develop an understanding of Lifestyle Entrepreneurship and Affinity Financing including entrepreneurial career tracks, managing the passion, finding the work / life balance, developing the sustainable value proposition, and operational excellence
Nurturing our strong links to EPFL, projects cover diverse sectors and issues, such as developing the market entry strategy for a biomedical product; fine-tuning the value system for a SAP service company; or empowering smallholder farmers in Ghana to create value via cocoa fruit’s untapped social, environmental, and culinary potential.
Over the course of the projects you will provide a total support to your selected startup of 500-600 work hours, an average of 6-8 hours each week.
Results
In the most recent Swiss Top 100 report, IMD-supported startups captured 39 of the 100 places, including 3 out of the top 10, and five of the top 25 scaleups!
Project Example: Rethinking Recycling
Having developed an innovative technology and with the momentum of a successful fundraising round and a demonstration plant under construction to scale the concept, this startup was ready to begin securing critical partnerships and to develop a market entry strategy.
The IMD team decided to make a “market entry toolkit”. First helping to identify strategic market entry points, then for each one, building a toolkit to help the company position itself to secure critical partnerships.
To identify strategic market entry points, the MBA team developed a set of criteria. They worked to piece together the supply chains of various industries, find relevant players, and understand the sources of power and influence. Through extensive research and numerous iterations of criteria assessment, they then narrowed down the most critical entry points and began constructing the market entry toolkits.
After three months of hard work, the team delivered a comprehensive presentation and detailed market entry strategy toolkits. Beyond the initial market entry, the presentation included strategic considerations for staging the plan, with insights on timing, priorities, and organizational complexities. The company was pleased with the deliverables and surprised by some of the new insights and data that the MBA team uncovered.
Project Example: Disrupting the Media and Broadcasting Industry
One of the major challenges our MBA team faced was to understand an industry in which none of us had any experience and its value chain. Founders having more than 80 years of professional experience had difficulty in simplifying how they see the world of broadcasting.
The original scope of the project was twofold: help the company to optimize their cloud computing costs (a large portion of their overall costs) and to do a simple competitive analysis for their main technological substitutes.
Research made it clear that there was an opportunity for the company to position their key technology in the sports and events space to exploit their main technological differentiator more fully.
To validate our strategy, we needed to complement our market study with a financial analysis. However, doing this for a startup is a far different challenge due to the amount of uncertainty that the revenue and cost projections are based on. Thus, we had to make it as flexible as possible without compromising its simplicity.
The last piece of the puzzle was predicting the money required for the seed funding round. This was not part of the original scope nor was is it in our initial plan. However, upon understanding the financials of the company we believed that it was crucial for them to understand how much money they would need to move to where they wanted to be in the next 3 years.
We now realize that entrepreneurship cannot be taught, but it can be learned through experience. This project gave us a taste of the startup world and there’s yet much to learn about becoming an entrepreneur.
Project Example: A clothing retailer with a mission to do things differently
The startup company appeared to be well positioned – their products were sustainably sourced and fully recyclable. Their target: an ambitious growth plan, increasing sales significantly through all four of their headline brands, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 70%.
The scope of our project was to review and redefine the company’s value proposition within the premium end of the market and to identify a tangible action plan for improvement of the e-commerce website. As the project developed, the scope expanded to include developing an omni-channel presence and to identify key risks and mitigations to sustainable growth of the operations.
Research showed that many people who interacted with the brand did not fully understand the values or differentiate it from similar brands. It also confirmed the strength and value of two of the startup’s key differentiators: sustainability and Swiss-made.
The MBA team identified many possible improvement actions to aid the startup in their quest for growth, based on:
- A re-evaluation of the brand’s value proposition, based on market research compiled from survey data and benchmarking against key competitors.
- A detailed interview process which mapped the customer journey through the company’s e-commerce offering and identified key pain points and improvement opportunities.
- An analysis of the company’s social media offering, and investigation of additional physical and online marketplaces to enhance the number of touch points as part of a wider omnichannel strategy.
- A comprehensive risk management framework identifying mitigations to the most significant threats to the operations.
For a young startup, it is of course not possible to do everything. The challenge is to prioritise the highest value actions going forward. The sum total of the project was therefore distilled into a five-point implementable action plan which was presented to the company.
At IMD we attract diversity. This means that many of our applicants already have entrepreneurial experience, while others are thinking of their long term career path and planning to transition from the corporate world into their own venture. For some the stream will develop new approaches to challenges in large corporations, for others it can inspire new dreams.
Here are just a few examples of MBA alumni who have opted to work in the entrepreneurial world:
Serena Shamash, Kenyan (MBA 2007):
Eat Me – creating a restaurant business that inspires
Dan Perpich, American (MBA 2013):
Healthy produce gets a fresh start(up) for cold climates
Galina Antova, Bulgarian (MBA 2011):
Gender equality isn’t just a women’s issue, it’s a human one
Oliver Freiland, German (MBA 2009):
When the purest form of business is doing something on your own
Hans Petter Mellerud, Norwegian (MBA 1990):
IMD MBA alumnus wins EY Entrepreneur of the Year award
Bea Knecht, Swiss (MBA 1995):
Rewiring the brain to face the unexpected
Lara Pierce, American (MBA 2014):
CEO, Auris Tech Limited – Auris Tech is pioneering automatic speech recognition (ASR) for children. Our first consumerproduct will change the way children use their tablets and improve how this and future generations become strong and avid readers from an early age.
Matthew Costello, Australian/British (MBA 2017):
Co-Founder and CEO, Voyager – Voyager is a multi-party collaboration and workflow management solution for the bulk shippingvalue chain. We allow companies to work together in a single cloud based environment tocoordinate complex shipping operations, email free.
Ignacio Barrios, Spanish (MBA 2015):
Co-Founder and CEO, Kido Dynamics – Our team is dedicated to generating deep knowledge about the mobility behavior of millions of people through big data and machine learning technologies leveraged by the science of social physics.
Professors Julia Binder & Florian Hoos
A rich week of learning that will help you explore new angles of leadership and sustainability whilst experiencing how innovation really works in practice.
Professor Omar Toulan
Two one-week trips focus on engaging where the future is being shaped by visiting innovative tech hubs as a whole class and developing your global awareness.
Professor Amit Joshi
Ensure you have the practical programming experience on how to make the most of the digital challenges the world is facing and move from digital survival to digital innovation.
Today, organizations live in an increasingly disruptive and fast-paced environment that requires continuous innovation. Companies that remain relevant in the long-term are those that never stop innovating.
During the one week MBA Innovation & Leadership Lab, you will focus on honing your capacity to come up with ideas that offer better solutions to the complex problems we face.
Design thinking is a discipline that will improve the quality of your innovation efforts. It will help you explore the world you live in to better decipher the problems that need to be solved; it will let you move from concrete observations to rapid prototyping and constant experimentations that will turn any interesting insight into a set of workable solutions.
A leader today needs a global awareness of innovation opportunities, technology, business models and environments.
The discovery expeditions allow you to discover and explore innovative hubs with the rest of your class. You will increase your global perspective and understand together how challenges and opportunities are shaping the future of business.
Objectives
- Address the risks of the largest business transformation of our time.
- Use learnings to reflect on the opportunities and challenges of innovation and globalization.
- Develop a point of view on how to make a positive impact.
Digital is changing our business environment. Today executives need to take bold – often irreversible – decisions on digital, such as establishing new businesses, reducing costs in traditional operations and making major platform investments.
However, while you are part of the most digitally savvy generation, we want to bring your understanding to a new level.
Our experience is that to make the right decisions you need to have some hands-on knowledge of programing and digital technologies. The Digital Analytics Lab is all about learning by doing.
Over one week, you will develop Python programming skills and put those skills into immediate practice as you complete a team assignment which will include Big Data, Machine Learning and AI.
Final results will be presented and the top teams selected by an external jury.
Take the chance to refresh and reflect on what you’ve learned so far.
Develop a deeper knowledge and experiential understanding of business areas such as negotiations, international strategy, strategy beyond the market and finance.
Professor Omar Toulan
Two one-week trips focus on engaging where the future is being shaped by visiting innovative tech hubs as a whole class and developing your global awareness.
A leader today needs a global awareness of innovation opportunities, technology, business models and environments.
The discovery expeditions allow you to discover and explore innovative hubs with the rest of your class. You will increase your global perspective and understand together how challenges and opportunities are shaping the future of business.
Objectives
- Address the risks of the largest business transformation of our time.
- Use learnings to reflect on the opportunities and challenges of innovation and globalization.
- Develop a point of view on how to make a positive impact.
International Consulting Projects (ICP)
Spend 7 weeks working with multinationals to implement your skills in a global setting and provide concrete recommendations to top management on a current issue they are facing.
Launch & secure
Take advantage of dedicated networking and interview time to secure your future role through on and off-campus recruiting events with diverse, global companies.
This is a critical part of your learning where you connect your new skills to practice in a global setting. It is an analytical and collaborative process, where each team is supported by a member of the Faculty to ensure you clearly set expectations with clients, plan your work appropriately and zoom in on the key issues.
IMD was the first MBA program ever to run International Consulting Projects. Since 1980, over 700 projects have been undertaken for 400 diverse companies worldwide.
Over seven-eight weeks, you help to resolve an issue being faced by a multinational, working with the top management in a team of 5-6. There are no classes during this time, so your focus is 100% on delivering results.
- Phase 1 : Outside-in Context analysis – key factors for success.
- Phase 2 : Company analysis – strategy context and value creation.
- Phase 3 : Issue analysis – recommendations.
- Phase 4 : Implementation design.
The funds generated from these projects keep expectations high and help source diversity for the following year’s program through the MBA Emerging Market Scholarships.
Interested in sponsoring an ICP project ? Please contact us.
Our dedicated Career Development team assists recruiters in identifying the best talent for their immediate and future business needs. They will also work closely with you as you focus on the first round of interviews, either on-campus, virtually or anywhere in the world.
We partner with companies from key industries, with diverse opportunities for our MBA graduates, while also encouraging you to use your own networks, those of your classmates and those of the entire IMD eco-system.
Your individual career advisor will continue to ensure that your job search strategy is on track and address any further issues or specific questions related to your search. Workshops will focus on the final stages of your recruitment, with topics such as salary negotiations.
- Anna Farrus, MBA Recruitment & Admissions Director
- Adélaïde Ernst, MBA Career Development Officer
- Natalia Milani, MBA Career Development Director
- Julia de Vargas, MBA Career Development Director
- Shabana Veyret, MBA Career Development Advisor
Out of the wide range of electives offered, select four areas that you want to explore more. Each year, electives offered are adapted to take advantage of latest research, trends and interests.
Engage, inspire and transition
Electives on corporate governance priorities and psychology; the impact of innovation on leadership; visual storytelling and public speaking.
Digital dynamics
These electives focus on leveraging a digital ecosystem, digital transformation; and the use of big data and data analytics for strategic decision making.
Financial concepts and challenges
These electives on the impact of new technologies, the links between Finance & Strategy, or understanding a trillion dollar market.
Social and sustainable impact
Electives explore aspects of social, economic and environmental challenges; the new role of marketing; and ethical implications and policy decisions.
Survive and thrive
From marketing perspective to risk & crisis management, learn how to outlast competition, master the tools to embrace complexity and deepen your ability to extract value out of problem solving.
Fast and informed decisions
Explore a number of analytical tools and techniques to solve complex business problems
2021: Corporate Governance & Boards
In this elective we’ll be looking at power, priorities and the psychology at the top of companies, at the interaction between top management and the (supervisory) board of directors. To successfully manage their careers, executives need to have a sense for what is going on behind the closed doors of the company boardroom.
- Who is involved? Ownership, Governance & Power Structures.
- How do they support value creation? Steering & Coaching.
- How do they control the conduct of the business? Auditing & Supervising.
- How do they work together? Board Governance & Dynamics.
2021: Top team dynamics: decoding behavioral cues and unconscious drives
Professor Anand Narasimhan – IMD
This fast-paced course offers up a rich brew of concepts (from corporate governance, social psychology, and psychoanalytic theories), exercises, and contemporary case studies. The experiences created from this course that unfolds over two consecutive days (with a working dinner in between) enables students to generate insights on playing the role of a top team executive effectively.
The content of this course, adapted especially for an MBA audience, is virtually identical to the IMD Open Program “Team Dynamics for Boards.” This course is the distillation of two decades of research and a decade of observation facilitating and educating top teams and boards.
2021: Resilient leadership
Professor Katharina Lange – IMD
- Leading Self – Before you lead others, know and lead yourself.
What would you like to achieve in your life and how can your values help build more resilience? - How do you show up as a leader?
Understanding your own leadership preferences and how to enlarge the personal leadership style portfolio. - Working with teams
Discover and experience behavioral preferences that all of us have when working in teams and look at how they influence the dynamic of the teams you work in. - Leading high-performing teams
A simulation to see how well you perform as a team. We will discuss how to build, participate in, and lead effective teams, and how leaders shape team decision-making and performance in competitive and time-sensitive situations.
2021: Gamification of leadership and change management: learning by doing
Change is the only constant in life. Organizations are in a perpetual state of change. Despite its importance and prevalence, the leading authority on change management John Kotter states:
“From years of study, I estimate today more than 70 per cent of needed change either fails to be launched, even though some people clearly see the need, fails to be completed even though some people exhaust themselves trying, or finishes over budget, late and with initial aspirations unmet. “
That raises the question: can we learn to manage changes? The class aims to learn how to drive change successfully via gamification—learning by doing and experiencing.
2021: Accelerating innovation and driving business growth in times of disruption
In today’s business environment well-established organizations are being disrupted, industry boundaries are getting blurry and many organizations are redefining themselves and are in different stages of transformation. Global trends are no longer allowing business-as-usual and resources are limited. Thus, managing change, accelerating innovation and driving business growth is key to not only for survival but also to thrive and ensures differentiation and continuous business success on the long-term.
This elective is highly practical and is designed to help you think like a successful leader. A clear understanding of the business environment, principles to accelerate innovation and learning ways to identify barriers to change and prioritizing action will help you develop your leadership skills and make you succeed in your new role while helping your future organization to stay relevant in a dynamic business environment.
2021: Presenting with impact
Dramatic Resources
Speaking in public is, for many, a nerve-wracking experience. There is much to think about – you must not only get the content right, but you must also engage and inspire your audience so that they want to listen to – and will remember – what you have to say. This involves having the confidence to harness your voice, body and personality to maximum effect.
Following on from the MBA “Effective Communication” sessions with Richard Hahlo in February, this elective explores how the actor’s toolkit can help overcome nerves and create impact when communicating in public and under pressure. The aim is to help students to get their message across with clarity, confidence and flair.
2021: Build your ecosystem of partners
Professor James Henderson – IMD
In 2025, McKinsey has estimated that approximately 30% of the global sales will come through ecosystems of partnerships. How can you take advantage of this megatrend that is rapidly reshaping industries? How can you build up a partnership capability?
Focusing on companies in high tech, healthcare, and financial services, you will learn how to:
- Strategize your ecosystem before you get started.
- Scout the right strategic partners.
- Structure the partnerships in the right manner.
- Start partnerships on the right footing.
- Steer your ecosystem for maximum advantage.
2021: 5 digital pathways to create customer value
Professor Goutam Challagalla – IMD
Many companies have launched digital initiatives. Our research shows that vast majority of them make a company “play the current competitive game better” rather than “change the competitive game.” In this session, we provide a framework of five digital pathways to “change the competitive game” by bringing new value to customers.
These opportunities leverage digital technologies to:
- Transform product offerings.
- Transform number of customers.
- Transform the purchase experience.
2021: Business agility for the digital age
Professor Stephane Girod – IMD
Drawing from examples and cases from the banking, luxury, telecom, and industrial engineering industries, we will focus on new trends in strategy formulation and execution to respond to the disruptive forces of complexity and uncertainty in the digital age. At the end of this elective, you will develop the mindset and master the tools for designing agile strategies and organizations so that you can embrace, not fear, the complexity and higher unpredictability of today’s business world.
- Learn which strategic dilemmas need to be managed to create more strategic flexibility and how to manage them.
- Understand how Western multinational companies can stay ahead of their fast-moving emerging-market competitors.
- Unpack the promises and challenges of organizational agility so that you can go beyond the “agile” buzz word. Revisit the principles of organizational design for superior strategy execution.
2021: Digital resilience
Today, it is a matter of when a company will be hacked, not a matter of if. Cyber-attacks are recognized as high-likelihood events that are also high-risk – as high as the risk posed by natural disasters (Source: WEF). Especially after the Covid-19 crisis hit and work-from-home need soared, 88% of organizations worldwide experienced phishing attempts, and the average cost of a data breach has increased up to 3.86 million US Dollars in 2020 (Source: ProofPoint).
This elective explores the role of business leaders in building digitally resilient organizations. The course also aims to equip leaders with critical tools to help them navigate the uncertainty associated with digital.
2021: Fintech and the new financial system
Fintech refers to the use of technology to disrupt the business model of financial institutions. This elective provides an extensive overview of the current fintech landscape. We investigate the impact of AI and Data Analytics in banking and pay special attention to blockchain and the token economy. Topics explored include Open Banking, DeFi, Cryptocurrencies and ICOs, Digital Identity and Cybersecurity. We also pay attention to the regulatory aspect of Fintech, understanding that Fintech means different things in China and in Europe or the United States.
The elective is a necessary complement to our Finance classes. You will find out that many of the things that we discuss in the core Finance class are important but obsolete, and that new tools are needed to cope with one of the biggest revolutions in Management.
2021: M&A
Professor Patrick Reinmoeller – IMD
Winning in markets with business strategies that deliver new products and services to serve a customer segment better is clearly important. However, among the most important strategic decisions mergers and acquisitions stand out. The stakes are high, and the returns can be big. Unfortunately, most M&As fail. This elective focuses in five sessions on how to succeed with M&A and post-merger integration.
The elective focuses on M&A as critical part of corporate strategy and the sessions answer five main questions. Each session will feature case study discussions and the working through of real life situations. Two guest speakers bring in the perspectives of practice on the promise and peril associated with M&A.
2021: Late-stage entrepreneurship: buyout, expansion and turnaround opportunities
The elective focuses on late-stage entrepreneurship, i.e. buyouts, scale-ups and turnarounds, addressing the topic from different perspectives, such as the entrepreneur, investors, employees, corporate partners, etc. It emphasizes the cross-functional elements involved in acquiring, growing, rejuvenating, and harvesting entrepreneurial businesses. It is designed to help students get a better understanding of the various issues relevant to the engineering of a buyout or turnaround, looking at business/financing plans, valuation techniques, alternative business models, possible sources of equity and loan financing, trade sales, deal structures, incentive management, etc.
The elective completes the coverage of startup entrepreneurship in Module 1 of the program.
2021: Options, futures, and other derivatives
Professor Salvatore Cantale – IMD
This course will cover a selected number of advanced topics in derivative markets. We will start our journey analyzing the options strategies available to investors, including Spreads, Strangles, Collars, and more. Once the use of these instruments are clear, we will tackle the challenging task of pricing options, understanding the variables that affect the price of an option, and finally, the Greeks.
A case study will help us put it all together. Linear contracts (forwards and futures) will come next. We will stress the possible uses in risk management, and the practical issues associated with their use. Another case study on a multi-million successful hedging program will be discussed in class. We will then conclude our analysis with credit risk its measurement, and its management.
2021: A primer on impact investment and sustainable finance
The ability to find the balance of risk-return-impact that meets organizational preferences is one of the most important catalysts to increase the scale of social innovation moving forward. Understand the benefits and challenges of integrating impact into investment analysis and decisions, which have traditionally been based on risk-return calculations:
- How can impact investors fill the private capital gap to finance SDGs?
- How can corporations play a role in the impact investment landscape?
- How can the financial sector deliver societal and environmental impact while still generating market rate returns?
- Why should firms take ESG issues into consideration in their corporate strategy?
- How can firms report and disclose ESG factors for investors?
- What are the different financing opportunities to finance business model transitions to a greener, more just and inclusive society?
2021: Reforming marketing for a sustainable future
Professor Frédéric Dalsace – IMD
Marketing has too often become a “dirty word” (e.g.: “is this true or is this (just) marketing”?). Most of the critique is unjustified…but when one takes a hard look at traditional marketing practices, it is difficult to ignore altogether marketers’ responsibility. This is all the more important as formidable environmental and societal challenges lie ahead of us at the level of the planet.
This elective aims at finding ways to transform marketing into a positive force of change for the future. Marketing “as-we-all-know-it” is the daughter of Globalization; marketing “as-some of-us-see-it” will be the mother of Sustainability.
The objective is to review current practices and systematically investigate possible avenues to develop new, or “alter”, marketing practices. Students will become aware of the responsibility they have, as their own decisions will be shaping tomorrow’s world. They will develop a critical knowledge of new marketing thinking and practices in this area.
2021: Economics that matters
A review of fundamental economics and its relevance for decision-making:
- Economics – The Big Themes.
- Labor-Economics, the Future of Work & your own Future.
- Designing incentives to reduce the need for monitoring others.
- Human Geography, Economic Development & Sustainability.
- Macroeconomic Outlook at the end of 2021.
2021: Movers, Shakers, Preachers & Pragmatists
The aim of this elective is to review the moral dimensions of everyday life and confirm your moral compass.
- Introduction: On the Need to Trust your Moral Intuition.
- Confronting Dilemmas.
- Philosophical Perspectives on 9 Everyday Issues.
- Culture Matters – Personality or Culture?
- The Tree of Philosophy – 14 Perspectives throughout History.
- One last video – One last Book.
2021: LEAP: strategic resilience in a disrupted world
The biggest danger of a crisis is distraction. Clarity matters. The best way to predict the future is to create it. I’ll show you how highly successful leaders “leap” during crises, how they manage to increase autonomy without sinking the organization into chaos, how they pursue new business opportunities when resources have to be preserved, and how they rapidly pivot and recover when everyone else falls on the side-lines. Through these actions, these leaders expand their scope of influence and their corresponding sense of control. They emerge stronger as individuals. Their companies come out more powerful than ever.
Howard Yu is the author of the award-winning book LEAP: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied. His work has been featured by CNBC, BBC, Fast Company Magazine, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Quartz at Work, MarketWatch, and numerous international outlets. Check out his latest thinking at https://www.howardyu.org/blog.
2021: Strategic thinking in practice: advanced problem solving
Professor Arnaud Chevallier – IMD
As a manager and executive, you need to solve a myriad of complex problems of different nature in constantly evolving environments.
In this elective, you’ll learn to extract more value out of the tools you’ve acquired and apply them to a problem of value to you. You’ll receive personalized feedback from your peers and me on your strong points and your weaknesses and actionable ways to work on them. And you’ll acquire additional tools to make you a more effective problem solver, including hypothesis mapping and analogical thinking.
2021: Good strategy, bad strategy
Professor Goutam Challagalla – IMD
The digital age is making many companies rethink their strategy. As companies attempt to do so, there is confusion about how to go about it. The reason for the confusion is the conflicting advice on strategy development. Some believe that the essence of strategy is to be adaptable and embrace the idea of adaptive capabilities. Further, others argue that classic approaches to strategy no longer work (e.g. Porter’s industry analysis – after all what is an industry)? Others vehemently disagree. This session will clarify what constitutes ‘good strategy’ in the digital age.
2021: Business-for-Business marketing strategies
Professor Frédéric Dalsace – IMD
This elective course is the logical follow-up of the core marketing class taught by Amit Joshi and myself, targeted at students interested in a career in B2B.
The traditional B2B Marketing model still in use today originated in the early 60s and was by large a “by-product” of the B2C world. It was designed for individual firms who sought to sell products TO customers within a supply-chain in a mostly physical world.
By contrast, we will work on a new “B4B” model, which seeks to develop a phygital ecosystem aiming at selling outcomes for customers.
2021 – The global business of sports
Professor Niccolò Pisani – IMD
Gain the industry-specific knowledge and frameworks that are needed to analyze and understand the way in which sports entities and professional leagues generate revenues and compete amongst themselves.
The global business of sports was already in the midst of a radical transformation before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus disruption has accelerated profound changes. One of them is the aggressive influx of institutional capital, with private equity firms defying the pandemic to dash into the business of sports.
The way global sports entities compete in this multi-billion industry offers valuable lessons, which can also serve well firms in other sectors.
2021 – Business analytics: stories and traps vs realistic case studies
Professor Karl Schmedders – IMD
“Digital transformation”, “data science”, and “business analytics” are leading modern buzzwords in business. But what can we really learn from data and analytical methods?
Modern managers need to develop a healthy skepticism towards data-based insights and have a solid understanding of the power, requirements, and limitations of the application of analytical methods in business. In this MBA elective, we will learn how to:
- Perform basic reality checks on data-based reports.
- Critique flawed studies.
- Apply analytical methods, mainly regressions, to business case studies.
- Derive qualitative and quantitative business insights.
2021 – Business analytics with Monte Carlo simulations
Professor Karl Schmedders – IMD
The Monte Carlo simulation comprises a large set of computerized techniques that allow people to account for risk in quantitative analysis and decision making. Such techniques have found many applications in business, finance, and management, because they can provide valuable insights to managers facing difficult and high-stakes decision situations.
- Improve your understanding of risk and uncertainty.
- Learn how to generate uncertain input to business models.
- Run Monte Carlo simulations.
- Analyze the effect of uncertainty on business decisions.
2021 – Marketing analytics for strategic decision making
In today’s business world, managers who are not comfortable making data analytics-based decisions are at a significant disadvantage. While there are a variety of software tools available for managers to conduct the statistical analysis, the actual interpretation and decision-making is what differentiates a successful executive. Therefore, in this course, we shall learn about data analytics and its applications to marketing strategy.
We shall then go through several cases that require students to perform basic data analysis, but then interpret the output and make decisions based on these interpretations. This course is thus designed to provide you with a glimpse of data-based decision making.
Celebration
Family, friends, the IMD community and national ambassadors gather to congratulate you as you receive your diploma. Top students join the Honours List.
The IMD Alumni Community
Upon graduation you join our powerful and global alumni network, with access to lifelong learning opportunities and networking events. We also hope to welcome you back as mentors, project sponsors or recruiters.
4- IMD Expanded Content
This block expands once a user clicks on the CTA to reveal more content.
Features
- Image field
- Title field
- Option to add a CTA and choose from 3 button styles
- Option to hide the expanded content area
- Option to choose from 3 background colors for the expanded content section, White, Dark, and Primary
- In the expanded content section, you can add the following fields:
- Title: the title field adds an h3 title
- Description: this filed adds a WYSIWYG editor where you can add text content
- Image: this fields adds an image
- Video: this field adds a YouTube / Wistia video
- Tabs: this field adds tabs and in the tabs there’s the possibility to add cards
Example 1
You can also add a description like this. You can also add an image either in the WYSIWYG editor, or using the dedicated image filed that the block provides. The image below is an example of the latter. Also, you can embed a YouTube video like the one below the image.
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
5- IMD Sticky Title
This block is used to add a sticky title to a page. This is mostly used on Research & Knowledge, SEM and SM landing pages, and events, but you can add it to any page.
Features
- Title field
- Option to add up to two CTAs
- Each CTA has different styles and option, such as adding a form
Important note
This block only works when there is no other sticky elements on the page. The only other sticky element is the main navigation (the one you can see on this page, for example). To turn off the stickiness of the main navigation follow these steps:
Example
For the purposes of this Web Guide, we can’t add the IMD Sticky Title because we already have the sticky main navigation. You can find a live examples here: SEM landing page
6- IMD Scroll to Section
This block is used to add anchors to the page. When the user clicks on an element from this block, it scrolls to the selected anchor.
How to use this block
- Add the block and then click “Add row”
- Set up the anchor
- In the URL field, add the name of your anchor preceded by a “#”
- Add the name you want to appear in the Scroll to Section block in the Link Text field
- Go to the block you want to the users to scroll to and click it
- On the right side bar, click Advanced
- In the HTML Anchor field add the same anchor name you add in the Scroll to Section block; this time no “#” is needed
P.S: In case you have an anchor consisting from several words, make sure to add a hyphen between each word.
Features
- Title filed for mobile devices
- One CTA
Example
Find a live example here.