IMD - International Institute for Management Development

Renowned Faculty

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  Sameh Abadir

  Professor of Leadership and Negotiation

  Sameh Abadir is a Professor of Leadership and Negotiation at IMD. Abadir's fields of expertise are negotiation, conflict management, crisis management, and leadership. Before his academic career, he served in the Egyptian Special Forces and was an executive at a large multinational, and his military...

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  Sameh Abadir

  Professor of Leadership and Negotiation

  Sameh Abadir is a Professor of Leadership and Negotiation at IMD. Abadir's fields of expertise are negotiation, conflict management, crisis management, and leadership. Before his academic career, he served in the Egyptian Special Forces and was an executive at a large multinational, and his military and corporate experience brings a unique perspective to his teaching.

  Abadir says everything is subject to negotiation in the modern business world, so negotiation skills are vital – but managers often fall into some common traps. These include being overoptimistic, overconfident, or arrogant, and going into negotiations believing that you have to reach a deal. People who assume they have to close a deal set themselves up for a poor deal, he argues. Another mistake is to think that negotiation is a zero-sum game in which one side wins and the other loses, which misses the point that the process is about increasing the size of the pie and can therefore have a win-win outcome. Some negotiators also make the error of believing that the other party is out to get them, whereas both sides are quite reasonably looking to create and capture value.

  In crisis management situations, leaders need a team with a range of skills, including not just people who are innately smart but also those who have made the behavioral choice to be emotionally smart by being kind and humble. In crisis negotiations, he says, you need a team that’s able to combine being confident, humble, smart, and kind, all at the same time.

  Abadir believes the role of a leader has changed fundamentally, and that those who fail to grasp this are likely to be under the erroneous illusion that they are in control. Vertical hierarchical organizational structures have given way to complex systems in which people are working in teams in different locations around the globe and communicating in a language that is not their mother tongue, so the old way of giving orders on the shop floor has gone. Leaders therefore have to accept that they cannot control everything and find a new way of managing.

  Abadir advises companies on negotiations and runs negotiation workshops in English, French, and Arabic. He has recently directed custom programs for Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, Jerónimo Martins, ArcelorMittal, and Merck, and is Co-Director of IMD's signature Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP) and Negotiating for Value Creation (NVC) open programs.

  He is also Chairman of his family business, which is based in Egypt with operations across the Middle East and Africa.

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  Shlomo Ben-Hur

  Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior

  Shlomo Ben-Hur is the Director of IMD's transformative leadership program for top executives, Cultivating Leadership Energy through Awareness and Reflection (CLEAR). He also directs the Organizational Learning in Action program (OLA) for Chief Learning Officers, the Changing Employee Behavior online...

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  Shlomo Ben-Hur

  Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior

  Shlomo Ben-Hur is the Director of IMD's transformative leadership program for top executives, Cultivating Leadership Energy through Awareness and Reflection (CLEAR). He also directs the Organizational Learning in Action program (OLA) for Chief Learning Officers, the Changing Employee Behavior online program and IMD's discovery trips to the Start-up Nation, Israel.

  As an educator, consultant and coach, Shlomo has worked with Boards, CEOs, executive teams, and businesses across the globe to develop their people strategy, leadership capabilities, teams and their overall organizational culture, and performance.

  Professor Ben-Hur's research, teaching, and consulting activities are focused on the psychological and cultural aspects of leadership, and the strategic and operational elements of talent management and corporate learning. His work in these areas appeared in four books: "Talent Intelligence," "The Business of Corporate Learning," "Changing Employee Behavior: a Practical Guide for Managers," and his latest book, "Leadership OS."

  He has also written a number of articles on talent management and corporate learning in academic and practitioner journals, including the Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Forbes, Financial Times, and MIT Sloan Management Review, such as "The Missing piece in employee development" and "Aligning corporate learning with strategy".

  Professor Ben-Hur also has written a variety of business cases including a case series on Deutsche Telekom that won the Responsible Leadership Award of the European Foundation for Management Development case competition.

  Prior to joining IMD, Professor Ben-Hur gained 20 years of corporate experience in senior executive positions in multinational organizations. He was the Vice President of Leadership Development and Learning for the BP Group based in London. Previous to that, he was Chief Learning Officer of DaimlerChrysler Services in Berlin where he headed-up the corporate academy. Early in his career, Shlomo worked with consulting firms and the Ministry of Education in Israel, focusing on leadership, organizational development, and the promotion of democracy and co-existence in the Arab and Jewish school systems.

  Professor Ben-Hur received his doctoral degree in Psychology from the Humboldt University of Berlin. He holds a Master degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and a Bachelor degree in Psychology and Political Science from Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

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  Arnaud Chevallier

  Professor of Strategy

  Arnaud Chevallier helps executives solve complex problems and make better decisions under uncertainty. His research, teaching, and consulting draw on empirical findings from diverse disciplines to provide concrete tools that prepare executives to manage the strategic challenges they face in today’...

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  Arnaud Chevallier

  Professor of Strategy

  Arnaud Chevallier helps executives solve complex problems and make better decisions under uncertainty. His research, teaching, and consulting draw on empirical findings from diverse disciplines to provide concrete tools that prepare executives to manage the strategic challenges they face in today’s dynamic global marketplace.

  Effective problem solvers are T-shaped – they are both generalists and specialists, combining depth and breadth of knowledge. Although traditional education and training cultivate specialist skills, they pay much less attention to the acquisition of generalist skills, including strategic thinking. Executives can use Chevallier’s tools to improve on the breadth dimension.

  His initial 2016 book, "Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving," published by Oxford University Press, is now followed by his latest title, "Solvable: A Simple Solution to Complex Problems," co-authored with Albrecht Enders. This book synthesizes the strategic thinking needed for complex problem solving into a simple three-step process: frame, explore, decide. It also shows practitioners how to follow these steps using highly applicable, concrete tools.

  He has helped numerous organizations identify breakthrough solutions to complex problems, including Shell, SAP, Lenovo, Cisco, Novo Nordisk, Statkraft, and the United Nations. He recently helped the International Committee of the Red Cross identify innovative funding sources and assisted Gavi the Vaccine Alliance in its drive to have greater impact. He also helped Swiss company Agathon to make decisions under high uncertainty during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and supported Tetra Pak in improving its decision-making processes through the optimal engagement of stakeholders.

  At IMD he is Director of the Global Management Foundations (GMF) program and the Master of Science in Sustainable Management and Technology (SMT) program offered jointly by IMD, the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and the University of Lausanne. He is also Co-Director of IMD’s Complex Problem Solving (CPS) program.

  Before joining IMD in 2018, Chevallier served as Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at Rice University in Houston, Texas, where he taught strategic thinking in the engineering school. He was previously graduate dean of the University of Monterrey in Mexico, teaching engineering and business. He trained in mechanical engineering and his PhD from Rice focused on nonlinear stochastic mechanics. He then worked in Accenture’s strategy and business architecture division before joining academia.

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  Albrecht Enders

  Professor of Strategy and Innovation

  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.

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  Albrecht Enders

  Professor of Strategy and Innovation

  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.

  Enders 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.

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  Öykü Işık

  Professor of Digital Strategy and Cybersecurity

  Öykü Işık is Professor of Digital Strategy and Cybersecurity. She is an expert on digital resilience and the ways in which disruptive technologies challenge our society and organizations. Named on the Thinkers50 Radar 2022 list of up-and-coming global thought leaders, she helps businesses to tac...

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  Öykü Işık

  Professor of Digital Strategy and Cybersecurity

  Öykü Işık is Professor of Digital Strategy and Cybersecurity. She is an expert on digital resilience and the ways in which disruptive technologies challenge our society and organizations. Named on the Thinkers50 Radar 2022 list of up-and-coming global thought leaders, she helps businesses to tackle cybersecurity, data privacy, and digital ethics challenges, and enables CEOs and other executives to understand these issues, which she believes are too important to be left to technical specialists alone.

  Işık’s research explores ways in which emerging technologies can be exploited to foster responsible innovation. She has worked with organizations such as Mastercard, Ageas, KBC, BNP Paribas Fortis, Turkcell, and the European Union Intellectual Property Office to help them shape their responses to consumer concerns around cybersecurity, data privacy, and digital ethics.

  While digital transformation creates more opportunities for organizations, this is also accompanied by increasing risks, she says. Cyber attackers are becoming more sophisticated and cyber extortion is now a booming business that poses a serious threat, with major financial, reputational, and regulatory implications for organizations that are targeted. Many organizations fail to give enough attention to these risks, but Işık is able to provide them with practical advice on how to develop the digital capabilities they need to ensure that they can deal with such hazards.

  Meanwhile, growing consumer worries about data privacy and protection mean that organizations are under pressure to build digital trust and transparency, and new regulations such as the EU’s GDPR regime have major ramifications for the way that businesses process consumer data. Işık therefore helps them to understand customer concerns and regulatory changes, and to shape their privacy and data processing policies accordingly.

  The emerging field of digital ethics is also growing in importance amid mounting anxieties over how organizations use digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence, for surveillance. Ethical considerations therefore need to be addressed as such technologies are deployed, she says.

  Işık is currently looking at public sector organizations, which are traditionally seen as slow to implement new technologies but may actually offer some examples of best practice that the private sector could learn from. She is also carrying out research into the behavior and attitudes of young people towards data protection and their readiness to exchange privacy for convenience or financial gains, and is developing a practical team simulation for how firms might respond to a ransomware attack. A future study will offer guidance for organizations on the considerations to bear in mind when engaging digital forensics experts.

  At IMD, she leads IMD’s Cybersecurity Risk and Strategy program, which helps businesses to develop an action plan to identify, prepare for, and respond to emerging and imminent cyber threats.

  A computer scientist by training, Işık’s work before joining IMD in 2020 focused on business intelligence, analytics, and technology and business process management. She was previously Assistant Professor of Information Systems Management at Vlerick Business School in Belgium and taught information systems courses at the University of North Texas and Istanbul Bilgi University.

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  Amit Joshi

  Professor of AI, Analytics and Marketing Strategy

  Amit Joshi 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, au...

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  Amit Joshi

  Professor of AI, Analytics and Marketing Strategy

  Amit Joshi 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, the 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 Mondelēz International group.

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  Nik Kinley

  Director, YSL Consulting

  Nik Kinley has worked with more than half of the top 20 FTSE companies, and helped businesses across the globe develop and implement their leadership strategy, drive organizational change, and select and develop the leaders they need to succeed. He now specializes in working with Board members, CEOs...

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  Nik Kinley

  Director, YSL Consulting

  Nik Kinley has worked with more than half of the top 20 FTSE companies, and helped businesses across the globe develop and implement their leadership strategy, drive organizational change, and select and develop the leaders they need to succeed. He now specializes in working with Board members, CEOs and Executive Teams in organizations big and small – from Founder-led portfolio companies, to multinational businesses with 100,000s of employees and total assets worth over $2T.

  Kinley began his career in commercial roles, then spent the next decade working in the public sector in prisons as a forensic psychotherapist, before returning to work with businesses. His prior roles include Global Head of Assessment & Coaching for the BP Group, and Global Head of Leadership Development for Barclays Bank.

  He has written books on leadership, talent assessment, behavior change, and corporate learning. He has published award-winning papers in leading journals. Kinley is a regular lecturer at leading global business schools and a frequent speaker at conferences. His latest book, "Leadership OS: Creating the Operating System you Need to Succeed," was published in December 2019. And his latest research identifies the lessons to be learned from past crises and recessions for today’s organizations and leaders as they seek to recover from the Covid-19 crisis.

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  Ina Toegel

  Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change

  Named one of the top business school professors globally by Poets&Quants, which included her on its 'Best 40 under 40' list in 2021, Ina Toegel's work focuses on how to build and sustain high-performance teams. She started her career as an economist at the World Bank – an atypical background which...

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  Ina Toegel

  Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change

  Named one of the top business school professors globally by Poets&Quants, which included her on its 'Best 40 under 40' list in 2021, Ina Toegel's work focuses on how to build and sustain high-performance teams. She started her career as an economist at the World Bank – an atypical background which means she adopts an interdisciplinary approach in her work. Meanwhile, her strong interest in the creative industries inspires her to incorporate interactive tools from the fields of film, sports, music, and the arts in her teaching.

  Toegel says teams play a crucial role as vehicles for change in organizations seeking to make major transformations. Her approach when engaging with companies is to work with project teams or individual units in an agile way – looking at the individual make-up of the team, dynamics within the team, and how these relationships are embedded in the organizational context. Much of her work involves leading organizational change and aligning organizational culture with strategic priorities.

  She is also keen on leveraging technology to enable executives to develop new ways of working, communicating, and collaborating. She uses virtual reality to explore how teams improve over time, and is investigating how AI can be used to recognize emotions – as well as its implications for an organization's business, how it structures its operations, and how it works with customers.

  She has led and taught on customized leadership programs for a wide range of organizations, including Hilti, Pirelli, Tetra Pak, Beiersdorf, Société Générale, DNB, DENSO, Vontobel, Buehler, Legrand, UEFA, MANE, Siam Commercial Bank, Bank of Communications, Bayer, Electrolux, ASSA ABLOY, T-Systems, Carlsberg, JTI, Hydro, and Tenaris.

  She also leads IMD's Teams Reimagined open program and the culture transformation stream of its MBA and EMBA courses.

  Poets & Quants said her inclusion on its 'Best 40 under 40' list was a recognition of her structured and inspirational approach to working with team dynamics and organizational culture transformation. She received nearly 100 nominations for the honor, making her one of the most nominated professors in its history. Participants, alumni, and faculty colleagues who nominated her praised her energetic style and ability to get people thinking, with one describing her as "our Socrates."

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  Michael Wade

  Director of the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation, IMD Business School

  Michael Wade is a Professor of Innovation and Strategy at IMD and holds the Cisco Chair in Digital Business Transformation and was named one of the top 10 digital thought leaders in Switzerland.

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  Michael Wade

  Director of the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation, IMD Business School

  Michael Wade is a Professor of Innovation and Strategy at IMD and holds the Cisco Chair in Digital Business Transformation and was named one of the top 10 digital thought leaders in Switzerland.

  Wade is also the Director of the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation and has published eight books and over 30 case studies and 50 articles in leading journals. His latest book is "Orchestrating Transformation: How to Deliver Winning Performance with a Connected Approach to Change."

  Previously, he was the Academic Director of the Kellogg-Schulich EMBA Program and has been nominated for numerous teaching awards across MBA and Executive levels. He obtained Honours BA, MBA and PhD degrees from the Richard Ivey School of Business.

  Michael was named one of the top ten digital thought leaders in Switzerland by Bilanz, Le Temps, and Handelszeitung for both 2016 and 2017.

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  Howard Yu

  LEGO® Professor of Management and Innovation

  Howard Yu is the LEGO® Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD and author of the award-winning book "LEAP: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied."

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  Howard Yu

  LEGO® Professor of Management and Innovation

  Howard Yu is the LEGO® Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD and 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-time (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 800 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.