IMD Annual Report 2019

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IMD ANNUAL REPORT 2019

Another important decision was the affirmation of our Swiss roots. IMD operates globally, but it has strong Swiss roots and as such we are inspired by some of Switzerland’s key values, such as independence and neutrality, openness and diversity, innovation, hard work and modesty. Last but not least, we realized that while the nature of our activities ranges from executive education to quasi-advisory activities with several nuances in between and many possible combinations, a fundamental cornerstoneof everythingwedo is the emphasis on helping executives and organizations to learn and to develop themselves. Our role is not to give solutions; it is to help executives and organizations to develop their own solutions and to improve their ability to do so in the future. As we were working on these ideas, we had several discussions with corporate partners who shared the challenges they were facing working

with academic institutions on one hand, and with professional service firms on the other. This led us to realize that IMD is perfectly positioned to be a hybrid of these two worlds, where hybrid refers to an entity whose background is a blend of two diverse cultures or traditions . Our academic heritage enables us to bring the best of academia – the curiosity to look at questions and issues from new angles, a rigorous and objective approach to issues and a keen understanding of the difference between practices , which do not travel well across contexts, and principles , which do travel well. Also, as a not-for-profit academic institution, our goal is not tomaximize the intensity or duration of our engagement with executives or organizations. Our goal is to help them become more effective and autonomous, at which point we can move on to helping other organizations and executives, and learn new things in the process.

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