IMD Annual Report 2019

12

IMD ANNUAL REPORT 2019

A strong purpose and a clear point of view Alongside this reflection on who we are, we also asked ourselves: What is our purpose? And what do we stand for, as an institution? Fortunately, we help a number of organizations to answer these questions, so we put ourselves through the same kind of interactive, iterative process that we recommend and support. After a rigorous and rich engagement process involving our Foundation and Supervisory Boards, faculty, staff and alumni, we settled on this sentence: Challenging what is and inspiring what could be, we develop leaders who transform organizations and contribute to society. In many ways, we had been doing so all along, at least some of the time. Still, articulating and formalizing it in one sentence has helped us to become even more deliberate about it. In particular, the explicit reference to societal impact was quite significant for us, and it led to two important complementary developments in 2019. First, we developed IMD’s first Sustainability Policy. This document contains a few very important statements: • We believe a sense of shared responsibility is essential for the prosperity of individuals, businesses, communities and nations. • We support responsible leaders who act with integrity, contribute to sustainable performance and have a positive impact on the world. • With respect toour ownactivities, our approach to environmental, social and economic

responsibility includes working within existing legislation, of course, but also voluntarily exceeding legal requirements to demonstrate leadership on issues that are important to us and our stakeholders. We commit to educating suppliers and other third-parties we work with on this policy, and to encouraging them to align operating practices with our policy’s objectives. • In our work with students, business executives and organizations, our goal is to educate effective, inspirational, reflective and responsible leaders who will contribute to enhancing the performance of their organizations in a way that also contributes positively to society. • On the research front, we research ambitious and progressive organizations that push the boundaries of performance. We also strive to identify and study individuals and organizations that find innovative ways to do well (performance-wise) by doing good (for society). • Beyond our traditional corporate partners, we collaborate with and support non- corporate institutions such as NGOs, NPOs and governmental organizations, to help them manage their activities more effectively and efficiently and thus have an even more positive impact on the world.