IMD Annual Report 2019

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IMD ANNUAL REPORT 2019

Our Digital Transformation Center gave us an opportunity to start better understanding and integrating the technological dimension in our research and programs. Our partnership with EPFL and UNIL researchers, many of whom are world-class experts in their fields, will be an invaluable accelerator on this front. From 2019 into 2020, and beyond 2019 was another important year for IMD. Building on the foundations established in 2017 and the momentum developed in 2018, we continued to grow our activities. In our world, this is an important confirmation that our activities on the research, programand advisory fronts are creating value for executives and organizations. 2019 was also a year of significant decisions for us. We formalized the way we think of ourselves and the role we want to play in the world. These decisions led us to accelerate some initiatives and to start others. As agreed during the November 2019 Foundation and Supervisory Board meetings, 2020 was going to be the year of return to breakeven. In a world where technological developments are creating huge opportunities for us by enabling new ways of interacting with executives and organizations (and, equally, huge threats for institutions who do not adapt quickly enough), we need to continue to invest. We were hence not targeting a significant surplus in 2020, but we had agreed to return to breakeven, at a minimum. Fortunately, we started 2020 with considerable momentum. Unfortunately, we quickly ran into the COVID-19 crisis. One of the implications of this crisis has been a dramatic reduction in managers’ ability to travel and gather with others.

This restriction is particularly problematic for an institution like IMD that derives 90 percent of its revenues from activities requiring one party to travel to work face-to-face with another party. From March 15 onward, we have been suffering massive program postponements to the second half of the year and, in some cases, cancellations of programs. Legitimately, this substantial revenue reduction led us to take a number of actions on the cost and financing side, to ensure that we can weather the storm. With the support of the Supervisory Board, we also decided to treat this crisis as a fantastic opportunity to dramatically accelerate our leveraging technology in our interactions with executives. We had been steadily progressing in that direction over the last few years, and this crisis is an unmissable opportunity to accelerate progress. Time will tell how this radical change plays out, but we are approaching it with a clear sense of urgency and an equally clear sense of opportunity. Beyond the crisis, the Management Team and I, with the support of the Supervisory and Foundation Boards guided by incoming Chairman Michel Demaré, look forward to continuing to implement our strategy and help IMD become ever more each day the trusted learning partner of choice for ambitious individuals and organizations worldwide.