Sustainability Initiative

Knut Haanaes' research and teaching focuses on strategy, sustainability, strategic renewal and business models. He is co-author of the best-selling book Your Strategy Needs a Strategy and a successful TED speaker, and was until recently the Dean of the Global Leadership Institute at the World Economic Forum. He is a former Senior Partner and Global Leader of the Strategy Practice at the Boston Consulting Group.

Your Strategy Needs a Strategy was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015 and won praise from the likes of World Economic Forum founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab, Pfizer Chairman and CEO Ian C. Read and Benetton CEO Marco Airoldi. The book has since been translated into seven other languages and its findings have underpinned much of Haanaes' teaching since he joined IMD in 2015. Meanwhile, his TED talk "Two reasons companies fail – and how to avoid them" has attracted more than 2 million views.

Haanaes says the different pillars of his work enable him to help companies think about their path for the future and take account of new trends like demands for greater sustainability. He believes that the secret to creating lasting, impactful companies is to find a balance between doing what you're good at (exploitation) and looking for new challenges to take on (exploration).

Sustainability is also an important cornerstone of his work. At BCG he led a collaboration with MIT on the topic, developing one of the largest databases globally of how executives address sustainability, and founded the BCG global sustainability initiative. And at IMD he plays a coordinating role in the Business Schools for Climate Leadership (BS4CL) alliance of eight leading European business schools set up in 2021 to address the climate crisis. The schools plan to collaborate on research to identify and shape best practices, and work across industries to accelerate the business community’s response to climate change. He is also heavily involved in IMD's strategic partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, which aims to equip business leaders with the skills to accelerate the pace of sustainable business transformation and create the most sustainability-centered MBA program in the world.

Through his work with clients, Haanaes has accumulated extensive experience in a number of industries on issues of strategy. At IMD, he has helped run custom programs for Neste, CMS, Technip FMC, Coca-Cola Bottling, Mondelez, Maybank, Rio Tinto and Iberdrola. He is also Director of the Leading Sustainable Business Transformation (LSBT) program, head of the sustainability stream in the MBA program and teaches in many of the school's key open programs, including the Advanced Management Program (AMP), Breakthrough Program for Senior Executives (BPSE) and Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP).

Haanaes has published articles in top publications such as Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review and research reports for BCG, The World Economic Forum and MIT.

Haanaes is a member of the CEO’s Sustainability Advisory Board at Carlsberg and a board member at private bank Alpian. He has also served as Chairman of BI Norwegian Business School, a member of the Global Agenda Council on New Economic Growth Models at the World Economic Forum, Executive Director of the Research Council of Norway, and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University.

Selected publications

Business schools must do more on climate change (Harvard Business Review, 2022)

How the university of the future must adapt to train future leaders (Forbes, 2020).

Your Strategy Needs a Strategy (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015)

Making sustainability profitable (Harvard Business Review, 2013)

How serious is climate change to business? (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2013).

Sustainability as adaptability (Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, 2012)

Sustainability nears a tipping point (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2012).

New sustainability study: The 'embracers' seize advantage (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2011)

Recognition

President’s Award, BCG

Expansion Management Review Best Article

BI Norwegian Business School best lecturer prize

Salvatore Cantale is Professor of Finance at IMD. His major research and consulting interests are in value creation, valuation, and the way in which corporations structure liabilities and choose financing options. Additionally, he is interested in the relation between finance and leadership, and in the leadership role of the finance function.

He has published in international double-refereed journals. One of his research papers, "Bank Capital Requirements and Managerial Self-Interests," was nominated for an Outstanding Paper Award at the Southern Finance Association.

Before joining IMD, Salvatore was an analyst with a large investment bank in London, Faculty Director of the Master in Finance and Master in Risk Management at Tulane University's A.B. Freeman School of Business, a member of the Yale International Institute for Finance, and a Research Fellow at New York University. He currently serves as advisor on the Board of the Goldring Institute of International Business at Tulane University.

Salvatore holds a BA in Economics and Finance from Universita' di Catania, Italy, a Master's Degree in Management and a PhD in Finance from INSEAD.

Carlos Cordon is a Professor of Strategy and Supply Chain Management.

Professor Cordon's areas of interest are digital value chains, supply and demand chain management, digital lean and process management.

Carlos Cordon is currently developing research and cases in the following areas: the digital journey of traditional companies, digital innovation in value chains, industry 4.0, digital lean, applications of big data in different spaces (healthcare, transportation and FMCG). He is the author of numerous articles and case studies in these fields, and over the past few years has won various prizes for his cases and articles on supply chain management, outsourcing, and process management.

He has been listed among the Case Center's top-40 best-selling case authors for 2020/21

Professor Cordon is also a consultant to multinational companies in the electronics, food, chemical, pharmaceutical, car, and other industries. He has designed and directed numerous executive development programs in the areas of digital and strategy journeys, supply chain management and sourcing.

Professor Cordon studied civil engineering at the Escuela Politecnica de Barcelona and holds a PhD in Management from INSEAD. Prior to the completion of his schooling, he was Manager in the manufacturing and distribution consulting group of Accenture, and later MIS Manager of Grupo Español General Cable (now a subsidiary of BICC).

Frédéric Dalsace is a Professor of Marketing and Strategy at IMD. Prior to that, he spent 16 years as a Professor at HEC Paris, where he held the Social Business / Enterprise and Poverty Chair presided by Nobel Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus. Prior to his academic life, Frédéric accumulated more than 10 years of experience in the business world, both with industrial companies (Michelin and CarnaudMetalbox), and as a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company.

He has worked with more than 40 multinational firms in many sectors, such as Porsche, Traton (VW Truck & Bus), Lafarge-Holcim, Colas, Dassault, Renault, Rabobank, Santander, Orange, Bouygues, Atos and others.

His research covers two areas. The first part focuses on inter-organizational (B2B) issues such as customer-centricity, buyer-seller relationships and value management. Frédéric also has been doing research on the role of firms in alleviating poverty and developing inclusive business models, both in rich countries and at the BOP (Bottom of the Pyramid). He has published in academic journals such as the Strategic Management Journal, Harvard Business Review, Revue Française de Gestion and Business Horizons. His thesis work received the ISBM (Institute for the Study of Business Markets) 2000 Award, and he was awarded the HEC Foundation Prize for the best research piece published by the HEC Faculty in 2004, and the Best Article Prize published by Business Horizons in 2017.

Frédéric is an alumnus from HEC Paris, holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and both an MSc and a PhD in Management from INSEAD.

Vanina Farber is Dean of the Executive MBA. She is an economist and political scientist specializing in social innovation, corporate social responsibility and sustainable finance with more than 20 years of consultancy, research and teaching experience, working with academic institutions, multinational corporations and international organizations. She is the holder of the elea Chair for Social Innovation.

In her research, Vanina is interested in studying and fostering the application of innovative, practical, sustainable and inclusive market-oriented approaches that aspire to change the world by eliminating the root causes of social ills. Her research focuses on social entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, impact investing and ESG Integration/sustainable finance. She also applies a gender lens in all her research projects. She seeks to understand the social innovation environment through a holistic approach that examines both the supply (entrepreneurs and corporates) and demand side of social innovation (society but also investors).

In November 2020, Farber co-authored with Peter Wuflli the book “The elea Way: a Learning Journey towards Sustainable impact,” Routledge. The book summarizes insights from elea’s 15-year pioneering journey, from creating an investment organization, choosing purposeful themes, and sourcing opportunities, to partnering with entrepreneurs for impact creation. This includes suggestions on how to lead impact enterprises in such areas as developing strategies, plans, and models; building effective teams and organizations; managing resources; and handling crises. Using real-life examples, the book is aimed at entrepreneurs, investors, executives, philanthropists, policymakers, and anyone curious about entrepreneurship and inclusive capitalism.

Prior to coming to IMD, Vanina was Professor and Chair of Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Social Inclusion at Universidad del Pacífico, Peru, where she also was the Dean of the Graduate School of Business from 2014 to 2016. From 2005 to 2017 she was also an Adjunct Professor for IE Business School, Spain, where she taught Economic Environment and Country Analysis in blended programs and designed and co-directed the training course for professors “Leadership in Blended Education”.

Vanina has worked as a researcher and consultant for different international organizations and national institutions in Switzerland, Spain and Peru.

Vanina holds a Bachelor in Political Science from Universidad de Buenos Aires and an M.A. in Economics and PhD in business administration (economics) from the University of Memphis in the USA.

As a former Olympic finalist, award-winning writer, executive coach, and speaker with more than 20 years of corporate experience with large multinationals, Susan Goldsworthy brings knowledge from the fields of sport, business and neuroscience to her leadership development work. She focuses on how leadership needs to change in an increasingly uncertain world, working with people and companies to turn knowledge into behavior to create the conditions for healthy high performance.

Goldsworthy believes that our current way of working and living is unsustainable – not only for ourselves, but for other species that share our planet – so the need for change with new narratives is critical. This includes a change in the style and type of leadership of organizations. No one person has all the answers, so the model of "power over" needs to be replaced by one of "power with" to cultivate conditions where people can flourish and co-create solutions to the challenges organizations face. This means uniting and working across departments, industries, cultures, and age groups, with a focus on inclusivity and diversity.

Goldsworthy has worked at senior management level in both publicly and privately owned companies in Japan, America and Europe, and has extensive experience in leading global communications, culture, brand management and diversity programs. She has also run her own successful business in leadership development, executive coaching and change communications for more than a decade. She is therefore able to offer expert guidance to individuals, teams, and companies on how organizations can develop clear, consistent, and credible narratives and instill a culture of sustainable high performance.

Notably, she has a long list of postgraduate qualifications and was one of the first people in the world to be awarded an Executive Masters in the Neuroscience of Leadership. Meanwhile, her doctoral research with Hult Ashridge International Business School explores [AD1] how leaders have a responsibility to co-create conditions for hope and agency in the current world context. As a highly qualified C-suite executive coach, she is also trained in the use of a number of psychometric assessment tools.

Before embarking on her studies, Goldsworthy had a successful international swimming career during which she was an Olympic finalist, medal winner at the European Championships and Commonwealth Games and British record holder for five years.

She is co-author of three award-winning books. The recently released Where the Wild Things Were is a story for all ages about leadership, responsibility, hope and biodiversity loss, and won an Axiom Business Book Awards Bronze Medal in 2020. Meanwhile, Care to Dare: Unleashing Astonishing Potential through Secure Base Leadership, written with Duncan Coombe and George Kohlrieser in 2012, and Choosing Change: How Leaders and Organizations Drive Results One Person at a Time, co-authored with Walter McFarland in 2013, were both named among Soundview’s best business books of the year and won Axiom Business Book Award Silver Medals.

Goldsworthy works with a number of multinational clients across a wide range of industries. Her work with aviation technology group SITA won gold in the Excellence in Executive Education category of the 2021 Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards. The category is specifically for executive education providers delivering targeted programs for specific clients. Goldsworthy and her team were honored for their work on the SITA 5.0 Leadership Journey, an IMD custom program for the company's top 200 executives.

In addition, she is Associate Director of IMD's CLEAR (Cultivating leadership Energy through Awareness and Reflection) senior leadership program and Co-Director of the new IMD Executive Coaching Certificate.

She is a fellow of the Institute of Data & Marketing, a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, and the International Coaching Federation.

Selected publications

Can we have two golds? (Today's Manager, 2021)

Recovery: The forgotten aspect of high performance (Today's Manager, 2021)

Jan Van Hasenbroek: A 'red-pencil' leader at a crossroads (IMD, 2020)

Where the Wild Things Were (IMD, 2019)

Choosing Change: How Leaders and Organizations Drive Results One Person at a Time (McGraw Hill, 2013)

Care to Dare: Unleashing Astonishing Potential through Secure Base Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2012)

Recognition

Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards gold medal for Excellence in Executive Education (2021)

Axiom Business Book Awards bronze medal winner (2020)

Axiom Business Book Awards double silver medal winner (2014)

Named on Soundview best business books of the year list (2013 and 2014)

Education

BA (Hons) (Journalism and Industrial Psychology)

San Diego State University

MSc (Consulting and Coaching for Change)

HEC/University of Oxford

Executive Masters (Neuroscience of Leadership)

Middlesex University/NeuroLeadership Institute

PhD (Organizational Change) (finalizing)

Ashridge Hult International Business School..

James Henderson is an expert on strategic agility, or the development and implementation of strategy under uncertainty. His research focuses on competitive strategy, corporate strategy, digital transformation, ecosystems, sustainability, and strategy execution.

Henderson says agility is all about an organization’s ability to respond to changing situations and to balance current performance with the exploration of opportunities for future growth. It may, therefore, involve an options-based approach in which small investments are made in projects with potential so they can be scaled up quickly if necessary, but without any major commitments if they don’t prove to be commercially viable. His research in this area has focused on investment timing, corporate venturing, strategic partnerships, and ecosystems.

He says agility takes different forms when applied to digital or sustainability transformation. Digital transformation initiatives usually incur rapid change cycles where getting it wrong can be quickly corrected. On the other hand, sustainability transformation initiatives often require long-term investments in physical infrastructure where companies need to be sure that the economics are right before making heavy commitments. However, he notes, conditions for sustainability transformations are now changing due to growing political will to support the transition to new sources of clean energy.

Henderson has also recently explored the topic of inclusive strategy, finding that giving employees and stakeholders a bigger say in strategy can foster greater engagement and understanding and thereby give firms a competitive edge.

He has helped many companies achieve and sustain their competitive advantage at a business unit, corporate, or global level through directing custom-specific executive programs, facilitating strategy workshops, or teaching MBAs and executives. He has designed, delivered, and directed programs for companies in a variety of industries including healthcare, aerospace and defense, capital-intensive industries, professional and financial services, high technology, consumer products, and economic development agencies.

At IMD, Henderson is Director of the Strategic Partnerships (SP) online course and Co-Director of the Leading Sustainable Business Transformation (LSBT) open program. He was also Director of the International Consulting Projects component of the MBA program between 2008 and 2021, and Dean of Programs and Innovation between 2012 and 2016, overseeing the doubling of the institute’s EMBA program, the redesign of its Program for Executive Development diploma, the launch of its Global Leadership in the Cloud portfolio of online programs, and the development of the Global Leader Index assessment tool.

He coedited the 2005 Strategic Management Society book Restructuring Strategy: New Networks and Industry Challenges, and his articles have been published in well-known journals such as the Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Business Venturing, and Journal of Operations Management. He also sits on the editorial board of the Strategic Management Journal. Furthermore, he has developed more than 50 published case studies, and won several research and teaching awards.

Before joining IMD in 2006, he was an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at Babson College and Babson School of Executive Education in Boston, Massachusetts.

Selected publications

Overcoming the seven concerns stopping you from building a more inclusive strategy (I by IMD, 2022)

Sustainability: From the drawing board into the business (I by IMD, 2021)

The influence of relational experience and contractual governance on negotiation strategies in buyer-supplier disputes (Journal of Operations Management, 2012)

Commitment versus flexibility: The role of resource accumulation lags (Academy of Management Journal, 2008)

From a hierarchy to a heterarchy of strategies: Adapting to a changing context (Management Decision, 2007)

Restructuring Strategy: New Networks and Industry Challenges (Blackwell Publishing, 2005)

Learning to time capacity expansion decisions: An empirical study of the global petrochemical industry (Strategic Management Journal, 2003)

Recognition

EFMD Excellence in Practice Gold Award (2018)

Management Decision Best Article award (2007)

ECCH Best Selling Case in Europe award (1993)

Academy of Management Conference Business Policy and Strategy Division Carolyn Dexter Award (2009)

Paper included in Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings (2003)

Nominations for Strategic Management Society Best Paper Prize (2003 and 2004)

Education

BA (Economics)

University of Western Ontario, Canada

MBA

Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, Canada

PhD (Strategic Management)

INSEAD

Karl Schmedders is Professor of Finance at IMD.

Karl's research focuses on quantitative methods in finance. He applies numerical solution techniques to complex economic and financial models shedding light on relevant market issues and industry problems. He has published numerous research articles in international academic journals such as Econometrica, The Review of Economic Studies, The Journal of Finance, and The Review of Financial Studies, among others.

Before joining IMD, Karl held (tenured) faculty positions at the Kellogg School of Management and at the University of Zurich. He is passionate about teaching and has received numerous teaching awards at Stanford University and Kellogg, including the Walter J. Gores Award, Stanford‘s university-wide teaching award, and the L.G. Lavengood Professor of the Year Award at Kellogg.

Karl holds a Master's degree and a PhD in Operations Research from Stanford University.

Michael Yaziji is an award-winning author whose work spans leadership and strategy. He is recognized as a world-leading expert on non-market strategy and NGO-corporate relations and has a particular interest in ethical questions facing business leaders. His latest research includes the world's largest survey on psychological drivers, psychological safety and organizational performance and explores how human biases and self-deception can impact decision-making and how they can be mitigated.

His earlier survey on NGO campaigns against corporations is the world's largest and most comprehensive on the topic and was the backbone for his seminal book NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration. He is also focusing increasingly on sustainability as companies come under growing pressure from NGOs to take more action in this area.

Holding separate doctorates in ethics and strategy gives him a unique perspective which enables him to integrate different academic and practical approaches in his work. His Strategy and Management PhD from INSEAD centered on non-market strategy and provides the foundations for his ongoing work on NGO-corporate relations, while his PhD in Analytic Philosophy from the University of California focused on ethics, ontology and epistemology and underpins his current interest in ethical questions around the roles and responsibilities of leaders and corporations. He also specializes in race-to-the-top strategies, new capitalism based on governance changes, cross-sectoral ecosystem business models, and personal leadership.

Yaziji helps board members, senior leaders and organizations sharpen their thinking and develop solutions for working with non-market stakeholders such as media, NGOs, and politicians and regulators. He is a board member, trustee, advisor and executive teacher for several Fortune 500 companies (e.g. Microsoft, Shell, Pepsico, Ericsson, PwC, Lufthansa, Sumitomo, Bosch, Vestas, NTT, Munich Re, Hydro, Grundfos, Maersk, Bunge Alimentos, Holcim) and for organizations such as the Red Cross, the University of California and the World Economic Forum. He is currently working on a research agenda on sustainability with Capgemini.

He teaches on IMD's Leading Sustainable Business Transformation program and was previously Director of the IMD Corporate Sustainability Management Center and the architect of a partnership between the school and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

He has been published in academic and managerial journals such as Harvard Business Review and he was one of the earlier management school professors to give a TED Talk. In his 2012 talk on rethinking the structure of corporations, he argued that existing corporate structures were no longer optimally suited to the needs of society or of corporations themselves.

Yaziji’s book NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration won praise from Nestlé Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Former Unilever Chairman and CEO Antony Burgmans, Anglo-American Chairman Mark Moody-Stuart and PepsiCo Vice Chairman Michael D. White.

He joined IMD in 2004 from INSEAD, where as well as completing his second PhD, he was the founding director of the school's Business and Society Forum and lectured on the MBA program. An American and Swiss national, he has spent most of his life as an expat global citizen, having lived in Italy, France, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and the United States.

Selected publications

Looking for opportunity in the midst of crisis (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)

Developing unique business models: Going beyond services/solutions (Perspectives for Managers, 2013)

The role of ideological radicalism and resource homogeneity in social movement organization campaigns against corporations (Organization Studies, 2013)

Corporate-NGO collaboration: Co-creating new business models for developing markets (Long Range Planning, 2010)

NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration (Cambridge University Press, 2009)

Time to rethink capitalism? (Harvard Business Review, 2008)

Turning Gadflies into Allies (Harvard Business Review, 2004)

Toward a theory of social risk (International Studies of Management & Organization, 2004)

Recognition

Academy of Management Social Issues in Management Division Best Book Award (2014)

Education

BA (Analytic Philosophy and Logic)

University of California

MA (Analytic Philosophy and Ethics)

University of California

PhD (Analytic Philosophy)

University of California

Master's degree (Strategy and Management)

INSEAD

PhD (Strategy and Management)

INSEAD