IMD business school for management and leadership courses
Research
At IMD, our research on the evolution of sustainable and inclusive business is rigorous, relevant, and actionable. This reflects IMD’s close links with firms and their leaders. We aim to share best practices and inspire new business models with societal impact.
Accelerating our impact
We produce research relevant to practitioners who are leading sustainable business transformation to create future-ready firms. We frequently interact with senior executives to engage them in our research and ensure that our insights are applied and fit for purpose.
In 2023, Sophie Bacq joined IMD as a Professor of Social Entrepreneurship. Her research and teaching focus on entrepreneurial action that aims to solve intractable social and environmental problems. Jan van der Kaaij and Miguel Veiga-Pestana joined IMD as Executive Fellows; they will focus on research, education, and outreach, with a particular focus on ESG, sustainability strategies, and sustainable innovation.
IMD’s 15 Centers and Initiatives produce cutting-edge research and actionable insights on key sustainability matters to enable sustainable business transformation. Below, we have detailed some of the work the Centers produced in 2023 that is accelerating our impact.
The Center for Sustainable and Inclusive Business combines research, innovation, and learning to drive sustainable business transformation. The Center’s research has a unified purpose: sharing actionable insights that support business leaders in managing sustainability successfully.
The Center is funded by the Adolf H. Lundin Charitable Foundation, Rio Tinto, and IMD. In 2023, the dentsu Group joined the consortium of funding partners and Goutam Challagalla was appointed dentsu Group Chair in Sustainable Strategy and Marketing.
His primary research objective is to formulate comprehensive indicators that effectively measure the sustainability transformation of companies to assess the impact of championing sustainability on both brand and corporate value.
The Center also welcomed Esther Salvi, a research fellow, and Adrian Dellecker and Bryony Jansen – van Tuyll, two new senior research writers.
This expansion aims to accelerate our commitment to academic research and thought leadership, particularly in areas such as circular business models, managing and measuring sustainability success, business and biodiversity, inclusive growth, sustainability strategy, stakeholder engagement and civic wealth creation.
The Center established the Sustainability Leaders Circle in 2023, providing a space where business leaders can collectively unpack sustainable business transformation and share new ideas, best practices, and their experience in navigating the complexities of ensuring that sustainable business transformation drives both business success and societal impact.
Drawing on robust discussions on a broad array of topics, IMD experts help shape actionable insights that address environmental and social challenges.
In 2023, Julia Binder, Professor of Sustainable Business Transformation, was shortlisted in the 2023 Thinkers50 Strategy Award in the Innovation Award Category in recognition of her work on sustainable innovation.
The Center for Social Innovation develops and shares research and pedagogical content that helps business and civil society leaders navigate the challenges of initiating and implementing social innovation. This research also informs IMD’s programs focused on leading innovative financing projects. The Center partners with research groups such as the Swiss Lab for Sustainable Finance and the Gender Lens Initiative for Switzerland. Shih-Han Huang, an award-winning case writer, joined the Center as a new senior research writer in 2023 to accelerate social innovation thought leadership.
The Center participated in key events during the period, including “Blended Finance in the Water Sector: New Pathways for Impact and Scale in Fragile Settings” and the AidEX 2023 panel on “Closing the Financing Gap for Humanitarian Response to the Impacts of the Climate Crisis.”
Center Chair Vanina Faber also delivered the Empretec Women in Business Award at the World Investment Forum in Abu Dhabi, honoring women entrepreneurs who promote business models that have a positive impact. IMD awarded Jovia Kisakye, Founder and CEO of Sparkle Agro Brands in Uganda, a scholarship to participate in the Leading High Performance Teams program.
For more than 30 years, the IMD World Competitiveness Center has pioneered research on how nations and enterprises compete to lay the foundations for future prosperity. It publishes several indexes, including the Hinrich-IMD Sustainable Trade Index and IMD Smart City Index.
The Hinrich-IMD Sustainable Trade Index aims to stimulate discussion among policymakers, business executives, and civil society leaders striving to advance sustainable and mutually beneficial global trade. The index – which studies 30 economies and represents approximately 67% of global GDP, accounting for 63% of the total global population – measures a country’s readiness and capacity to participate in the international trading system in a manner that supports the long-term goals of economic growth, environmental protection, and societal development.
Published yearly, the results of the 2023 Index can be found here: 2023 Hinrich-IMD Sustainable Trade Index.
The IMD Smart City Index offers a balanced focus on the economic and technological aspects, as well as the human dimensions, such as the quality of life, environment, and inclusiveness, of smart cities. Now in its fourth year, the 2023 Smart City Index was published in collaboration with the Seoul-based World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization (WeGO). It formally recognizes efforts in smart city development by awarding the Seoul Smart City Prize. The prize, offered for the first time in 2023, is designed to promote an innovative and inclusive smart city model that looks after underprivileged groups in the area of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The 2023 results can be read here: IMD Smart City Index Report 2023.
The IMD Global Family Business Center organizes the annual IMD Global Family Business Award to celebrate excellence in family, business, ownership, and society. To be considered for this award, family businesses must be international, multi-generational (of at least third generation), and have an annual turnover of at least $0.5bn.
Careful consideration is given to the values of the people who run the business, including how they unite their family and business interests, combine tradition and innovation, and show clear commitment to their communities.
Thermax, an engineering company headquartered in Pune, India, was awarded the 2023 IMD Global Family Business Award. Established in 1966, the conglomerate has become a worldwide reference in providing sustainable energy and environmental solutions.
“Having seen the business families that have won this award previously, it is humbling to be amongst them. It’s a validation of our commitment to every stakeholder, to sustainability, ethical business practices, our vision, values, and a thriving culture that each person within Thermax has painstakingly invested in,”
Publications and thought leadership
FT50 articles published
- Sight unseen: The visibility paradox of entrepreneurship in an informal economy, Journal of Business Venturing, Dec 2023
- The Social Cost of Carbon When We Wish for Full-Path Robustness, Management Science, Dec 2023
I by IMD articles
Conference papers
Original cases
Other practitioner articles
IMD’s academic publications and thought leadership articles offer actionable insights on sustainable business, social innovation, and philanthropy. We track our impact on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by tagging our publications with the relevant goals addressed.
In 2023, we saw an uptick in the number of articles we published compared to the previous year. We published two FT50 articles, 14 conference papers, 14 original cases, eight other practitioner articles, and 60 I by IMD articles. We also published or contributed to more than 100 pieces of philanthropy research content, including 11 FT50 articles. As part of our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiative, we published two FT50 academic journals, 56 I by IMD articles, and five case studies.
Thought leadership
We regularly feature thought leadership articles on sustainability and inclusion themes on our digital I by IMD knowledge platform and quarterly magazine. I by IMD is part of IMD’s content ecosystem designed to spark conversation and deliver actionable insights to a broad and engaged global audience. In 2023, three of our I by IMD magazines focused on sustainable and inclusive business and social innovation as core themes.
The Inclusive Leadership issue
Organizations must become more inclusive and diverse to thrive in the future. The business case is as compelling as the moral imperative. How can executives foster inclusion to unlock the power of diversity while recognizing and tackling inequity and discrimination? Issue X explores how leaders can build organizations and design products and services that are truly inclusive.
The Sustainability Transformation issue
No organization can escape the need to transform to become more sustainable. The need to act is urgent. It calls for strong leadership, difficult decisions, and profound cultural change. Developed in collaboration with the Center for Sustainable and Inclusive Business, Issue XI explores how to build sustainable organizations to succeed in turbulent times.
The Impact Economy: How to make a positive difference
We need creative ideas and partnerships to reimagine the global economy to secure a more sustainable and inclusive future. Issue XII of I by IMD explores how the fast-emerging “impact economy” is changing how we do business – and the world. Curated by the Center for Social Innovation, the articles highlight the diverse approaches and strategies actors use to manage impact.
Recognition of the articles and papers we produce
In 2023, Sophie Bacq’s article, co-authored with Ruth Aguilera, won the Journal of Management Studies Best Paper Award out of 14 nominated articles published in the journal in 2022. The article, titled “Stakeholder Governance for Responsible Innovation: A Theory of Value Creation, Appropriation, and Distribution,” also received widespread recognition, amassing more than 90 citations.
Marco Mismetti, Ivan Miroshnychenko, and Alfredo De Massis’ conference paper “Financial wealth, socioemotional wealth and sustainable development goals in family firms: A mixed gamble perspective” was nominated for the Best Paper Award at the 18th European Institute for Advanced Management Studies (EIASM) Workshop on Family Firm Management Research.
Three IMD co-authors, Alfredo de Massis, Malgorzata Smulowitz, and Peter Vogel, received the ERNOP Conference Best Paper Award 2023 for their article “What leads to impactful family philanthropy” at the 11th International Research Conference of the European Research Network on Philanthropy ERNOP.EU held in Croatia.
Case study awards
IMD teaching cases demonstrate our close relationship with business and are recognized for their relevance to executive learning on pertinent issues such as sustainable and inclusive transformation. These teaching cases are distributed worldwide to be used in classrooms at global institutions, and several received awards in 2023.
IMD had five faculty members listed in The Case Center’s Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors list for 2022/2023. Among those featured is Professor of Marketing and Strategy Frédéric Dalsace, whose case study on Michelin Fleet Solutions investigates the conditions under which XaaS business models work and highlights their advantages in terms of sustainability.
Julia Binder, Professor of Sustainable Innovation and Business Transformation, and Heather Cairns-Lee, Affiliate Professor of Leadership, received the EFMD Case Writing Competition Award in the category ‘Responsible Leadership’ for their case study: “Carbon is the new calorie”: Logitech’s carbon impact label to drive transparency in sustainability.
