Regional spotlight

IMD South East Asia and Oceania (SEA) is in the second year of its transformation, focused on growing its impact on organizations in the region. To deliver on this promise, the organization continued to deepen its country-based strategy to reach the largest organizations in every country it serves, developed new strategic talent management offerings, and grew its team of faculty and staff. Combined, these efforts allowed the team to generate more revenue from custom programs in 2021 than in 2019.

Country-based sales strategy

IMD SEA approaches every country in the region as a separate market served by dedicated business development experts. In each market, the team identifies at least 20 companies where it believes IMD can have the largest impact, studies their transformation needs, and then provides them with a tailored solution. This disciplined approach allowed IMD to grow in markets where it is well known and markets with less presence.

In Thailand, IMD continued to engage with Siam Commercial Bank and dtac. In Malaysia, the client list featured long-term leadership development engagements with Telekom Malaysia and an ESG implementation program with Maybank. In Singapore, the team engaged with GIC, OCBC, and Sumitomo Mitsui, while in Indonesia, IMD continued to deepen its engagement with Bank Mandiri, Bank Danamon and Adira Finance. In the Philippines, the focus was on working with Globe as well as its subsidiaries.

In addition, IMD continued to deliver impactful engagements for Asian divisions of global players such as UBS, Bayer and Johnson & Johnson. Although they started as regional deliveries, many of these interactions expanded into large global programs delivered virtually out of the South East Asia base.

IMD continued to engage learning and HR leaders in the region through the Learning & Development Forum Asia series, dedicating this year’s series to introducing new strategic talent management offerings, which resulted in new commercial engagements.

This year also saw the introduction of the Industry Dialogue Series, which engages CXOs from a particular industry in the region in conversation with faculty members who are experts on that industry. Professor Mark Greeven, who recently co-authored a book with Professor Winter Nie on the future of retail, kicked off the series with executives from that sector. These engagements allowed IMD to broaden its customer base and its impact. The team expects to continue them in the future, focused on retail and many other industries.