Howard Yu
Howard Yu, hailing from Hong Kong, is LEGO® Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD. He leads the Center for Future Readiness, founded in 2020 with support from the LEGO Brand Group, to guide companies through strategic transformation.
Recognized globally for his expertise, in 2023 he was honored with the Thinkers50 Strategy Award, recognizing his substantial contributions to management strategy and future readiness. His additional inclusion into the Thinkers50 list places him among the top global management thinkers.
Back in 2015, Yu was already named among the world’s top business professors under 40 by Poets&Quants, and in 2018 he appeared on the Thinkers50 Radar list. Notably, in 2023, his work with the LEGO Group was recognized with an EFMD Gold Award for organizational development and a Brandon Hall Group Gold Award for advancing learning strategies and competencies development.
I help executives to filter out the noise. They can then lay bare what impacts their companies. Leaders must take action to make their organizations future-ready.
Today, Yu co-directs the Strategy for Future Readiness program and has delivered tailored training to global companies including ABB, Bosch, the LEGO Group, Novo Nordisk, Electrolux, Heineken, Maersk, and many others.
His ongoing work has been published in journals such as Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. His case studies have won several awards from the European Foundation for Management Development and The Case Centre. He regularly appears on media outlets including Bloomberg, CNBC, and the BBC.
His book, LEAP: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied, published in 2018, has earned multiple awards, including an Axiom Business Book Awards Gold Medal and the strategy+business Best Business Book award.
He joined IMD in 2011 after completing a doctoral degree at Harvard Business School. He worked in Hong Kong as a banker at the start of his career.
