IMD business school for management and leadership courses
Measuring the impact of our programs
Our unique positioning allows us to define organizational impact and return on investment (ROI) for learning interventions facilitated by IMD and the methodologies employed for measuring them. Our comprehensive impact assessment process serves the dual purpose of showcasing the impact and business ROI to our clients and evaluating and enhancing our performance.
In 2023, our Impact Office established a structured framework for measuring learning impact; more information on this model can be found in IMD’s Annual Report 2023.
The Impact Office executed 683 immediate impact assessments, 334 post-program assessments, and approximately 10 customized program impact assessments. Notably, most of these assessments relied on participant self-reported estimates.
Further, to gauge our programs’ societal and environmental impact on participants, we conduct a follow-up assessment after 12 months. We inquire whether participants have applied what they learned to make a difference in society and the environment and ask for specific examples of their use of what they learned and the observed impact. From July 2022 to Oct 2023, we gathered 1,388 responses, with 56% of open and custom program participant survey respondents ‘agreeing’ or ‘strongly agreeing’ that they have applied their learnings to make a difference in society.
“The goal was to take the participants out of the classroom and give them a completely interactive experience, bringing learning to life. It ties into the goals of OWP Singapore by exposing participants to the most cutting-edge thinking and developments from IMD.”
Technology enriches sustainability learning at OWP
We introduced an immersive 360-degree learning experience at our Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP) program in Singapore in 2023 to deepen learning about leadership and sustainability. The learning experience combines augmented reality (AR) technology with game mechanics to deliver a highly engaging, realistic, and impactful experience for participants.
Participants were invited to a simulation onboard a state-of-the-art deep-sea carbon-capture vessel. They got into character by putting on a lab coat and being handed a phone. They were told that they were scientists about to join other scientists onboard the vessel.
The vessel is run by SpheriCO2, a company that has developed breakthrough green technology that captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it in ocean chasms, where it will absorb naturally into ecosystems over time.
Fish appear to swim outside the vessel, creating a highly realistic experience. However, the scientists soon learn that an impending environmental disaster looms, and they are tasked with averting it.
To do this, they must apply their minds to the issue, use their critical thinking skills, lean on situational judgment, and leverage the other team members to help solve a series of challenges. The game mechanics create a highly realistic experience.
The simulation’s outcome is that participants learn a lot about themselves as leaders and how they navigate decision-making and crises. They have the chance to reflect on where they are today and what they need to do to become the leaders they aspire to be.
“We didn’t know what to expect – we were in an emergency scenario, and everybody reverted to their natural tendencies. It was interesting to see how the group solved a complex situation by identifying those capable of solving different parts and bringing it together to have a successful outcome.”
Supercharging learning
The world is time-poor, yet the demand for leadership and business learning continues to grow. To meet this need, IMD launched the Sprint training program, which offers accelerated learning opportunities for a variety of different audiences. Designed to accelerate learning and create alignment across organizations, Sprint ensures leaders can drive innovative, time-effective, and cost-effective results. The online programs deliver fast-paced faculty-led sessions on key topics such as mastering stress, generative AI for business, and digital transformation.
In 2023, IMD’s Digital Transformation Sprint program, developed in partnership with NovoEd, was awarded six gold medals at the Brandon Hall Tech Awards in recognition of its innovative learning experience. IMD’s innovation in learning was further celebrated when OWP+GPT received a gold award in the Best Advance in Emerging Learning Technology category for its implementation at OWP.
Participants at OWP were given access to OWP+GPT, an innovation developed by IMD that is elegant in its simplicity.
OWP+GPT makes sense of hours of classroom sessions and adds further depth to the classroom topics through additional IMD research, articles, podcasts, and webinars.
At OWP, participants used a mobile app to ask questions of IMD’s ChatGPT. It answered these by drawing on the session and other relevant information and utilizing OpenAI’s GPT-4 to round out the answer.
Hundreds of queries in more than 20 languages were inputted during the AI-powered sessions. Participants were also given access to a plugin connected to OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 and invited to share their key takeaways in the format of text-to-image prompts.
IMD’s Mastering Board Governance program also received a gold award, bringing the award tally to eight in total.
