IMD business school for management and leadership courses

BARCELONA, JANUARY 2023. What started in 2016 as a humble entrepreneurial attempt to contribute to a more sustainable future had turned into a solid eyewear brand present in major Western markets. François van den Abeele was even more excited by the rapid development of the Sea2see Foundation, which he set up in Ghana. But success brought its ow…

When the dotcom bubble burst in March 2000, this did not stop the world from going digital, but it did poke holes in the concept of trust, especially in the digital world. David Goldenberg, a Belgian entrepreneur with extensive experience in management consulting, was confronted daily with the hassles of recruiting when information about candida…

SEPTEMBER 2023, SÃO PAULO (BRAZIL). Gustavo Buffara was painstakingly putting the finishing touches on the IG4 Private Equity Fund III presentation. Co-founded by Gustavo in 2016, IG4 Capital had grown to become a leading force in private equity in Latin America with a unique value proposition that focused on private equity special situations. W…

GENEVA (SWITZERLAND), OCTOBER 2023. Vanessa Monestel was ecstatic. a day earlier, she had just signed the letter of intent (LOI) to acquire an Amsterdam-based fashion company. This was the culmination of her 18-month search for a company to acquire, conducted with the support of Novastone Capital Advisors’ (NCA) Entrepreneurship through Acquisit…

GENEVA (SWITZERLAND), AUGUST 2021. There was a lot at stake for Sébastien. This was the culmination of his 18-month NCA supported search journey to find a company to acquire. Instead of a single target, he was now faced with the prospect of acquiring 4 separate companies at once, consolidating them into a group. One, SAS, was bigger than the oth…

The case focuses on Rede Mulher Empreendedora (RME), Brazil’s largest support platform for female entrepreneurship, and its founder, Ana Fontes. Founded in 2010, RME had grown into a significant network by 2023, impacting the livelihoods of over 12 million women in Brazil, a country with substantial gender disparities. The platform offers initia…

The case follows Oliver Freiland, a former Roland Berger consultant with a successful corporate career, in his quest for the right acquisition target. In 2015 Oliver finally took a leap of faith to buy his way into entrepreneurship by acquiring HeliService, a provider of offshore helicopter operations for wind farms in the North Sea, with the he…

In July 2024 Guido Preti, La Marzocco’s sustainability manager, was preparing his three-year plan to combine La Marzocco’s ESG program with that of its new owners, the De’Longhi Group. Since its inception in 1927, the company had relentlessly sought to produce the perfect espresso machine through exceptional craftmanship, user centric designs an…

The case focuses on Contabilizei, a Brazilian startup providing online accounting services for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The case study delves into the challenges faced by the company’s founder and CEO, Vitor Torres, as he navigated Brazil’s complex social and economic landscape. Issues such as Brazil’s byzantine tax system, dis…

Fatbergs and grease waste from industrial kitchens are hardly the most enticing topics for a business school case study. Yet ZhanaSolutions, the start-up examined in this impact investment due diligence case, is all about grease waste. At least, on the surface. When one dredges deeper, the case reveals a compelling story about how to embed impac…

This case follows the steps taken by Kaichi Yokoyama, Moon Creative Lab’s CEO, to establish the entity as a pioneering venture studio and entrepreneurial talent development entity within the Mitsui Group. As a corporate venture, the story began in 2018 when Kaichi embarked on a mission to reshape Mitsui’s deeply entrenched traditions and pursue …

In 2022, Elon Musk, known for his innovative ideas and often compared to Steve Jobs, made a big move by buying Twitter for $44 billion. He then started transforming the microblogging platform, rebranding it as “X.” His goal was to turn Twitter into a super app like WeChat in Asia, combining many services like messaging, shopping and payments int…

Terry Burns launched UniMag in 2007 and went on to develop its ecosystem of affiliated companies over several years. As most media were rapidly shifting online, UniMag established its brand as a high-profile magazine with a counter-intuitive focus on high-quality print and journalism. Since then, digitalization has increasingly shaped the media …

Peter Goldschmidt became the CEO of pharmaceuticals company STADA in 2018. He was a firm believer in culture as a driving force – and a predictor – of organizational performance and competitiveness. A year earlier, two private equity funds had become majority owners of the “old” STADA – essentially a loose, decentralized network of country opera…

MADRID (SPAIN), MARCH 2023. Jaime Garcia-Prieto, founder and CEO of Galeneo, was polishing the deck for the fundraising for his healthcare start-up. The seed round of €1 million would take him to the institutional A round scheduled for Q3-2024, a comfortable 18-month+ runway. His proposal to decentralize healthcare through a tech-enabled hospita…