In January 2007 EFMD launched a new business magazine 'Global Focus'.
The new magazine is a modern
replacement for the Forum magazine and in
the same vein provides you with in-depth updates on the international
management development community and features topical reports and
insight from leading experts.
Taken from the Global Focus (sent to BizDeansTalk by EFMD).
Peter Lorange, Dean of IMD, will step down in Spring 2008.
When I arrived in 1993, the institute already had a very strongly business-oriented culture. For example, in contrast to other academic institutions IMD has never had tenure, there is no hierarchy of titles, there are no academic departments and the institute bases all its research on actual business issues,” says Prof Lorange, reflecting on 13 years in charge.
”There have been several shifts in the management development landscape in general and at IMD in particular during that time. Today we see that customers are more and more interested in tailored in-company programmes – we call them partnership programmes. Currently the balance at IMD is 50/50 for open and partnership. We are quite happy with this and foresee that it will stay this way, as the two formats have their own benefits both for the companies as well as for IMD.
” Companies, he says, seem to be less interested in training in functional skills such as finance or marketing programmes. Compared to a decade ago, today almost all IMD’s programmes coer interdisciplinary topics such as leadership, board issues, change, innovation or managing the value chain.
“We do not talk about teaching anymore,” he comments. “We feel that both the practitioner and the academic learn when they engage in a programme, of whatever type. IMD’s faculty bring in their latest research findings and participants respond with their own experience-based reflections. This leads to a rich exchange of viewpoints.”
The school’s origins go back to two institutes created by international companies – IMI, founded by Alcan Aluminium in Geneva in 1946, and IMEDE, founded in Lausanne in 1957 by Nestlé. In 1990 the two institutes merged to create IMD, based on the old IMEDE campus in Lausanne. And Lorange emphasises that for him Lausanne is and will be the only IMD campus.
“We provide a global meeting place in a wonderful setting by Lac Leman (Lake Geneva),” he says. “Here, executives from all over the world come together to discuss their business dilemmas. Creating satellite campuses would only compromise on the great diversity you will find here.”
As to the future, Lorange does not foresee anything dramatically different for IMD or for himself.
“I think IMD will keep building on its strengths,” he says. “We just received a SFR. 15 million donation from the AP Møller and Chastine McKinney Møller Foundation for the construction of a new centre for executive learning, which will completed in June 2008 and will mean IMD will be even better positioned to meet the growing demand for programmes. And as for myself, I will simply keep doing my research [on internally generated growth] and will stay in touch with real-life business issues as a board member of several international corporations.”
An IMD search committee expects to be able to announce news on the appointment of a new president by early 2008.
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