IMD Business School

Picture this: You are a top one-year business school. Bloomberg Businessweek has ranked you as the #1 European MBA program in four of the past five years. And the market views you as elite in the executive education and executive MBA space too. Your brand is associated with excellence in leadership training and sustainability programming. Let’s face it: who wouldn’t love being part of a premier small school experience…next to Lake Geneva, no less.

That’s the positioning of IMD Business School: an academic powerhouse revered by alumni and employers alike. So why did they start over with a “blank sheet” when their formula was already so successful? As teachers of business, they understood what happened to carriage manufacturers when Fords started rolling off the assembly line or how video chains quickly folded after consumers got a whiff of streaming. With the advent of artificial intelligence, IMD recognized that the roles they were preparing students for were being wiped out by the ultimate disruptor. In response, the school decided to act before it was too late, focusing on making its students proficient in the areas that machine intelligence could never replace.

“We reorganized everything,” says Omar Toulan, MBA dean at IMD, in a 2024 interview with P&Q. “We needed to take this up to another level. We are focusing on elemental human traits. I have yet to see an AI system that can be an effective leader. You still need someone in the room to use judgment in making the final decision and motivate people to implement it, someone with the intelligence and the courage to make difficult decisions. I would put my bet on leadership.”

Starting in January, IMD is taking one of the biggest calculated gambles among business schools recently. While the school will maintain many of its signature experiences such as the Leadership Streams, it will approach business education as if AI will completely alter how organizations operate and interact. After surveying the market and crunching the numbers, IMD couldn’t dance around the results: there are certain functions, currently performed by managers, that can now be handled by AI technologies. Hence, the school is pivoting towards teaching and evaluating the mastery of a new set of skills.

“We all need to reconsider what we teach, how we teach, and how we evaluate people,” says Toulan. “Graduates may not have to do certain analyses themselves anymore, but they will have to ask the right questions from AI. AI can be extremely time-saving, allowing you to focus on more critical issues. The goal is not to take a defensive posture against AI. When you are talking about projects and papers, you need to be conscious of the kinds of questions you are asking and you need to use AI as a partner. It’s not something to defend against. We introduced an AI policy in 2023. It is not a policy that simply says you can’t do A, B, and C. It details what you should do to use AI effectively and properly.”

Notably, IMD has codified 10 ‘transversal’ skills. Taught during the first two weeks of the week, these are the skills MBA students must master to maximize the value of AI tools and remain viable in an increasingly tech-driven world.

IMD’S 10 Fundamental Skills
1. Systems Thinking: Understand complex systems and how different components interact
2. Pattern Recognition: Hone observation skills based on patterns extracted from data and learn to recognize irregularities.
3. Structured Problem-Solving: Approach problems systematically, utilize tools and techniques to break down complex issues and find effective solutions
4. Decision Making: Know how to make sound decisions based on data
5. Visioning & Scenario Planning: Learn to anticipate and evaluate future trends and challenges in order to develop relevant solutions and plans
6. Divergent & Convergent Thinking: Enhance creative problem solving abilities, build on the insights and ideas generated to develop feasible solutions
7. Quantifying Strategies: How to use data and analytics to back up your strategic thinking
8. Asking Good Questions: In today’s data-intensive world it’s critical to know how to ask the right questions to find the information you need to make informed decisions
9. Storyboarding & Storytelling: Present information and communicate your ideas clearly and evocatively through visualization and compelling narratives
10. Strategic Presence & Presentation: Learn to present ideas confidently and persuasively to influence stakeholders and drive action

On the surface, this may seem like heresy in a program regaled for its deeply personalized approach. After all, the program is known for its one-on-one coaching, even offering up to 20 hours of psychoanalysis to help students understand how their experiences and underlying values shape their decision-making and leadership style. These elements won’t change, however. What may surprise students is who – or what – is now involved in evaluations.

According to Toulan, AI tools will be deployed to help with the assessments of video and PowerPoint presentations. However, IMD’s grading system will be a reflection of its larger approach to machine learning. Toulan points to faculty using assessment tools like Microsoft copilot in their grading He adds that professors will also hold quarterly meetings with students to walk them through their progress in the 10 skills. On top of that, the school will roll out a dual grading system, with students assessed separately on what they know and what they demonstrate.

“People wanted a greater emphasis on skill-based learning and not just course-based learning,” says Toulan. “We worked down to a list of critical skills we want to track across the entire program. These are skills that an MBA needs to dominate before they go to the job market. By working with every professor in the program, we can identify how a person is doing on certain skills.”

At the same time, the school will be setting up dashboards so students can assess their own development. Still, like any launch, IMD anticipates a few bugs here and there starting out. That’s one reason why the school has been running past assignments through both faculty members and AI tools to train both on the new rubrics using the same sources. While IMD continues to heavily promote team-based learning, the school has also bumped up the number of individual assignments to better measure where students stand and where they need coaching.

“What I want to do is develop a sustainable system that provides feedback constantly for the students and that is why we need to make sure we educate AI properly,” Toulan adds. “We will always review the feedback before we send it out. On the video assessments for storytelling and presentation, I will still do a human evaluation with the AI evaluation. Those two skills are so fundamental that I want to make sure they are really effective.”

IMD MBAs won’t just be learning about AI through classroom exercises, either. The school has also squeezed a new immersion into the program: Future Lab. A month in Singapore, this June immersion will set aside two days per week for site visits and executive speakers to expose students to the latest applications and impacts of AI technology and digital transformation.

“The goal is to focus on not only big tech but how government leverages technology to the betterment of society,” Toulan explains. “Singapore has recently been selected as the most competitive economy in the world by the World Competitiveness Center at IMD and as such is a perfect setting to learn about these trends. It is a great test site for this. And we will do it with a mix of in-classroom and out-of-classroom activities.”

MBA students won’t be alone in deriving benefits from IMD’s curriculum shift. The school has also developed a GenAI platform where students and alumni alike can access everything from faculty research to recorded lectures – in the user’s native language, no less.

“All of our graduates will have access to their entire MBA, both while they are in the MBA program and eventually as alumni,” says Toulan.

Along with that, Toulan adds, students can use the recently-released IMD A+, which enables them to access information 24×7, according to Toulan. “All class recordings and material are inputted into our closed access AI+ (PPI scratched), which also has access to the broader web, and as such students can ask questions such as, ‘What were the key elements of the framework Professor Toulan discussed on Tuesday and can you give me an example from the pharma industry?’”

Last March, IMD also announced that it would devote July to a summer break and August to for-credit internships – a rarity in a 12-month program. For students who opt out of the internship, they can complete electives in their place.

“From the participant’s point of view, it’s an opportunity to get a head start in the job market since many companies that offer summer internships use it as a feeder to the permanent roles,” Toulan explained last spring. “For recruiters, on the other hand, it’s a relatively low-risk opportunity to have first access to a highly skilled talent pool which has already gone through a rigorous selection process.”

In the long term, Toulan hopes to turn IMD Business School into the “most innovative program in the market.” He credits the school’s progress thus far to being a small and “relatively niche MBA program.” More than that, he praises his professors as open-minded and “one of the most collaborative faculty in the world,”. Such a commitment, from top-to-bottom, will be critical for IMD to continue its momentum – and for rival schools pursuing similar innovations.

“This isn’t the MBA of 30 years ago,” adds Toulan. “There are many changes and differences, while at the same time preserving the leadership and experiential focus on the program. Any time you make such a fundamental change, though, there are always stakeholders that must be engaged. We tried to align all interests to come up with a solution that is appealing to candidates and future students while preserving the connection to alumni so they can see their IMD in the new program.”

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