P&Q’s 2026 Best In Class: IMD, Geopolitics

David Bach, IMD President and Nestlé Professor of Strategy and Political Economy, delivering a keynote of the Orchestrating Winning Performance program 2024 in Singapore on the topic “The US election 2024: implications for global business”.

For more than 35 years, Switzerland’s IMD has studied how nations compete and what that means for business. Beginning with its World Competitiveness Yearbook in 1989, the school built expertise in trade, political economy, and the relationship between governments and companies. Today, that work informs how it prepares leaders to navigate geopolitical forces affecting investment, supply chains, technology, and international growth.

Before the pandemic, IMD faculty were already hearing from executives whose concerns extended beyond conventional country risk. In 2022, the school launched a multiyear research effort with corporate executives and the World Economic Forum. It has since produced three white papers drawing on interviews with more than 100 multinationals, alongside presentations to corporate boards, industry associations, and policymakers.

With geopolitics integrated across its degree programs, an expanding research base, and a new program dedicated to board oversight, IMD is Poets&Quants’ 2026 Best in Class winner for Geopolitics.

THE END OF THE RULES-BASED ERA

“Many executives located on both sides of the Atlantic and who came of age after the fall of the Berlin Wall lived, by and large, through an era of peace where governments and businesses followed rules,” says Simon J Evenett, professor of geopolitics and strategy. “That era is over, and business education is playing catch-up.”

IMD’s faculty operates without academic departments, a structure that supports collaboration across disciplines. Its geopolitical expertise includes President David Bach, international economist Richard Baldwin, and Arturo Bris, recently named the Douglas Geertz IMEDE 1988 Professor in Geopolitics and Business. Evenett, who joined in August 2024, has worked with dozens of executive teams and corporate boards.

MBA students encounter geopolitics during their opening week, when Bach examines global disruptions and their implications for business. Required Economics, taught by Baldwin and Evenett, and Non-market Strategy provide foundations for understanding political and institutional forces. Students can explore the subject further through electives including Geopolitics and Global Business Upheaval.

GEOPOLITICS ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

That perspective extends across management coursework. Strategy examines how sanctions, industrial policy, and political alignment affect market opportunities. Finance considers country exposure and political constraints on investment and capital. Operations addresses export controls, supplier concentration, and the trade-offs between efficiency and resilience. Leadership teaching explores decision-making under pressure and managing international teams whose members may experience the same geopolitical event differently.

Students apply those lessons through the required International Consulting Project and month-long Future Lab in Singapore, examining how government, technology, business, and society interact. IMD’s redesigned Executive MBA curriculum similarly places geopolitics in its required Foundations module and revisits it in the concluding Future Readiness module. At least one Global Immersion Week is required, with recent and planned destinations including China, India, Kenya, Peru, and Estonia.

For current and aspiring directors, the new Geopolitics for Boards program, developed with the IMD Global Board Center, focuses on challenging management assumptions, assessing exposure, and strengthening oversight. Participants in the broader Orchestrating Winning Performance program examine sourcing decisions, where companies operate, organizational design, and how much risk to accept.

Simon Evenett, IMD Professor of Geopolitics and Strategy, during the 2025 IMD CEO Roundtable on the topic “Borders and Battles: Trade and Geopolitics”.

FROM TRADE ALERTS TO REBUILDING UKRAINE

Through its research partnership with the St. Gallen Endowment for Prosperity Through Trade, IMD draws on Global Trade Alert, Digital Policy Alert, and the New Industrial Policy Observatory. These initiatives track trade policy, industrial policy, and digital regulation, with findings regularly presented to executive participants, MBAs, and EMBAs.

“This is geopolitical insight for time-pressed and overloaded managers, not only for academic peers,” Evenett says.

The school also applies its expertise to reconstruction. Its Accelerating Responsible Reconstruction Initiative has prepared eight briefing papers on other countries’ postwar experiences to inform options for Ukraine, including the roles of women managers, returning veterans, and European integration. IMD commissioned a study of Ukraine’s business environment from MIM-Kyiv and more than doubled participation in its Women’s Leadership Program, whose third cohort includes 100 women entrepreneurs and managers supported by faculty from both schools.

Looking ahead, IMD plans to expand research on industrial policy and effective collaboration between companies and governments. It is also preserving faculty capacity to respond to unexpected developments—a practical extension of its emphasis on helping leaders make decisions amid enduring uncertainty.

Richard Baldwin, Professor of International Economics, in class with participants of the Orchestrating Winning Performance program 2026 in Lausanne on the topic “When geopolotics rewrite the rules. Strategic amid disruption”.

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