IMD Will Open A New Global Hub In China, Betting On ‘Shenzhen Speed’

IMD is moving deeper into China.

The Lausanne, Switzerland-based business school is opening a new Global Hub in Shenzhen in spring 2027. Located in the Qianhai district, the Hub will host company immersions and discovery expeditions for IMD’s MBA and EMBA participants, executive education programs, and advisory work with Chinese companies and multinationals operating in China.

IMD says it is the first Western international business school to establish a base in the city. It isn’t the first to put down roots there, though. Cambridge Judge Business School has worked in Qianhai with Peking University HSBC Business School since 2020, and France’s Audencia Business School has run a joint institution with Shenzhen University since 2016.

For IMD President David Bach, the move is the logical next step for a school – named the top school globally for geopolitics by Poets&Quants in 2026 – that has been sending executives to Shenzhen for years and keeps finding more reasons to stay.

“Our model has never been educational tourism,” Bach tells Poets&Quants, speaking from Shanghai Pudong International Airport before a flight to Shenzhen. “We don’t just take people to visit companies. This is all grounded in frameworks.”

FROM HOTEL BALLROOMS TO A PERMANENT HOME

Bach says two things drove the decision. The first is teaching. IMD participants who visit Shenzhen companies need somewhere to come back to, he says, to work in groups, sort through what they’ve seen and figure out how it applies to their own businesses.

“You need space for that. You need space where people can collaborate, where they can work in groups, where they have flip charts to write down things,” Bach says. “You just can’t do this as effectively in a hotel.”

The second is a deeper commitment to the region. IMD – named by P&Q the 2026 Best in Class B-school for Geopolitics, a new category – already has a small office and staff in Shenzhen, and it wants more research and case writing to come out of the city.

“It’s equal parts a better learning environment and a stronger commitment to becoming part of that ecosystem,” Bach says.

The Hub covers about 900 square meters, or roughly 9,700 square feet. Bach says it will look nothing like a typical business school classroom. He was the point person when the Yale School of Management opened its center in Beijing, and he describes that space as beautiful but laid out in a traditional auditorium style.

The Shenzhen Hub will have a flat floor with tables arranged to encourage group work. It can be configured for 30, 60 or 90 people – the size of IMD’s MBA class – and for larger plenary sessions. It will also include office space, drop-in workspace and meeting rooms. IMD says the Hub can seat up to 150 participants, and up to 170 if needed.

WHY SHENZHEN, AND NOT SHANGHAI

Shanghai, Beijing or Hong Kong might seem like more obvious choices. IMD did run an office in Beijing until about three years ago, when it moved its China operation to Shenzhen. The shift was championed by Professor Mark Greeven, who leads IMD’s China Initiative, and was embraced by Bach’s predecessor.

Bach admits he was skeptical at first.

“I thought the same thing. Why are we going to Shenzhen?” he says. “If we want to move from Beijing, we could go to Shanghai. That’s the obvious business capital.”

The argument that won him over was that many of the companies already shaking up global industries – BYD, DJI and Tencent among them – are based in Shenzhen. Since the move, Bach says, IMD’s activity and research there have grown to the point where the school needs a place where it can “really convene people.”

The city’s pace is part of the appeal.

“There’s China speed and then there’s Shenzhen speed. It’s even faster than China speed,” Bach says. “One of the things I’ve been noticing in a lot of conversations with executives is that things are just moving too slowly in Europe in particular.”

A WAKE-UP CALL FOR WESTERN LEADERS

Bach expects the Hub’s main clients to be Western multinationals trying to understand their Chinese competitors, rather than Chinese companies going global, though IMD works with both. He says leadership teams from about a dozen Western multinationals, plus some from the Middle East, spent time with IMD in Shenzhen this year.

Part of the demand, he says, comes from a gap the pandemic created.

“A lot of Western leaders sort of lost a bit of touch with China,” Bach says. “They would go in 2017, ‘18, ‘19. Then they stopped. And when some of them started re-engaging, all of a sudden there was a set of companies, a set of products, a lot of innovation that was just way ahead of where they thought it was going to be.”

The kind of trip has changed too.

“Twenty years ago, Western business delegations would visit giant steel plants to understand China,” he says. “Now they’re coming to visit this incredible tech ecosystem, and we want to support that.”

IMD is also turning its custom corporate immersions into an open program, an “immersive journey” that individual executives can book, not just companies. The school is holding its alumni symposium in Shenzhen this week, the first time the event has been held outside Lausanne. Attendance is capped at about 100 because the companies on the itinerary, some of which are opening R&D areas, typically limit groups to around 30.

FACULTY, AND THE QUESTION OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM

For now, IMD doesn’t plan to base a full faculty in Shenzhen. Researchers work there, and one faculty member splits time between Shenzhen and Singapore. Bach says faculty from IMD’s other locations will mostly travel in to do research and teach, though the school may eventually station faculty at the Hub.

Asked whether faculty will be able to research and teach freely on sensitive topics, Bach points to IMD’s long track record in the country. He says the school’s faculty have done the research they wanted to do in China and published it in premier journals and books.

“With the kind of work that we do and the experience that we have, I’m not too concerned about that,” he says.

‘LEARNING FROM CHINA’

Bach frames the Hub as part of IMD’s ambition to be, in his words, the world’s most impactful business school, which means being where the action is.

“This is not about learning about China. It’s learning from China, and with China and leaders there,” he says.

In 2030, he says, success won’t show up as a revenue line. Most revenue will be earned elsewhere, with Shenzhen serving as a module within larger programs. He’ll measure it by how busy the space is.

“It would just be that the occupancy is pretty high,” Bach says, describing faculty calling to say they have a client or a program they want to bring there, only to find it booked. Beyond that, he wants the Hub to produce practical research and cases that explain how Shenzhen’s companies compete so effectively, and to deepen IMD’s relationships with those firms.

“It’s the quality of those relationships that I’ll look at most,” he says.

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