History & Mission
IMD was formed in January 1990 through the merger of independent management education centers International Management Institute (Geneva) (IMI), established in 1946 by Alcan, and Institut pour l'Etude des Methodes de Direction de l'Entreprise (IMEDE) Lausanne established in 1957 by Nestlé. The new organization settled in Lausanne.
Its industrial heritage sets it apart from the other leading business schools, which are all university-affiliated. IMD is set up as a business school that solely provides executive education; it is determinedly not part of a university, and there are no academic departments, just one integrated multidisciplinary faculty. The professors do not have permanent academic tenure but work under one-year contracts and a performance based pay package. The faculty consists of 60 full-time members, made up of 23 different nationalities. The current President is Dominique Turpin, who follows John R. Wells and Peter Lorange. The latter ran the school from 1993 till 2008 and has been widely credited with having established the institute as one of the world's leading business schools.
IMD has a strong focus on training and developing general management and leadership skills. IMD selects therefore experienced candidates for both the Master of Business Administration (MBA) (average age 31) and the Executive MBA (average age 39). Its other focus is to have a broad international group of participants attending the courses to ensure that no nationality dominates. It intentionally doesn't set up branches in other countries but brings the participants together in Lausanne to stimulate cross-cultural interaction. Every year, some 8,000 executives, representing over 98 nationalities attend one of the programs.
Read more about this topic: International Institute For Management Development
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