I by IMD

Jay Mehta, owner of the Metha Group, sits down with Misiek Piskorski Dean of IMD Asia and Oceania.--Read our new magazine, I by IMD, here.Discover IMD's leadership programmes here.

French entrepreneur and mountain guide Marion Chaygneaud-Dupuy explains to Professor of Sustainable Innovation and Business Transformation Julia Binder how she made a profitable business model – climbing Mount Everest – more sustainable.-------Read our new magazine, I by IMD, here.Discover IMD's leadership programmes here.

Olympian Rebecca Wardell tells Heather Cairns-Lee how a 20,000 km bike ride from Lausanne to New Zealand taught her the importance of managing her mindset, resilience, teamwork, and the kindness of strangers.-------Read our new magazine, I by IMD, here.Discover IMD's leadership programmes here.

Inspired by electrical engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla, Mate Rimac, CEO of the electric supercar company Rimac Automobili, is helping to drive a revolution in the automotive sector. He sits down for an interview with IMD's Didier Bonnet.-------Read our new magazine, I by IMD, here.Discover IMD's leadership programmes here.

IMD's Julia Binder how Judith Wiese, Chief People & Sustainability Officer at Siemens, effectively combines two roles at the German technology and industrial group.-------Read our new magazine, I by IMD, here.Discover IMD's leadership programmes here.

Globally, firms are coming under increasing pressure to weigh profit-making against their social and environmental responsibilities. The trend, which breaks with a long tradition of shareholder primacy, requires business leaders to understand the needs, interests, and expectations of a diverse array of stakeholders. At Rio Tinto, no one has a greater awareness of this than Isabelle Deschamps. As the mining group’s Chief Legal Officer, Deschamps is not short of responsibility. Her remit includes legal, ethical, and corporate governance functions, as well as communications, and public affairs. It's rare that companies bring all of these functions together under one person. But Deschamps says that while at first glance they may seem to conflict with one another, the key to solving all of them is listening: "When you talk about communications you think about 'transparency,' when you talk about legal you think 'defense'. But that's not the way we see it. We see that all these functions can create positive tension, but also help us get to the right decision-making." Deschamps says that to improve decision-making, every stakeholder – both internal and external – needs to be given a voice. In conversation with David Bach, IMD's Professor of Strategy and Political Economy, she talks about ethics, leadership, and getting ahead of the curve. ***** Isabelle Deschamps joined Rio Tinto in November 2021 and has extensive international experience. She is admitted to the England and Wales Law Society and to the Quebec Bar, in Canada. Deschamps has also worked as General Counsel of the AkzoNobel Group and a member of its Executive Committee, and prior to this at Unilever. David Bach is Professor of Strategy and Political Economy, Rio Tinto Chair in Stakeholder Engagement and Dean of Innovation and Programs. He is a political economy expert with a proven track record of creating impactful learning journeys in a dual role as both Professor and Dean. His course The End of Globalization? – designed in the aftermath of the Brexit vote and the rise of populist leaders across Western democracies – received the 2018 Ideas Worth Teaching Award from the Aspen Institute.

90% of startups fail. For all sorts of different reasons. And few people want to talk about it. But WiReD Magazine co-Founder and IMD Executive in Residence Ian Charles Stewart and Aike Festini, Founder and CEO of logistics startup Luckabox AG, are more than happy to.In our latest IMD ACE Founders Series podcast interview Stewart and Festini discuss what happens when things go wrong, how to spot the signs of an ailing business, and lessons that can be learned for next time. *****Aike Festini is a passionate, compassionate, and curious serial entrepreneur who has been awarded multiple tech awards for her startup LuckaBox Logistics AG. She is currently the founder of Rebels With A Cause, offering scaling and innovation strategies for SMEs and Scale Up Startups. Aike also acts as an executive coach for startups and SME leaders in the digital sphere and mentors other executives and entrepreneurs as they build their businesses. She’s been featured on Forbes, CNN, as well as many newspapers and business magazines in the DACH region.Ian Charles Stewart is Chairman of the WheelsPlusWings Foundation, is a Trustee of the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Canada, and is an Executive in Residence at IMD. Stewart is also an investor in and advisor to startups in the FinTech and Media sectors. Stewart was the Co-Founder of WiReD Magazine and Founder and CEO of Aztec Internet (responsible for BBC News Online and FT.com). Stewart was formerly MD of venture capital in the Rothschild Group and a Venture Fund Manager within the Lazard Group. Stewart has served as Mentor, Judge, and Lecturer to students in Venture Capital and Social Entrepreneurship programs at London Business School, was a Visiting Professor and Enterprise Board member of the University of the Arts, London, and holds an MBA (with Honours) from IMD.

As the FinTech arena moves beyond smoothing back-office processes and facilitating relationships between existing players we are seeing a new generation of B2C players rise to take on the incumbent institutions.  With the rise of challenger banks, we also see hybrid organizations seeking to use new technologies and the resulting processes and public awareness thereof to slice up markets a little differently. Alpian is one such nascent institution, with both new aspects and old backers, seeking to bridge the gap between high street/ retail banks and service-based private wealth managers.  Schuyler Weiss is a dual U.S.-Swiss citizen and he has been CEO of Alpian for the past three years. In a conversation with IMD Executive in Residence Ian Charles Stewart, he discusses the near future of how you manage your money.

Raffaello D’Andrea co-founded warehouse automation company Kiva Systems, which was sold to Amazon in 2012 for $775m and rebranded as Amazon Robotics, and then Verity, the autonomous indoor drone company now growing quickly in Zürich. He is also a Professor of Dynamic Systems & Control at Switzerland’s leading technology university ETH, in Zürich and was formerly an Associate Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University in the US.  In conversation with Ian Charles Stewart, WiReD Magazine co-founder and IMD Executive in Residence, D'Andrea talks about the future of Robotics and AI/Machine Learning in our latest Founder Series interview.

Oyster began with a question: How can we make global employment easier for companies and talented workers? Building an all-star team shouldn’t be limited by borders. Now, the company is on a mission to make it easier than ever for growing companies to hire, pay, and take care of brilliant employees - wherever they are in the world. Tony Jamous, the founder of Oyster, is a tech entrepreneur and angel investor. He is currently building the future of work through the distributed talent enablement platform that allows growing companies to tap into the global talent pool and offer their remote workers around the world a great employment experience. Prior to Oyster, Tony co-founded and led Nexmo, a leader in CPAAS (Communication Platform As A Service) acquired by Vonage in 2016. Tony holds a Masters in Computer Science from Grenoble Institute of Technology in France and an MBA from IMD.