|
At first glance, the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland, appears to be a typical top business school. It operates a strong MBA program, offers a wide array of executive education courses and churns out reams of new research each year.
Dig a little deeper, though, and it becomes quite clear that IMD is far from typical. The school has abandoned faculty hierarchy (you’ll find no assistant or associate professors at IMD) and the tenure system—time-honored traditions at most institutions of higher education. And, unlike the majority of b-schools, IMD actually makes money.
In 2002—a year when many business schools around the world were struggling financially—IMD generated a net profit of approximately U.S. $4.5 million on overall revenue of about U.S. $70 million. “We are totally self-financed,” says IMD President Peter Lorange. “We accept no government money. We have no debt. We are very healthy.”
Lorange, who has been at the helm of IMD since 1993, takes pride in his school’s financial health—as well as in IMD’s reputation for breaking the rules. In fact, he credits doing things differently—and running IMD more as a business than as a traditional business school—as the fuel driving his organization’s growth. “We are doing better than ever,” he says. “That has to do with the fact that we have a very modern portfolio of programs that are highly relevant for today’s companies and their success.”
IMD is reveling in its own success these days. With more than 900 applicants vying for one of only 90 spots in the school’s MBA program, IMD is one of the most exclusive b-schools in the world. It’s also one of the most expensive, charging U.S. $50,000 in tuition and fees for its 10-month MBA program.
In its 2002 ranking of full-time MBA programs, BusinessWeek rated IMD the third best b-school outside the United States, behind the European Institute of Business Administration (INSEAD) and Queen’s University. Coming in at number 21, IMD was the highest-ranked international b-school in the Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive 2003 survey of corporate recruiters.
The school’s broad array of open and customized executive education courses—which generate more than 80 percent of IMD’s annual revenues—are highly regarded and sought after, as well. In its 2002 Executive Education Survey, the Financial Times ranked IMD number six worldwide and number one in Europe in executive education. The survey rated IMD number two worldwide in customized programs.
Practical Value
With the motto “real world, real learning,” IMD’s goal is to provide its students and executive education participants with research and classroom lessons steeped in relevance. “We are obsessed with practice,” says Sean Meehan, IMD’s MBA program director and the Martin Hilti Professor of Marketing and Change Management. “Working with real managers on real issues is the dominant thing that goes on here.”
This obsession with practice is perhaps most obvious in IMD’s executive education offerings. The school recently launched a new suite of “action learning” programs that enable companies to send teams of executives to study specific issues affecting their businesses and industries.
|
