IMD Reinvents Its MBA For The AI Revolution

IMD Business School. MBA innovation MassChallenge in Les ateliers at Renens near Lausanne. © Olivier Vogelsang / IMD

With the likelihood that machines may be smarter than people in as little as two decades, business schools all over the world are rethinking how to produce graduates that cannot be replaced by an algorithm.

With most professors still debating exactly what to do about the AI revolution, IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, has devised an innovative answer. In a major redesign of its one-year MBA curriculum, IMD is betting that human skills not easily duplicated by machine intelligence is the best way to prepare students for the AI future.

The school’s reimagined MBA experience, to take effect when it enrolls its new MBA cohort in January, is one of the boldest changes yet in response to how powerful AI will change society and the world of work. For one thing, the new program acknowledges that we are not living with change as usual. The MBA curriculum—informed by corporate executives, faculty, and alumni—accepts that the world is fundamentally changing with the advent of machine intelligence.

A FULL EMBRACE OF AI TECHNOLOGIES AT IMD

A business school must now double down on the humanistic skills not easily duplicated by a machine and must teach a new generation of students how best to collaborate—not only with each other—but with the machines that will sit side by side with them. IMD believes it must place an even greater focus on the human qualities of leadership and enabling change, as these are critical in a world of abundant data and AI.

At IMD, that means a full embrace of AI technologies to do things that graduates had once done on their own. It also means that skill development has become as important if not more so than the knowledge dispensed in traditional coursework.

Among the innovations in IMD’s redesign is an intense focus on ten core skills that range from systems thinking and pattern recognition to storytelling and presentation (see table below). To emphasize the teaching of those skills, IMD students will now receive two grades: a course grade based on the knowledge they are taught and another for the skills they develop and demonstrate.

‘WE NEEDED TO TAKE THIS UP ANOTHER LEVEL’

Omar Toulan, dean of the MBA program at IMD in Switzerland

“We reorganized everything,” says Omar Toulan, MBA dean at IMD. “We needed to take this up to another level. We are focusing on elemental human traits. I have yet to see an AI system that can be an effective leader. You still need someone in the room to use judgment in making the final decision and motivate people to implement it, someone with the intelligence and the courage to make difficult decisions. I would put my bet on leadership.”

“People wanted a greater emphasis on skill-based learning and not just course-based learning,” says Toulan. “We worked down to a list of critical skills we want to track across the entire program (see table below). These are skills that an MBA needs to dominate before they go to the job market. By working with every professor in the program, we can identify how a person is doing on certain skills. When you go into a job interview, you are not there with a team. It’s just you, so you need to have those skills at the individual level.”

IMD believes that a full embrace of machine learning is essential so it is embedding AI throughout the curriculum both as a topic and as a tool for learning. Every professor is now required to have an AI policy on their syllabus. In the new curriculum, MBAs will be taught how to ask the right questions and draw the right inferences from data.

‘NEED TO RECONSIDER WHAT WE TEACH, HOW WE TEACH, AND HOW WE EVALUATE PEOPLE’

To that end, the school has created its own AI engine—IMD AI+—that sources all of the knowledge created by its faculty including lecture recordings, seminars, and published articles along with what is available on the web for both students and alumni. “All of our graduates will have access to their entire MBA, both while they are in the MBA program and eventually as alumni,” says Toulan.

“We all need to reconsider what we teach, how we teach, and how we evaluate people,” says Toulan. “Graduates may not have to do certain analyses themselves anymore, but they will have to ask the right questions from AI. AI can be extremely time-saving, allowing you to focus on more critical issues. The goal is not to take a defensive posture against AI. When you are talking about projects and papers, you need to be conscious of the kinds of questions you are asking and you need to use AI as a partner. It’s not something to defend against. We introduced an AI policy in 2023. It is not a policy that simply says you can’t do A, B, and C. It details what you should do to use AI effectively and properly.”

The new program will kick off with a newly designed, two-week module on critical thinking and communication. “There were always elements of these skills in the program but we need this intense focus in the beginning to highlight the importance they have but also to reinforce them throughout the program. These skills are fundamental, as to be a good leader one must also possess the critical thinking abilities needed to diagnose, assess, and solve problems” adds Toulan.

MBA STUDENTS AT IMD WILL NOW RECEIVE GRADES ON THESE CORE SKILLS

A MONTH-LONG SINGAPORE IMMERSION WILL FOCUS ON TECH & COMMUNICATION

An immersive month in Singapore, entitled the Future Lab, has also been added to the program and will center on digital and AI, during which two days per week will also involve exploring the power of technology in Singapore. “The goal is to focus on not only big tech but how government leverages technology to the betterment of society. Singapore has recently been selected as the most competitive economy in the world by the World Competitiveness Center at IMD and as such is a perfect setting to learn about these trends” says Toulan. “It is a great test site for this. And we will do it with a mix of in-classroom and out-of-classroom activities.”

IMD is making several other adjustments as well, adding a for-credit, eight-week internship option in July and August, devoting more attention to career development, and adding the opportunity to take several electives during August.

The initiative to develop a new curriculum began nine months ago with conversations with corporations, alumni, and faculty. The last time IMD had an overarching program review was ten years ago, though IMD constantly tweaks elements to keep its MBA up to date. In fact, only two years ago in 2022, the school engineered a redesign to put sustainability in the program after interviews with external experts, recruiters, and alumni. Sustainability remains a key element of the new MBA curriculum.

‘NOT THE MBA OF 30 YEARS AGO’

IMD professors were involved in every aspect of the redesign. “The faculty were engaged in at least three touchpoints in the process,” says Toulan, “In the fall, in the winter, and in the final review process in April. We kept the core faculty engaged and informed through it all.  We don’t have a finance department or a strategy department. They are all professors at IMD,” an advantage Toulan believes in changing the program so rapidly.

“This isn’t the MBA of 30 years ago,” adds Toulan. “There are many changes and differences, while at the same time preserving the leadership and experiential focus on the program. Any time you make such a fundamental change, though, there are always stakeholders that must be engaged. We tried to align all interests to come up with a solution that is appealing to candidates and future students while preserving the connection to alumni so they can see their IMD in the new program.”

In its interviews with corporate recruiters, IMD found that problem-solving skills came up again and again. “That led us to the belief that you no longer want to just focus on courses. You want to focus on skills.”

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT REMAINS THE CORE OF THE IMD EXPERIENCE

What will not change is IMD’s focus on leadership development, reinforced through a leadership lab, individual coaching, and 20 hours of psychoanalysis. “The goal of introducing these critical ten skills is to support the development of leaders,” says Toulan. “An effective leader is someone who can make difficult decisions.”

IMD will also retain its small class sizes, its diverse student population, and its highly-popular global International Consulting Projects that have been a key pillar for many years.

Toulan believes that because IMD has what he calls “a relatively niche MBA program” it is in a better position to put through the kinds of comprehensive changes that other schools would find more difficult. “It just means you have to be that much more innovative and creative,” he says. “A standard and purely functional MBA you can get from different sources and different price points. We want to be the most innovative program in the market.”

DON’T MISS: FOR THESE JITTERY MBA APPLICANTS, IT’S THE ULTIMATE GAME OF THRONES or MEET IMD’S MBA CLASS OF 2023 

Learn more about the IMD MBA.