International Institute for Management Development (IMD) is a business education school located in Lausanne, Switzerland.
It is not part of a university, and only offers MBA and Executive MBA programs.
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, the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), settled in Lausanne. The history of IMEDE and its merger with IMI is documented in Jean-Pierre Jeannet and Hein Schreuder (2015, chapters 2 and 4). Its industrial heritage is unusual for business schools, which are usually university-affiliated.
IMD business school 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 50 full-time members, made up of 21 different nationalities. The latter ran the school from 1993 till 2008 and has been widely credited with having established IMD as one of the world's leading business schools.
IMD focuses on training and developing general management and leadership skills. IMD selects experienced candidates for both the Master of Business Administration (MBA) (average age 31) and the Executive MBA (average age 40). Its other focus is to have a broad international group of participants attending open programs to ensure that no nationality dominates.
Every year, some 8,000 executives, representing over 98 nationalities attend one of the programs.
