Tabla de contenidos para 21. March 2026 en I by IMD

March 2026 marks a milestone in the history of modern thought: the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Smith’s “quiet miracle of coordination” remains the bedrock of our global economy, and the articles in this issue of I by IMD demonstrate that his insights are more relevant than ever. Smith’s most famous concept, the “invisible hand,” describes how individuals pursuing their own interests promote the welfare of society as a whole. In our cover story, Mark Greeven explores the modern evolution of this coordination. Building a true business ecosystem, he argues, requires leaders to give up control – shifting from a monolithic center to a network of autonomous actors. Just as Smith’s baker does not bake out of benevolence, ecosystems succeed only when they…

When will we get our first one-person unicorn – a company valued at $1bn that has a single employee? Sam Altman and his CEO friends are confident it will happen soon, thanks to the revolution in generative AI. But do we even need that one person? With agentic AI, we could soon see zero-person corporations that operate according to a core mission that may or may not be visible to us. Let’s call it an algorithmic corporation. Tech platforms have pioneered a model in which the vast majority of labor is provided by contractors, not employees. DoorDash’s latest annual report states that the company has 23,700 employees and eight million “dashers” (non-employee drivers) – that’s 340 gig workers for every employee. Similar figures hold for Uber and other platforms. Hiring,…

1. Start with yourself Before changing the system, audit your own habits. What are you skipping, rushing, or delegating too quickly? Leadership credibility starts with doing the basics well. 2. Get closer to the work Step out of the slide decks and into the real experience. Spend time with customers, teams, and front lines. That’s where insight lives. 3. Trade optics for outcomes Don’t chase what looks good at the moment. Focus on what works over time. Real leadership shows up in follow-through, not flash. 4. Design your days on purpose Chaos isn’t a badge of honor. If everything feels urgent, nothing is intentional. Structure your time to reflect your priorities. 5. Make responsibility visible People don’t learn from what you say. They learn from what you do. Model ownership…

Adam Smith, born in Kirkcaldy in 1723, was a child of the Scottish Enlightenment. He attended the University of Glasgow from the age of 14, where he was exposed to influential philosophical thinking, and continued his studies at Balliol College, Oxford. Smith built an academic career and became Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. During this period, he published The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, a work that established his reputation as an important moral philosopher long before he became known as an economist. In 1764, he left academia to serve as tutor to a young duke, a role that allowed him to travel extensively across France and Switzerland. These travels proved decisive for his intellectual development. It is widely believed that he met Voltaire and…

Ping An, one of the largest and most digitally advanced financial services groups in the world, didn’t set out to build an ecosystem. It wanted to digitally transform an insurance business. It was only after more than a decade of that difficult process that the possibility of an ecosystem emerged. It gradually became a strategic necessity. Almost a quarter of a century ago, the Chinese insurance giant embarked on the unglamorous grind of digital transformation: centralizing siloed back offices into a shared “kitchen” to serve every business line, digitizing customer journeys, arming a vast front line with tools, and building the data and AI capabilities that would become Ping An Technology, serving more than 500 million users. As its former co-CEO Jessica Tan recalled, it was “difficult just building everything”…

The drive toward an eco-friendly economy is not an ideology, but an innovation and business design challenge When Paul Polman took over as CEO of multinational consumer goods giant Unilever in 2009, he took a gamble, premised on the idea that companies do well by doing good. Polman scrapped “short-termist” quarterly earnings guidance and launched the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, perhaps the boldest sustainability initiative ever attempted in corporate history. The goal? “To decouple growth from our environmental impact, while increasing our positive social impact.” In doing so, the Dutchman believed he could double the size of the business. For a time, it looked like the bet had paid off. Unilever’s reported regular sales growth during Polman’s 10-year tenure delivered strong shareholder returns and outpaced the market. The company became…

1. What is your personal motto? Always focus on the value you bring. 2. Name three traits that make a great business leader. Curiosity, clarity, and energy. 3. What experience has had the greatest influence on your leadership style? As chief of staff for a Fortune 100 company, I learned how much of the friction and inefficiency in a company stems from silos and corporate functions that think more highly of themselves than the people on the frontline. The CEO must focus on being a CFO - a chief facilitating officer. This involves listening to the people who talk to customers, make products, and understand the problems in the field, and giving them the tools they need. 4. How do you balance your well-being and personal life with leadership? I…

Shareholder activism is not limited to distressed situations. It also engages high-performing companies when investors believe further value can be unlocked. Entry points are diverse: perceived undervaluation, excess cash, capital allocation under scrutiny, a conglomerate structure that creates a holding discount (where the sum of the parts exceeds the group’s market value), governance open to improvement, or a strategy viewed as overly cautious. Strong performance mitigates risk – it does not eliminate it. And it is often during the good times that governance vulnerabilities quietly accumulate. Shareholder activism pushes for change. Strategy, capital allocation, and governance are put to the test. External pressure builds. When an activist shareholder accumulates a meaningful stake, that pressure shifts into the boardroom. Formally, little changes overnight. Mandates remain intact. Committees continue to operate. The…

Executives contemplating a transition almost always focus on tactics: updating their CV, polishing their LinkedIn profile, reaching out to their network, and applying for jobs. But they would be better served asking themselves, “What is my ‘competitive identity’ in this market?” All successful executives build their careers on performance. They deliver, take responsibility, and create results. For many years, that is enough – until suddenly it is not. When entering a period of transition, experienced leaders find themselves compared with peers who are equally accomplished: similar education, scope of responsibility, and industry exposure. The question shifts from, “Are you competent?” to “Why you?” If you can’t answer that question with clarity, you become interchangeable. Interchangeability is expensive and perilous. It lengthens transitions, creates risks, reduces negotiating power, and weakens influence…

In today’s algorithm-driven world, we are obsessed with “loud” leadership. We track Elon Musk’s latest public brawls and Mark Zuckerberg’s “done apologizing” tours because, in the current media landscape, volume seems to masquerade as value. But as business historian Martin Gutmann argues, we often confuse a good story with good leadership. Gutmann’s research on polar explorers makes the point vividly. Ernest Shackleton’s legendary rescue mission after his ship, Endurance, got stuck in ice in Antarctica, has become one of history’s great adventure stories. However, despite the hype around Shackleton’s exploits, it was the detail-obsessed Norwegian Roald Amundsen who reached the South Pole first in 1911, some four years earlier than Endurance’s ill-fated mission. Amundsen’s diaries? “Almost boring,” Gutmann notes. “No melodrama, no near-death cliffhangers. There were just checklists, weather notes,…

The logic for Sustainability 2.0 might sound straightforward, but delivering it is another matter. Why? Because it calls for a different approach to leadership: sustainability efforts are destined to fail if leadership decisions and behaviors are at odds with the new logic. Sustainability, by definition, introduces unwelcome tensions and trade-offs. It sits at the intersection of regulation and innovation, activism and profitability, long-term resilience and short-term pressure. It divides customers into those who care deeply and those who do not care at all. It invites scrutiny from investors and NGOs. For many leaders, this feels like a complication layered onto an already complex job. Over two years of research, we have identified five leadership principles that executives can adopt to manage these tensions and transform their organizations into “clean winners.”…

When Slawomir Krupa became CEO of Societe Generale in May 2023, he took the helm of one of Europe’s oldest and most storied financial institutions. Founded in 1864, Societe Generale operates in 58 countries, serves around 27 million clients, and employs about 110,000 people. The bank generated revenues of €27.3bn and net profit of €6bn in 2025, translating into a market capitalization of €55bn - marking a 300% rise under Krupa’s leadership. For years, however, the bank had struggled to convince investors of its long-term trajectory. When Krupa took office, Societe Generale’s share price was still below where it had traded 15 years earlier, in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, and it stood at a significant discount to major European peers. The institution had endured successive shocks…

We often discuss leadership in terms of culture, inclusion, empathy, and purpose. These all matter, of course, but beneath every effective leader and every meaningful career is a simpler truth: there are no shortcuts, only responsibility. This surfaces repeatedly in the advice of enduring leaders. Take Jamie Dimon, Chair and CEO at JPMorgan Chase since 2006. He has been consistent: work hard, learn deeply, be efficient, communicate clearly, do not waste people’s time, and take ownership of outcomes. “There’s no replacement for hard work,” he says. “I still see people who think they can take a shortcut to something heroic. It’s almost never true.” Leadership does not begin with a title or a mandate; it begins with how you show up for the work in front of you. The discipline…

Walk into any coffee shop and you’ll witness a quiet miracle of coordination. The beans may come from Colombia, the milk from a Swiss valley, and the cup from China. Yet no one planned this complex dance. Each actor in this value constellation – the farmer, the roaster, the barista – is pursuing their own livelihood. There seems to be an “invisible hand” that coordinates all these activities. Adam Smith described it perfectly 250 years ago in his book The Wealth of Nations. Perhaps no phrase is more misunderstood in economics than this “invisible hand.” It isn’t a mystical force guiding the economy but a social mechanism: when individuals act to improve their own situations, they often promote the welfare of society as a whole. The baker does not bake…

In the first installment of this column, I confessed to an “intense exchange” with ChatGPT to find a name for these lines. Back then, I described it as a real collaboration; neither the machine nor I could have arrived at President’s Soliloquy alone. Eighteen months later, human-machine collaboration has evolved into something far more profound than merely editorial support. That was the theme of my graduation speech to the February cohort of the IMD Executive MBA Class of 2026. As I looked out, I realized they represented a historic pivot point. They are the first generation who will not just hire people but also “on-board” intelligence. The shift is already visible in the data. We are seeing a 32% decline in UK entry-level job postings since the launch of ChatGPT.…