AUTHORS’ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Our names are on the cover, but this book came to life only with the help of many wonderful people. We are deeply indebted to our executive students, advisors, co-authors, colleagues and the many other people who contributed to, hopefully, making us a little less wrong.
For the production of this book, we are particularly indebted to Friederike Hawighorst whose stellar fact-checking left us no respite! Not only did she painstakingly challenge each of our assertions, but she did so in an inspiring way. Thank you for your wonderful contribution, Friederike; we can’t wait to hear about your upcoming successes—and we’ll be the first to tell people that we knew you way back when!
IMD is a unique sandbox. At the intersection of the world of ideas (academia) and that of doing (management), it enables us to generate ideas, develop them and relentlessly test them in empirical settings. That makes our job unbelievably fun. Any more fun, in fact, and we’d feel compelled to forgo our salary.
IMD’s unique DNA stems from diverse, fun, brilliant people working together—plus us two, who aspire to be half as talented as them. We are indebted to our many colleagues here. Among them, we send particular appreciation to Jean-Louis Barsoux, Cyril Bouquet, Christos Cabolis, Dominik Chahabadi, Antoine Chocque, Frédéric Dalsace, Lisa Duke, Delia Fischer, Susan Goldsworthy, Lars Haggstrom, Paul Hunter, Tawfik Jelassi, Amit Joshi, Blandine Malhet, Jean-François Manzoni, Alyson Meister, Anand Narasimhan, Kiyan Nouchirvani, Francis Pfluger, Patrick Reinmöller, Karl Schmedders, Dominique Turpin and Michael Watkins. Phil Rosenzweig gets special thanks for directly (Albrecht) and indirectly (Arnaud) bringing us to IMD, serving as a role model of rigour and pedagogy during our tenure here, providing deeply insightful comments on an early version of the draft, and generally challenging us to be better thinkers and educators.
Participants in our programmes significantly contributed to shaping the material. We are especially grateful to those in the MBA, Executive MBA, Advanced Strategic Management, Advanced Management Concepts, Global Management Foundations, Transition to Business Leadership, Orchestrating Winning Performance and Complex Problem-Solving programmes.
We also benefited immensely from the help of numerous individuals in academia and the business world who through the space of an email exchange, joint teaching, a dinner conversation, a walk along the lake, or a review of the draft offered wonderful ideas. We extend special gratitude to Max Bazerman, Jeff Friedman, Marc Gruber, Dirk Hoke, Jouko Karvinen, Philip Meissner, Gilles Morel, Fred Oswald, Martin Reeves, Denise Rousseau, Richard Rumelt, Ian Charles Stewart, Phil Tetlock, Tim van Gelder and Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg and Torsten Wulf.
Others yet helped us improve how we approach complex problems in ways big and small. We’re grateful to TJ Farnworth, Øystein Fjeldstad, Harald Hungenberg, Thomas Hutzschenreuter, Ajay Kohli, Michael Kokkolaras, Andreas König, François Modave, Paula Sanders, Pol Spanos, Siri Terjesen, Petros Tratskas and Michael Widowitz for sharing insightful ways into cracking tough problems.
We also thank the staff at Pearson Education and in the IMD Communication team for bringing this project to life.
Finally, we are most grateful to our extended families—in Germany, France, and the US—for their love, advice, patience, humour and support throughout the journey. They continuously put up with us when FrED kept us away from family activities over countless evenings, weekends and vacations. Now that FrED is out in the world, we only hope to show them as much support as they have. Our lives are better because you’re in them; thank you!