Stephane Girod

Stéphane J.G. Girod Background

On the functional side, he is committed to helping companies acquire the tools they need to agile to play to win and adapt skillfully to uncertain and fast-changing environments reshaped by digital and (de)globalization. Crucially, he believes that being agile goes beyond merely “doing agile”. Stéphane also ardently argues that organizational innovation is an all-to-often overlooked source of competitive advantage.

At the Institute for Management Development in Switzerland (IMD), which has its headquarters in Lausanne, he facilitates many senior executive workshops and co-directs the Digital Execution open program. In 2021, Stéphane co-authored the book “Resetting Management”, which focuses on mastering business agility in the context of a newly emerging management paradigm that leaves behind the bureaucratic and hierarchical way of strategizing, working and leading. In 2022, he will be co-guest editor of a Special Issue of California Management Review on business agility.

He is therefore passionate about helping companies and leaders build the confidence they need to create more agility for themselves and weave it into their strategies and organization. He can inspire you to:

• Shift the business from “playing not to lose” to “playing to win” in the digital age
• Articulate what form of agility is right for your business based on the diagnosis of your current degree of rigidity vs agility.
• Create a roadmap to make your business gradually more agile, instead of automatically defaulting to agile methods.
• Identify and reconcile the competing demands (trade-offs) that are preconditions of strategic and/or organizational agility.
• Create organizational designs that can boost competitive advantage using the opportunities that the digital age presents.
• Become a more agile leader and harness the power of more distributed leadership throughout the business.
• Navigate the planned and unplanned challenges of agility transformation.

Stéphane is an expert of consumer goods industries such as retail and automobile, and a recognized thought leader in strategy and innovation in luxury goods. At IMD, he oversees those activities designed for luxury brands, which culminate in the annual Reinventing Luxury Lab open program. He writes a regular online column in Forbes on innovation and agility in luxury.

To sum up, Stéphane can inspire you to:

• Accelerate innovation while retaining the specificities of luxury
• Accelerate your digital transformation to create more economic value
• Lead a process of transformation towards a more purposeful and durable luxury
• Recalibrate your distribution strategy in the era of connected retail
• Redesign your ways of working and leading for greater agility in times of uncertainty

His thought leadership has appeared in several top scientific journals, Harvard Business Review and also in China Daily, The Economist Intelligence Unit, Women’s Wear Daily, BBC News, Télévision Suisse Romande, Valor Econômico, La Vanguardia, Tribune de Genève, Luxury Society, Handelszeitung, Vogue and The Times.

Stéphane J.G. Girod Keynote Speaker

A highly competent speaker of English and Spanish alongside his native French and Italian, Stéphane has either spoken or has upcoming engagements at the Glion Economic Forum, Ambrosetti, the Swiss Chamber of Commerce, the Luxury Innovation Summit in Geneva and Watches and Wonders, also in Geneva.

Stéphane holds a PhD from Saïd Business School, Oxford University and an MBA from Aalto University, Helsinki. He has been a keen tennis player since childhood.