The CEO Dialogue

Anticipating rising raw material costs, Tata Steel’s CEO & Managing Director TV Narendran tells IMD President Jean-François Manzoni how he introduced a change management process to instill a culture of future readiness at the 100-year-old industrial company.

Henrik Andersen discusses with IMD President Jean-François Manzoni the challenges of navigating supply chain disruptions and soaring raw material costs over the past three years, and why he changed the wind farm developer’s culture to encourage openness and trust.

Regenerative agriculture techniques are vital to improve the resilience of crops and help farmers achieve humanity’s dual objective of growing more food using less land, the CEO of the Swiss agriculture group tells IMD President Jean-François Manzoni, as he advocates for carbon labelling on produce. 

Dilhan Pillay, CEO of Singapore’s global investment giant Temasek, discusses with Jean-François Manzoni the importance of a carbon tax and how his company is working to ensure ‘every generation prospers’ without sacrificing profits.

Mostafa Terrab, CEO and Chairman of the Board of the Moroccan fertilizer group OCP, explains to IMD President Jean-François Manzoni how sincerity of intent helped him gain the trust of his people.

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Antoine de Saint-Affrique is a man who doesn’t let himself, his employees, or his investors get too comfortable. Since becoming the CEO of French food and nutrition giant Danone in September 2021, the 58-year-old executive has delivered some uncomfortable truths.

Saint-Afrique has clearly called out the company’s underperformance compared to peers while remaining confident that Danone is operating in the right categories and has what it takes to win. In conversation with IMD President Jean-Francois Manzoni, he talks about his quest for constant learning and renewal, and his drive to create room for budding talents to emerge and thrive within the organization.

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Read our new magazine, I by IMD, here.

Discover IMD's leadership programmes here.

Rakuten CEO Mickey Mikitani tells IMD President Jean-François Manzoni how – by challenging conventional wisdom and encouraging all staff to tidy their own offices – he has grown his company from an e-commerce startup into an ecosystem spanning internet services, fintech, and mobile.

The Wallenberg sphere operates in about 180 countries and its holdings generate a total of $260bn of annual revenue. But Marcus Wallenberg, chairman of the family holding company, explains to Jean-François Manzoni why working for the benefit of his native Sweden is so important. The Swedes even have a word for it: landsgagneliga.

As companies grapple with some of the biggest upheavals since the industrial revolution, today’s business owners face multiple challenges, from how to transition seamlessly towards sustainability to ensuring that their companies harness the full potential of digitization.  

But they also have to satisfy an increasingly complex tapestry of stakeholders while ensuring that their governance structures remain transparent and agile enough to respond to a backdrop of growing economic and geopolitical uncertainty.

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Read our new magazine, I by IMD, here.

Discover IMD's leadership programmes here.