Michael Wade
Most large digital and AI investments stall before they deliver. The technology is rarely the reason. The operating model and leadership decisions move slower than the tools, and that mismatch is where most programmes quietly slide off the agenda.
Michael Wade helps boards and senior executives close the gap between digital and AI ambition and the execution that delivers it, drawing on two decades at IMD Business School and books including Digital Vortex and Hacking Digital.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Michael Wade
- He runs IMD’s AI Maturity Index, which evaluates the 300 largest companies in the Forbes Global 2000 on how they have actually embedded AI across executive support, infrastructure, operations, workforce and ethics. The data behind it gives him a view of corporate AI adoption that is not available to the wider speaker market.
- The Digital Vortex framework, introduced in his 2017 Axiom Business Book Award winner and updated through IMD’s ongoing research, gives strategy teams a way to map how fast each industry is being pulled toward digital disruption.
- His books work as operating manuals. Hacking Digital and Orchestrating Transformation give boards and Chief Digital Officers structured playbooks for sequencing change, drawn from custom programmes with Vodafone, AXA, Credit Suisse, Nestle and Cartier.
- He founded and directs Leading Digital and AI Transformation at IMD, Europe’s first and largest executive programme on digital and AI. Many of the leaders setting the agenda inside their own boards have already been through his classroom.
Biography highlights
- Professor of Strategy and Digital at IMD Business School in Lausanne and holder of the TONOMUS Professorship in Digital and AI Transformation
- Director of IMD’s TONOMUS Global Center for Digital and AI Transformation, which publishes the annual AI Maturity Index of the largest companies in the Forbes Global 2000
- Co-author of Digital Vortex (winner of the 2017 Axiom Business Book Award), Orchestrating Transformation, Hacking Digital, ALIEN Thinking, Twin Transformation and GAIN: Demystifying GenAI
- Published in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, MIS Quarterly and Strategic Management Journal; regular contributor to Fortune and Forbes
- Inducted into the Swiss Digital Shapers Hall of Fame in 2021 by Bilanz, Handelszeitung, Le Temps and Digitalswitzerland; named one of Switzerland’s top 10 digital thought leaders in 2016, 2017 and 2020
- Hosts the IMD podcasts Management Under the Microscope and Mike & Amit Talk Tech; has designed custom executive programmes for Vodafone, AXA, Credit Suisse, Nestle, Cartier and others
Biography
Most digital and AI transformations do not fail at the technology layer. Research at IMD puts the failure rate around 87%, and the bottleneck almost always sits elsewhere. It is in the gap between the system that has been bought and the operating model that has to absorb it.
Wade has spent two decades inside that gap. He is Professor of Strategy and Digital at IMD Business School in Lausanne, where he holds the TONOMUS Professorship and directs the school’s Global Center for Digital and AI Transformation. The Center’s AI Maturity Index ranks the 300 largest companies in the Forbes Global 2000 on how they have embedded AI in production. It is one of the few public benchmarks that separates companies running AI at scale from those still in pilot.
Digital Vortex, the 2017 Axiom Business Book Award winner, gave executives a way to measure how fast their industry was being pulled toward digital disruption. Orchestrating Transformation and Hacking Digital followed with playbooks for what to do once that velocity is clear. Twin Transformation and GAIN, both published in 2025, extend the same discipline into AI and sustainability. The pattern is consistent: books written for the executive who has to deliver the change.
In 2021, the Swiss media consortium Bilanz, Handelszeitung, Le Temps and Digitalswitzerland inducted him into its Digital Shapers Hall of Fame. He had been named one of Switzerland’s top 10 digital thought leaders three times before that. Boards still book him because he has taught their peers and run custom programmes for companies they benchmark against, including Vodafone, AXA, Credit Suisse and Nestle.
Key speaking topics
- Digital and AI transformation
- Enterprise AI adoption at scale
- Industry disruption and competitive strategy
- The AI-augmented executive
- Innovation and breakthrough thinking
- Organisational agility and resilience
Ideal for
- Boards and executive committees overseeing digital and AI strategy
- Chief Digital Officers and Chief AI Officers responsible for end-to-end transformation
- CEOs and senior leadership teams making capital allocation decisions on AI and technology
- Strategy and innovation leaders inside companies that are mid-transformation and need to course-correct
Audience outcomes
- A specific read on where their organisation sits on the AI maturity dimensions, and what separates companies running AI in production from those still in pilot
- A working language for the gap between digital ambition and execution that boards and senior leaders can use in their own conversations
- A revised view of which industries are most exposed to digital disruption, and where defensive strategy and offensive moves should sit in the response
- A way to frame AI investment as an organisational change problem, with the operating model and leadership decisions as the binding constraint
Talks
A challenge to the equation of organisational speed with strategic advantage, showing where motion masks weak strategy and burns out leadership teams.
Key takeaways:
- A diagnostic for telling value-creating momentum apart from activity that drives burnout
- Structural moves that let an enterprise absorb external shocks without costly pivots
- A method for using disruption to strengthen the business, anchored in foresight and leadership discipline
A working method for executives to reduce administrative load and reclaim time for strategic decisions, built around an AI operating system rather than a tool list.
Key takeaways:
- Executive prompting that aligns AI outputs with the leader’s voice and specific objectives
- An AI operating system that automates non-value work and acts as a digital chief of staff
- AI as a thinking partner for stress-testing strategy, surfacing blind spots and rehearsing counter-arguments before key decisions
A keynote on how AI is redistributing value across professional services, where commoditisation is happening fastest and where complexity creates new openings.
Key takeaways:
- Where AI is reshaping professional services and which roles are being commoditised first
- How rising complexity creates new sources of advantage for the firms that can hold it
- What it takes for incumbents to lead the AI transition, judged against the speed at which competitors are moving
An examination of how organisations move from isolated AI experiments to integrated agent-based systems, and the strategic choices that decision forces onto leadership.
Key takeaways:
- The shift from point AI solutions to orchestrated agent systems that scale value creation
- The strategic implications of treating AI agents as a foundational enterprise capability
- The leadership choices that determine whether AI agents become a source of competitive advantage
Videos
Testimonials
Books
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Asia Pacific | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Europe | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Middle East & Africa | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| South America | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| United Kingdom | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US East Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US West Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Virtual | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |