Stephane Girod

Why organisations work with Stéphane J.G. Girod

• Co-author of Resetting Management (Kogan Page, 2021), shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2022 in Change & Sustainability, with diagnostic tools tested against the agility journeys of LEGO, General Electric, LVMH and ING.
• Co-edited the Summer 2023 California Management Review special issue on business agility with Julian Birkinshaw of London Business School and Christiane Prange, placing him at the academic centre of how agility is studied and taught.
• Directs IMD’s Luxury 2050 initiative and the Reinventing Luxury Lab, with named C-suite client work at Richemont, La Prairie, Cartier, PUIG, Mazda and Telenor.
• His Harvard Business Review article “Restructure or Reconfigure?” (with Samina Karim of Northeastern) gives executives the working distinction that one in three reorganisations get wrong: when to change the underlying structure and when only to recombine units within it.

Biography highlights

• Professor of Strategy and Organizational Innovation at IMD Business School, Lausanne.
• Co-author, Resetting Management: Thrive with Agility in the Age of Uncertainty (Kogan Page, 2021); shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2022 in Change & Sustainability.
• Co-editor of the Summer 2023 California Management Review special issue on business agility, with Julian Birkinshaw and Christiane Prange.
• Forbes columnist on innovation and transformation in luxury industries.
• Research published in Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal and Long Range Planning.
• DPhil in Strategic Management, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; MBA, Aalto University; speaks seven languages.
• Forthcoming with Wiley: Purposeful Luxury, on positive-impact sustainability strategies in luxury industries.
• Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Entertainment and Lifestyle Economy, 2025 to 2026.

Biography

Most large organisations are not built for the speed at which their markets now change. Strategy cycles run on multi-year horizons. Org charts assume stable competitive advantage. Both premises are under sustained strain in consumer goods, banking, retail and luxury.

Stéphane Girod has spent his academic career on the diagnostic question this raises: when planning fails, what replaces it? His book Resetting Management, co-authored with Martin Králik and shortlisted for the 2022 Business Book Awards in Change & Sustainability, sets out a framework for business agility tested against case studies of LEGO, General Electric, LVMH and ING. Agility, in his account, lives at three distinct levels: strategic, organisational, and leadership. Most companies confuse one for another.

His base is IMD, where he is Professor of Strategy and Organizational Innovation, leads the Luxury 2050 initiative, and directs the Reinventing Luxury Lab. He works directly with executive teams at Richemont, La Prairie, Cartier, PUIG, Mazda and Telenor on strategy and transformation. His sectoral focus on luxury, retail and consumer goods places him close to the industries where the agility question has become most urgent, where consumer behaviour, digital channels and sustainability pressure are now moving faster than strategic planning can absorb.

His research has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal and Long Range Planning. With Samina Karim of Northeastern University, his 2017 HBR article “Restructure or Reconfigure?” gave executives a working distinction between two organisational change strategies that produce very different financial results. He co-edited the Summer 2023 California Management Review special issue on business agility with Julian Birkinshaw of London Business School and Christiane Prange. Girod holds a DPhil from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and speaks seven languages. He writes a Forbes column on innovation and transformation in luxury industries. His forthcoming book with Wiley, Purposeful Luxury, addresses how luxury houses move sustainability from brand narrative into operating substance.

Key speaking topics

• Business agility in established organisations
• Strategy under uncertainty
• Organisational design and reconfiguration
• Digital execution in large companies
• Innovation and disruption in the luxury sector
• Sustainability strategy in luxury and consumer goods
• Leading large-scale transformation

Ideal for

• Executive teams in luxury, consumer goods, retail and banking facing structural disruption
• Chief strategy officers and transformation leads designing the next planning cycle
• Boards of luxury and premium brands navigating polarisation, sustainability pressure and shifts in the Chinese market
• C-suites running a major reorganisation who need to choose between restructuring and reconfiguring

Audience outcomes

• A working distinction between strategic, organisational and leadership agility, with a diagnostic for which one their company needs first
• A test for whether the next reorganisation should be a restructure or a reconfiguration, and what each implies financially
• Specific examples of how LEGO, ING, LVMH and General Electric have succeeded and failed at agility, with the lessons that travel across sectors
• A sector-specific read on how luxury and consumer-goods incumbents are responding to digital channels, sustainability pressure and shifts in the Chinese market