Tawfik Jelassi
Digital transformation has become the flag every board agenda flies. The hard question is which parts of the business model actually change, who is accountable for the outcome, and how governments and regulators will reshape the ground beneath a strategy as it is being executed. Leaders who treat technology, policy and strategy as separate conversations keep losing the argument in all three.
Tawfik Jelassi is a former UNESCO Assistant Director-General and IMD professor who advises organisations on digital transformation in a world where technology strategy and public policy now move as one system.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Tawfik Jelassi
- He has run digital transformation from three vantage points most speakers only write about: as an IMD professor teaching the OWP programme, as a national minister responsible for ICT policy, and as the UNESCO executive overseeing the global agenda on information and knowledge societies.
- His textbook Strategies for e-Business, now in its fourth edition with Springer, is used in business schools worldwide, which means his frameworks on value creation and digital business models are not improvised for the stage, they are stress-tested in classrooms.
- The policy lens is hard to replicate. On questions of AI governance, disinformation, platform regulation and digital inequality, he speaks from inside the UN system, not as an outside commentator.
- His case-writing record, recognised repeatedly by the European Foundation for Management Development, the Society for Information Management and the Case Centre, produces sessions anchored in named companies and decisions rather than abstractions.
- He moves credibly across corporate, government and multilateral audiences, which is what most digital and AI briefs now require when the room includes a regulator or a chief of staff.
Biography highlights
- Professor of Strategy and Technology Management at IMD Business School; Co-Director of IMD’s flagship Orchestrating Winning Performance programme
- UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, 2021 to 2025
- Former Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research and ICT in Tunisia’s Jomaa government, 2014 to 2015
- PhD in Information Systems, New York University (Stern); former faculty at INSEAD and Indiana University (Kelley); former Dean of the Business School at École des Ponts ParisTech
- Co-author of Strategies for e-Business, Springer, fourth edition
- Multiple case-writing awards from EFMD, SIM and the Case Centre; two Tunisian national decorations for service in education and science
Biography
Digital transformation is no longer a technology programme. It is a choice about the business model, the regulator’s next move, and the kind of society an organisation wants to operate in. Tawfik Jelassi’s authority comes from having run that choice at three levels at which most leaders only experience one. He teaches it at IMD as Professor of Strategy and Technology Management and Co-Director of Orchestrating Winning Performance, the institute’s largest executive programme.
Before IMD, he spent thirteen years as Dean of the Business School at École des Ponts ParisTech, with earlier faculty posts at INSEAD and Indiana University’s Kelley School, and a PhD in Information Systems from NYU Stern. His case writing on digital business and technology management has been recognised repeatedly by the European Foundation for Management Development, the Society for Information Management and the Case Centre. The co-authored Springer textbook Strategies for e-Business is in its fourth edition.
The second stream is policy. Jelassi served as Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research and ICT in Tunisia’s post-revolution government under Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa. From 2021 to 2025 he was UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, responsible for the organisation’s global programmes on freedom of expression, digital transformation, AI governance, information integrity and ICT in education. Few academics working on digital strategy have held the pen on multilateral regulation of the platforms they teach about.
That dual vantage point is the point of the work. Jelassi can tell a board how a generative AI deployment looks from the inside of a UN agency drafting rules for it, and tell a ministry how a platform chief executive reasons about compliance. For organisations whose strategy now runs through regulation, geopolitics and public trust as much as technology, that is an unusually useful seat at the table.
Key speaking topics
- Digital business transformation and value creation
- AI governance and platform regulation
- Leadership in technology-driven organisations
- Information integrity, trust and freedom of expression
- Inclusive knowledge societies and the digital divide
- Public-private cooperation on technology policy
Ideal for
- CEOs and executive committees setting direction on digital and AI strategy in regulated industries
- Boards and chairs working through the governance implications of AI, data and platform policy
- Government, multilateral and public-sector leadership teams shaping national digital agendas
- International conferences and cross-sector forums where business, policy and civil society share a room
Audience outcomes
- A clearer read of how digital and AI strategy is being reshaped by policy and multilateral regulation in real time
- Practical frameworks for evaluating digital business models and value creation, drawn from the Springer textbook used in business schools worldwide
- Specific reference points from named corporate cases and from inside UN and ministerial decision-making
- A more confident vocabulary for discussing trust, information integrity and the social licence of technology in boardroom terms