This article focuses on the need for top-quality professors in business schools and how their drive for enhancing academic valuecreation, generating cutting-edge research, leading teaching and building strong interrelationships with students and executive participants fuels the success of the academic institution. Obviously, the administration is also important and must be outstanding, along with the research associates, finance staff, marketing team and the like. Still, in order to contribute to the overall success of the academic institution, these other functions all depend on an outstanding professorial staff – they cannot create success alone.

Drawing on IMD's experience and strategy, implicitly and explicitly, this article reports on unique, new thinking on strategy-setting and key priorities for business schools and academic institutions.

This article explores how marketing, as part of a business school's value creation, is now more central than ever, and it requires a fundamentally different focus in light of the network marketing challenges that are being created as part of today's knowledge society.