Geneva, 21 March 2013. Today CERN¹ hosts the first day of a 3-day conference promoted by the Strategic Management Society, a non-profit organization operating exclusively for charitable, scientific, and educational purposes to promote and encourage research and practice in the field of strategic management.

This special SMS conference is organized in partnership with CERN and IMD, the world leading International Institute for Management Development located in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The theme of the Lake Geneva Conference is “Strategizing Practices from the Outliers: Enabling “Big Bang” Innovations.”

Around 300 leading management scholars, consultants and business leaders will gather to better understand the value of outlier organizations, such as CERN and IMD, and how they are developing practices that enable large-scale, transformative innovation.

CERN fits well the description of an outlier organization, where large international communities built around a strong and shared motivation achieve outstanding results.

“The connection between fundamental science, high tech and innovation at CERN has caught the interest of management scholars,” said Markus Nordberg, Conference co-chair and senior member of the ATLAS Collaboration. “We are interested in contributing to the discussion about what constitutes innovative management practices and to share our experience in the implementation of big projects across a global community.”

“We are living in a world where companies continuously seek new ways to provide competitive advantage and increase value,” said Paul Hunter, Director of IMD’s Corporate Learning Network. “With innovation taking center stage around new and dynamic opportunities for business and research to fusion, the SMS conference is a stellar learning opportunity for IMD to be a part of.”

The Conference will bridge the gap between management theory and practice, by analyzing business models of expert organizations, new innovation ecosystems, large-scale practice implementations and innovative management practices.

“SMS is pleased to be present at leading institutions such as CERN and IMD,” said Niko Pelka, SMS Executive Director. “We look very much forward to the fruitful interactions planned between management scholars and business practitioners in re-thinking new innovation models for the future.”

1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its member states are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Romania is a candidate for accession. Cyprus, Israel and Serbia are associate members in the pre-stage to membership. India, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have observer status.