Stéphane Garelli is best known for asking a deceptively simple question: why do some countries, regions, and organisations stay competitive, while others slowly fall behind?

A professor at IMD Business School and long-time leader of the IMD World Competitiveness Center, Stéphane has spent decades analysing how productivity, governance, education, infrastructure, and business capability interact to determine long-term performance. His work moves beyond growth rates and rankings to examine the underlying conditions that allow economies and organisations to adapt, renew, and prosper over time.

He explores how countries and companies lose advantage through complacency, short-termism, and fragmented decision-making, often long before decline becomes visible.

He brings perspective drawn from observing dozens of economies and industries side by side, revealing patterns leaders inside a single system rarely see.