Thinkers50, Marketing- & Management-Guru - Expert for "Hidden Champions"

Hermann Simon is Chairman of Simon-Kucher & Partners Strategy & Marketing Consultants. He was the CEO between 1995 and 2009. He is an expert in strategy, marketing and pricing and has advised clients from around the world. In 2005 he was voted the most influential management thinker in Germany after the late Peter Drucker.

Simon has published over 30 books in 15 languages, including the worldwide bestsellers Hidden Champions and Power Pricing. His most recent book Manage for Profit, not for Market Share (Harvard Business School Press, 2006) challenges the wide-spread focus among managers on volume and market share, advocating instead a clear profit orientation.

Simon has been and still is a member of numerous company boards and boards of trustees. He also serves on editorial boards for business journals.

Before committing himself full-time to the management consulting business, Simon was a professor of business administration and marketing at the universities of Mainz (1989-1995) and Bielefeld (1979-1989). He was also a visiting professor at Harvard Business School, Stanford, London Business School, INSEAD, Keio University in Tokyo and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Between 1985 and 1988 he was the director of the USW – the European School of Management and Technology.