Management Consultant, Successful Author and Economics Professor more less
Hermann Simon’s career has followed three paths: as a management consultant, a successful author and an economics professor. He is the chairman of the international management consultancy Simon-Kucher & Partners, Strategy & Marketing Consultants. For over 15 years he was a professor of business administration and marketing at the Universities of Bielefeld and Mainz. His books have been translated into 22 languages and have been highly acclaimed among managers. Professor Simon is internationally renowned as an expert in corporate strategy. An ongoing online survey votes him the most influential management thinker after the late Peter Drucker.
Management Consultant
Hermann Simon has been the chairman of Simon-Kucher & Partners Strategy & Marketing Consultants since 1995. The company operates worldwide with offices in Amsterdam, Bonn, Boston, Brussels, Cologne, Frankfurt, London, Luxembourg, Milan, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo, Vienna, Warsaw and Zurich.
The consulting work focuses on strategy, marketing and pricing. The strategies developed by Simon-Kucher & Partners aim to enhance value via competitive advantages and customer value. Furthermore, “value extraction”, the derivation of the real market value, is given the utmost attention.
Professor Simon supports his clients in the market launch, positioning and especially in price management. Simon-Kucher & Partners is the world market leader in this field. The magazine BusinessWeek described Simon-Kucher & Partners as a "world leader in giving advice to companies on how to price their products" (Jan. 18, 2004) and The Economist wrote: “Simon-Kucher is the world’s leading pricing consultancy” (2005).
Professor Simon prefers using the word “hard”, i.e. number-based business analyses and highly developed methods. He has a wide range of clients in various sectors such as the automotive industry, banks/insurances, chemical industry, services, energy/supply, healthcare, media, commerce/consumer goods, high-tech industry, industrial goods, telecommunication, transport/logistics and tourism. The clients include large corporations such as Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, DaimlerChrysler, BMW, Bayer, Hewlett Packard, Deutsche Bank, TUI and Vodafone as well as the so-called “Hidden Champions”, i.e. medium-sized world market leaders such as Stihl, Würth, Heidelberger Druck and Trumpf.
Professor Simon has gained experience in the area of corporate governance as a board member of numerous joint-stock companies as well as boards of trustees. These positions have also influenced his perception of the German corporate landscape. He acknowledges the expertise of German companies in technology and products, but asserts that they still show weaknesses in terms of marketing, customer orientation and service. Compared to companies in the USA, German companies perform poorly in terms of market capitalization. Consequently, Professor Simon sees a great danger of German companies being “colonized”.
Author
Hermann Simon’s books have been highly acclaimed among managers and have already been translated into 22 languages. In 2006, Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share has been published. This provocative book takes a critical look at the widespread focus on volume and market share and calls for a conscious shift of focus towards profit. Simon’s most well-known publications include Think (2004), Power Pricing (1997), Hidden Champions (1996), Hidden Champions of the 21st century (2009) and Preismanagement (3rd edition 2009). Some further successful publications include Das große Handbuch der Strategieinstrumente (2002), Das große Handbuch der Strategiekonzepte (2000) and Simon for Managers (2000). Professor Simon has coined a number of phrases which are now commonly used in management theory and practice. For example, the terms “price management”, “hidden champions”, “servicewüste” and “investor marketing” can be attributed to him. Since 1988 Simon has regularly written a column for the German monthly Manager Magazin. In addition, he was and still is a member of the editorial boards of numerous business journals, including the International Journal of Research in Marketing, Management Science, Recherche et Applications en Marketing, Décisions Marketing, European Management Journal as well as several German journals.
Economics Professor
Hermann Simon is also recognized as a successful professor of economics and has contributed pioneering work to the field of marketing. Until 1995 he was a professor of business administration and marketing at the Johannes-Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. Simon’s academic career began very early: After completing his studies, he started his Ph.D. under the supervision of Horst Albach. Professor Albach significantly influenced his professional development, especially regarding the bridge between theory and practice. Between 1978 and 1980 Simon received a post-doctoral scholarship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) and was also a visiting fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during that time. Since then he has been a regular contributor to leading journals such as Management Science, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review and Journal of Marketing Research. His academic career placed him in numerous guest professorships at international universities: Simon was a visiting professor at the Vienna Institute for Advanced Studies in 1979, at the Keio University in Tokyo in 1983 and at Stanford University in 1984. He also taught at INSEAD in Fontainebleau (1980-1985), at Harvard Business School (1988-1989) and London Business School (1991-2002). Between 1984 and 1986 Professor Simon was the head of the European Marketing Academy (EMAC), and between 1985 and 1988 he was the research director of the “Universitätsseminar der Wirtschaft” (USW, now: European School of Management and Technology) at the Schloss Gracht in Cologne.
During his time as an economics professor, his research focused mainly on bridging the gap between theory and practice. His approach to research was therefore empirical and decision-oriented. Numerous theoretical concepts were practically applied in his pioneering projects (calculation of expected market reactions, non-linear pricing, product life cycles, bundling). Professor Simon prepared his students for daily work in the business world by providing them with the necessary methods and tools to successfully implement textbook concepts.
The decision to enter the professional business world in addition to his academic career was made during his time as the director at the USW, the biggest German institute for management training at that time. At the USW, Simon came into contact with many German top managers. Thus in 1985 he founded the management consultancy UNIC, which later became Simon - Kucher & Partners Strategy & Marketing Consultants, together with his former Ph.D. students. In 1995 Professor Simon left his university career behind him to dedicate himself full-time to the consulting business as the chairman of Simon - Kucher & Partners.
Professor Simon was greatly influenced by his long-standing friend Peter Drucker, with whom he corresponded for many years and whom he often visited at his home near Los Angeles. Their last scheduled meeting, however, never took place. It was scheduled for November 12, 2005 ? the day before Drucker died.
Very politically active as a student, Simon is now more critical of politicians. He believes they do not have the necessary competence, particularly concerning economic issues. Furthermore, he deplores the lack of communication between economists and politicians. Simon feels very connected with his place of birth, the Eifel region, and has published the book Kinder der Eifel in 2008.
