Topic: Globalization

Hermann Simon

Hermann Simon is the Founder and Honorary Chairman of Simon-Kucher & Partners. He is an expert in strategy, marketing and pricing. He is the only German in the “Thinkers50 Hall of Fame” of the most important management thinkers in the world. In German-speaking countries he has been continuously voted the most influential living management thinker since 2005. The magazine Cicero ranks him in the top 100 of the 500 most important intellectuals.

Before committing himself entirely to management consulting, 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. From 1995 to 2009 he was CEO of Simon-Kucher & Partners.

Professor Simon has published over 35 books in 27 languages, including the worldwide bestsellers Hidden Champions (Boston 1996, cover story of BusinessWeek in 2004) and Power Pricing (New York 1997), as well as Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share (Boston 2006). Hidden Champions of the 21st Century, Success Strategies of Unknown World Market Leaders (New York 2009) investigates the strategies of little known market leaders. Confessions of the Pricing Man was published by Springer, New York in 2015. His newest textbook Price Management has been published in 2019.

Simon was and 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. For several decades he regularly wrote columns for the German business monthly Manager Magazin. As a board member of numerous foundations and corporations, Professor Simon has gained substantial experience in corporate governance. From 1984 to 1986 he was the president of the European Marketing Academy (EMAC). Simon is co-founder of the first Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) listed on the German Stock Exchange in Frankfurt, and the first search fund in Germany.

A native of Germany, he studied economics and business administration at the universities of Bonn and Cologne. He received his diploma (1973) and his doctorate (1976) from the University of Bonn. Simon has received numerous international awards and holds honorary doctorates from IEDC Business School of Bled (Slovenia), from the University of Siegen (Germany) and from Kozminski University Warsaw (Poland). He is a honorary professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. In China, the “Hermann Simon Business School” is named after him.

In 2022 Simon released his brand-new book Beating Inflation–An Agile, Concrete and Effective Corporate Guide, co-authored with Adam Echter, partner in Simon-Kucher’s San Francisco Office.

Arvind Subramanian

Arvind Subramanian currently serves as the chief economic advisor to the government of India. He is on leave for public service from his position as the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Formerly an economist at the International Monetary Fund, he is a widely cited expert on the economics of India, China, and the changing balance of global economic power.

He was assistant director in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. He served at the GATT (1988–92) during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and taught at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government (1999–2000) and at Johns Hopkins' School for Advanced International Studies (2008–10).

He has written on growth, trade, development, institutions, aid, oil, India, Africa, and the World Trade Organization. He has published widely in academic and other journals, including the American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Economic Growth, Journal of Development Economics, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, International Monetary Fund Staff Papers, Foreign Affairs, World Economy, and Economic and Political Weekly.

He has also published or been cited in leading magazines and newspapers, including the Economist, Financial Times, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and New York Review of Books. He contributes frequently to the Financial Times and is a columnist in India's leading financial daily, Business Standard.

His book India's Turn: Understanding the Economic Transformation was published in 2008. His book Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance was published in 2011, and he is coauthor of Who Needs to Open the Capital Account? (2012).

Foreign Policy magazine has named him as one of the world's top 100 global thinkers in 2011.

He obtained his undergraduate degree from St. Stephens College, Delhi; his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, India; and his M.Phil and D.Phil from the University of Oxford, UK.

Francis Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), resident in FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, effective July 2010. He comes to Stanford from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, where he was the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and director of SAIS' International Development program.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues relating to democratization and international political economy. His book, The End of History and the Last Man, was published by Free Press in 1992 and has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent book, The Origins of Political Order, was published in April 2011. Other books include America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, and Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap between Latin America and the United States.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation from 1979-1980, then again from 1983-89, and from 1995-96. In 1981-82 and in 1989 he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State, the first time as a regular member specializing in Middle East affairs, and then as Deputy Director for European political-military affairs. In 1981-82 he was also a member of the US delegation to the Egyptian-Israeli talks on Palestinian autonomy. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. He served as a member of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004.

Dr. Fukuyama is chairman of the editorial board of The American Interest, which he helped to found in 2005. He is a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins SAIS Foreign Policy Institute, and a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Center for Global Development. He holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), and Aarhus University (Denmark). He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy, and member of the advisory boards for the Journal of Democracy, the Inter-American Dialogue, and The New America Foundation. He is a member of the American Political Science Association and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

Yong Zhao

Yong Zhao currently serves as the Presidential Chair and Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon, where he is also a Professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy, and Leadership. He is also a professorial fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Health and Education Policy, Victoria University.

Until December, 2010, Yong Zhao was University Distinguished Professor at the College of Education, Michigan State University, where he also served as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology, executive director of the Confucius Institute, as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence.

His research interests include educational policy, computer gaming and education, diffusion of innovations, teacher adoption of technology, computer-assisted language learning, and globalization and education.

Zhao has extensive international experiences. He has consulted with government and educational agencies and spoken on educational issues in many countries on six continents. His current work focuses on designing 21st Century Schools in the context of globalization and the digital revolution.

Zhao has published over 20 books and 100 articles. His most recent books include Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization and the Handbook of Asian Education. He has also developed computer software, including the award-winning ZON, the world’s first massively multi-player online role-playing game for studying Chinese.

Zhao was born in China’s Sichuan Province. He received his B.A. in English Language Education from Sichuan Institute of Foreign Languages in Chongqing, China in 1986. After teaching English in China for six years, he came to Linfield College as a visiting scholar in 1992. He then began his graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993. He received his A.M. in Education in 1994 and Ph.D. in 1996. He joined the faculty at MSU in 1996 after working as the Language Center Coordinator at Willamette University and a language specialist at Hamilton College.

He is a recipient of the Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association and was named one of the 2012 10 most influential people in educational technology by the Tech & Learn Magazine. He is an elected fellow of the International Academy for Education. His latest book World Class Learners has won several awards including the Society of Professors of Education Book Award (2013), Association of Education Publishers’ (AEP) Judges’ Award and Distinguished Achievement Award in Education Leadership (2013).

Moisés Naím

Moisés Naím is an internationally-syndicated columnist and best-selling author of influential books including the recently-published The End of Power, a startling examination of how power is changing across all sectors of society, and Illicit, a detailed expose on modern criminal networks.  In 2011, he launched Efecto Naím, an innovative weekly television program highlighting surprising world trends with visually-striking videos, graphics and interviews with world leaders which is widely watched in Latin America today.  Dr. Naím gained international recognition with the successful re-launch of the prominent journal Foreign Policy and, over his fourteen years (1996-2010) as editor, turned the magazine into a modern, award-winning publication on global politics and economics.

His prize-winning work is highly influential in the world of international politics, economics and business. In 2005, Illicit was selected by the Washington Post as one of the best nonfiction books of the year; it was published in 18 languages and is the basis of an Emmy award-winning National Geographic documentary.  Of his recent book, The End of Power, former US president Bill Clinton said it “will change the way you read the news, the way you think about politics, and the way you look at the world.” Arianna Huffington, president of the Huffington Post, said it is, “a compelling and original perspective on the surprising new ways power is acquired, used and lost – and how these changes affect our daily lives.”

Dr. Naím’s columns and media commentary have a worldwide audience. He is the chief international columnist and “Global Observer” for El Pais and La Repubblica, the largest daily newspapers in Spain and Italy, a contributor to The Financial Times “A-list”, and an associate editor at The Atlantic. His columns are also carried by all leading newspapers in Latin America, and have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg Business Week, Newsweek, Time, Le Monde and Berliner Zeitung.  In 2011, he was honored to receive the Ortega y Gasset prize, the  most prestigious award for journalism in the Spanish language . In 2013, Naim was named one of the world’s leading thinkers by the British magazine Prospect and in 2014, Dr. Naím was ranked among the top 100 most influential global thought leaders by GDI Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute for his work on The End of Power.

Dr. Naím is a Distinguished Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC.  He is the founder and Chairman of the Board of the Group of Fifty (G50), which brings together top-flight progressive Latin American business leaders, and a member of the board of directors of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Foundations as well as several global companies.

In the early 1990s, Dr. Naím served as Venezuela’s Minister of Trade and Industry, as director of Venezuela’s Central Bank, and as executive director of the World Bank.  He was previously professor of business and economics and dean of IESA, Venezuela’s leading business school.  Dr. Naím  holds MSc and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lives in Washington DC.

Pankaj Ghemawat

Pankaj Ghemawat is the Global Professor of Management and Strategy and Director of the Center for the Globalization of Education and Management at the Stern School of Business at New York University, and the Anselmo Rubiralta Professor of Global Strategy at IESE Business School. Between 1983 and 2008 he was on the faculty at the Harvard Business School where, in 1991, he became the youngest person in the school's history to be appointed a full professor.  Ghemawat was also the youngest "guru" included in the guide to the greatest management thinkers of all time published in 2008 by The Economist.

Ghemawat's books include Commitment, Games Businesses Play, Strategy and the Business Landscape and Redefining Global Strategy. IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano described the latter book as "an important strategic guidebook for leaders of the 21st century globally integrated enterprise... [with an] analytic framework that is both visionary and pragmatic - aware of the broader historic trajectories of globalization, but grounded in the real kinds of decisions business leaders have to make."

Ghemawat's new book, World 3.0, was published in May 2011 by Harvard Business Review Press. According to an early review in The Economist, "World 3.0.should be read by anyone who wants to understand the most important economic development of our time." World 3.0 won the 50 Thinkers Book Award for the best business book published in 2010-2011, the Axiom Business Book Gold Award in the International Business/Globalization category and the IESE Alumni Research Excellence Award.

Pankaj Ghemawat also developed the DHL Global Connectedness Index 2014 a comprehensive analysis of globalization and the rise of emerging markets.

Ghemawat has written more than 100 research articles and case studies, is one of the world's best-selling authors of teaching cases and fellow of the Academy of International Business and of the Strategic Management Society. Other recent honors include the Booz Eminent Scholar Award of the International Management Division of the Academy of Management, the McKinsey Award for the best article published in the Harvard Business Review, the Irwin Educator of the Year award from the Business Policy and Strategy division of the Academy of Management and the Herbert Simon Award of Rajk Laszlo College for Advance Studies in Budapest. Among other recognitions are the IESE-Fundación BBVA Economics for Management Prize and the IESE Alumni Research Excellence Prize for Redefining Global Strategy.

Ghemawat helps companies and business schools better understand and address international opportunities and challenges.  He served on the taskforce appointed by the AACSB, the leading accreditation body for business schools, on the globalization of management education, and authored the report's recommendations about what to teach students about globalization, and how.

Marshall Goldsmith

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is a world authority in helping successful leaders get even better – by achieving positive, lasting change in behavior: for themselves, their people and their teams.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There is a New York Times best seller, Wall Street Journal #1 business book and winner of the Harold Longman award for Best Business Book of the Year. It has been translated into 23 languages and is a listed best seller in six different countries.

The American Management Association named Dr. Goldsmith as one of 50 great thinkers and leaders who have influenced the field of management over the past 80 years. Major business press acknowledgments include:

Business Week – most influential practitioners in the history of leadership development,
The Times (UK) – 50 greatest living business thinkers,
Wall Street Journal - top ten executive educators,
Forbes - five most-respected executive coaches,
Leadership Excellence – top five thinkers on leadership,
Economic Times (India) – five rajgurus of America,
Economist (UK) - most credible executive advisors in the new era of business and
Fast Company - America’s preeminent executive coach.

Dr. Goldsmith’s Ph.D. is from UCLA. He teaches executive education at Dartmouth’s Tuck School and frequently speaks at leading business schools. He is a Fellow in the National Academy of Human Resources (America’s top HR honor) and his work has been recognized by almost every professional organization in his field. In 2006 Alliant International University honored Marshall by naming their schools of business and organizational studies - the Marshall Goldsmith School of Management.

Marshall is one of a select few advisors who have been asked to work with over 100 major CEOs and their management teams. He is co-founder of Marshall Goldsmith Partners, a network of top-level executive coaches. He served as a member of the Board of the Peter Drucker Foundation for ten years. He has been a volunteer teacher for US Army Generals, Navy Admirals, Girl Scout executives, International and American Red Cross leaders – where he was a National Volunteer of the Year.

Marshall’s 31 books include: The Leader of the Future (a Business Week best-seller), Coaching for Leadership and the upcoming Succession: Are You Ready? (in the Harvard Business Memo to the CEO series). Over two hundred of his articles, interviews, columns and videos are available for viewing and sharing online (for no charge) at www.MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com. Visitors to this site have come from 195 countries and have viewed over 5.2 million resources.