Strategy courses

Academic Focus

Acquisitions and corporate strategy, developing an acquisitions strategy and post-acquisition integration.

Recent Clients

Marcus Alexander consults to a number of multinational companies such as Shell, Proeza and Alfa Group, and has worked with more than 50 group CEOs over three decades. He also brings experience from joint ventures in Abu Dhabi and as a board member of an acquisitive Saudi Arabian Group.

Experience

Alexander is a non-executive director of companies in three countries, and on the advisory board of a private equity firm. Prior to joining London Business School, he worked in investment banking, strategy consulting, and advertising. He has had many articles published in leading practitioner journals, including Business Strategy Review, Harvard Business Review and California Management Review. He has also co-authored a number of books and contributed to leading news outlets including the BBC, CNN, CNBC, The Times, and the Financial Times.

Academic Focus

Julian’s main area of expertise is in the strategy and management of large multinational corporations, specifically corporate entrepreneurship, innovation, change management and subsidiary headquarters relationships.

Recent Clients

Rio Tinto, ABN Amro, UBS, Tata Group, Exxon.

Experience

Professor Julian Birkinshaw was ranked 46th in the 2017 Thinkers50 list of the top global management thinkers. Consultant and executive educator with companies all over the world. He is the author of 15 books, including Fast/Forward, Becoming a Better Boss, Reinventing Management and Giant Steps in Management, and more than 90 articles in journals such as Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review.

Academic Focus

Simona teaches on brand strategy and brand execution. Her research focuses on consumer behaviour and decision making. She is particularly interested in the psychological processes underlying perceived personal control, and how the different ways of providing and exercising control influence consumers’ satisfaction and well-being.

Experience

Simona collaborates with companies on topics related to consumer behaviour, decision making and brand management.

Academic Focus

Helen teaches brand delivery and how to create and deliver a consistent and cohesive brand strategy across all internal and external brand touchpoints. Her writing and research focuses on best-practice branding, symbolic consumption and the value of emotional brand connection.

Experience

Helen is a partner at strategic brand consultancy Passionbrand, helping to direct global brand strategy for clients including Johnson & Johnson, Avon, MetLife, EDF Energy, BBC Worldwide and Smith & Nephew. She is an award-winning business columnist – writing for industry journals Marketing Week and Campaign – and a regular judge for industry awards. She co-authored Creating Passion Brands: how to build emotional brand connection with customers, published in 2005 by Kogan Page, and has since contributed chapters for The Definite Book of Branding (Sage, 2014), Advertising Works 24 (IPA, 2018), and Eat Your Greens – a collection of essays from industry leaders on evidence-based marketing (APG, 2018).

Academic Focus

Professor Tammy Erickson runs a board member simulation.

Experience

A McKinsey award-winning author, Professor Erickson has been three-times named one of the 50 most influential global management thinkers by Thinkers50. An experienced senior executive, she has served on the Board of Directors of two Fortune 500 companies. Her academic work is based on extensive research on employee values and the changing nature of work.

Academic Focus

Dr David Faro’s research examines consumer and managerial decision-making. He is particularly focused on understanding and improving consumer decisions in medical and financial settings.

Recent Clients

Telenor, Tata, ExxonMobil, Idomoo, Digitai

Experience

Dr Faro's research has been published in top journals in marketing, psychology and management. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Consumer Research. Before joining academia, he worked in the marketing departments of household appliance firms in Turkey and Greece.

Academic Focus

Professor Gratton is recognised as one of the world’s leading thinkers on human resources and the future of work. Over the last 20 years she has written extensively about the interface between people and organisations. She was named by The Times/Harvard Business Review ‘Business Thinkers50’ as one of the top 15 business thinkers in the world.

Experience

Lynda has written extensively about the interface between people and organizations. Her books cover the link between business and HR strategy (Living Strategy), the new ways of working (The Democratic Enterprise), the rise of complex collaboration (Hot Spots and Glow) the impact of a changing world on employment and work (The Shift) and the impact of longevity on society (The 100 Year Life – co-authored with Andrew Scott).

Lynda is a Steward of the World Economic Forum and has chaired the WEF Council on Leadership. She serves as a judge on the Google.org prize, and in November 2017 was named as a council member of Prime Minister Abe’s council on social change.

Academic Focus

A serial technology entrepreneur, advisor, keynote speaker and author, Peter Hinssen is one of the most sought-after thought leaders on radical innovation, leadership and the impact of digital on society and business. He lectures at various business schools such as MIT in Boston. Peter founded nexxworks to help organisations become fluid, innovate and thrive in The Day After Tomorrow, the title of his most recent book.

Recent Clients

He has performed keynotes for major technology firms such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle.

Experience

Peter’s research examines radical and disruptive changes in society due to technology innovation. Since 2008, Peter has taught on London Business School’s Senior Executive Programme. Since 2016, he has been a research affiliate at MIT SLOAN CISR, the centre for Information Systems Research.

Academic Focus

Dominic teaches strategy, values and corporate transformation. He combines his teaching work with independent consultancy assignments and Board appointments.

Recent Clients

Dominic works as an independent consultant with major corporations including SAP, Linde, Balfour Beatty, Groupe Publicis, Deloitte, British Airways, G4S, PwC and Herbert Smith.

Experience

Previously, Dominic was Group Strategy Director at Blue Circle Industries. He was responsible for managing the Group’s business planning systems, leading merger and acquisition programmes, and coaching executives in the development and implementation of corporate strategy. Dominic’s books include Strategy and Mindfulness and Money, and he has also published in Sloan Management Review and Harvard Business Review. His most recent article, The Professional Challenge, looks at the dangers and opportunities facing global knowledge intensive organisations.

Academic Focus

Richard teaches on both the degree and executive education programmes and is also an executive fellow at London Business School.

Experience

Richard is Deputy Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide. He has 30 years’ experience working with a diverse range of brands including Unilever, Virgin, Nestlé, the British Army, Renault, Toyota, T Mobile and Diageo. Richard speaks to clients, conferences and business schools around the world on Lovemarks, creativity, leading strategic transformation, and corporate strategy. He also chairs Planting Promise, a sustainable educational enterprise in Sierra Leone, is a Trustee of the British Heart Foundation and Chairman of its £50 million Mending Broken Hearts appeal.

Academic Focus

Professor Jacobides is an expert on business model change and strategy in changing environments, and one of the worlds’ leading experts on business (and digital) ecosystems. He has studied industry change, value migration, and organisational transformation, and teaches the popular turnarounds elective. Professor Jacobides is an Academic Advisor to the Boston Consulting Group, has served on the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum, and is a visiting scholar with the New York Fed and a visiting fellow at Cambridge.

Recent Clients

McKinsey, IDEO, Accenture, PwC, Deloitte, Santander, Helvetia, Zurich, CS, Airbus, Lufthansa, Vodafone, Nokia, DeBeers, Burberry, MerckSerono and the NHS.

Experience

Professor Jacobides focuses on change, design and strategy: he studies industry evolution, value migration, new business models and structural change in firms and sectors. A highly cited researcher, he is an Editor of Industrial & Corporate Change, and has earned the Theory to Practice Award (2018, WU). A frequent keynote speaker at high profile events from TEDx to Davos, he puts his theory into practice with top consulting firms, Fortune 500 companies, and sits on smaller ventures’ Advisory Boards. He has also worked with the EU, the UK and the WEF on policy.

Academic Focus

Current M&A practices related to industry-specific valuations. He is also an expert in financial reporting considerations for deal-making.

Recent Clients

Dr Alastair Lawrence has worked with and advised several of the world’s largest companies on valuation and financial reporting issues in the technology industry.

Experience

Dr Lawrence has a PhD in Management with a focus on financial reporting analyses and valuation issues. He sits on the editorial board of two top academic journals and has been published in top-tier US-based academic journals. Dr Lawrence’s research covers key financial reporting and valuation issues. He worked in financial reporting, before becoming a tenured faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley.

Academic Focus

Professor Costas Markides teaches strategic innovation and creative thinking leading to breakthroughs.

Recent Clients

Unilever, Pirelli, Avon, Polygram, Mercury Asset Management, Nestlé, LVMH and Sara Lee.

Experience

Holder of the Robert P Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership, Non-Executive Director of Amathus (UK) and best-selling author of All the Right Moves: A Guide to Crafting Breakthrough Strategy and Fast Second: How Smart Companies Bypass Radical Innovation to Enter and Dominate New Markets with Paul Geroski.

Academic Focus

Rupert teaches on Executive Education programmes around the themes of entrepreneurship, owner management and the management of growth. Rupert works with ambitious entrepreneurial businesses around the world helping to plan and implement their strategies and growth plans.

Experience

Rupert is both a chartered accountant and a qualified HR professional, so has an unusual mix of experience when it comes to advising on the implementation of strategy. Previously Rupert was a partner of BDO for 16 years. He is the author of 7 books on growth, governance and management, the latest of which, Growing a Business, was published by The Economist in 2016. He currently sits on 3 boards as a non-executive director.

Academic Focus

Yiorgos’ research focuses on understanding how organisations and individuals identify new challenges and develop innovative ways of addressing them while overcoming resistance to change. He has examined these issues in the context of ecological sustainability, venture communities and business ecosystems.

Recent Clients

Zurich Financial Services, IBM, Lufthansa.

Experience

Yiorgos has taught and consulted for a wide range of companies worldwide, in sectors from banking to travel, and was Faculty Lead of the Global Business Consortium 2006-2012.

Academic Focus

Dr James Ryans’ expertise covers target company valuations, synergy estimations and negotiating M&A terms, as well as current developments and best practices in deal-making.

Recent Clients

Dr Ryans serves as independent director and audit committee chair for Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp, an NYSE-listed blank-check acquisition company. He recently served as independent director, and was on a special board committee, of Groundspeed Analytics, an insurance technology firm. In that role, he negotiated and completed the sale of the firm to the private equity firm Oak HC/FT. Dr Ryans has more than 15 years’ experience in business development, investments and advising insurance industry clients.

Experience

Dr Ryans’ academic research has been published in prestigious journals such as the Journal of Accounting and Economics and The Accounting Review. He is currently researching representation and warranty breaches in acquisitions, M&A synergy disclosures and the effect of securities regulators on deal-making. Dr Ryans has a PhD in Business Administration (accounting) from the University of California, Berkeley, an MBA from the University of Michigan and a bachelors in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Academic Focus

Professor Nicos Savva is an expert in data science, using it to solve operational problems and help large organisations develop data-science capabilities. He also advises on the policy implications of algorithms. His research focuses on hospital operations and healthcare management. His work has appeared in leading journals such as Management Science, M&SOM, Production & Operations Management, and Nature Biotechnology. He holds multiple editorial positions.

Experience

Professor Savva holds an honorary appointment at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, a large hospital system based in London. He has acted as a consultant to hospitals, biotech/pharma companies, high-tech start-ups, retail firms, and a hedge fund. He has also taught at The Wharton School, Columbia GSB, and at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.

Academic Focus

Professor Henri Servaes offers participants new approaches to adding shareholder value, number analysis and governance.

Recent Clients

PwC, Deutsche Bank, Anglo American and Chase Manhattan.

Experience

Professor Servaes is Chair of the Finance Faculty, Director of the Institute of Finance and Accounting and an award-winning author published in the world’s top finance journals.

Academic Focus

David teaches people about how to drive organic growth from your core business.

Experience

David has been named one of the world’s 50 most important marketing thinkers by the Chartered Institute of Marketing. He is founder and managing partner of the brandgym, a global network of brand coaches who help companies create an inspiring brand vision and action plans to turn into growth. Key clients include Nespresso, Philips, Vodafone, Mars and LVMH. David has authored seven acclaimed books, each topping Amazon’s branding best-seller list. He has also published many articles in Brand Strategy, Marketing, Market Leader, The Guardian and The Marketer.

Academic Focus

As a researcher, instructor, and programme director, Stefano has gleaned significant insights on strategy execution — which has become a critical component of the Executing Strategy for Results programme.

Recent Clients

In the last few years Stefano has consulted for a number of companies worldwide including Deutsche Bank, Coller Capital, Exterran, Ferrari, Hess Oil, Kyowa Hakko Kirin, Luxottica, Oman Fiber Optic Company, Purdys, Thomson Reuters and VicSuper.

Experience

Stefano is the co-founder of Charles Thames Strategy Partners, a boutique advisory firm assisting CEOs and top teams in formulating and executing strategy. He has worked closely with a multitude of C-suite executives, leading company-wide interventions to remove strategic bottlenecks—all with documented results and far-reaching impact. Stefano holds an MSc in General Management (with distinction) from London Business School and an MSc in Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, and has studied participant-centered learning methods at Harvard Business School. He has published a number of papers, case studies and articles.

Academic Focus

Current developments and best practices in M&A, private equity perspectives on M&A, valuation and structuring of M&A transactions and negotiations of M&A terms.

Recent Clients

Florin has been advising companies across sectors including manufacturing, construction, hospitality and financial services.

Experience

Florin has a PhD in Management with a specialisation in accounting and finance. He sits on the editorial board of two top academic journals and has published extensively in top tier U.S. based business academic journals. He has been pursuing research on private equity topics and debt markets and is regularly invited to present his research at major business schools around the world. He has long combined his academic expertise with the practice; advising several large investment funds and serving on few advisory boards.