Costas Markides

Costas Markides is Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and holds the Robert P. Bauman Chair in Strategic Leadership at London Business School. He has been at LBS since 1990 and has served as Chairman of the Strategy Area for six years and as member of the Academic Board of Executive Education at the school for four years. He also served on the Board of the Strategic Management Society (SMS) for six years.

He is recognised as one of the world's foremost experts on strategy, business model innovation and diversification. His research has explored how established companies could pursue radical or disruptive innovation and how they can compete with two business models in the same industry. He also examined how companies create a culture of continuous innovation and the role that individual managers play in making a company more innovative. He is currently studying how the digital context is affecting how much firms can diversify and the type of capabilities that underpin successful diversification. He is also exploring how firms can grow without diluting their differentiated strategic positioning.

An internationally acclaimed teacher and conference speaker, Professor Markides has won multiple teaching awards at London Business School, including the Excellence in Teaching Award Across All Programmes (and Executive Education) in 1999, the first time the award was ever given.

A native of Cyprus, he received his BA (Distinction) and MA in Economics from Boston University, and his MBA and DBA from Harvard Business School. He has published ten books, including: All the Right Moves: A Guide to Crafting Breakthrough Strategy (2000); Fast Second: How Smart Companies Bypass Radical Innovation to Enter and Dominate New Markets (2005); Game-Changing Strategies (2008); Organizing for the New Normal: Prepare your company for the journey of continuous disruption (2021); Business Model Innovation (2023); and Diversification in the world of data and AI (2025).