The Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded since 1969, but there is no such prize for business management. To close this gap, the British journalists Des Dearlove and Stuart Crainer founded the "Thinkers50 Initiative" in 2002. Every two years, Thinkers50 publishes the list of the 50 most influential management thinkers worldwide. From this list, a few selected individuals are permanently included in the "Thinkers50 Hall of Fame" and thus honored for their life's work.
As already announced, Professor Hermann Simon has now been inducted into the "Thinkers50 Hall of Fame" at a ceremony in London. The founder of the global strategy and marketing consultancy Simon-Kucher & Partners and inventor of the term "Hidden Champions" is the only German to have received this recognition. Here he is in the company of management thinkers such as Michael Porter and Tom Peters as well as the late Peter Drucker.
Simon has gained worldwide recognition with two topics. Building on his academic research on price management, he founded the management consultancy Simon-Kucher & Partners in 1985 and developed it into the world market leader in price consulting. Today, the company has more than 1,500 employees and 39 offices on all continents. Simon's books on price management have become standard works worldwide.
Simon also achieved international fame with the term "hidden champions" which he coined. Hidden champions are medium-sized world market leaders who are little-known to the public. Germany has more hidden champions than any other country. Their success in terms of management and strategy is admired around the world. Simon is the author of more than 40 books published in 27 languages. More than a million of his books have been sold in China alone.
The internationally sought-after speaker comes from a village in the Eifel. As part of his academic career, he was Professor of Marketing at the Universities of Bielefeld and Mainz. This was followed by positions at Harvard and Stanford, MIT and INSEAD, Keiō University in Tokyo and London Business School. In his autobiography "Zwei Welten, ein Leben - Vom Eifelkind zum Global Play" (Two Worlds, One Life - From Eifel Child to Global Play) he tells of his unusual path.