Hermann Simon, Founder of Simon-Kucher & Partners

Today, my guest is Hermann Simon, 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. Professor Simon has published over 35 books in 27 languages, including the worldwide bestsellers Hidden Champions (Boston 1996) 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 textbook Price Management (2019), his autobiography Many Worlds, One Life: A Remarkable Journey from Farmhouse to Global Stage (2021), and True Profit! No Company Ever Went Broke from Turning a Profit (2021) were all published with Springer, New York. New this year are Hidden Champions in the Chinese Century: Ascent and Transformation and Beating Inflation. 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.