Karel Cool

Karel Cool is a Professor of Strategic Management and the BP Chaired Professor of European Competitiveness at INSEAD. His research, teaching, and consulting focus on problems of industry dynamics and competitive strategy (e.g., competitive positioning; assessment of profit opportunities in markets; strategic supply chain dynamics and management; eco-system leadership; vertical integration and de-integration; industry overcapacity; critical mass races, customer value creation, and capturing). Karel Cool is directing the Competitive Strategy Executive Education programme.

He has published in many journals, including Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, Marketing Letters, Advances in Strategic Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management, etc.; edited books such as European Industrial Restructuring in the 1990s (with D. Neven and I. Walter; Macmillan 1992), and Industry Structuring and Restructuring (with J. Henserson and R. Abate; Blackwell 2004, SMS Book Series); and has contributed to many books on competitive strategy.

From 1995 to 2007 he was an Associate Editor of the Strategic Management Journal, a leading strategy journal.

He has consulted on major strategic issues of corporate and industry restructuring, and worked with various corporations including Unilever, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Daimler-Chrysler, Borealis, RollsRoyce, Thomson Travel Group, Exxon, Solvay, Novo-Nordisk Lufthansa, KBC, Whirlpool, IBM, Expedia, Banque de France, McKinsey, Starwood, BCG, Shell, ING, Aktiva, Amgen, Bayer, Nordea, World Economic Forum, IBM, KGL Kuwait, Hearst, Reynaers Aluminium, Dong Energy Wind Power, Vandemoortele, Mars, etc.

During the 1995-1996 academic year, he was a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. He was also a Visiting Professor at Northwestern University, and was a co-chair of the annual 2002 Strategic Management Society Conference held in Paris.

He is a six-times winner of the 'Best Teaching Award' in the MBA programme, and is the founder and Programme Director of the long-running 'Competitive Strategy' Executive Education programme at INSEAD in Fontainebleau and Singapore. In 2007 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Strategic Management Society. In 2009 he received the George S. Day Distinguished Alumni Academic Service Award from Purdue University.

In September 2014, he was honoured by the Case Center as one of the best-selling case authors over the past forty years — Karel has (co-)authored more than sixty case studies.

Karel Cool obtained his PhD (1985) and MScIA (1982) from Purdue University, and his MA (1981) and Lic (1978) in Applied Economics from the University of Antwerp (UFSIA).

PUBLICATIONS

• BOOK CHAPTERS - The Dynamics of Resource Erosion - Palgrave
• BOOK CHAPTERS - Asset Mass Efficiencies - Palgrave
• BOOK CHAPTERS - Diseconomies of Time Compression - Palgrave
• JOURNAL ARTICLES - The Competitive Implications of the Deployment of Unique Resources - Strategic Management Journal
• JOURNAL ARTICLES - When Every Customer Is a New Customer: High-turnover Markets offer big Opportunities to win Share, Here’s how to do it - Harvard Business Review
• JOURNAL ARTICLES - Experience and Learning in Wine Supply Chian Negotiations - Supply Chain Forum
• JOURNAL ARTICLES - Resolving the Commitment Versus Flexibility Trade-off: the Role of Resource Accumulation Lags - Academy of Management Journal
• CASE STUDIES - Orbitz Worldwide and the Global Travel Industry in 2013
• CASE STUDIES - Glencore, Xstrata and the Restructuring of the Global Copper Mining Industry in 2012
• CASE STUDIES - Michelin in China in 2011

RESEARCH AREAS

Strategies for achieving leadership in winner-takes-all eco-systems, Customer churn / turnover and the consequences for entering markets / defending market positions, Managing supply chains for competitive advantage, Merger control: an instrument of country competitiveness?

TEACHING AREAS

Industry and Competitive Analysis (MBA elective), Competitive Strategy (Executive Education), PhD Competitive Strategy Research