Abstract
When I founded our consulting firm together with my doctoral students in 1985, no one could have dreamed of what Simon-Kucher & Partners would become. As if on wings of eagles, we were carried to world market leadership for pricing, with more than 40 offices and more than 1500 employees on five continents. How did we achieve this success? This chapter explores our system of globalization, our management principles, and our capital structure, which is unique in the consulting industry. I am convinced that every ambitious entrepreneur can learn a lot from our experience, from our mistakes, and from my motto: “On rough roads to the stars.”
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Notes
- 1.
Letter from Eckhard Kucher and Karl-Heinz Sebastian to Hermann Simon in Tokyo, November 21, 1983.
- 2.
The older photo was taken by Manager Magazin for an article about professors as consultants; see Manager Magazin 6/1988, p. 188. The second photo, imitating the first one, was taken in Bonn in 2015 to mark the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Simon-Kucher & Partners.
- 3.
A unicorn is a young company with a valuation of at least $1 billion.
- 4.
The meaning of the real name in German is very similar to rupture.
- 5.
See also the section in Chap. 14, “Avoid lawyers.”
- 6.
Georg Tacke, “Core Values—Key Ingredients to Our Long-Term Success,” Simon-Kucher & Partners: Our Voice, December 2017.
- 7.
For further information about the development of Simon-Kucher & Partners, see Simon and Krütten (2008).
- 8.
At Simon-Kucher, the CEO or CEOs are elected for a first term of five years, and then may be re-elected to no more than two subsequent three-year terms. The maximum tenure is therefore 11 years.
- 9.
Wendel, the German name of the main investor, means “helix.” Helikos is the Greek word for helix.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
https://thinkers50.com/hall-of-fame/, accessed on 9 Oct 2019.
- 13.
My personal record for interviews came on one Sunday in Beijing, when I was interviewed 14 times.
References
See Anja Müller, “Übernehmer statt Unternehmer,” Handelsblatt, January 16, 2017, p. 22.
Hermann Simon, Preisheiten—Alles, was Sie über Preise wissen müssen, Frankfurt: Campus 2013/2015.
Hermann Simon, Confessions of the Pricing Man, Springer: New York 2015.
Hermann Simon, Die Gärten der verlorenen Erinnerung—Eifel unvergessen, 2nd edition, Südwest- und Eifel-Zeitung Verlags- und Vertriebs-GmbH: Daun 2017. Translated into English, the title is “The Gardens of Lost Recollections.”
Hermann Simon, True Profit! No Company Ever Went Broke from Turning a Profit, New York: Springer Nature 2021.
Hermann Simon and Martin Fassnacht, Preismanagement, Wiesbaden: Springer-Gabler 2016.
Hermann Simon and Martin Fassnacht, Price Management, New York: Springer 2019.
Hermann Simon and Jörg Krütten, “Globalisierung und Führung—Kulturelle Integration und Personalmanagement in global agierenden Beratungsunternehmen” in Ingolf Bamberger (editor), Strategische Unternehmensberatung, 5th edition, Gabler Verlag 2008, pp. 175-195.
Lester G. Telser, “The Demand for Branded Goods as Estimated from Consumer Panel Data,” The Review of Economic Statistics, 1962, No. 3, pp. 300-324.
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Simon, H. (2021). On Wings of Eagles. In: Many Worlds, One Life. Copernicus, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60758-6_11
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