Costas Markides

Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship; Robert P Bauman Chair in Strategic Leadership; Executive Education Faculty Director

Costas Markides is Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the London Business School (LBS) where he holds the Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership.

He is also the Faculty Director for Executive Education at London Business School.

He is considered one of the world’s leading experts in the areas of business strategy and strategic innovation and has appeared several times on the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top management gurus.

He is the author or co-author of several best-selling business books including All the Right Moves (1999), Fast Second (2004) and Game Changing Strategies (2008).

A graduate of Harvard Business School and Boston University, Costas Markides worked as an Associate with the Cyprus Development Bank and as a Research Associate at Harvard Business School before joining London Business School in 1990. He has taught on a wide range of in-company programmes and serves on the Editorial Board of several academic journals. He is also on the Board of Directors of the Strategic Management Society (SMS) and on the Academic Board of the Cyprus International Institute of Management (CIIM).

His work explores how established companies could pursue radical or disruptive innovation and how they can compete with two business models in the same industry. He also examines how companies can create a culture of continuous innovation and the role that individual managers play in making a company more innovative.

Costas Markides has written about a broad range of business issues including strategic innovation, corporate restructuring, business model innovation and international acquisitions. His publications have appeared in numerous academic journals as well as leading managerial journals such as the Harvard Business Review and the Sloan Management Review.

He is a member of the Academy of Management and the Strategic Management Society and participated at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland during 1999-2003 and 2012-2013.

The books written by Costas Markides include: Game-Changing strategies: How to Create New Market Space in Established Industries by Breaking the Rules; Diversification, Refocusing and Economic Performance, and All the Right Moves: A Guide to Crafting Breakthrough Strategy. He has also co-authored several other books including: Strategic Thinking for the Next Economy and Fast Second: How Smart Companies Bypass Radical Innovation to Enter and Dominate New Markets, which was shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Management Book of the Year award in 2005.

Costas Markides’ current research interests focus on corporate entrepreneurship, the management of business model innovation and the use of creativity to achieve strategic breakthroughs.

A native of Cyprus, Professor Markides received his BA (Distinction) and MA in Economics from Boston University, and his MBA and DBA from Harvard Business School. He is now Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and holds the Robert P Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership at London Business School.