Freek Vermeulen

Associate Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship - London Business School

Topics:

Expertise:

 HR, Talent Management, Corporate Culture, Leadership

Freek Vermeulen

Freek Vermeulen is an Associate Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship at the London Business School.

He has designed and taught some of the School’s most successful courses such as Strategic Management, Talent Management, General Management, Strategies for Growth, which, in combination, earned him the School’s “Best Teacher Award”.

In addition, in 2008, he was announced as the first ever recipient of London Business School’s “Excellence in Teaching Award”. Over the past years, Freek has acted as an advisor and worked on executive programmes for companies such as BP, EDS, The Guardian, the Fiat Group, IBM, KPMG, Lloyd’s, Maersk, Novartis, PwC, Rabobank, Roche, Sara Lee, ThyssenKrupp, Toshiba, Vodafone and others.

In 2009, the Financial Times wrote about Freek: “The London Business School associate professor is a rising star and his pithy observations are both accessible and authoritative”. In 2011, the same newspaper described him as a new management guru.

Freek’s research on strategies for growth has been published extensively in highly reputed academic journals, such as the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly and the Strategic Management Journal. As a result, he received the prestigious “Academy of Management Journal Best Paper Award”, particularly for his research on international expansion. In addition, his views on management appeared in global pracitioner outlets, such as the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and the Wall Street Journal. He also wrote a popular business blog for the Harvard Business Review (called “Strategy Freek“), which was covered in Business Week, The Washington Post, the Financial Times, among others. He now writes a blog for Forbes.

Have you ever wondered why most newspapers are so large? Or why management consultants work such long hours? Or why hotels still insist on having check-in desks? Ask anyone in these industries, and their answer will be the same: “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”

“Best practices” may be widespread, but that doesn’t mean they’re effective. In many instances the opposite is true: best practices can be outdated, harmful, and a hindrance to innovation. These badpractices are all too common in organizations, and managers and executives can be blind to their pernicious effects. Since they’ve worked in the past, or have been adopted with success by other firms, their purpose or effectiveness is rarely questioned. As a consequence, these practices spread and persist.

In Breaking Bad Habits, Freek Vermeulen, a strategist with a keen eye for the absurd, offers the tools to identify these practices and rid them from your organization. And, most of all, he presents a compelling case for how eliminating popular but outworn ideas, processes, and strategies can create new opportunities for innovation and growth.

Brimming with examples of norm-defying organizations in an eclectic range of industries–including IVF clinics, hotels, newspapers, and a famous London theater–Breaking Bad Habits will make you rethink your long-held beliefs about industry norms while encouraging you to reinvigorate your business by breaking out of the status quo

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Freek Vermeulen