The Authors


Daniel Deneffe and Herman Vantrappen are accomplished strategic advisors and thought leaders. They work for companies worldwide, teach at leading institutes and write for prominent journals.

Daniel Deneffe

Dr. Daniel Deneffe is the Managing Director of Deneffe Consulting, a strategic advisory firm, and a Professor of Strategy. As a consultant, he advises companies worldwide in the areas of corporate and business unit strategy, marketing strategy and pricing excellence. Until 2013, he worked with the management consulting firm Arthur D. Little for 17 years, of which 12 as a Partner.

Deneffe is on the Teaching Faculty at Harvard University’s Division of Continuing Education, where he teaches Business Strategy in the Real World. At Harvard, he obtained the Dean’s Commendation for Teaching Excellence twice. He is also a Professor of Global Strategy and Managerial Economics at Hult International Business School. At Hult he teaches in the MBA and EMBA programs in Boston, Dubai and London and holds the School’s record of Professor of the Year awards. Deneffe has published widely in journals such as Management Science, Harvard Business Review, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Managerial and Decision Economics, and Health Policy.

Deneffe obtained his PhD and MA in Economics (Industrial Organization) from Cornell University (Ithaca, NY, USA) and holds a BA in Economics and Sociology from the University of Toronto (Canada). He started his professional career as a full-time faculty member at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where he taught in the MBA and EMBA programs.

Herman Vantrappen

Herman Vantrappen is the Managing Director of Akordeon, a strategic advisory firm. He serves large and medium-sized clients in a broad range of business sectors worldwide. Until 2012, he worked with the management consulting firm Arthur D. Little for 26 years, of which 19 as a Partner. He was a member of the board of the firm’s global Strategy & Organization practice. He was also the Editor-in-Chief of the firm’s flagship journal Prism for 7 years.

He has published numerous articles in a variety of journals, including Long Range Planning, MIT Sloan Management Review, Strategy & Leadership, Harvard Business Review, Nikkei Asian Review and Fortune. He is the coauthor of the book The Organization Design Guide: A Pragmatic Framework for Thoughtful, Efficient and Successful Redesigns (Routledge, 2024). He is also the author of the book The Executive Action Writer (CreateSpace, 2009).

Vantrappen holds an MBA from Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) and an MS in Engineering from KU Leuven (Belgium).

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