- IMD Business School
- IMD Business School

Adrian B Ryans

Professor Emeritus of Marketing and Strategy

Adrian B Ryans is Professor Emeritus of Marketing and Strategy. His areas of interest include marketing strategy and strategic market planning. He has particular expertise in business-to-business marketing and in strategic responses to low-cost competition. He has a BASc in engineering from the University of Waterloo in Canada and MBA and PhD degrees from Stanford University, USA.

Before joining IMD, he was on the faculty of the Richard Ivey School of Business in Canada, where he served as Dean of the Ivey Business School. He was formerly Assistant Professor and Associate Professor of Marketing at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He was also a Visiting Professor of Marketing at INSEAD in 1985-86 and at IMD in 1996.

His research interests center around how best to meet the challenge posed by low-cost competition and strategic market planning. He has published numerous articles in books and journals, and was lead author on Winning Market Leadership in Technology-Intensive Businesses (John Wiley & Sons in 2000) and Beating Low Cost Competition: How Premium Brands Can Respond to Cut-Price Rivals (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).

Ryans has designed and taught on executive programs for organizations in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia, including General Electric, Nestle, Bank of Montreal, Medtronic, Borealis, Saurer, Vestas, IBM, Boeing, National Semiconductor, BioWare, ASML, Holcim, Varian, Hoechst, Keithley Instruments, Amgen, Fluke, Noranda, LSI Logic, Hutchison Port Holdings, Caterpillar, Novartis, ASML, Borealis, Ericsson, Cisco, and Qualcomm.

His consulting interests center around business-to-business marketing and strategic market planning. He has served as a consultant to a number of leading companies around the world including General Electric, Bank of Montreal, Tektronix, Hewlett-Packard, National Semiconductor, LSI Logic, Trojan Technologies, and Fluke.

Ryans received a National Post Leader in Management Education Award in 1999 for his outstanding contribution in teaching, research, and administration in Canada. He also received a Faculty of Engineering Alumni Achievement Medal in 1997 from the University of Waterloo.

Academic publications
Book
Beating low cost competition: How premium brands can respond to cut-price rivals

Low cost competitors, who offer “good enough” products and services at very attractive prices, are currently significantly impacting the businesses of many leading companies, and some are starting ...

Branding Competitiveness
12 February 2009
Article
Profitable multibranding

Multibranding strategies represent firms' attempts to sell products or services under multiple brand names. This paper explores some of the strategic and tactical issues involved in developing a pr...

Branding Strategy
1 January 2007
Book Chapter
Beyond beating competition: Shaping markets for profitable growth

In many organizations marketing's role is too narrowly defined. The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) often spends a disproportionate amount of his of her energy and time focusing on such traditional i...

Growth Competitiveness Marketing
20 June 2005
Book
Beyond traditional marketing: Innovations in marketing practice

This book aims to be what every marketing manager needs to know about marketing in today's competitive markets. The idea was born out of repeated comments from IMD clients that there were gaps in t...

Marketing Strategy
12 May 2005
Book Chapter
Developing winning marketing strategies in real time

This chapter considers the challenges faced by companies in fast-moving global industries when they evaluate market opportunities and develop timely implementation plans.

Marketing Talent Management Organizational Learning
1 January 2005
Insight for Executives