Patrick Reinmoeller is Professor of Strategy and Innovation. His teaching, research, and consulting focus on strategic thinking for senior executives, with a particular emphasis on customer-centric innovation. He has particular expertise in the Japanese business sector, having lived and worked in the country for several years.
Reinmoeller helps companies with the difficult decisions they have to make when developing and executing a strategy. He says strategic decisions often involve dilemmas, paradoxes, and alternatives that all have pros and cons, and the approaches to solutions can range from a rational decision-making method to adjustments in top management team dynamics.
The strategic creation of knowledge fosters innovation but many companies fail to exploit opportunities to use external sources of insight to create knowledge. They miss out on a lot.
He also works with companies on the strategic creation of knowledge for commercial benefit. Knowledge development fosters innovation and can lead to future commercial success, but he says many companies do not exploit opportunities to create and leverage knowledge and therefore miss out on potential gains, finding that this is particularly true of larger organizations which tend to become self-absorbed.
His recent research has focused on crisis-driven innovation, including how companies have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and other unexpected developments. His second stream of work focuses on post-merger integration, which can be immensely difficult, with only 30% of mergers succeeding. He has been able to identify some patterns that can be used to help firms navigate the process.
He has led custom programs on developing strategic priorities, implementing strategic initiatives, and managing change for a wide range of companies including Bank Mandiri, Coca-Cola İçecek, DENSO, DNB, and Norlys, and he has written numerous case studies inspired by this work including ones on IKEA, Grammarly, Turkcell, Geely, GoJek, Sea, Stellapps, Urban Company, CCI, and NTT. He also teaches on IMD’s MBA and EMBA programs.
Reinmoeller has published two books on strategy development and strategic management, including his 2018 title Mapping a Winning Strategy: Developing and Executing a Successful Strategy in Turbulent Markets, and his 2011 work Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalization.
His academic articles have appeared in leading journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, the British Journal of Management, European Management Journal, MIT Sloan Management Review, Organization Studies, R&D Management, and Strategic Organization.
In addition, he is a member of the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Discoveries, European Management Journal, and Strategic Organization, and a regular reviewer for Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, Organization Studies, MIT Sloan Management Review, and the Journal of Management Studies.
Beyond his academic work, he is also an angel investor and non-executive director of a startup.
Reinmoeller has taught executives around the world; his working languages are Dutch, English, German, Italian, and Japanese. He joined IMD in 2020 after 11 years as a professor at Cranfield University in the UK and spells as an associate professor at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, and as an assistant professor at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He carried out post-doctoral research at the Institute of Innovation Research at Hitotsubashi University in Japan after completing his academic studies in Germany and Italy.
