Erich Joachimsthaler – Keynote Speaker

Erich Joachimsthaler is a rare combination of consultant, entrepreneur, academic, researcher, author and positive contrarian. He is the Founder and CEO of Vivaldi Group.

Vivaldi is a 150-person independent strategy, brand, and innovation marketing consulting firm with headquarters in New York City and offices in Chicago, Munich, London, Zurich, Hamburg, Duesseldorf, and Singapore. In addition to the strategic consulting business, the Group also includes a digital experience and design firm, Fifth Season, and a data-analytics and research firm, Vivaldi Analytics, and Edge, a management and executive development firm that delivers programs in over 26 countries.

Time permitting, Dr. Erich Joachimsthaler also serves as a Visiting Adjunct Professor of Business Administration at IESE since 1995. He first joined IESE full-time professor in 1989 after completing his Post-Doctoral Fellowship work at Harvard Business School. IESE is ranked globally one of the top ten MBA programs in 2017, and is ranked the world’s No. 1 executive program by The Financial Times in 2015 and 2016.

In his career, he has published over 100 articles in highly respected academic journals and best-selling and award-winning books. Together with David A. Aaker, he wrote some of the most seminal and best-selling articles on brand strategy and brand architecture in the Harvard Business Review and the California Management Review. His book Brand Leadership, co-authored with David A. Aaker was first published by The Free Press in erichjoachimsthaler.com January, 2000 and republished in 2009 by Pocket Books London.

It described the new leadership paradigm of building strong brands and has been translated into 14 languages. His most recent book on innovation and growth strategies from a demand-centric perspective, entitled: Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Find and Execute Your Company’s Next Growth Strategy, was published by the Harvard Business School Press has been also translated in 10 languages. Erich Joachimsthaler is currently working on two books on Reimagining Value Creation: Platforms versus Pipelines and The Future of Brand Leadership.

Dr. Joachimsthaler has received many awards of distinctions for his work. He won Best Dissertation Award for his pioneering work on solving the mathematically difficult challenge known as the classification problem using Lpnorm estimation. Over the course of his career, he won a number of awards for his writing and research. In 2008, he won the American Marketing Association-Berry Best Marketing Book of the Year award. In 2017, he was inducted as an ISBM Thought Leader and Research Fellow which recognized him as a senior scholar/thought leader having made significant contributions to the advancement of the theory and practice of B2B marketing. Only 27 academics and scholars exist worldwide who have been award this distinction. He also was voted Top 50 Chief Digital Officer CDO Influencer list which is a ranking of global superstars in the fields of digital technology and in the adoption of data-driven culture.

Dr. Joachimsthaler is an internationally recognized authority on the impact of technology on strategy, the digitalization of industries and categories, the role of innovation and branding. He is being quoted regularly in the USA Today, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Investor Business Daily, Advertising Age, Absatzwirtschaft, Brandweek, Bloomberg Business Week, Marketing Week, Fast Company, US News & World Report, Forbes, a host of trade publications and extensively in European and Latin American media.

Erich Joachimsthaler has been featured at Bloomberg Business TV, CNBC PowerLunch, CNBC Europe and Forbes TV.com. Dr. Joachimsthaler is one of the most sought-after keynote speakers in industry conferences and company meetings in Europe, Asia and the U.S. His powerful, inspiring and highly engaging style have earned him major invitations such as for example: Forrester Consumer Marketing Conference NYC by Google 2017, TEDxLondon Business School, IAA Leadership Conferences in Ghana, Cannes, Moscow and London, Brand Week Istanbul 2016, Philippines Global Marketing Conference, and Swiss Leadership Forum 2016 and ISBM Big Thinker Conference 2017. He conducts conferences, speeches and workshops in English, German and Spanish.

Erich holds degrees in economics, statistics and business administration from both German and U.S. universities, having received a Master of Science degree in quantitative methods and marketing and a Ph.D. in Business Administration with emphasis in statistics and consumer behavior from the University of Kansas.

Erich Joachimsthaler joined Harvard Business School as a Post-doctoral Fellowship. He resides in New York with his wife and three children. He holds both German and U.S. citizenships.