Biography

Hamel, who lives in California, gained a BSc at Andrews University in Michigan, followed by an MBA from Michigan University. He worked as a hospital administrator until 1978, before returning to Michigan to study for a PhD in international management.

It was then that he met CK Prahalad, who became his mentor and collaborator. His big break came with a best-selling book Competing for the Future (1994), co-written with Prahalad, which centred on the strategic re-direction that organisations had to follow to survive and prosper.

The foundation idea was that they should stick to what they know best – which they called core-competencies – and which echoed Drucker's "play to your strengths, and eliminate your weaknesses".

Hamel is recognised as a leader on strategy and develops his ideas as Visiting Professor of Management at London Business School, as a Distinguished Research Fellow at Harvard, and through Man-Lab, a think-tank located in Silicon Valley. In his 2000 book Leading the Revolution, he advocates that businesses should throw away the old rulebook, and act upon what the future might bring.

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