Olaf Plötner

Olaf Plötner is a professor at ESMT. He joined ESMT as one of the first faculty members and managing director of ESMT Customized Solutions GmbH in 2002. From 2010 to 2017, he was the dean of executive education at ESMT and developed the school to a top-ten institution in this field, based on the global ranking of Financial Times.
Next to his professorship Olaf is leading today the ESMT Center “Bringing Technology to Market” and heads the executive education program of the same name, in which international managers of renowned B2B companies attend modules in Germany, the USA and China.

His research and teaching focus is on strategic management in global B2B markets. He authored and co-authored several books about this topic, the latest under the title “Solid Growth – Strategies of Industrial Champions in Global Markets”, published by World Scientific, Singapore. His research has been portrayed in scientific journals such as Industrial Marketing Management and Journal of Service Research as well as in leading international media such as MIT Sloan, Wall Street Journal Europe, CNN, Times of India, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, China Daily Europe, People’s Daily (China) and Financial Times.

From 2008 to 2023 Olaf held visiting professorships at several renowned Business Schools in the USA and China (e.g. Darden School of Business at University of Virginia and Antai College of Economics and Management at Jiaotong University, Shanghai)

Olaf also worked as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group in Frankfurt and as a director at Siemens AG in Boston.