In The Simon Principles, Hermann Simon, a global advisor, scholar, and entrepreneur, distills the essential lessons he learned at the intersection of leadership, decision making, innovation, and time to provide a reflective, experience-rich exploration of how leaders think, decide, and endure. From boardrooms and hidden champions to encounters with business icons, scientists, artists, and statesmen, Simon reveals why leadership cannot be reduced to tools or metrics—and why judgment, character, timing, and focus matter more than ever. He examines how intuition complements analysis, why speed is sometimes decisive and sometimes dangerous, how digitalization and AI reshape authority, and why experience has no shortcut. He explores the psychology of pricing, the power of genuine innovation, and the importance of humility in business, while always eyeing the bigger picture of a digitized, globalized world.

This book is a plea for entrepreneurial thinking that is not driven solely by short-term profits but creates long-term value. It is also a compass that safely guides us through the complexity of modern corporate leadership—with courage, foresight, and consistency.

“Hermann Simon distills decades of experience as an academic and entrepreneur into powerful insights every manager and entrepreneur should read. This book offers timeless guidance on leadership, value creation, and market success.”
Philip Kotler
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University, USA

Hermann Simon is the Founder and Honorary Chairman of Simon-Kucher, which is the world’s leading price and commercial excellence consultancy. He has taught at Harvard, Stanford, MIT and Keio-University Tokyo. In China the “Hermann Simon Business School” is named after him. Professor Simon is an expert in strategy, marketing and pricing and the only German in the “Thinkers50 Hall of Fame” of the most influential management thinkers in the world.

Professor Simon has published over 40 books in 30 languages, including world bestsellers on Hidden Champions and Price Management. His most recent books are True Profit! No Company Ever Went Broke from Turning a Profit (Springer, 2021) Hidden Champions in the Chinese Century (Springer, 2022) and Beating Inflation (Springer 2022).