Felix Oberholzer-Gee

Felix Oberholzer-Gee is the Andreas Andresen Professor of Business Administration in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. A member of the faculty since 2003, Oberholzer-Gee received his master's degree and his Ph.D., both in Economics, from the University of Zurich. He held his first faculty position at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Currently, he teaches competitive strategy in executive education programs such as the Program for Leadership Development, the Senior Executive Program for China, and a program for media executives titled Effective Strategies for Media Companies. His course, "Strategies Beyond the Market," is a popular elective class for second-year MBA students. Oberholzer-Gee has won numerous awards for excellence in teaching, including the Harvard Business School Class of 2006 Faculty Teaching Award for the best teacher in the core curriculum and the 2002 Helen Kardon Moss Anvil Award for the best teacher in the Wharton MBA program. Prior to his academic career, Oberholzer-Gee served as the managing director of Symo Electronics, a Swiss-based process control company.

Professor Oberholzer-Gee’s research and consulting are centered on competitive strategy, international competition, and non-market strategy, a branch of strategic management that studies how companies best work with government and non-governmental groups. He has conducted significant work in analyzing the impact of digital transition on entertainment companies, specifically focusing on music file-sharing. Working with Koleman Strumpf, Oberholzer-Gee co-authored the paper "The effect of file sharing on record sales: An empirical analysis," which was published in 2007 and later cited during the Pirate Bay trial. Their study indicated that the file-sharing of music had a negligible impact on CD sales. This research received significant funding from the record industry.

Aside from his focus on non-market strategy and digital transition, Oberholzer-Gee has long-standing interest in the Chinese economy and Chinese companies, stemming from a study abroad program as an undergraduate. In his recent academic work, he compared the financial performance of Chinese companies with that of multinationals operating in China, and also studied the diversification of Chinese companies. Oberholzer-Gee’s academic work has been published in prominent, peer-reviewed journals of his profession, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Financial Economics, and Journal of Law & Economics. His work and insights have been profiled by global media outlets. He also penned a book titled "Better, Simpler Strategy".