The political economist Prof. Dr. Kai-Alexander Schlevogt is globally recognized as a foremost expert in economic policy and strategic leadership, with a special focus on innovation, transformation, and crisis management in high-growth markets in Eurasia, particularly China and Russia. He serves as global expert columnist for RT International/RT.COM (RT World News) and the U.S.-based CovertAction Magazine (formerly CovertAction Quarterly). He writes RT’s highly influential “Prof. Schlevogt’s Compass” column, for which he was awarded the first prize in the prestigious triennial international Golden Feather competition.
Prof. Dr. Schlevogt served as TV News Presenter and Chief Economist, as well as Program Author, Project Team Leader, Producer, Editor and Anchorman of a new innovative show (“Prof. Schlevogt’s Economic Compass”) for RT at its world headquarters in Moscow, Russia.
He also worked as Full University Professor and Ph.D. Supervisor at the Department of Strategic and International Management of the Graduate School of Management (GSOM), St. Petersburg State University (SPbU), Russia, where he was the inaugural holder of the new university-endowed chair in strategic leadership. Besides, he served as the Director of the GSOM St. Petersburg University-Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) Paris Dual Degree Executive MBA Program. He also held an appointment as the Director and Orchestrator of the IBM-GSOM SPbU Growth Market Leadership Program.
In addition, Prof. Dr. Schlevogt worked as a professor of strategy and leadership at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School and Program Director of the Nestlé Global Leadership Program, delivered in association with the London Business School (LBS).He was also the first regular foreign professor in the history of Peking University. At its Guanghua School of Management, he served as distinguished professor (特聘教授) of strategic management and international business, as well as Senior Research Fellow, teaching his students management in Chinese. He was also Senior Lecturer at the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM), a joint venture of the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney.
Moreover, Prof. Schlevogt regularly served as invited faculty (Area Orchestrator & Educator) of Duke Corporate Education (CE), Duke University, the world’s leader in custom executive education according to the Financial Times and Businessweek.Among other things, he held appointments as Area Orchestrator, Asia-Oceania (AO) and Northern and Eastern Europe-Central Asia (NEECA), and Educator of the HeidelbergCement Summit Program, a global leadership development program for top and senior managers. Besides, he served as Visiting Professor at the Henley Management College (now: Henley Business School) in the United Kingdom. He also founded the Schlevogt Business School, the first business school in Germany specializing in European-Chinese economic relationships, and became its President.
Moreover, Prof. Schlevogt held two appointments at Harvard University, one as Associate at the Harvard Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Asia Center, another as Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Business School (HBS), conducting state-of-the art research about China (including collaborative research with HBS professor Yasheng Huang). Further, he was elected as an editorial board member of the Asia Pacific Journal of Management, the official journal of the Asia Academy of Management. The European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS), the leading association for management research in Europe, appointed him as its National Correspondent for China. Besides, he was a member of the Academy of Management (AOM), where he served as the Country Representative for Germany and China of its International Division, and the Academy of International Business (AIB). Moreover, he was appointed as the Area Editor, Asia-Pacific and CIS/CEE, of Performance Journal (the global business journal of Ernst & Young) and a Member of the Ernst & Young Global Business Performance Thinktank (GBPT). Furthermore, he has been elected as a Member of the Editorial Board of the IUP Journal of Marketing Management.
Prof. Schlevogtserved as a Fellow of the McKinsey & Co. Global Institute (MGI), San Francisco and Shanghai, responsible for establishing a new Asia hub in Shanghai, as well as developing and implementing a new high-impact MGI research agenda in Asia, with a special emphasis on public policy, economics, and management. Moreover, Prof. Dr. Schlevogt worked as a senior strategic management consultant for McKinsey & Co. in the Greater China Office. His consulting experience includes helping the Malaysian Prime Minister develop an "electronic government" and other flagship projects for the Multimedia Supercorridor (MSC). He also advised some of the largest Chinese and multinational companies throughout Asia on how to develop growth strategies and improve their organizational effectiveness in industries such as construction materials, chemicals, automobile parts and finance.
Prior to this China assignment, Prof. Dr. Schlevogt served as country manager for Colonia-Victoire (now: AXA), a leading European financial services company, in the former Soviet Union. He led its chief representative office in Moscow, advised the Russian strategic partner (Rossiya Insurance), set up a joint venture and introduced new insurance products to the Russian and Ukrainian market. He was also appointed as the Representative of the Association of German Insurers in the former Soviet Union, advising the Russian government on insurance legislation.
Prof. Dr. Schlevogtis listed in the international encyclopedia "Who's Who in the World" and the German "Who's Who." The Effective Executive magazine featured him as "Global Thinker on Global Business." One of his six books, "The Art of Chinese Management" (Oxford University Press), has been hailed by reviewers as the seminal standard text on the subject. In "The Innovation Honeymoon" (Pearson Prentice Hall),he proposes a new innovation model, which helps different types of organizations to achieve quantum leaps in performance.[1] His latest book, in which he absolutely correctly predicted radical global reversals, is "Brave New Saw Wave World" (Pearson/FT Press).
Prof. Dr. Schlevogt was an influential columnist for RT.DE (RT Germany) (author of the column “Prof. Kai”) and wrote the widely read Asia column ("Notes from Asia") for Manager Magazin, a leading German business publication. Besides, he served as columnist for Euro, the largest monthly capital market magazine in Germany. Furthermore, he wrote the highly popular column "Prof. Kai on Strategic Leadership" for the Jakarta Post, the leading English-language newspaper in Indonesia. Prof. Schlevogt published over 200 additional articles in a broad range of journals, magazines and newspapers (both print and online versions) such as Academy of Management Executive, Journal of International Business Studies, Organizational Studies, Thunderbird International Business Review, European Business Forum, Performance Journal, Effective Executive, Journal of Management Consulting, Journal of Asia Pacific Management, Asia Pacific Business Review, Asian Business, Far Eastern Economic Review, China Business Review, China Economic Review, Wirtschaftswoche, Euro, Financial Times, RT (formerly Russia Today), China Daily, CovertAction Magazine, Straits Times, Business Times, The Nation, Bangkok Post, Die Welt, Frankfurter Rundschau, DieWoche, and Neues Deutschland.
He was a regular TV commentator for Channel NewsAsia and gave exclusive interviews to the BBC World Service, CNN International and Deutsche Welle (German state radio). In addition, he regularly served as TV expert for RT (formerly Russia Today).He delivered keynote speeches at the Evonik CEO Symposium, Annual Conference on International Cash, Treasury and Risk, organized by EuroFinance (The Economist Group), and other resonant high-profile events.
Prof. Schlevogt frequently runs degree courses and executive education programs for senior business leaders and senior government officials throughout the word, teaching in Chinese, Russian and other world languages. His executive education engagements include the Nestlé Global Leadership Program, Bosch Global Leadership Development Program, IBM-GSOM SPbU Growth Market Leadership Program, Evonik Animal Nutrition Asia South Strategic Roadmapping, Evonik Degussa FA Asia South Strategy Workshop, Evonik-CTC Group (正大康地集团) Strategic Leadership Workshop, E.ON Gazprom Young Leaders Program, HeidelbergCement Summit Program, ANZ Super Regional Leaders Program, Petronas Senior Management Development Program, Panasonic Asian Management Seminar, International Management Seminar of Total (now: TotalEnergies SE), NUS Asia Pacific Advanced Management Program, UCLA-NUS Executive MBA program, NUS Asia-Pacific Executive MBA program, GSOM St. Petersburg University-HEC Paris Dual Degree Executive MBA program, ESMT-CKGSB China CEO Program, and Zhuhai City Government Strategy Seminar in China. Other clients include Bank Julius Bär, DyStar (integrating the former textile dye businesses of Bayer, Hoechst, BASF, ICI/Zeneca, Mitsubishi and Mitsui), and Ayala Corporation (Integrated Microelectronics (IMI) Inc.).
Prof. Dr. Schlevogt pursued postdoctoral studies (non-degree) at Harvard University and holds a Ph.D. in Management Studies from the University of Oxford, Saïd Business School, Christ Church (College), where he also received the Economic Research and Development Council (ESRC) Award. He earned two master’s degrees in management from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he studied under the Nobel Prize Laureate for Economic Sciences Professor Christopher Pissarides, and the Community of European Management Schools (CEMS). He also holds diplomas and certificates in International Enterprise Management from the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing and Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) in Paris, as well as a Bachelor (Honors) degree in Management from the London School of Economics. He also completed the McKinsey Master of Business Administration (Mini-MBA) program and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® Certification Program at the Center for Applications of Psychological Type (CAPT), founded by Isabel Briggs Myers, in Gainesville, Florida, where he passed the examinations required to become a Certified Practitioner of the MBTI® Step I™ and Step II™ Instruments. A German national, he speaks fluent Chinese (teaching top leaders in Mandarin), Russian,and six other world languages. Prof. Dr. Schlevogt lives in Potsdam, Germany. Website: http://www.schlevogt.com. TikTok channel “Schlevogt”: https://www.tiktok.com/@schlevogt. Telegram channel “Schlevogt”: https://t.me/schlevogt. LiveJournal: https://kai-schlevogt.livejournal.com. Email addresses (personal): schlevogt@schlevogt.com, schlevogt@gmail.com and schlevogt@yandex.ru.