Professor Derek Abell is Founding President of ESMT European School of Management and Technology. His primary teaching and research interests are in strategic marketing, general management, leadership in technology-based industry and the broader responsibilities of the executive "beyond the bottom line". 

From 1981-2003 he was Professor of Strategy and Marketing at IMD, Lausanne, and parallel to that, from 1994-2003, Professor of Technology and Management at the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH Zurich and EPF Lausanne). He was Dean of IMEDE (the institutional predecessor of IMD) from 1981-1989, and from 1969-1981 a full-time faculty member at the Harvard Business School.

He originally graduated as an aeronautical engineer from the University of Southampton. He has a Master's degree from the Sloan School of Management at MIT and his Doctorate from Harvard Business School. He has served as a consultant to governments in Eastern and Central Europe, as well as to many multinational corporations around the world. He has also served as a board member of a number of European-based public and private organizations.
He has published five books and numerous articles, among others Managing with Dual Strategies: Mastering the Present; Preempting the Future, published by Free Press, New York