Prof. Dr. Andreas Kaplan is Professor of Digital Transformation at KLU. His research addresses society’s digitalization, notably due to advances in AI, virtual reality, and social networks. With roughly 50,000 citations on Google Scholar, a high-profile PLoS study counts Kaplan within the group of most impactful scientists worldwide. His seminal work defining the term “social media” has recurringly been the most downloaded publication of the ~15 million scientific articles in the world’s largest research database, Elsevier’s Science Direct, spanning several disciplines, including data science, engineering, management, and psychology. Dr. Kaplan’s work has been published by Cambridge, Harvard, and Oxford University Press.
With significant leadership experience in academia, Professor Kaplan is an internationally renowned and widely published higher education expert. Currently, he serves as KLU’s President and Managing Director. As former Rector and Provost of ESCP Business School, Sorbonne Alliance, Kaplan oversaw 6,000+ students across the school’s six campuses in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the UK and gained strong insights into various European higher education systems. His academic career began at Sciences Po Paris and ESSEC Business School. Kaplan has been board member and sat on strategic advisory committees of various higher education institutions and edtech start-ups. He has recurrently served as an advisor, consultant, and keynote speaker.
Professor Kaplan did his Habilitation at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University and his Ph.D. at the University of Cologne and HEC Paris. Holder of an MPA (Master of Public Administration) from the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA, Institut National du Service Public - INSP), an MBA from ThePower Business School (ThePower MBA), an MSc from ESCP Business School, and a BSc from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Kaplan additionally did part of his doctoral studies at INSEAD and graduated from the ITP at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
Selected Publications
(2023): Business Schools post-Covid-19: A Blueprint for Survival, 1 ed., Routledge: Abingdon, Oxon, 9781032381046..
Abstract: It all began when the world’s first business school, the European School of Commerce Paris (ESCP), was established in 1819. Criticism notwithstanding, business schools have since continued their path in higher education without facing existential metamorphoses. Covid-19, however, has accelerated business schools’ digital transformation, calling into question the concept of business school itself. Business schools are in a new competitive landscape and profound structural changes seem inevitable. This concise text offers insights into how business schools should rethink their approach to management education, differentiate themselves from new players in the higher education market, and find innovative ways of doing things. The book is a survival toolkit for leadership teams across the world. It examines the rationale of business school and how it has evolved. The purpose of research is explained, and the teaching of management is explored. Kaplan analyzes the current business model in the digital environment. He looks at the business of accreditations and rankings and branding and community-building as strategies to address competition. The book concludes by looking at change leadership at business schools. It will interest both leaders of established academic institutions and alternative educational providers from edtech and big tech planning to enter the management education market.
(2019): Digital transformation and disruption: On big data, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and other things, Business Horizons, 62 (6): 679-681.
(2022): Examining artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in marketing via a global lens: current trends and future research opportunities, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 39 (2): 522-540.
Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured substantial interest from a wide array of marketing scholars in recent years. Our research contributes to this emerging domain by examining AI technologies in marketing via a global lens. Specifically, our lens focuses on three levels of analysis: country, company, and consumer. Our country-level analysis emphasizes the heterogeneity in economic inequality across countries due to the considerable economic resources necessary for AI adoption. Our company-level analysis focuses on glocalization because while the hardware that underlies these technologies may be global in nature, their application necessitates adaptation to local cultures. Our consumer-level analysis examines consumer ethics and privacy concerns, as AI technologies often collect, store and process a cornucopia of personal data across our globe. Through the prism of these three lenses, we focus on two important dimensions of AI technologies in marketing: (1) human–machine interaction and (2) automated analysis of text, audio, images, and video. We then explore the interaction between these two key dimensions of AI across our three-part global lens to develop a set of research questions for future marketing scholarship in this increasingly important domain.
(2010): Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media, Business Horizons, 53 (1): 59-68.
Abstract: The concept of Social Media is top of the agenda for many business executives today. Decision makers, as well as consultants, try to identify ways in which firms can make profitable use of applications such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Second Life, and Twitter. Yet despite this interest, there seems to be very limited understanding of what the term “Social Media” exactly means; this article intends to provide some clarification. We begin by describing the concept of Social Media, and discuss how it differs from related concepts such as Web 2.0 and User Generated Content. Based on this definition, we then provide a classification of Social Media which groups applications currently subsumed under the generalized term into more specific categories by characteristic: collaborative projects, blogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual social worlds. Finally, we present 10 pieces of advice for companies which decide to utilize Social Media.
(2006): Valuing the real option of abandoning unprofitable customers when calculating customer lifetime value, Journal of Marketing, 70 (3): 5-20.
Abstract: In recent years, several authors have developed models that focus on the allocation of scarce marketing resources based on customer lifetime value (CLV). These approaches use CLV to develop a rank order of customers and recommend devoting more resources to customers with higher ranks. However, it has been discussed in the literature that a simple net present value analysis may not reflect the value of the flexibility to make such decisions. Therefore, some authors recommend the use of a real-options analysis in certain situations. Building on this stream of research and using the case of the option to abandon unprofitable customers, this article proposes an approach that combines real-options analysis and CLV; this approach explicitly values the seller's flexibility to abandon unprofitable customers. Using a combination of examples, empirical analysis, and Monte Carlo simulations, the authors provide evidence that the divergence between CLV that includes and CLV that excludes option value can be substantial and may not be the same for all customers. Therefore, the authors conclude that a distribution of customers based on CLV can change when option value is included. Thus, using CLV as a basis for marketing decisions but not including the value of the option to make such decisions a priori when calculating CLV can lead to an overall biased result.