Wim Buekens

Wim Buekens is currently teaching ‘Strategy & Entrepreneurship’, ‘Marketing Strategy’ and ‘International Business’ at the Business faculty of University College Ghent. He is mainly teaching in post graduate curricula and in the international curriculum (Erasmus programme) and has been guest professor in the Czech Republic (Ostrava), France (Paris and Toulouse), Estland (Riga), Sweden (Halmstad), Romania (Sibiu), Slovenia (Lubljana), Spain (San Sebastian, Vigo and Madrid), UK (Cambridge), the Netherlands, Germany and Norway (Alesund). For several years he has been teaching the elective course on “Innovation & Entrepreneurship” at Toulouse Business School (France) and in the master programme at Lucian Blaga University (Romania). Since this academic year he is also visiting professor of Entrepreneurship at Erasmus Hogeschool in Brussels. He has been the promotor of many student projects in the field of strategy together with companies both in Belgium and abroad. Apart from that for several years he was Programme Manager Executive Education at the Vlerick Business School (one of the top European business schools) and gave workshops on business planning and strategy implementation in some of the Vlerick programmes. He works with both managers and entrepreneurs and between 2001 and 2012 he was running a programme in which start-up entrepreneurs are coached in developing a new venture. In that period he was involved in supporting over 250 entrepreneurs in starting or growing a business and in developing their business plan. More recently he has become co-founder and strategy professor in an entrepreneurship programme for growth companies organised by University College Ghent. In 2015 he became board member of a cluster of Schools that is going through a merger and that is now facing a transition process. Since 2017 he is chairman of the board of this organisation. He is also teaches in a marketing programme for adult education and is author and member of the advisory board at the Wolter Kluwers Editing Group. In his own consulting activities he gives strategy workshops for management teams from companies in the Benelux. These are mostly smaller and mid-sized companies. Before joining the academic world he worked as a consultant for a UK based consulting firm in the field of strategic management ( a spin off from McKinsey and Co) and worked as marketing manager and assistant general manager for international companies in the food (Friesland Campina) and building products industry (Koramic Terca Wienerberger) . He has a master degree in both economics (major in industrial organization and international economics) and management (major in strategy and international business) and followed an advanced management programme. He tries to motivate and challenge the students and to prepare them for business life by continuously integrating business experience and best management practices in his courses. Also he likes to be the sounding board for executives and to invite them review their strategy and to discover new ways of thinking.