Derek F. Abell
1938 (age 85–86)
Professor Emeritus, International Dean
Three Dimensional Business Definition model
Career[edit]
He obtained a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Southampton in 1960. After that he moved to the United States and obtained his master's degree in industrial management from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1966, and his doctorate in business administration from Harvard Business School in 1970.[2]
After obtaining his doctorate, Abell served as a full-time faculty member at the Harvard Business School, until 1981. He became a professor of strategy and marketing at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland from 1981 to 2003. During that same time he held two other positions. He served as dean of IMD's institutional predecessor, Institut pour l'Etude des Methodes de Direction de l'Entreprise (IMEDE), from 1981 to 1989, and as professor of technology and management at the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (at both the Zurich campus and Lausanne campus) from 1994 to 2003.
The Three Dimensional Business Definition model (or Abell model) helps a company define its business. Prior to Abell’s model, it was common to define a business either through its resource capabilities or its programs of activity, such as with a product/market grid.[3] According to his book, Defining the Business, Abell suggests the previous two-dimensional definitions were insufficient, and instead created a three-dimensional analysis. The three dimensions in Abell's model are:[4]