Bruno Levy
Managing Director, Strategyn France
Locale: Neuilly sur Seine, France
Biography: With Strategyn France, Bruno has built a diverse consulting team with the skill set to execute growth and innovation strategies using ODI. He has worked with companies such as Isodis Natura, Picanol, Garlock and Selecta, helping them to understand the strategy behind ODI and using it to devise new offerings that result in commercial success.
Bruno started his career as an entrepreneur, when his father’s death forced him to take charge of his family’s civil engineering firm. He sold the business after two years and 30 percent yearly growth. After furthering his education in the United States, he came back to France, where he joined ILOG, then a technology start-up.
He went on to co-found Hypermind, a boutique multi-media publisher that specialized in explaining the big questions of science to the general public. He co-authored and published three titles that sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide through prestigious publishers, including Scientific American and Oxford University Press. His multimedia titles have received some of the most prestigious industry awards for their entertaining content, design quality and unique interactivity.
Next, he co-founded Smart Trade Technologies, a publisher of trading platforms and engines for financial OTC markets. The Smart Trade platform is currently used in banks worldwide, including three of the largest 10 banks in the world. He then founded Value Logic, a consulting company that helped early-stage software publishing companies. It quickly evolved, however, as a strategic marketing consulting company with worldwide assignments for customers like Microsoft MSN.
Bruno is an engineer from French École Polytechnique. He holds master’s degrees in electrical engineering and in industrial administration from Carnegie Mellon University (with honors). He was the first Carnegie Mellon student to earn both degrees at the same time. He also won a Japanese Ministry of Education (Monbusho) scholarship that enabled him to study the economics of robotic systems at Tokyo University.
Personal: I am married and the proud father of Chiara. My principal hobby is cooking Italian dishes. My wife is Italian and she is very picky as far as food is concerned (as most Italians are). So I am quite proud that she regularly congratulates me on what I have prepared.
Greatest Client Challenge: The greatest challenge our clients face is building a core strategic vision that is really new. With a new vision, innovation naturally follows.
Quote: The best way to predict the future is to create it – Peter Drucker
Last Book Read: Defiance by Nechama Tec, the story of three brothers who organize resistance networks in the forest of Bielorussia during World War II. They save more than 1,200 Jewish people even though they are surrounded by Nazi soldiers. Very moving. Fiction supersedes reality.