Mark Chussil is Founder of Advanced Competitive Strategies, Inc. He’s a pioneer in business war gaming, an expert in business-strategy simulation, a prolific author of essays on competitive strategy in Harvard Business Review, ACS’ website, LinkedIn, and many journals, and a thought-provoking teacher of strategic thinking. He’s helped Fortune 500 companies, in many industries and countries, add billions of dollars to their bottom lines.
Mark’s simulation designs have won a patent and an industry award. Two thousand people have participated in the Top Pricer Tournament™, an example of his Cyborg Strategy™ technology. He served on the Board of Directors of Friends of the Children from 2011 to 2018, was voted a fellow of SCIP and of the Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellows, and chaired the Community Partners program of the Harvard Business School Association of Oregon from 2014 to 2019. He taught as an Adjunct Instructor, and visits as a guest speaker, in the Pamplin School of Business at the University of Portland.
A highly rated and entertaining speaker (testimonials), Mark lectures and consults around the world about strategic thinking, advanced business war games, and computer simulation. Mark presented from 1989 to 1994 in the Competitive Marketing Strategies executive-education program at The Wharton School, and he’s presented programs for Harvard Business School, the Indian School of Business, and other graduate schools in various countries.
Mark has worked with ACS clients around the world, including Astra Merck, AT&T Wireless Services, Bell Atlantic (now Verizon), Blount, British Airways, DuPont, GlaxoSmithKline, Itron, JBS USA, Kennametal, Kodak, Methanex, Nestlé, Nortel, Novartis, Organon (Schering-Plough), Petronas, Philips, Sanofi Pasteur, Shell, Sprint, Sprint PCS, The Times Group of India, USWEST (now CenturyLink), Weyerhaeuser, and others who prefer not to be identified for competitive reasons.
Previously, Mark spent 15 years at the Strategic Planning Institute (The PIMS Program), where he was Director, Business-Unit Strategy Research and Director, PC Products. His experience also includes three years in market research and strategy at Sequent Computer Systems (subsequently acquired by IBM).
Mark is lead author of Strategy Analysis with ValueWar (Scientific Press, 1993). Mark’s articles, book chapters, and case studies on competitive strategy have appeared in Cases in Marketing Research (Reibstein and Farris), Competitive Intelligence Magazine, Competitive Intelligence Review, Harvard Business Review, Marketing Research, PC World, Planning Review, SCIP.Online, Sloan Management Review, Starting a CI Function (The CI Foundation), The Journal of AGSI (Association for Global Strategic Information), The Journal of Business Strategy, The Journal of Professional Pricing, The PIMS Principles (Buzzell and Gale), War Footing (Gaffney), Wharton on Dynamic Competitive Strategy (Day and Reibstein), and other publications. He has been featured and quoted in Across The Board (from the Conference Board), Computerworld, Fast Company, Harvard Management Update, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and more.
Mark also wrote two other books. Harvard Business School gave Nice Start: Questions Only You Can Answer to Create the Life Only You Can Live (Inkwater Press, 2010) to its alumni career coaches and to alumni returning for reunions, and had Mark address two reunions based on Nice Start. (See several videos based on Nice Start on Mark’s YouTube channel.) Mark is co-author of The NEW Employee Manual: A No-Holds-Barred Look at Corporate Life (Entrepreneur Press, 2019), with Benjamin Gilad. The NEW Employee Manual focuses on corporate dysfunctions and on the mavericks who can cure them.
Mark earned his MBA from Harvard University and his BA from Yale University.