Peter Cohan

Peter S. Cohan is an American businessman and author.

Cohan earned a BA in art history in 1979 and a BS in electrical engineering in 1980 from Swarthmore College. He did graduate work in computer science at MIT and earned an MBA from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

After graduation, he worked for Index Systems, an information technology management consulting firm started by several MIT professors; and at The Monitor Company, a strategy consulting firm co-founded by Harvard Business School professor Michael E. Porter, a specialist on competition and strategy.

In 1994 he started Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He has invested in seven private companies—Andromedia, SupplierMarket.com, Epesi Technologies, 3Plex, Lexar Media, Round One, and SoFi—three of which (Andromedia, SupplierMarket.com, and Lexar Media) were sold for a total of $2 billion.

He has taught at Stanford University, MIT, the University of Hong Kong, and the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering. He is a visiting professor at EADA Business School in Barcelona, and since May 2002 has been an executive-in-residence at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Since September 2005, he has taught business strategy to undergraduate and MBA students at Babson where he created and leads the Hong Kong/Singapore Start-up Strategy, Israel Start-up Strategy, Spain/Portugal Start-up Strategy and Paris Start-up Strategy offshore elective courses. In September 2014, he was promoted from an Adjunct Lecturer to a Visiting Lecturer in Strategy. In June 2016, he was promoted to a Lecturer of Strategy.

Cohan writes the Start-up Economy column for Forbes magazine, The Hungry Start-up column for Inc magazine, and a weekly column for Entrepreneur. Wall and Main, his Worcester Telegram & Gazette column, helped its Business Matters section win the 2012 New England Newspaper and Press Association award for the best Business page for papers over 30k circulation]. He is a member of the Wharton Blog Network, which received the Gold Award in the 2013 Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District II Accolades Awards program.

From September 2004 to September 2008, Cohan served on the board of the Alzheimer's Association, Massachusetts Chapter. He is the brother of William D. Cohan.

• Hungry Start-up Strategy: Creating New Ventures with Limited Resources and Unlimited Vision (BK Business, 2012), ISBN 978-1609945282
• Export Now: Five Keys to Entering New Markets (Wiley, 2011), co-authored with Frank Lavin, ISBN 978-0470828168
• Capital Rising (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), co-authored by U. Srinivasa Rangan, ISBN 978-0230612310
• You Can't Order Change (Portfolio, 2009), ISBN 978-1591842392
• Value Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2003), ISBN 978-0787966041
• Net Profit (Wiley, 2001), ISBN 978-0787944766
• E -Profits by Peter S Cohan - The 12 Steps To Creating A State Of The Art E-Commerce Strategy For Any Size Business, ISBN 978-1905953691

He has also contributed to six compendiums of modern management.