by Robert S. Benchley

"I believe in an evidence-based, data-driven, iterative product-development process."

How many of us can reduce the central truths we've learned in business to a single sentence? Olivier Dumon (MBA 1998) can, and does. "Every word has meaning and is based on the experience I have had," he says.

At 44, Dumon has had more experience than most. A self-described "Internet product guy," he has known both success and failure, and he believes that failure can be a good teacher.

"Once, when we tried an e-commerce product, we looked from the outside in," he says. "Lots of companies were buying the same products for different prices, and we were trying to make it more transparent. The problem was that the product users did not want transparency. We approached it like consultants, but I learned that any new product you build has to solve the actual end-user's needs. That took me a long time to understand, and it cost me a lot of money. It is why I believe what I believe. I don't want to repeat mistakes."

Dumon is more than someone with a formulaic approach to designing new products. He has another, larger mission. The co-holder of four US patents related to search, he firmly believes that the more search technology is improved, the faster researchers can find cures for diseases and a host of other societal problems. In brief, search can change the world—and for the better.

Born in Paris, Dumon studied at Sainte-Croix de Neuilly and received a BS in business from the École Supérieure de Commerce de Grenoble in 1992. Following military service, he took a consulting position with Bossard Consultants, a Zurich, Switzerland-based firm that had him working with technology clients throughout Europe. "Most assignments involved new back-end systems for invoicing and similar functions," he recalls. "I wanted to connect with the US, and I thought getting an MBA there would be a good entry point. I was accepted by all of the schools I applied to, and Columbia offered full tuition, but HBS had the best brand and reputation."

Dumon wasn't disappointed. "The whole experience was life-changing," he says. "It was the passion, the drive, the business cases themselves." He cites former finance professor Donald Collat, now managing partner and chief strategist for corporate finance at Ernst and Young, as especially inspirational. "What was special," Dumon recalls, "was his energy. He made it fun."

After graduating from HBS, Dumon returned to Europe and began working for McKinsey as a technology strategy consultant. Taking the entrepreneurial route next, he co-founded Constructeo, a maker of online collaboration tools for the architecture, engineering, and construction industry, with fellow HBS alumnus Bertrand Dumazy (MBA 1999). The mixed success of the company's product offerings led to a takeover by industry competitor Bricsnet. Dumon left to become CEO of Prosys, another European technology company.

"After a couple of years at Prosys, I had an opportunity to join eBay France as senior director of its auctions marketplace," he says. "They were growing in triple digits then, so I thought the timing was right. Then they offered me a transfer to San Francisco to be senior director of search. I finally was working for a technology company in California."

That move also got him more focused on search. Two years after arriving in San Francisco, a call from a former eBay colleague led Dumon to join AT&T Interactive as vice president of product management for search and data; the company was taking the Yellow Pages online at the time. But global publishing giant Elsevier beckoned two years later, and Dumon moved to Amsterdam as its managing director for academic, government, and research markets.

Dumon admits he has made a large number of career moves, but he enjoys change. "I desire to live a life that is as rich as possible," he says, which may be why his interests include activities as diverse as opera and surfing. He adds, "And I am driven by a passion to understand the needs of people and apply technology to meet those needs." This is where his belief in using search to make the world a better place comes in.

"I feel very strongly about my work having meaning," Dumon says. "When I join a company, I ask whether my work will have an impact on society. At Elsevier, I'm pushing the same agenda, using the latest in web technology to help searchers get to the best content as quickly as possible. We publish 20 percent of the world's scientific content. If we can help medical researchers, for example, search better—help them get access to content faster, aggregate information in a more efficient way—then we can help them get closer to a cure."

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