Karel Cool's research, teaching and consulting focus on problems of industry and competitive analysis (e.g. industry overcapacity; profit dynamics, product standards, critical mass races, value creation, building unique resources). He has published in Management Science, the Strategic Management Journal, Organization Studies, Marketing Letters, Advances in Strategic Management, etc., has edited a book, European Industrial Restructuring in the 1990s (London: Macmillan), 1992 with D. Neven and I. Walter, and has contributed to several books on competitive strategy. Right now, he is Associate Editor of the Strategic Management Journal, the leading strategy journal.

He has consulted on major strategic problems of corporate and industry restructuring and worked with a variety of corporations, including Whirlpool, the Thomson Travel Group, Thomson Corporation, Price Waterhouse, Schering Plough, Ciba Geigy, Lufthansa, Europcar, Banque de France, Unilever, DaimlerChrysler, Borealis, Exxon, Solvay, Shell, IBM, etc.

During the academic year 1995/6 he was Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. He is also Visiting Professor at Northwestern University and co-chair of the 2002 annual Strategic Management Society Conference held in Paris.

Competitive Strategy and Industry Dynamics: Building Unique Resources; Creating Customer and Shareholder Value; Capturing Customer Value; Critical Mass; Product Standards: How to Set the Standard? How to Compete when Losing a Standards Race? The Strategy; Industry Capacity Management: How and When to Add Capacity? How to Manage Industry Capacity? Value-C; Industry Competitiveness.

Industry and Competitive Analysis (MBA elective); Competitive Strategy (Executive Education).