Rolf Dobelli

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Rolf Dobelli (born 1966) is a Swiss novelist and entrepreneur.

He was born in 1966 in Lucerne, Switzerland. In 1986, he enrolled at the University of St. Gallen, where he studied business, earning his MBA in 1991 and PhD in 1995. He began working for Swissair in 1992 and held several managerial positions. In 1999, he co-founded getabstract, the world's leading provider of book summaries (both in fiction and non-fiction).

Rolf Dobelli has a weekly book show on Bloomberg TV Germany, a weekly show on FAZ Radio (Germany) and has appeared on CNN, n-tv, N24. He has been quoted in Wall Street Journal, Business 2.0, Financial Times, WirtschaftsWoche, Facts, Cash, NZZ and many other U.S. and European business newspapers and magazines.

In 2003, Diogenes Verlag published his first novel, Fünfunddreissig (literally, "Thirty-five"). It became a bestseller and was translated into several languages. His second novel, Und was machen Sie beruflich? ("What Do You Do for a Living?") was published in 2004, Himmelreich, in 2006, Wer bin ich? ("Who am I?") and Turbulenzen ("Turbulence?") in 2007 all by Diogenes.

Dobelli's specialty is the intersection between business and fiction. The major themes in his work include the search for meaning in the workplace, the meaning of success and the role of randomness in life. His fictional questionnaires and aphorisms ^[1] on these topics have been reprinted in several newspapers and magazines. Critics and readers have praised him as "a new language in German fiction" Weltwoche and one of the few fiction writers who thoroughly understand the business world, from both an academic and practical point of view.

Dobelli is founder and curator of zurich.minds (www.zurichminds.com), an invitation-only community of Switzerland’s most distinguished thinkers, scientists, artists and entrepreneurs.