Dr. Paul Papayoanou is the founder and Managing Director of Dragonfly. He earned a Ph.D. from UCLA and initially pursued a career in academia, working as a professor at the University of California, San Diego and at Harvard University, doing research and teaching in international relations, political economy, and game theory. He then left academia to start a strategy consulting practice that specialized in applying Strategic Gaming, a novel and practical game theory approach for business strategy and negotiations that he developed, as well as decision analysis. In his 18-year consulting career with Strategic Decisions Group, SGG, and Shell, he has worked on more than 150 strategy and negotiation engagements, helping large and small companies in oil and gas, power, alternative energy, the life sciences, technology, manufacturing, consumer goods, financial services, and other industries to capture billions of dollars in value. He also spearheaded efforts to improve decision-making throughout Shell’s global organization as the lead subject matter expert in game theory, decision analysis, and decision quality. In addition to game theory and decision analysis, he is adept at applying real options, wargaming, and political risk analysis.

Dr. Papayoanou is a Fellow of the Society of Decision Professionals and the author of Game Theory for Business, as well as several articles in business publications. He has lectured on game theory and business at Harvard Business School, the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University, Stanford University, Texas A&M, The George Washington University, and Virginia Tech, and has delivered presentations and training to over a thousand business professionals, as well as political and governmental leaders. As a professor, he wrote Power Ties and numerous articles that have appeared in academic journals, and he co-edited and contributed to New Games, a special issue of The Journal of Conflict Resolution.