Stevan Dedijer

Who was Stevan Dedijer?

Stevan Dedijer was a Yugoslav academic and a pioneer of Business Intelligence.

Stevan Dedijer was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina to Serb parents, Milica Dedijer and Jefto Dedijer.

He attended secondary school in Rome, Italy, and graduated from the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, in 1930. He earned a degree in physics at Princeton University in 1934.

Stevan worked as a journalist in Pittsburgh and New York and later, after World War II in Yugoslavia.

He served in the American army as a paratrooper in The 101st Airborne Division from 1942 to 1945 while his brother Vladimir Dedijer fought for Tito's Partisans. He jumped over Normandy with the task to bodyguard the Major General Maxwell Taylor.

He was also the Head of the Belgrade Nuclear Institute 1949–1954.

Stevan was awarded a PhD from the University of Lund in Sweden. He was also the founder of the Research Policy Institute at Lund University. His research focus was on Business Intelligence and he has been named the grandfather of business intelligence by his friend, the late CIA Director William Colby.

Prof. Dedijer was the first person in Europe to teach business/competitive intelligence at a university. He was a co-founder of the Swedish Intelligence Network BISNES.