Raymond Vernon obtained his Bachelor’s degree (B.A.) with honours from the College of the City of New York in 1933. In 1941, Raymond Vernon obtained his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Columbia with his doctoral thesis ‘The regulation of stock exchange members’.

After he had obtained his doctorate, Vernon worked almost 24 years in share trading and stock broking. Next, he was engaged in improving the relations between the United States, Japan and Europe. He particularly proved his worth during the negations with Japan about exports issues.

In 1959, Raymond Vernon joined Harvard Business School (HBS) as Faculty Director. There, he set up a large multinational enterprise research to study the direction from the United States. The research team looked at the aspects in terms of finance, organization, production, management, marketing and business-government relations. This produced several theories including that of the product life cycle. In the course of time Vernon wrote numerous books and articles about multinational management, doing business in other counties, relations with the Government etcetera. According to the Economist (1999), he is still regarded as the discoverer of Globalization.

In 1981, Raymond Vernon transferred to the Kennedy School of Government as a central figure between Business and Government and continued his research in the area of Globalization. Vernon died at the age of 86.