My grandfather, Simon Majaro, who has died aged 95, led a life rich in reinvention. A marketing professor at Cranfield University, he was also a management consultant, author, translator, luthier and patron of chamber music. From consulting to craftsmanship, translation to fiction, he connected people, ideas and cultures.

Born in Jerusalem, Simon was the son of Hanna (nee Rokach) and Leon Majaro, a doctor and Russian-Jewish refugee who fled Odessa (now Odesa) after the 1917 revolution. As a child he met the poet Haim Nahman Bialik, the conductor Arturo Toscanini and the future Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir.

He went to school at the Hebrew Gymnasium in Jerusalem, and moved to London in 1950 to study law at University College London, but soon shifted towards business. He built a successful consulting career before joining Cranfield School of Management, becoming a respected professor and writing influential books on creativity and innovation.

He was appointed MBE in 2011 for services to music education through the Cavatina Chamber Music Trust, which he co-founded with his wife, Pamela (nee Cohen), whom he had met at UCL, where she also studied law. They married in 1954 and had two daughters, Nadine and Nicola. Nicola died from cystic fibrosis aged nine.

In retirement, Simon crafted string instruments from his Hampstead home in north London, making 15 violins, violas and cellos, each of which were played professionally by the Wihan Quartet, among others. Simon and Pamela sponsored chamber music competitions, initially at Trinity Laban, London, and later at the Royal Academy of Music.

He translated his father’s diaries, published as From Odessa to Jerusalem (2011), and wrote Jerusalem’s Doctor of the Poor (2022), a memoir highlighting his father’s medical work across the city’s diverse communities.

During the pandemic, inspired by meeting John le Carré at a restaurant in Hampstead, Simon turned to fiction, and wrote the historical thriller Who Is Mr Poliakoff? (2022), spanning Soviet gulags, Israeli espionage and the Jewish diaspora.

Pamela died in 2016. Simon is survived by his daughter, Nadine, his grandsons, Jonathan and me, and three great-grandchildren, who affectionately knew him as “Saba”.