Professor Jacob has been Professor of Marketing at ESCP Business School (Berlin campus) since January 2002. In this role, he has undertaken teaching assignments across a wide range of regions, including Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. He has extensive teaching experience in marketing at the undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate, doctoral, and executive education levels. In addition to his academic activities, he is actively engaged in business consulting.

Professor Jacob studied business administration at Saarland University (Universität des Saarlandes), where he earned the degree of Diplom-Kaufmann in 1989. During his studies, he spent an academic year as an exchange student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (USA), from 1985 to 1986. In 1989, he began his doctoral studies while serving as an assistant lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin, where he developed a specialization in business-to-business marketing. He received his doctorate in 1994.

He subsequently continued his academic career at Freie Universität Berlin, completing his Habilitation (post-doctoral qualification to supervise research) in 2001 with a research focus on industrial business relationships. In the academic year 1997–1998, he further strengthened his international profile as a visiting professor at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.

Professor Jacob served as a program director at ESCP, overseeing collaborations with institutions in Eastern and Central Europe, the Executive MBA program, and the Master in International Sales Management. Since 2023, he has also held the position of dean at the ESCP Berlin campus.