"The last financial/economic crisis redefined the term ?dynamic?", says Dr. Juan Rigall. Fast and flexible operating companies were less affected by the crisis than inflexible companies, comments the partner of Santiago Advisors. However, these companies need to prove now, that they can switch quickly towards growth, because growth topics are in the Americas and Asia of similar significance as among European top managers. This is the result of the fourth Handelsblatt Management-Forum.
This forum has been established by Santiago Advisors and Prof. Ronny Fürst, head of the European Management School (EMS) in Mainz. The forum conducts surveys among twelve professors of top business schools in the Americas, Asia and Europe regarding the latest management- and business trends regularly.
During the last crisis controlling and financial management topics have been on the top agenda among leading companies. Today, 18 months after the peak of the crisis, companies need to refocus on entering new markets and the development of new products again. However, some companies experienced a significant change in their competitive position due to the crisis, which has mainly been a crisis of the Western industrialized economies.
An example mentioned by Waldemar Pfoertsch, professor at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), is the China Commercial Aircraft Comp. The Chinese company is benchmark applying new Western technologies in order to develop a medium range aircraft, which fits to the specific regional demand and resources. As yet the Chinese airplane is not in the air. However, the aircraft industry expects that the duopoly of Airbus and Boeing will sooner or later face serious competition by the Chinese industry.
Recently, especially the solar industry is exposed to an increasing speed of change. Dirk Stenkamp, Chief Operating Officer of Centrotherm, a German supplier of solar technology, talks about an extremely competitive environment. The innovation management of this German company could therefore be regarded as archetype for other industry sectors. Centrotherm strictly separated the production- and the R&D unit in order to avoid interferences. The R&D unit, with currently about 100 employees, can therefore be considered as a sort of think tank, which works independently from daily operations.
