DÜSSELDORF. Europe’s leaders struggle for real innovations, Americans recognize their remaining lack of efficiency and the Asians realize that their structures do in no way support the ambitious growth targets. That is the result of the first Handelsblatt Management-Forum, a survey conducted with 12 leading business schools in the triad: America, Asia and Europe.
Among others business schools like Yale and Columbia (USA), IESE (Barcelona) and St. Gallen, the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai or the Indian Business School in Hyderabad do participate. Renowned experts like Jagmohan Raju, David Sobermann or Dominique Hanssens are part of the group. The complete matrix with all answers can be found on the Handelsblatt website.
In cooperation with the management consultancy Santiago Advisors and the scholar Ronny Fürst, Head of the European Management School in Mainz, the Handelsblatt has questioned the panel participants about the subjects which are on the top of the management agenda in their region as well as which topics will dominate the future management agendas. This survey will be conducted on a regular basis with partly changing questions.
Western leaders are looking for orientation. That is the impression emerging from the current turn of the year survey. Therefore, Strategic Management is a top subject at business schools across Europe and the United States. But only in the US the interest for instruments to enhance economic efficiency is ranked with equal importance. In Europe and Asia this aspect is not an issue. “The survey shows furthermore, that the once unrivaled leading role of American business schools is weakening”, remarks Fürst. The reason: In the Far East totally different questions are on the agenda. In the view of leading Asian scholars, two main strategies will guide Asian global players in the next decade. “Think global, act local” and “from contract manufacturing to globally leading technology.”
For Cathy Chen, (Singapore Management University) Asian companies will concentrate on the needs of Asian customers in the future. Target customers will no longer be looked for in Europe or America. Chen: “Value-added technological innovations and consumer-oriented marketing are replacing the traditional low-cost oriented models.”Her colleague Jagmohan Raju (Wharton Business School) adds: “Business models that recognize the importance of growing local markets and are capitalizing on India’s young talent will be successful.” In other words: China, India and other rising Asian nations are waving goodbye to their role as an extended workbench of the Western world. “Companies in Asia have been positioned as mere low-cost suppliers. Now they want to ascent to the league of global players and compete with their own brands.” says Fürst.
Asian managers do not only re-discover their own markets which have been neglected due to the mere export orientation. There are more aspects that differentiate the Asian management elite. During the World Economic Forum it became apparent, that Asians recognize the current crisis as to be mostly of Western concern. For the developed nations that surely does not mean relief. On the contrary “Competition between regions will increase, especially between China and the US predicts Oliver Heil (Universität Mainz).
A further finding of the Handelsblatt Management-Forum is the central role of innovations for the established Western world. “Europe and the USA are focused on sustainable breakthrough innovations” says Santiago consultant Juan Rigall. Whereas the target to accelerate companies’ growth is clear, a shortage of appropriate ideas to do so is obvious as well. Scholars are therefore re-focusing their research. Stefan Thomke (Harvard) for example is researching into open innovation models, meaning cross-company networks to fuel the creation of new products, services etc.
