I am happy with the successful participation at the two-day conference “Hidden Champions in CEE and Dynamically Changing Environments“. The international event organized by CEEMAN international management development association, in cooperation with IEDC-Bled School of Management and Austrian Federal Chamber of Commerce (WKO), brought together over 130 business leaders, business thinkers, investors, deans of business schools, researchers, policy makers and media from 31 countries.

We first-handedly exchanged the experience about business success trajectories and distinctive business and leadership practices of “Hidden Champions” – highly innovative, differentiated and specialized small to medium size companies holding lead market positions in their field internationally.

My role was twofold: as a Member of the Board of BISOL Group, I attended as a panelist, representing one such Hidden Champion Company. In a panel moderated by Prof Kevin C Desouza of Metropolitan Institute (USA), I shared the views on how in BISOL strategic alliances are formed, what are the challenges that we are faced with, our success and failure stories of cooperations.

As a professor of Management of Innovation and Technology at IEDC, I have also acted as the panel leader on “Leverages of Innovation” where I have been joined by two executives of Hidden Champions: Petar Uliæ of EXECOM (Serbia), Lazslo Suveges-Sabo of CASON Engineering (Hungary), and three researchers who represented Hidden Champions: Miklos Stocker (Hungary), Nataliia Palii (Ukraine – Ukrainian Beer Company) and Ozat Beiserkeyev (Kazakhstan – Tulpar).

Panel conclusions: To win customers and stay ahead of the competition, to survive and compete, innovation is critical. Coming up with products and cashing them in todays dynamic markets is indeed a competence. One thing is sure: it is not the amount of money you drop into R&D and it’s not sheer size that makes a company successful. Company has to do it smartly – but how is that? In the panel couple of themes recurred:

• Becoming a serial innovator, creating products on ongoing basis, is a must. Innovation lies in the hands of all employees.
• Companies have to set up innovation process and a culture of innovation. Process is important so that everyone understands how one can submit ideas, how they will be assessed, how they will be experimented on. Leaders role is extremely important in fostering the culture of innovation.
• Interesting that it needs to be explained, but products must be such that people will have reason to buy. Benefits have to be communicated clearly to the customer – at this sales aspect many companies still struggle even though it is a crucial step.
• Understanding that deep technological knowledge can be used to create products for different customer segments, different markets even.
• Creative destruction and cannibalization of own products is something that has to be done. »If you don’t do it, someone else will.«

Just a few of the Hidden Champions

As a IEDC professor for Management of Innovation and Technology, I will be chairing a panel on Leverages of Innovation where I will steer the discussion with four esteemed panelists from Serbia (EXECOM), Hungary (CASON Engineering), Ukraine (Ukraininan Beer Company) and Kazakhstan (Tulpar) into uncovering a few key managerial issues, challenges, and behavioral characteristics of HC companies.

As a Member of the Board of BISOL Group, which is considered as one of the Hidden Champions, I will be also attending the panel on “Cooperation, coopetition and strategic alliances for success”.

The purpose however was not just to celebrate, but to tackle the challenge of leadership in the 21st century. There were several interesting speeches from world top thinkers and even founders of the fields of leadership (Prof. Manfred Kets de Vries, Dr. Ichak Adizes), organizational psychology (Prof. Edgar Schein), and cross cultural and global leadership (Prof. Dr. Nancy Adler). Along with other experts and gurus discussing in two panels, they offered an outlook on the future.

Besides the visionary but exemplary content, the networking was a blast. Such was also the setting – Brdo pri Kranju is Slovenian premier conference venue, nestled among the Alps.

I was the lead author in Chapter 2 – The Concept of Knowledge, which in a very digested way integrates the philosophical views on knowledge and learning into something that can be used in practice.

The book was published by Facet Publishing / Neal-Schuman (US & Canada) and has recently been made available worldwide through book stores.

About my chapter: Chapter 2 answers key questions including: What do we mean by knowledge? How do we differentiate knowledge from information or data? Is knowledge the same as intelligence (or wisdom)? Are there different types of knowledge? Who owns or controls knowledge (individuals, groups, organizations, interorganizational networks, or society)? The goal of this chapter is to help the reader understand the multifaceted nature of knowledge and how the lens through which it is viewed impacts the management of knowledge. It shows the broad view on knowledge which is needed to succeed in 1) improving how experience of yesterday is integrated in decision making of today and tomorrow, and in 2) improving how efficiently and effectively solutions to new problems and challenges are created.

About the book: Written by experienced KM project leaders and teachers, this book balances the theory and practice of KM and considers the issues organizations encounter in the global marketplace. This book is the first to integrate social media and networking into KM practice. The book’s nine chapters are divided into three major parts:

• Part I covers foundational concepts and introduces the reader to the key elements of knowledge management.

• Part II explores critical activities of knowledge management.

• Part III offers a strategic view of knowledge management in organizations.

Each chapter provides a broad overview, graphics that help readers visualize key points, and several vignettes documenting case scenarios that will help the reader digest concepts. Knowledge Management will prove ideal for iteachers who have been forced to design courses around KM business texts, augmented with scholarly articles. It will also be useful to anyone who needs to better understand KM to apply it in his or her organization.

A few more bits of info at Dr Desouza’s blog.

My panel follows the conference’ opening speech on Blue Ocean Strategy. At the panel, which is moderated by Dr Nenad Filipovic of IEDC Bled School of Management, five panelists and the audience will be discussing possibilities on implementing BOS principles in real business. I will be showing how BISOL forms and executes its strategy which leads to becoming one of the champions in the photovoltaic industry.

Creating Value through Innovation

The main objective of this course is to develop an understanding of contemporary innovation processes and the issues surrounding it. Innovation lies in the core of any successful enterprise, however, is too often considered by managers as serendipitous and black boxy. We will start with clear outline of the stages of innovation process, strategies, concerns and organizational-design-to-do’s for each. Participants will learn what the most common obstacles for innovation are and how to successfully tackle them. We will look into issues such as how to put contemporary IT to work for us, why and how to unleash the experimentation in companies, how to grow an organizational culture that will foster innovation, and when to innovate business models. Participants will be actively discussing concrete innovation related issues (and designing organizational solutions) that are most relevant for them.

“In thorough detail and through real-life examples, the book goes through all the MS Office 2010 applications and exactly shows how a modern-day professional can use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher and Access, to make his or her work more efficient and of better quality.”

“Find all the answers to your Office questions here. Vlookup, color filters, pivot tables, task panes, mass mailings through email, collaborative document editing, note making, presentation designing, organizing meetings, analyzing data, creating publications, everything is here. AND IT IS HERE IN A WAY ONE CAN ACTUALLY LEARN HOW TO DO IT. When you go through the book, finally, you can say that YOU are in control of the computer.”

Did you know that if you save only 6 minutes of your time a day, this results in 2 full days off per year? With help of this book you can make that – and more – happen.

See Pasadena website for more details.

I am proud and eager to join this world-class Executive school, prof. dr. Danica Purg, and the team of top professors who educate or were educated at Harvard, INSEAD, IMD, Kellogg Business School, London School of Economics, and the team of more than 50 renowned visiting professors from the best European and North American business schools and other management development institutions from about 30 countries.

Hidden on a shore of Alpine lake Bled, IEDC-Bled School of Management is an award-winning boutique business school created exclusively for practicing managers and experienced executives. It has unique, innovative, real-world programs like: PhD, Bologna Master Executive MBA and Other Open Enrollment and Customized Programs. Mission of the IEDC is to attract the most promising executives and top managers, provide them with world-class management education and other relevant services in an international context, inspire them for lifelong-learning, and prepare them to act and add value as competent and ethically responsible transformational leaders in their organizations and society at large. The School with a view, with strategy, and with execution!

www.iedc.si

“Among company’s key competences is the ability to transform the complexity of its products into simplicity for the costumers” (Stéphane Garelli)

We need more people asking “Why not go ahead with this idea?”. That is the secret of competitiveness. (Stéphane Garelli)