The Swiss Entrepreneur of the Year 2008, a management consultant who swears by Lego (who will that be?) and a conductor are just three bright minds - out of a total of 80 - who will meet on 22 May at Pienzenau Castle in Merano to jointly develop "bold business perspectives for the future" in the fields of product development, people management and sales. The conference is organised by the TIS innovation Park in Bolzano, South Tyrol. It brings together 80 invited company representatives from Bavaria, Tyrol and, of course, South Tyrol, to jointly bring to light the unwritten laws of successful entrepreneurs.
In addition to Giselle Rufer, the Swiss Entrepreneur of the Year 2008, and the conductor Christian Gansch, I will give the keynote speech on the topic of "Product Innovation in Disruptive Times". The central questions are:
What opportunities lie in the rapid and ongoing changes of our time?"
How does the innovation process win in the company:
- the necessary agility
- Proximity to the customer
- the economic efficiency
to be a guarantor for successful growth?
Where the "black swan" - the unlikely but serious event - used to be the exception, it has now become the rule. When times become volatile, incremental product improvements are not enough to set a company apart from the competition; only something that improves life in the long term serves as an incentive to buy.
Real innovation in a shorter time is needed, but budgets are tight. Concepts for open or user innovation offer an attractive way to combine customer proximity, innovation
and economic efficiency. The lecture will illustrate how the necessary rethinking can succeed with successful examples from business practice.
Following the presentations, workshops will be held on the topics of "sales", "employee management" and "product development", in which the entrepreneurs present will explain their recipes for success to each other under the guidance of high-profile moderators and jointly develop new approaches from the combination of these experiences, which will then find their way into future business practice. I will then co-moderate the workshop on product development with LEGO SERIOUS PLAY™.
The results of the workshop will be documented in the form of a book and a DVD.