Conferences & seminars

Workshops & Seminars

"The Seven Fields of Reorientation and of Action for Renewal in Enterprise Management"- Workshops  

How can entrepreneurs, companies and their executives and managers prepare themselves and their organisations for today's new reality of lower growth and the pressure to better compete through a visible, relative competitive advantage and through authentic pricing power?

What are the consequences for enterprise management and what do organisations have to change in their enterprise management practice to adapt to this new reality?

At the IIOE we have identified "The Seven Fields of Reorientation and of Action for Renewal in Enterprise Management" (see Juergen Daum's article) for which we will start to offer workshops & seminars  - in Englisch and in German. More information will be available here soon.

If you are interested to contribute with your input to our reserach programme or if your are interested to receive our newsletter about this initiative or to participate in one of the workshops (organised on demand) please contact us

Here "The Seven Fields of Reorientation and of Action for Renewal in Enterprise Management":

1. Strategic enterprise management:

The focus will shift from: “How can we become bigger and dominate our markets? to: “How can we improve our relative competitive strength and remain a player in the market”?

We will see a reorientation on the capability of an enterprise to create original, visible organic value-add for its customers. stakeholders and investors and to maintain that capabilities over market cycles through strategic innovation and flexibility.

• How do we manage for strategic competitive advantage and strategic renewal & flexibility?

2. Innovation management

The focus will shift from: “What is the next product innovation we have to deal with?” to “What is the appropriate business model for us in the future and how do we get there”?

We will see a new focus on the capability of a business to renew its business model in shorter time intervals to leverage technology and market developments in order to make a difference not only in what it sells, but in how it does business. A critical piece will be the identification, management and continuous improvement of the underlying platform of capabilities, intellectual capital and potential yield, as well as the systematic evaluation of technologies and stakeholder markets.

• How do we organise for continuous innovation and renewal that makes a difference?

3. Operations management:

The focus will shift from: “Operational excellence (today widely understood as ‘operational efficiency’)” to “Operational effectiveness in customer value creation”.

We will see a new focus on the capability of the operations to not only operate in an efficient way but to create superior value-add for customers and stakeholders and to constantly optimize both and to adapt the current business model in time. That requires an approach that moves beyond the process perspective and includes the identification, management and continuous improvement of the underlying platform of capabilities, intellectual capital and potential yield, as well as the continous monitoring of possible changes of demand.

• How do we design operations for effectiveness, agility and responsiveness? 

4. Finance and control:

In finance the focus will shift from: “Net earnings” to “Financial flexibility (i.e. cash flow and working capital)”. In controlling the focus will shift from “Where and how do we earn money?” to: “Why are customers buying and how can we stay in business?”

We will see a re-newed focus on the capability of finance to provide the liquidity to stay in business and the funds to invest in innovations and critical capabilities required for the future. We also will see a new focus on the capability of controlling to provide the tools and concepts to not only manage profitability (price/cost) but to monitor and manage as well relative customer value-add (value/price), i.e. competitive advantage, and to thus enable managers to make better trade-off decisions and prepare for sustainable enterprise management.

• How do we create enough financial flexibility? How do we control performance?

5. Leadership, organisation and people management:

The focus will shift from: “Command and control organisation & leadership model” to: “Sense and response organisation and leadership model”

We will see a reorientation in the leadership model of enterprises: away from an organisation that can easily be managed by ‘orders’ from the management hierarchy, to an organisation, where people are empowered to respond to changes in the market environment and customer demand without involving management all the time - in other words: to a more reactive and a more intelligent organisation. That requires the right team structures, an organisation that works more like a network than a hierarchy, and appropriate leadership and people management programmes.

• How do we organise for performance?

6. External communication and marketing

The focus will shift from: “Reporting” and “Attracting” to “Relationship” and “Engaging”

We will see a reorientatation to communicate the true value-add story of the enterprise by personal and community experience, rather than by self-created marketing ‘messages’ that are pushed at external audiences. That requires more than the traditional one-way corporate and marketing communication, but new relationship, network and engagements models that involve customers, stakeholders and investors personally.

• How do we engage effectively with customers, the public, with stakeholders and investors?

7. Values

We will see a new focus on the true “corporate values” of enterprises and "personal values" of managers.

Customers, stakeholders, shareholders and employees will be more interested in the future how sustainable an enterprise is operating and how sustainable its managers are managing, i.e. if it is stable enough to still exist in ten years and how it deals with the interest of others (such as of the communities in which it operates, of its business partners and employees etc.) - than just knowing a company's product offerings and last quarter's profitability. Therefore they want to know why a company is in business (what its values and its mission are) and what the personal values of its key personell are. And another reason exist, why values will be more important in the future: Only when a company has decided what its core values are, it can decide what can be given up, i.e. only then true innovation, the engine of competitive advantage and of new growth can happen.

• For what are we in business? What are our core values? What will always stay?

If you are interested to contribute with your input to our reserach programme or if your are interested to receive our newsletter about this initiative or to participate in one of the workshops (organised on demand) please contact us