Foreword by Olaf Mergili, CEO of Microplex Printware AG.- Management in medium-sized companies as a bottleneck?.- How innovative are medium-sized companies?.- About the (in)probability of being able to predict the future: Typical thinking errors, the role of chance in planning and why waiting is nevertheless not a serious option.- What SMEs can learn from other companies - or not (cases): the deep fall, tunnel vision, retreat instead of innovation, making the future an issue.- Preparing for the future: evolution - revolution - disruption?.- The swarm, the swarm bird and the consultant.- Ten steps to your own vision of the future.- Process and workshop design: a do-it-yourself guide.- Encore: The future process as a basis for crisis management.
Heino Hilbig, management consultant and keynote speaker, worked for almost 30 years in technology-driven companies, dealing with innovation management and strategies for marketing and sales. Two more of his management related books have also been published by Springer Gabler.
This book shows how companies can develop sustainable future scenarios for their own market in order to remain successful and profitable in the future. Most of those who thought they were operating in a stable market and were prepared for crises were disabused of their conviction by the Corona pandemic. But even less dramatic influences such as technological disruption or side attacks from outside the industry are massively changing the environment of companies and demand - latest now! - a rethink. A useful guide for managing directors, executives, marketing managers and planners with helpful tips, illustrative examples and an individually adaptable template for a future workshop.
This book is a translation of the original German 2nd edition Zukunftsmanagement für den Mittelstand by Heino Hilbig, published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature in 2020. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.
Contents
About the inability to predict the future
Typical thinking errors when planning for the future
Learning from the mistakes and successes of others
Rules of the game of changing markets
Toolbox for the future and future workshop
The Author
Heino Hilbig, management consultant and keynote speaker, worked for almost 30 years in technology-driven companies, dealing with innovation management and strategies for marketing and sales. Two more of his management related books have also been published by Springer Gabler.