The Executive Seminar on Innovation and Growth - Connecting regional SME companies to the ZU growth agenda

Small and medium sized companies from around the Bodensee region are invited to have their high potential managers participate in a 2 year training program on innovation and growth. The training program comprises of a total of 19 seminar days plus preparation periods and coaching sessions. It is crosslinked with the Students Master courses of the University. The purpose of the program is to provide the participants with a deep foundation of understanding on the inner mechanics of company and personal growth – and apply that understanding for many years to the development of the company. Each year in June a new cohort of participants will start the program. Currently the cohort for 2006 is being recruited.

Events
| one Kick-off Event in June;
| 4 core meetings of 3 full days each, every six months 
  normally in October and March
| 4 campus days together with master students from ZU;
| Interim self-guided study groups

Topics
| 1st core meeting: Strategy and Growth in the Enterprise
  Strategy tools, innovation typologies, growth subjects, personal profiles, today’s golden
  age of innovation

| 2nd core meeting: Sources of growth and knowledge
  The Western search for the truth, new knowledge, personal biases and goals, why growth
  and for what purpose?

| 3rd core meeting: Comparison with Japan, China, India, Arabia and America

| 4th core meeting: Creating a growth agenda
  Personal growth, growth of the team, growth of the business

Venue
Campus of Zeppelin Universität in Friedrichshafen, joint stay at a hotel in town (still to be announced). Contact with the home office (email, mobile telephone) during the 3 days of the core meetings is explicitly undesirable

Campus days
Campus days are an additional offer for encounter with the students of ZU who are participating in a master level course of studying innovation and growth. Participating in the campus days is not required, but will certainly be interesting

Study groups
Two or three participants from different companies will form a study group to coach each other in applying the seminar insights to their respective personal business challenges. Intensity and frequency of the study groups is self-directed.

Kick-off event
Participants get to know each other and their companies; distribution of the first set of materials; participation is not essential for the seminar

Participating companies in the previous cohorts
| Diehl Avionik Systeme GmbH, Überlingen
| Linnig Trucktec GmbH, Markdorf
| Rohwedder AG, Bermatingen
| TechniData AG, Markdorf
| Wagner Group, Markdorf

Each of these companies sends three managers, who are currently stationed in Germany, US and Japan.

Target participants
| Managers with 10 to 20 years of business experience;
| Managers who are already, or who will be made in charge of substantial growth
  of a business
| Managers who will be sent into international assignments where they will be in
  charge of creating new business
| Managers interested in broadening their horizon and equipping themselves with
  the newest tools and methodologies that the science of strategy can offer

Director of seminar
Dr. Peer Ederer is an expert for innovation and growth, both inside the enterprise and in society as a whole. He has worked as a financial trader for Deutsche Bank, as a project leader for McKinsey&Co. and built a company with 70 employees. Today he is professor in executive education at many leading universities in Europe, and heads the Innovation and Growth Project of Zeppelin Universität. He advises many boards and CEO’s in their growth strategies, many of whom double sales and profits each year. Ederer has a Baker Scholar degree from Harvard Business School, a magna cum laude degree from Sophia University in Tokyo, and a PHD from University of Witten Herdecke. He publishes widely, has co-written two best selling books, and received several public recognitions for his work, for instance the acclaimed Wolfram Engels Award of Stiftung Marktwirtschaft.

Contact
Dr. Peer Ederer | pederer@zu.de | Tel +49 171  55 164 99