Cornelia Amstutz
YOU?
Author Swipe
View article: Leveraging Local Competitiveness
Leveraging Local Competitiveness Open
How do SMEs, competing for global export markets, remain competitive when operating, to a large extent, from Switzerland, one of the world’s most expensive countries? Data compiled annually by the IMD World Competitive Report document that…
View article: Business Focus Choices
Business Focus Choices Open
This chapter will highlight the fact that “Focus” is not just “Focus” by identifying five different types of focus choices. Older companies began in a given industry sector and remained loyal to that sector, adopting an industry focus. Pas…
View article: Founders, Shakers, Prime Movers
Founders, Shakers, Prime Movers Open
This chapter introduces the reader to the principal actors of these stories, namely the founders, organized along major periods, and their backgrounds. Listed are early period founders, those from the interwar period, during World War II p…
View article: Leveraging Resources for Growth
Leveraging Resources for Growth Open
Specific managerial practices adopted by the SMEs have been detailed in previous chapters. This chapter takes a step back and reviews the growth trajectories of the documented firms over their histories. Plotting growth (expressed in sales…
View article: International Sales and Distribution Strategies
International Sales and Distribution Strategies Open
This chapter covers the history of the international market development of the researched firms and in addition how these companies established agent networks, built sales subsidiaries worldwide, or enlisted partnerships, and how they reac…
View article: Supply Chain Choices
Supply Chain Choices Open
To what extent did SMEs consider active involvement in production as a necessary element of their strategy and how they approached value chain integration to enhance their efficiency are the focus of this chapter. Driven by the necessity o…
View article: Segmentation Choices
Segmentation Choices Open
At the outset of this chapter, the need to treat segmentation as distinct from focusing is explained. Both are important, and both have to be addressed separately. Successful segmentation implies choices, and carving out a segment from a m…
View article: The Role Played by Management
The Role Played by Management Open
This chapter puts the spotlight on the various forms of owner-management models adopted by the researched companies, and how they evolved over time as ownership passed on to the next generation. At first, a comparison between owner-manager…
View article: Achieving Ownership Stability
Achieving Ownership Stability Open
Stability of ownership is a big issue among SME owners. This chapter deals with strategies to preserve and guarantee ownership stability. The experience of founders and owners in applying foundation structures are described. Approaches to …
View article: Company Profiles
Company Profiles Open
This final chapter, containing the full-length profiles of each of the 36 companies representing the base of this research project, plays an integral role in Masterpieces of Swiss Entrepreneurship . Although the various profiles have been …
View article: Production Processes Choices
Production Processes Choices Open
How SMEs arranged their factory floor and the kind of processes, proprietary, or other, they employed, including the extent of automation in use, are all important aspects of the process practices. Swiss SMEs have realized that reliance on…
View article: Production Footprint Choices
Production Footprint Choices Open
How SMEs decided on how to arrange their production footprint, trading-off production in Switzerland vs. offshoring, and how they decided on component sourcing, as well as how they dealt with asset plays related to production, is reviewed …
View article: Ownership Structures
Ownership Structures Open
This chapter details how ownership structures evolved, starting from the early stages of a company to unfolding over time as ownership invariably passed on from one generation to another. Examples are offered on how and under what circumst…
View article: Role of Swiss Entrepreneurship Ecosystem
Role of Swiss Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Open
This chapter will strike the reader as being quite different than the previous chapters and analyses. This is deliberate and placed toward the end of the book in order to provide some additional perspective to the previous analysis. Descri…
View article: Organizing for Innovation
Organizing for Innovation Open
Given that innovative ideas are expected to be generated on a permanent basis, it is interesting to observe that among the documented firms, there were special practices in place to assure that ideas and improvements would roll off the ass…
View article: Boards and Governance
Boards and Governance Open
Company boards play a big role in the governance of SMEs and different models were traced from family boards to foundations, as well as the impact of dual board structures frequently adopted. Covering governing arrangements, the chapter re…
View article: Franchise Focus Choices
Franchise Focus Choices Open
This chapter centers around the concept of the customer franchise defined as a distinct group of users for whom a company offers a central element or product. Explanations are offered how companies attach such groups to their products and …
View article: Innovation Processes
Innovation Processes Open
The extensive examination of the defining innovations, which were gleaned from the documented companies, was driven by the importance those early decisions had in shaping the companies. Most of these ideas were product innovations. The sep…
View article: Marketing and Sales Processes
Marketing and Sales Processes Open
Not different from many other, larger companies, marketing and sales processes at SMEs have undergone constant changes. The chapter details how SMEs dealt with the tension between marketing and sales, how they differentiated in B2B vs. B2C…
View article: Product Design Choices
Product Design Choices Open
How SMEs dealt with the trade-offs between functionality, design, and ergonomics to compensate for a high-cost production basis and offering customers a competitive in-use price is key to their overall competitiveness. Design for durabilit…
View article: Introduction
Introduction Open
This chapter tells the story of the origin of the project from the Big Idea: the research design, the recruiting of the research team, adoption of the sample design, the database, the extensive field research effort, as well as the applica…
View article: Epilog: Implications for Public Policy
Epilog: Implications for Public Policy Open
What then are the implications of these research findings reported in Masterpieces of Swiss Entrepreneurship ? And for which communities might they be relevant?
View article: Financing the Enterprise
Financing the Enterprise Open
This chapter examines the many different pathways company founders and successors pursued to finance their businesses, as well as the financial practices adopted to assure the longevity of the companies. Describing frugal beginnings such a…
View article: The Process of Focusing
The Process of Focusing Open
Describing the achieved focus of a company is one thing, but finding how companies arrived at their given focus through an analysis of their focus journey offers an important aspect of understanding the practices adopted by the researched …
View article: Sourcing the Defining Business Idea
Sourcing the Defining Business Idea Open
How did the founders come upon their central, defining business idea that went on to shape the destiny of their companies? Although many of the firms profiled in this book are known for their products as of today, it is rarely known how th…
View article: Product Line Choices
Product Line Choices Open
Success in global markets is not only dependent on the quality and effectiveness of a single product. For many firms, even as they focus on narrow niches, the number of product variations they can cram into a narrow market space becomes a …