European Business Forum articles from September 2007

European Business Forum archives from September 2007

CEMS an authority in management education.
September 22, 2007... COMMUNITY OF EUROPEAN MANAGEMENT SCHOOLS AND INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES www.cems.org The Community of European Management Schools and International Companies (CEMS) is an alliance of leaders in business and higher education. Founded...

Letter from the editors.
September 22, 2007... Universities must surely rank as Europe's greatest gift to the world. With the possible exceptions of football and ice cream, no other invention has been so widely disseminated, nor so enthusiastically received around the globe. And what a...

Adapting for emerging markets.(Observations)(Company overview)
September 22, 2007... The village roads can be impassable, home cooking is still a way of life, and local products often have generations of loyal customers. But emerging markets in Eastern Europe and Asia are delivering some of the strongest growth for global...

Military parallels.(Observations)
September 22, 2007... Comparisons between war and business are frequently made. Military leadership and strategy provide obvious sources of inspiration for business leaders. Books such as The Art of War by the ancient Chinese sage Sun Tzu are frequently recommended...

The M & A surge.(Observations)
September 22, 2007... Cross-border mergers and acquisitions are a feature of the global economy at the beginning of the 21st century. From a peak of $1.1trn in 2000, cross-border M&As fell to $297bn in 2003, before rebounding to $963bn in 2006. Preliminary data...

The broader forces driving cross-border M&A activity mean that the current upswing may be here to stay.(Observations)
September 22, 2007... Sustainability will be a key driver of global economic change during the next 50 years. Companies face an unprecedented opportunity to create shareholder value by helping to chart the way forward and by contributing to sustainable development....

Europe must prepare for a world in which high-skills are widely available at relatively low cost. That means greatly improving how it educates its young people.(Debate Is European education fit for purpose?)
September 22, 2007... When EU leaders set the goal of making Europe the world's "most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy" by 2010, they were acknowledging that the most effective modern economies will be those that produce the most knowledge and make it...

Two common misconceptions about education threaten the quality of what we teach our future business leaders.(Debate Is European education fit for purpose?)
September 22, 2007... As a means of addressing the challenges of the 21st century, the writing about which is already boldly on the wall, education in Europe for future business leaders is sorely lacking. This failure is in part due to two widespread misconceptions...

Universities are not delivering all the benefits they could to society. reforms are needed in how they are governed and financed.(Debate Is European education fit for purpose?)
September 22, 2007... Across the EU, political interest in universities and higher education has never been greater. There is a clear sense in Europe that our universities are being held back and that they are not delivering all the benefits they could to society....

Finland has built Europe's most admired education system by focusing on "outcomes", giving schools autonomy, and by supporting teachers.(Debate Is European education fit for purpose?)
September 22, 2007... Finland can claim to have one of the best education systems in Europe, if not the world. In the most recent PISA international comparisons, in 2003, the country came top in all three areas assessed: maths, reading and science. ...

Europe will be built through higher education, or it will not be build at all.(Debate Is European education fit for purpose?)
September 22, 2007... We do not often discuss, it, yet it is certainly at the root of our difficulty in building a Europe that is anything more than a free trade area. We persist in "forgetting" one essential aspect - the cultural dimension of the European project....

Reform is necessary, but governments should be wary of turning universities into machines of economic progress.(Debate Is European education fit for purpose?)
September 22, 2007... Universities have proved to be one of the great entrepreneurial centres of the modern world, and as such, have moved from the periphery to the centre of government agendas. High-quality, internationally competitive research and higher...

School curricula are overloaded and outmoded. It is time to take a fresh look.(Debate is European education fit for purpose?)
September 22, 2007... What should schools look like 20 years hence? What do we want our children and grandchildren to know and be able to do? What, in fact, is our notion of an "educated person"? Schools will certainly continue to be key to the task of...

New research into how the brain functions points the way to more modern pedagogical approaches.(Debate Is European education fit for purpose?)
September 22, 2007... Is European education fit for purpose? Not without a paradigm change. European education systems are still predominantly organised around a 19th century model, where teachers stand alone in the classroom, where learning is in one place, and...

Leading paradoxically; Modern leadership requires the ability to manage things that appear at odds, but in fact are not.(Indepth)(Company overview)
September 22, 2007... Corporate leaders face a more complex world - and must satisfy more competing objectives - than they did even a decade ago. In order to maintain competitive advantage, the firm's product and services must be differentiated, and yet cost...

In search of European leadership; Most leadership literature is based on American experience. Is it possible to identify a more distinctly European approach?(Indepth)
September 22, 2007... It started, as these things so often do, with a cup of coffee. A colleague and myself had been reviewing the past 50 years of the literature on leadership, and it had struck both of us that there was comparatively little research on European...

Investing for the long term: Techniques and perspectives for the European market.(In depth)(Industry overview)
September 22, 2007... Forecasting returns is a mix of art and science, with a fair share of sorcery, In fact, the smaller the number of assets in a portfolio, and the shorter the time period for which forecasts are made, the bigger the role played by this last...

Volkswagen in China: running the Olympic marathon.(Case study)(Company overview)
September 22, 2007... Bernd Pischetrieder, CEO of Volkswagen, took a few minutes from his busy agenda to reflect on the group's position. Although VW was still the largest carmaker in Europe, times were difficult. There had been losses in North America and there...

Walther Rathenau: man of many parts; An industrialist, politician, management thinker and more, Rathenau's intellectual legacy lives on, despite his early and violent death.(History lesson)
September 22, 2007... For a brief period after the First World War, the German banker and politician Walther Rathenau was one of the world's foremost thinkers on business and society. He invented the concept of the "separation of ownership and control", which became...

A long-time Nokia executive talks about the global war for talent, the future of the mobile phone, "Asianisation", and how he stays abreast of social trends.(Leaders)(Interview)
September 22, 2007... * What is the biggest challenge facing Nokia at the moment? One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that we have all the relevant competencies within the organisation, and that our know-how continuously evolves. It's crucial to not get...

A leading shipping executive discusses the recent shipping boom, the chinese economy, and the centrality of "containerisation" to globalisation.(Leaders)(Interview)
September 22, 2007... Gerry Wang is president of Seaspan, one of the world's largest container ship-owning companies. Seaspan is headquartered in Vancouver, and is listed on the NYSE. He speaks here with Peter Lorange, president of IMD. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]...

With wages rising at home, Skoda must look east, says its high-profile director of human resources.(Leaders)
September 22, 2007... Martin Jahn has been at the centre of the Czech Republic's "transition" over the past decade. First as the director of the foreign investment agency Czechlnvest, later as deputy prime minister for the economy, and now as a director at carmaker...

The American economist says the US and Europe are missing a trick by not being more welcoming to high-value immigrants.(Last word)(Interview)
September 22, 2007... * Can America and Europe meet the competitive challenge being posed by China and India? The first thing to realise is that the rise of China and India, in terms Of their importance in the global economy, is not going to be reversed, In the...