forumWHU at the Otto Beisheim School of Management

Similarly to the EBS Symposium at the European Business School, I applied this time to the forumWHU, a the WHU Business School in Vallendar, near Koblenz.

It is a two day forum with about 120 participants from all over Germany, plus some internationals, like myself (but not many). Each day is packed with about 8 talks about a common theme. This year it is about the need for democracy in business, or, better said, how much of it is necessary. The secondary focus is on the BRIC countries, which have been well represented by the speakers so far. Brazil is still missing, but Paulo Sérgio Kakinoff,Executive Director for the Volkswagen Group in South America should speak today.

We had 2 German executives with broad international experience speaking yesterday. Jürgen Meng, Bosch's Head of Controlling with experience in Mexico, US and South-East Asia and Hans-Jürgen Meng, Executive VP of Siemens Russia. Both gave good examples of particular challenges in doing business abroad and where both good examples themselves, showing the difference of two generations of German expat executives.

We also had Mr. Mohan Murti, MD Europe for Reliance Industries who showed us many aspects of the prototypical Indian mind. Thoma Wu, founder and partner of MSM Consulting is himself a German-Chinese national and told us his view of how to deal in China and with Chinese businesses.
In my opinion, the most interesting talk was delivered by Subroto Bagchi, who is a founder of Mindtree and holds the curious position of Gardener of the company. His talk wasn't necessarily aligned with the focus of the forum, but extremely relevant nonetheless. He talked about his company, its values and the need for a post-capitalism world order, to be brought by by entrepreneurs and innovation.
Roland Berger's CFO, on the other hand, gave the least inspiring talk of the day. And also the most off-topic. He talked about how Roland Berger views the current economic situation and told us they believe that, by 2010, the recovery should start. It is always nice to hear facts and figures from one of the main management consultancies, but we could have gotten that information out of the report he was reading aloud himself. But I will give him some credit, he was summoned on short notice after the CEO cancelled his talk.
To finish the day we had Dr. Michael Wiehen, a former director of the World Bank and the ethics commissioner of Transparency International. He talked, of course, about corruption, which is seen here in Europe as a main obstacle to business in the BRIC countries. His talk was highly interesting, but dealt mainly with statutory instruments to fight corruption in Germany.
All in all a great event so far. It is not so big as the EBS Symposium and not as international. Everybody here speaks German fluently. The average age of the participants is also somewhat lower, with students still in their first half of their bachelor courses. There are not many WHU students participating, it is an event to show the business school to the public, not necessarily to connect their students to others (which is OK). Because there is always only one talk going on at a time, everybody is much more focused than at the EBS event. There also isn't a career fair, which reinforces this focus. And the "work" schedule is much, much tighter. Which is good.

The other side of the event, the mingling, talking, eating, drinking and having fun is first rate. The organisation is impeccable (well, almost), there is plenty good food and beverages and, because the number of participants is smaller, it is easier to have an overview of who you have talked to already and who there is still to get to know.
Today is another day, with two workshops and three talks. It will end a bit earlier with a barbecue, which, after an intensive day yesterday, is a good thing.
But now the first Saturday talk will begin, I have already written too much.