Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. is a Japanese manufacturer of optical sensors, electric light sources, and other optical devices and their applied instruments for scientific, technical and medical use.
Roland Berger is an international management consultancy headquartered in Munich. With 2,400 employees and 52 offices in 35 countries, it has a presence in all major industrialized and emerging markets. As the market leader in Germany, Roland Berger is the only European consultancy with an international presence and is one of the leading representatives of its industry. Annual sales in 2018 were around EUR 600 million, the most successful financial year to date.
WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management is a prestigious German business school with campuses in Vallendar and Düsseldorf, Germany. WHU was founded in 1984 by the Koblenz Chamber of Commerce as the Wissenschaftliche Hochschule für Unternehmensführung; the name was modified in 1993 to honour WHU's benefactor, the businessman Otto Beisheim. As of September 2022, there are 2,082 students at WHU, about 243 employees and 59 professors. WHU is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious business schools in the German-speaking world (DACH).
Campus for Finance Association is a student association at the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management in Vallendar, Germany. It was founded in 2001 in cooperation with the Endowed Chair of Finance, held by Prof. Dr. Markus Rudolf, to support and organize the student-run “Campus for Finance”-conferences. The association annually hosts the “WHU New Year’s Conference” and the “WHU Private Equity Conference”. The mission of the association is entitled “Uniting the World of Finance”.
Beluga Shipping was a German heavy-lift shipping company in the Hanseatic city of Bremen. It was a world market leader in heavy-lift shipping and also highly innovative in related fields. As such, it was the first to equip ships of its fleet with SkySails that can reduce fuel consumption by up to 5%, and was the first company to send a heavy-lift ship from Europe to Asia along the Northern Sea Route through the Arctic Ocean rather than through the Suez Canal. The company was declared insolvent in March 2011, affecting 670 employees.
Klaus Erich Agthe is a German-born businessman and author.
Hidden champions are relatively small but highly successful companies that are concealed behind a curtain of inconspicuousness, invisibility, and sometimes secrecy. The term was coined by Hermann Simon. He first used the term as a title of a publication in a scientific German management journal, describing the small, highly specialized world-market leaders in Germany. According to his definition, a company must meet three criteria to be considered a hidden champion:
Torsten Oltmanns is a German manager, consultant and author. He focuses on strategy and stakeholder management as well as digitalisation.
think: act is a publication title created by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. Since 2004, various kinds of publications for international leaders have been collected under the brand think: act. Among these are magazines, information brochures and books.
Bernd Venohr is a German management consultant, entrepreneur and author. He is the editor of the "Lexikon der deutschen Weltmarktführer" about the German Mittelstand companies. Between 2006 and 2008 he was a tenured full Professor of strategic management at the Berlin School of Economics and Law. Before taking up this academic position he spent about 20 years in industry as managing director at Accenture and senior partner and member of the worldwide board of directors at Bain & Company. Venohr studied business administration at the Goethe University Frankfurt, where he also took his Ph.D. degree. In addition, he holds a Master of Business Administration degree (MBA) from Northwestern University, Chicago. He is married with two children and lives in Munich.
Axel Wieandt is a German manager. He has been serving as a honorary professor at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management since 2004.
Simon-Kucher & Partners is a global strategy consulting firm with offices in 30 countries. Founded in 1985, the firm focuses on growth strategy, marketing, pricing, and sales.
The Global Peter Drucker Forum is an international management conference dedicated to the management philosophy of Peter Drucker. Drucker, who lived from 1909 to 2005, was a management professor, writer, and consultant, frequently referred to as a "management guru." The Forum is held annually in November, in Drucker's home town of Vienna, Austria and is put on by the Peter Drucker Society Europe, an affiliate of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University.
Bodo Abel is a German Professor at the University of Hamburg in Business Administration, focused on“International Marketing”. He was till 2013 the program director of the international master program „MiBA – Master of International Business Administration“ at the University of Hamburg and at the St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance (FINEC), Russia. His teaching and research fields are „International Marketing“, „International Media-Management“, „International Business Ethics“, „International Corporate Social Responsibility“ and “Studies of Methods in Business Administration”.
Thorsten Teichert is a German economist and Professor of Business Administration, especially marketing and innovation at the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Hamburg.
Klaus Brockhoff is a German economist, organizational theorist and Emeritus Professor at the University of Kiel.
Peter Gentsch is a German academic, researcher, author, management consultant, and entrepreneur specialising in digital management and data science.
Serden Özcan is a professor and holder of the Otto Beisheim Endowed Chair of Innovation and Corporate Transformation at the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management in Vallendar near Koblenz. During the 2017/2018 academic year the Chair of Innovation and Corporate Transformation moved from Vallendar to Düsseldorf.
Martin Fassnacht is a German economist, professor and director of the Chair of Strategy and Marketing at the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Managementin Düsseldorf.
