Success Factors of Fast Growing Companies: Selected Case Studies

This book contains the stories of multiple fast growing companies. All these case studies were written by our students at the Otto Beisheim Graduate School of Management (WHU), Vallendar, Germany, in consecutive seminars on success factors of fast growing companies. We have been conducting this seminar for graduate students on an annual basis in close cooperation with entrepreneurs and managers from high growth firms since the fall semester of 2001. The idea for such a seminar came up in early 2001, after the downturn of the new economy. We strongly felt that the time for entrepreneurship and successful innovation management in growing companies was not over, it was rather just about to re-start again. We decided to start the academic exercise of a seminar with graduate business students and look for cases of firms from different industries that suc­ cessfully grew and prospered despite the crisis and despite difficult capital market condi­ tions. This book covers a broad range of industries, company ages, and company sizes. Most of the case studies in this book were written about German companies. Although they were founded and are now headquartered in Germany, many of them have become interna­ tional while growing. some nowadays are truly global firms, like Qiagen and SAP. The companies under consideration in this book are active in diverse industries like biotech­ nology, internet services, nanotechnology, software, food processing and others.

Prof. Dr. Holger Ernst is a professor of technology and innovation management at the Otto Beisheim Graduate School of Management (WHU).
Dr. Stefan Glänzer is a serial entrepreneur and a lecturer at the WHU.
Prof. Dr. Peter Witt is the Otto Beisheim Professor of Entrepreneurship at the WHU.