Shaping the Future of Your Business

As an entrepreneur - and especially leading a medium-sized company - can you prepare for the future in a targeted manner? Which methods work and where do you succumb to classic thinking errors when planning for the future?

This book shows how companies can develop viable future scenarios for their own market in order to remain successful and profitable in the future. Anyone who thought they were operating in a stable market and were prepared for crises was proven wrong by the Corona pandemic. But even less dramatic influences such as technological disruption, side attacks by competitors from outside the industry or end-of-life scenarios are massively changing the environment of companies and demand - at the latest now! - a rethink. In this completely revised 2nd edition, the author shows why early planning for the future can be decisive for success, why one should not rely on experience and intuition, and which mistakes should be avoided. In addition, he explains which tools can be used and put together to form a well-founded process with which future, but also crisis, management can be creatively planned. A useful guide for managing directors, executives, marketing managers and planners in medium-sized companies - with helpful tips, illustrative examples and an individually adaptable template for a future workshop.

This book is a translation of the original German 2^nd edition Zukunftsmanagement für den Mittelstand by Heino Hilbig, published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature in 2020. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL. com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.

Foreword by Olaf Mergili, CEO of Microplex Printware AG. - Management in medium-sized companies as a bottleneck? . - How innovative are medium-sized companies? . - About the (in)probability of being able to predict the future: Typical thinking errors, the role of chance in planning and why waiting is nevertheless not a serious option. - What SMEs can learn from other companies - or not (cases): the deep fall, tunnel vision, retreat instead of innovation, making the future an issue. - Preparing for the future: evolution - revolution - disruption? . - The swarm, the swarm bird and the consultant. - Ten steps to your own vision of the future. - Process and workshop design: a do-it-yourself guide. - Encore: The future process as a basis for crisis management.