Joe Kaeser Living with the entrepreneurial compromise ” The missing service culture Traditionally, many German technology companies have had little contact with the end- user consumer since most of their activities were business-to-business driven. The environment within these companies has been anything but entrepreneurial. In addition, German companies today still neglect competencies in sales and customer service. As a waiter in a German restaurant, you get tipped 10% anyway, so why try harder? While service-driven jobs have traditionally been regarded as less prestigious in Germany than manufacturing and engineering jobs, the awareness of the need to change these circumstances has increased considerably. Technology companies like Siemens are becoming increasingly consumer focused, as the service sector is the fastest growing part of the German economy. Yet, Germans themselves consider the country to be a "service desert." Changing attitudes is a slow and difficult process. Creating an entrepreneurial environment in Germany is still difficult, since entrepreneurship is not something that can be taught at university, but develops around freedom and creativity. To succeed at creating such an environment, Germans need to increase their sensitivity and acquire a deeper understanding of customer demands and of how these demands can be met. If a technology company wishes to shape customer demand and to build the standards for the future, it needs to be the first to meet the demands of the customer. If high-tech companies in the region do not learn to excel at understanding this, they risk ending up as "me-too's," playing catch-up in fast-paced, customer-driven markets in which others are calling the shots. In an environment as dynamic as the mobile phone market, in which product life cycles range from 9 to 15 months at most, not hitting the "design window" by addressing the very latest customer demands can cause revenues to fall short by up to 50%. Mobile phones don't sell because of their features, but because people like their look and feel. For this reason, Siemens has recently put together a cross-disciplinary team of engineers , market researchers, sales people, and production professionals to better understand what customers need and to learn more about how to better manage the business-to-consumer relationship. We still have a long way to go and I believe that the Munich region should attract more service-oriented technology companies to help accelerate the spreading of the missing culture. The failed green card program German national labor laws present a further constraint to entrepreneurship in the Munich region. Time is often lost as companies are forced to consider the unemployed people in their region for a job before being allowed to look for competence outside of Germany. In an effort to address the shortage of highly skilled workers in ICT and related sectors in the country, the national government offered 20,000 green cards to foreign individuals wishing to apply for high-tech jobs in Germany. However, the program did not get off to a good start. There was a lot of controversy surrounding the issue for months and when the law was finally passed, only a handful of foreigners applied. It is not surprising that the turnout was so low. If you are the person in demand in a country such as India, for example, and you look to Silicon Valley, the message will be: "Please come to work here, this is what we can offer you . . . we want you to help us shape the future." Now, if the same person looks to Germany, what do they see? A bunch of people talking for who knows how many months about whether or not and under which circumstances foreigners could be employed and about which kind of tests they would need to undergo in order to even be allowed to apply. Where would you go? Before these highly skilled people from all over the world fill out huge stacks of paperwork in order to apply for a job in Germany, they will go to work in the U.S., if they have the chance. If Germany wants to attract highly skilled foreigners, it has to go out there and make them attractive offers. There is a global war for talent and this has not yet been understood by the German national government. This doesn't mean that Siemens ICM has been complacent. The company has been doing what a lot of other companies have: If the people couldn't come to us, we went to them. This sort of logic will continue until national politicians have understood the implications of the shortage of highly skilled workers in the country. Certain corporate managers in Germany still believe that their employees should be happy to have a job. Well, there may be a few people that are happy to have a job, but in reality, it is a war for talent and if we are not careful, others will come and take away our best employees . | 