Hermann Simon – författare

Vinst är ett av näringslivets mest centrala begrepp, men samtidigt ett av de mest missförstådda och ett av de mest kontroversiella. Varför har den en sådan negativ klang för somliga? Och vad är egentligen definitionen av vinst? Dessutom varierar uppfattningarna – men också missuppfattningarna – om hur företag kan påverka lönsamheten.

Vinst! är en av de första böckerna som behandlar begreppet på djupet. Den vänder sig till dig som företagare, som vill förstå vad vinst faktiskt är och inte är – och kanske viktigast av allt: hur du kan öka den.

Boken är heltäckande och blandar teori med konkreta exempel.

Hermann Simon, Andreas Jonason och Felix Mörée har tillsammans mer än 70 års erfarenhet av att hjälpa företag utveckla sin lönsamhet. Det här är en handbok som innehåller exempel och observationer från deras mångåriga och mångsidiga karriärer som konsulter på världsledande företag.

Författarna har skrivit en välstrukturerad och lättillgänglig handbok i att öka företagets vinst. Vinst! håller sig på en akademisk nivå, men är ändå tillgänglig för målgruppen personer som är praktiskt verksamma i företag.BTJ-häftet nr 18, 2022. Lektör Rolf Retoft

Though many of the details of Jewish life under Hitler are familiar, historical accounts rarely afford us a real sense of what it was like for Jews and their families to live in the shadow of Nazi Germany’s oppressive racial laws and growing violence. With Jews in Nazi Berlin, those individual lives—and the constant struggle they required—come fully into focus, and the result is an unprecedented and deeply moving portrait of a people.

Drawing on a remarkably rich archive that includes photographs, objects, official documents, and personal papers, the editors of Jews in Nazi Berlin have assembled a multifaceted picture of Jewish daily life in the Nazi capital during the height of the regime’s power. The book’s essays and images are divided into thematic sections, each representing a different aspect of the experience of Jews in Berlin, covering such topics as emigration, the yellow star, Zionism, deportation, betrayal, survival, and more. To supplement—and, importantly, to humanize—the comprehensive documentary evidence, the editors draw on an extensive series of interviews with survivors of the Nazi persecution, who present gripping first-person accounts of the innovation, subterfuge, resilience, and luck required to negotiate the increasing brutality of the regime.

A stunning reconstruction of a storied community as it faced destruction, Jews in Nazi Berlin renders that loss with a startling immediacy that will make it an essential part of our continuing attempts to understand World War II and the Holocaust.

What do Tetra aquarium supplies, Elector-Nite sensors, and Nissha touch panels have in common? They are typical "hidden champions," medium-sized, unknown companies (with annual revenues under $4 billion) that have quietly, under the radar, become world market leaders in their respective industries. Hermann Simon has been studying these hidden champions for over 20 years, and in this sequel to his worldwide bestseller, Hidden Champions, he explores the dramatic impact of globalization on these companies and their outstanding international success. Going deep inside more than a thousand hidden champions around the world, Simon reveals the common patterns, behaviors, and approaches that make these companies successful, and, in many cases, able to sustain world market leadership for generations, despite intense competition, financial pressures, and constantly evolving market dynamics. In the tradition of In Search of Excellence, Built to Last, and Good to Great, Simon identifies the factors in business operations, customer service and marketing, innovation, human resources management, organizational design, leadership, and strategy that separate these outstanding performers from the rest of the pack – and from the large corporations of the day. In the process, he provides a glimpse behind the curtains of many secretive companies who buck today’s management fads, and succeed instead through such common-sense strategies as focusing on core capabilities, delivering real value to the customer, establishing long-term relationships, innovating continuously, rewarding employees for performance, decentralized operations, and developing an unparalleled global presence. Hidden champions teach us that good management means doing many small things better than the competition—quietly, with determination, commitment, and never-ending stamina. And in turbulent economic times, the hidden champions represent an antidote to the short-sightedand excessive practices that have brought many corporate giants crashing down. The hidden champions provide invaluable lessons for all stakeholders in the business community, from entrepreneurs to corporate managers, investors to employees, union organizers to regulators, advanced and emerging countries and may well serve as the new role models for sustainable economic growth in the globalized world of the future.

Newspaper columns blare the news daily. There is no doubt that we are struggling through a worldwide economic and financial crisis of a magnitude not witnessed since the Great Depression.

In this environment, fraught with danger, no company can afford to take a wait-and-see attitude. One hesitation or misstep can result in the rapid demise of a once stalwart enterprise. Even small miscalculations can topple mighty empires; consider the U.S. auto industry, for example. The severity of the crisis demands that your company understand its causes, diagnose carefully, implement decisively and monitor constantly.

However, the crisis also creates chances for companies that learn to assess risk, recognize opportunity and take action quickly. This book is an antidote to the chorus of doom-and-gloom, a manual for business leaders and employees who are ready to fight. In Beat the Crisis, international strategy guru, Hermann Simon, offers 33 practical actions that any company can take immediately. Organized into broad categories—"Changing Customer Needs," "Sales and the Sales Force," "Managing Offers and Prices" and "Services"—Simon shows companies how to focus on the areas where emphatic action can have quick and maximum impact on corporate performance. Drawing from dozens of successful cases around the world, Simon helps readers learn to read the market signals, develop quick solutions, and stay a step ahead of their competitors, while avoiding the pitfalls looming in the crisis. A concluding chapter looks beyond the crisis and considers the longer-term socio-political and business consequences, in which Simon foresees a new era of restraint.

In this engaging, insightful, and inspiring narrative, Hermann Simon, the world-renowned management thinker, consultant, pricing expert, entrepreneur, and leading authority on the “hidden champions” business model, highlights the influences on his remarkable journey from humble origins on a German farm to advising and sharing the stage with global leaders in industry, academia, and politics.

Born in 1947 in the rural Eifel region of Western Germany, Simon’s coming of age parallels that of a country struggling to come to terms with the legacy of World War II and reinvent itself as a new world power. His colorful anecdotes of a youth spent in an agricultural community that in many ways operated as it had since the Middle Ages, reflect the establishment of core values, such as trust, focus, quality, and commitment that served as an anchor against the accelerating pace of technological, economic, political, social, and cultural change in the subsequent decades.  Simon takesreaders on a journey through time and space, as his—and our—world transformed from isolated to connected, local to global, revealing lessons learned from the extraordinary people (from Peter Drucker to Henry Kissinger) and places he has encountered along the way, through a career that has evolved from research and education to management consulting to leadership and strategy development on a broad scale. His particular interest in the Mittelstand, or “hidden champions,” the small and medium-sized companies that exemplify the German business philosophy and served as the engine of its economic revival, becomes a powerful metaphor of his own experiences in blazing new trails while staying true to one’s roots.

For anyone familiar with Simon’s work and contributions, Many Worlds, One Life reveals unique insights into the man himself and the origins of his ideas on successful leadership and business strategy. But more generally, readers in any field or discipline will recognize howtheir own stories reflect their ties to the past, their accomplishments in an increasingly complex environment, and, ultimately, their roads to the stars.

Real profit after taxes is the most important management target. Profits are the cost of survival and the creators of new value. In this book, celebrated management thinker Hermann Simon brings clarity to the jungle of profit concepts and balance sheets. He sheds light on the performance of numerous companies and industries in international comparison and looks at the key profit drivers: price, sales and costs. Hermann Simon derives practical consequences from his astute analysis and offers a convincing guide to profit-oriented and sustainable corporate management!  

The book pleads for a reconsideration of profit as the guiding concept of management and entrepreneurship, and it showcases how profitability can ensure the long term health of a business. Questioning the fact/dilemma, why more than 80 percent of companies in the US are going public have never turned a profit, this book is invaluable inspiration and a powerful guide for responsible and resilient managers and entrepreneurs. 

“Hidden Champions” are medium-sized, unknown companies with annual revenues under $5 billion that have quietly, under the radar, become world market leaders in their respective industries. In this new instalment to his worldwide bestselling Hidden Champions volumes, Hermann Simon takes readers on in-depth exploration of the ever changing operating conditions and the greater uncertainty and volatility that defines the global business sphere over the next ten years. In particular, in this book he focuses on China’s continued impact on the business world since its rise in the global business and economic sphere over recent decades. In this regard, Dr. Simon shows the reader how the current status evolved, and then offers concrete and actionable recommendations. New driving forces such as digitalization, business ecosystems and sustainability receive special attention. While the main focus is on companies in German-speaking countries as they comprise 56 percent of the world’s Hidden Champions, the success factors mentioned in this book can be applied globally to mid-sized companies in other regions as they strive to become global market leaders.

Whether a company is a “Hidden Champion”, aspires to be one, or wants to emulate their success model, Dr. Simon’s new book provides essential food for thought as executives and managers chart their course into the future.

The world’s foremost expert on pricing strategy shows how this mysterious process works and how to maximize value through pricing to company and customer.

In all walks of life, we constantly make decisions about whether something is worth our money or our time, or try to convince others to part with their money or their time. Price is the place where value and money meet. From the global release of the latest electronic gadget to the bewildering gyrations of oil futures to markdowns at the bargain store, price is the most powerful and pervasive economic force in our day-to-day lives and one of the least understood.

The recipe for successful pricing often sounds like an exotic cocktail, with equal parts psychology, economics, strategy, tools and incentives stirred up together, usually with just enough math to sour the taste. That leads managers to water down the drink with hunches and rules of thumb, or leave out the parts with which they don’t feel comfortable. While this makes for a sweeter drink, it often lacks the punch to have an impact on the customer or on the business.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though, as Hermann Simon illustrates through dozens of stories collected over four decades in the trenches and behind the scenes. A world-renowned speaker on pricing and a trusted advisor to Fortune 500 executives, Simon’s lifelong journey has taken him from rural farmers’ markets, to a distinguished academic career, to a long second career as an entrepreneur and management consultant to companies large and small throughout the world. Along the way, he has learned from Nobel Prize winners and leading management gurus, and helped countless managers and executives use pricing as a way to create new markets, grow their businesses and gain a sustained competitive advantage. He also learned some tough personal lessons about value, how people perceive it, and how people profit from it.

In this engaging and practical narrative, Simon leaves nothing out of the pricing cocktail, but still makes it go down smoothly and leaves you wanting to learn more and do more—as a consumer or as a business person. You will never look at pricing the same way again.

In this book, the world’s foremost experts on pricing integrate theoretical rigor and practical application to present a comprehensive resource that covers all areas of the field. This volume brings together quantitative and qualitative approaches and highlights the most current innovations in theory and practice. 

The result is a “bible” for leaders who recognize that price is not only a means to drive profit in the short term, but a tool to generate sustained growth in shareholder value over the longer term, and a primer for researchers, instructors, and students alike.

Praise for Price Management

“This book is truly state of the art and the most comprehensive work in price management.”

- Prof. Philip Kotler, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

“This very important book builds an outstanding bridge between science and practice.“

- Kasper Rorsted, CEO, Adidas

“This book provides practical guidelines on value creation, communication and management, which is an imperative for businesses to survive in the coming era of uncertainty.”

- Dr. Chang-Gyu Hwang, Chairman and CEO, KT Corporation (Korea Telecom)