Lothar Späth, the former Prime Minister of Baden-Wuerttemberg and mentor of the competition has awarded the Top 100 seal of approval to GEZE for its new product development, innovative approach to the market and cost saving process improvements.
GEZE’s innovations management practices are characterised by flat hierarchies, efficient communication and swift decision-making, as well as the straightforward allocation of resources. The company’s commitment to innovation, which is mirrored at GEZE UK, is clearly shown by GEZE’s substantial time and resource allocation to nurturing and inspiring new ideas. Approximately 10-15 per cent of the engineers’ capacity is set aside for brainstorming, experimenting and trying out new suggestions, outside of the fixed production development plan.
GEZE has even succeeded in halving the development time for a new product by using a roadmap system that monitors the large number tasks associated with the innovation process so that each department knows when each activity has to be carried out and completed.
Now in its 17th year, the award has become a benchmarking project for medium sized enterprises and GEZE underwent a stringent, two-stage process devised by the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration to qualify. The assessment looked at the innovation stimulation by top management, innovation climate, innovative processes and organisation, innovation marketing as well as innovation success.
“Our results show that the 100 top innovators generally tackle challenges head on and are thus well equipped to deal with the current economic situation. Innovation is a matter of priority at management level for most of these companies,” commented Professor Nikolaus Franke, head of the research team on the analysis.
Andrew Hall, managing director at GEZE UK, is delighted about the company’s European success: “Our customers in the UK directly benefit from the new products developed at our German parent company as well as from those products developed by our home grown teams using the same innovation stimulation and processes. GEZE GmbH is now officially classed among the most successful innovators in the German SME sector. In these challenging times it’s important to recognise those companies that continue to innovate and drive innovation from the top, down.”