Ownership Structures

This chapter details how ownership structures evolved, starting from the early stages of a company to unfolding over time as ownership invariably passed on from one generation to another. Examples are offered on how and under what circumstances companies go public and how founders recruit new owners when ready to pass on the company. Specifically covered are single ownership and family ownership. To provide ownership stability and ownership control, the text describes efforts to keep control within the founding family, ways of passing ownership on to another family, and the process of shareholder agreements. Examples are provided on how companies recruit new owners and how companies approach the decision to go public vs. remaining privately owned.

International Sales and Distribution Strategies

This chapter covers the history of the international market development of the researched firms and in addition how these companies established agent networks, built sales subsidiaries worldwide, or enlisted partnerships, and how they reacted to constantly changing market developments requiring adjustments in their distribution networks. The early founders of Swiss SMEs engaged in extensive travel to promote their companies at a time when the transport infrastructure was still rudimentary. Distributors and agent networks were built and still maintained by smaller companies, at times expanded to include formal distribution partnerships. Subsidiary networks were the preferred choice of larger companies which had greater volumes per country markets. Sometimes, market entry was achieved by building or acquiring manufacturing operations. Cracking some of the most difficult markets, such as Japan, posed special challenges. And finally, when industry conditions changed, even well-planned distribution strategies needed to be changed.

Achieving Ownership Stability

Stability of ownership is a big issue among SME owners. This chapter deals with strategies to preserve and guarantee ownership stability. The experience of founders and owners in applying foundation structures are described. Approaches to provide ownership stability as a public company are described. Special situations covered are employee ownership, and how to maintain stability in ownership with private investors. Examples are provided for situations when ownership stability fails. Finally, the chapter concludes with a differentiation between independence of a firm vs. autonomy in making key decisions.

Marketing and Sales Processes

Not different from many other, larger companies, marketing and sales processes at SMEs have undergone constant changes. The chapter details how SMEs dealt with the tension between marketing and sales, how they differentiated in B2B vs. B2C environments. For B2C companies, global brand building becomes important. All firms, regardless of industry environment, had constantly professionalized the marketing process. Choosing a product or company name can be crucial in a global environment. In the B2B environment, marketing and selling differ from the consumer markets and are focused more on application-driven sales, key account systems, and reliance on lead customers. Examples from adopting key account systems and enlisting lead customers are provided.

Production Processes Choices

How SMEs arranged their factory floor and the kind of processes, proprietary, or other, they employed, including the extent of automation in use, are all important aspects of the process practices. Swiss SMEs have realized that reliance on product feature advantages alone, even if protected by patents, is not sufficient to guarantee a lasting competitive advantage. Many companies, over time, have developed proprietary processes that are not available on the open market. This can include proprietary production or custom equipment developed and built in-house for key steps of the production process. Automation and robotization are extensively applied throughout, much of this designed by the companies themselves. The longevity of the companies fosters long-term improvements that are not available on the free market.

Introduction

This chapter tells the story of the origin of the project from the Big Idea: the research design, the recruiting of the research team, adoption of the sample design, the database, the extensive field research effort, as well as the application of pattern analysis to arrive at findings on management practices. Details on the book’s organization can be found here, as well as some suggestions on how to absorb both the 36 company profiles in Chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-65287-6_26 and the detailed analyses in Chaps. 10.1007/978-3-030-65287-6_2–10.1007/978-3-030-65287-6_25.

Organizing for Innovation

Given that innovative ideas are expected to be generated on a permanent basis, it is interesting to observe that among the documented firms, there were special practices in place to assure that ideas and improvements would roll off the assembly line of innovation. Such organizational practices were particularly prevalent in firms which could be classified as platformers, or those practicing and dependent on a steady stream of new product versions, or variants.

Product Design Choices

How SMEs dealt with the trade-offs between functionality, design, and ergonomics to compensate for a high-cost production basis and offering customers a competitive in-use price is key to their overall competitiveness. Design for durability is an important practice as it decreases in-use costs over time and offsets higher acquisition costs. For marketing success, design flair can be used to enhance the product appearance and looks. A very important element is the ergonomics and ease of use of a product as this can both reduce in-use costs and make the higher price tag the most efficient solution after all. The chapter ends with a discussion of the more recent concept of design thinking and how some of the Swiss SMEs have applied this idea well before the term became fashionable.

Financing the Enterprise

This chapter examines the many different pathways company founders and successors pursued to finance their businesses, as well as the financial practices adopted to assure the longevity of the companies. Describing frugal beginnings such as setting up in garages and old factory buildings to start, the chapter deals with the bootstrapping mentality and experience with tapping family resources or personal savings. SME experience with leveraging external financing are reported. Finally, the chapter concludes with experiences of SMEs financing themselves internally, such as based upon cash flow and applying conservative financial policies.

Company Profiles

This final chapter, containing the full-length profiles of each of the 36 companies representing the base of this research project, plays an integral role in Masterpieces of Swiss Entrepreneurship. Although the various profiles have been quoted extensively as part of the analysis in the previous chapters, those excerpts were used to illustrate a particular concept, finding or practice. A reader, going through the previous chapters, cannot possibly gain a comprehensive understanding of the history and trajectory of a given company in the main book text; this section allows for a more in-depth reading, one company at a time. The company profiles are organized in the order of when each of the enterprises was founded.