Alenka Braček Lalić - Hidden Champions in Dynamically Changing Societies: Critical Success Factors for Market Leadership

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In the foreword to the book Hidden Champions in CEE and Turkey, published in 2013, I wrote that I was surprised and impressed by the large number of Hidden Champions in Central and Eastern Europe and by the strength, passion, deep knowledge, and ambitions of the Hidden Champion founders and entrepreneurs. I expressed my optimism that many more new Hidden Champions would emerge in Central and Eastern Europe in the future. This new book proves that my optimism was justified.

IEDC-Bled School of Management, Postgraduate Studies and CEEMAN, the International Association for Management Development in Dynamic Societies, have taken my more or less hidden wish seriously. They started a new research project with a double aim: to report on the development of the Hidden Champions from the study of 2013 and detect new Hidden Champions that either were not discovered in 2013 or have been established after that time.

Although I have studied the Hidden Champions phenomenon intensively over 30 years and have many times spoken and written about the characteristics of those companies and their importance for their national economies, my curiosity about Hidden Champions is far from satisfied. Therefore, I appreciate that this book provides deep analyses of, and insights into, important features of Hidden Champions in Central and Eastern Europe and selected countries in Asia. It was an excellent decision to include Mongolia and China. We all know the names of Chinese Big Champions that have successfully achieved global market leadership. We could suppose that there are other companies in China with strong global market positions that are still unknown. This book reveals the names of the first group of Hidden Champions in China. I am certain that many others will emerge and be discovered in the future.

I would like to repeat what I expressed as my wish in 2013: that this book will encourage many young people, entrepreneurs, and midsized companies to use their knowledge and skills to go decisively for hidden championship. But the message of this book goes far beyond individual entrepreneurship and has great societal significance. The case studies show that the countries included in the study have a huge potential to develop world-class companies. I am convinced that these countries should not try to build their economic future on large Fortune-Global-500-type companies. It is much more effective to foster a strong Mittelstand and promote the emergence of numerous Hidden Champions. I see this as the most promising way to a prosperous future. The book makes an enormously important contribution to this endeavor.

We would like to acknowledge and thank all the researchers who contributed to this book, which is a follow-up project after the Hidden Champions study of 2013, edited by McKiernan and Purg. We would like to express our special gratitude to Prof. Hermann Simon, who inspired us to start this research and generously shared his methodology.

Our thanks go to the hidden champions and their presidents, owners, or top managers who made time for the interviews, opened their companies and minds, and let the researchers explore and learn. The researchers from management schools from 22 countries, members of CEEMAN, the International Association for Management Development in Dynamic Societies, made a fantastic job and we are proud of them! We also thank EBRD for its financial support, which was of great value for us. Artyom Ushnichkov had an important role from the beginning to the end of the research. We appreciate enormously his work. We thank Katja Babi, and Livija Marko, who collected the data and assisted in the research process.

We are very grateful to language editor Misho Minkov, and Kristina Sokli and Tanja Grilc, from the office of IEDC and CEEMAN president.

Thank you all!

The Editors

Bled, Slovenia, August 2020