Cuno Pümpin

Cuno Pümpin ( born August 21, 1939 in Basel ) is a Swiss economist. Since 1994 he is Professor at the University of St. Gallen.

Pümpin was awarded the Swiss Innovation Award. He developed the concept of strategic success positions (SEP ), which has found today under the term core competency considerable spread in the early 1980s. Pümpin published primarily on the subject of strategic management for over thirty years. He served eleven years in the business and even today in several companies - mainly in the financial sector - a seat on the Board of Directors (Supervisory Board).

Origin

Cuno Pümpin was born as the second son of Fritz Pümpin (1901-1972) and Rosa Gerster in Basel and is a citizen of Gelterkinden.

Career

Pümpin attended primary school and district in the half canton of Basel. Subsequently, he completed a commercial apprenticeship. After graduating in 1961 he spent two years studying economics in Basel, then moved to the University of St. Gallen, in which he the diploma of a like in 1966. oec. acquired. In 1968 he received his doctorate from the University of St. Gallen with a thesis on "Long-Term Marketing Planning ".

Activities

Professional activity

In the years 1965-1967 Pümpin was in the Department of Corporate Development at JR Geigy AG (now part of Novartis) in Basel worked. In 1967 he moved to the Sperry Univac computer (now part of Unisys ), where he became head of the department of training and information in a short time. In 1970 he was appointed to the Board of Sperry Univac Switzerland with the responsibility of marketing.

Parallel to his work in business practice Pümpin written in the years 1970 and 1971 his habilitation thesis on "Information and Marketing". 1972 he was appointed lecturer and 1973 election to the part-time associate professor of business administration at the University of St. Gallen. In 1973 Pümpin supervising the management center of St. Gallen ( MZSG ), a then affiliated with the HSG training and consulting organization.

In 1977 Pümpin founded his own company, focused in particular on consulting in the field of strategic management. During this time, most international companies in Switzerland were among his customers. In addition to teaching and consulting activities, he worked on several Boards, including the ATAG Ernst & Young AG, Ems Chemie Holding AG, in the Liechtenstein Global Trust (LGT ) Ltd., Metro International AG and as an international advisory board of private equity firm Blackstone. In the Prince of Liechtenstein Foundation - where he served as Board of Trustees - and in the LGT, he was heavily involved in the international development of this group. He also served as an advisor and Commissioner in various university departments. Today he is president of the Institute of Management at the University of St. Gallen.

From the mid- 1970s was Pümpin regular speaker at international conferences and meetings, including at the World Economic Forum, at the ISC St. Gallen or at the Management Centre Europe. Lecture tours have taken him to many overseas countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, etc.

1985 acquired Pümpin with a small circle of investors, which is active throughout Europe Ausblidungsfirma Scheidegger with over 1,000 employees, which he presided over the following years. The company was sold later to a restructuring again.

In the 1990s Pümpin was involved as a Board of Directors of Metro International AG instrumental in building the metro corporate venture company Invision. After a management buyout, he was first vice president and since 2002 Chairman of the Board Invision Holding AG, one of today 's leading private equity firm in Switzerland.

Also in the 1990s Pümpin worked as an advisor to governments. So he developed in collaboration with the government and major political parties and associations of Andorra, the National Strategy Pyrenees this state. In 1990 he was " working group leadership structures of the covenant" appointed by the Federal Council of the Swiss Confederation in the, where he advised the Federal Council in relation to the design of the top management structures of the federation.

Scientific activity

In his career Pümpin published thirteen books and over 100 journal articles. His books have been translated into more than ten languages.

One of his most successful publications was " Strategic Leadership in Corporate Practice " ( 1980), which was printed in more than 200,000 copies.

As the most important work the book "Management strategic success positions - SEP concept as the basis of effective corporate governance " can (1982 ), respectively. In this book, he defined a strategic success (SEP ) as "... one in a company through the development of important and dominant skills consciously created condition that allows this enterprise, competition superiority and thus achieve superior long-term results. " (Management strategic success positions, p 34). The concept of strategic success positions largely corresponds to the propagated by Hamel and Prahalad in 1990 approach the Core Competence (see Harvard Business Review, May-June 1990) or even the late 80s of Stalk, inter alia, published concept of " Core Capabilities (see Harvard Business Review, March-April 1992). Pümpin is thus the forerunner of today's world introduced the concept of core competencies. The comprehensive 219 page book "Management strategic success positions " shows Pümpin in which entrepreneurial activity fields in September / core skills can be built. Then he developed ten strategic principles that must be followed when determining SEP / core competencies. Finally, he deals in depth with the question of how September / core skills can be built. Here he anticipated the much-discussed in the 80s and 90s theme of the strategy implementation.

The concept of strategic success positions won international recognition. So this was licensed in the 80s by Ernst & Young as the basis for the Company's business strategy. For the development of this concept, he was awarded the 1983 Swiss Innovation Award.

Also great attention was paid to the 1990 published book " The dynamic principle ", which was chosen by Euro Marketing at the best reference book of the year. In this work Pümpin has continued to develop its strategic approach. As one of the first authors he has it highlighted the importance of multiplication / scalability of business activities. He has shown what requirements must be met within the company for a successful multiplication. Incoming he has also dealt with the question of how sustainable scaling can be achieved.

Publications

• Long-term marketing planning, designing and formalizing ( Diss 1968, 2nd edition, 1970, 136 pp. ).
• Information and marketing, information systems as a guiding basis ( Habil, 1973, 234 pp. ).
• Strategic management in the enterprise practice (1980, 80 pp., French 1981, English 1982).
• Management strategic success positions (1982, 217 S., Spanish 1982 - with S. Garcia Echevarria, Title: Estrategia Empresarial - como la implementar estrategia en la empresa, english 1987: Title: The essence of Corporate Strategy, portuguese, 1987, japanese 1987, Finnish 1989 korean 1989 Indian edition Bombay 1995).
• Corporate culture - based on strategic profiling of successful companies (1985, 56 pp. with J.-M. Kobi and HA Wüthrich, French 1985). Cultura Empresarial (1988, 139 pp. with S. Garcia Echevarria ).
• The dynamic principle (1989, Paperback 1991, English 1989, Spanish 1990 - with S. Garcia Echevarria, French 1991, Italian 1993 Indian edition Bombay 1995 edition How World Class Companies Became World Class, 1991. )
• Enterprising dynamism - How we run things into new dimensions? ( P. 64, 1991, with C. Imboden, French 1991).
• Management of corporate development - phase-specific leadership and dealing with crises (1991, 276 S., with J. Prange ).
• Selling propositions - methodology of dynamic strategic management (1992, p 202 ).
• Selling propositions - build and implement core competencies, with Wolfgang Ammann (2005, 136 pp. )
• The private equity investor as a strategy coach, Bernd Pfister, Martin Ankli, Wolfgang Ammann (2005, 167 pp. )
• Business Development - Corporate Life Cycles: metamorphosis instead collapse, with Christian Wunderlin (2005, 215 pp. )