Review SME Day 2023: SMEs and their right momentum

This year's Swiss SME Day celebrated an anniversary: For the 20th time, managers from small and medium-sized enterprises met for "their" day. What started out as a "beer idea" at the SME Institute of the University of St.Gallen has now become an established business event with nationwide appeal. The organizers used the anniversary as an opportunity to make various changes to the conference design: For the first time, there was an electronic ticket system, and a "goodie bag" with giveaways was dispensed with. And with the SME talk, a new format was introduced on the podium. The "Duo Lapsus" was responsible for the humorous and unexpected nuances at this year's SME Day.

SMEs with positive momentum

The conference theme was "SMEs and Momentum - what makes entrepreneurship tick". In his opening address, host Tobi Wolf began by pointing out some parallels between today and the situation 20 years ago: 2003, for example, was the year of the Swissair grounding - and this year it "caught" the major bank Credit Suisse in a similar way. Also 20 years ago, many technological developments that are taken for granted today got their start: smartphones, 3D printers or social media. So they had caught the right moment and pulled the momentum on their side. And the SMEs: What do they think about the "right momentum"? This is what the study conducted in the run-up to SME Day sought to find out. In it, more than 80 percent of responding SME executives agreed with the statement that the right momentum is central to a company's success. When asked if their company had missed any momentum in retrospect, and what the reason was, there were three main statements: "We weren't bold enough," "We had too few resources," and "We were too slow." And 60 percent of the respondents are convinced that the momentum in their company has changed positively in recent months. Tobi Wolf used the image of a spinning top in his explanations: "You never know in advance which direction it will take - in other words, where the momentum will lie. But the advantage of a spinning top is that you can always set it in motion again.

From AI and proven leadership principles

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the big trend topics of 2023. With ChatGPT, this was democratized virtually "overnight". In just two months, this tool recorded over 100 million users (for comparison: the telephone took 75 years!). Keynote speaker Nicole Büttner called on SMEs not to close their minds to this development: Those who do not join in today could find themselves at a competitive disadvantage in the future, she warned. It is not a matter of replacing employees with AI, but rather of providing them with AI-supported tools. For example, with the support of generative AI, contract reviews could be completed in as little as two minutes instead of four to five hours. And likewise, SMEs should start creating a data strategy. This includes making company data "reusable," he said.

Bernhard Heusler, former president of FC Basel and now a lawyer and consultant, underlined the importance of leadership and collaboration in his subsequent keynote address. Especially in times of digitalization and AI, empathy and emotional intelligence are once again more in demand. He emphasized that it is the task of leadership today to take away pressure in teams and create trust in return. "Mistrust paralyzes and causes standstill," Heusler said. But he added that leadership also means looking ahead and sometimes acting in an unpopular way.

Startups and established SMEs on the podium

After the lunch break, the "Inspiration Session" continued. Three startups pitched for the audience's favor: Philomena Schwab presented her company Strayfawn Studios, which develops computer games. Founded in 2016, the company operates in a market that is now larger than the film and music industries combined. Melusine Bliesener and Katharina Lehmkuhl presented Papydo, their idea of ecological premium gift paper made from grass fibers. Their claim: They want to make the "Festival of Love" a "Festival of the Environment". After all, the consumption of conventional wrapping paper is high: if you were to line up all the paper consumed per year, it would result in a distance from the earth to the moon. In addition, conventional wrapping paper can hardly be recycled. Pascal Bieri, on the other hand, presented "Planted," a startup that is actually hardly one anymore: Founded four years ago, the company is growing rapidly and shows that its plant-based meat is well received by customers. The products of Planted as well as the presented corporate strategy seemed to convince the audience the most: Pascal Bieri won the voting in the end.

In the SME Talk, moderator Arthur Honegger talked with Claudio Minder of Kybun Joya, Tanja Zimmermann-Burgerstein of Antistress AG, and Til Zollinger of Zollinger Bio about their very concrete experiences with momentum and entrepreneurship. For example, the audience learned about initial difficulties after the merger of Kybun and Joya to form the new company. And whether the right momentum will be found again after the further takeover of the shoe brand "Kandahar" cannot yet be estimated, said Claudio Minder. Or Til Zollinger had to admit to having been caught on the wrong foot by the heatwave summer of 2017. However, he said, lessons had been learned and the company was now better prepared for similar scenarios. And Tanja Zimmermann-Burgerstein explained how the Corona pandemic had acted as a driver and how the company had been able to cope with this "momentum" by building up stocks.

SMEs can also learn from NASA

Finally, Thomas Zurbuchen provided another momentum or highlight at the end of the SME Day: In a captivating presentation, he was able to show that small and medium-sized enterprises can indeed learn from the American space organization NASA and its high technologies - after all, he was its research director for years. One of his insights: "Change" is always present in everyday company life. "Change is a law of nature, not stability!" Thus, the changes brought about by AI will be greater than those after the invention of the computer, he cautioned. And from his experience, he relayed this point to the audience, "When rapid change comes: Do something! Learn actively and experiment!" Specifically, he advised company managers to make only a few decisions at a time, but to make the important ones - and that is only 20 percent of all decisions. And: "Long time scales are more important than the short ones - but the more difficult ones," Thomas Zurbuchen concluded.

The next SME Day will be held on October 25, 2024. Further information: www.kmu-tag.ch