From Sepp Blatter to AI: power and powerlessness at the Swiss SME Day 2024
"SMEs and power(lessness) - with natural intelligence to success" was the theme of this year's 21st Swiss SME Day, which was attended by 1,200 guests. Four keynote speakers - Sepp Blatter, Miriam Meckel, Léa Steinacker and Thomas Müller - and two SME entrepreneurs talked about their experiences with power and powerlessness. This year's start-up pitch was won by Anastasia Hofmann from Kitro for her solution to reduce food waste in the catering industry.
On the Friday after OLMA, managers from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) met for "their" day, the Swiss SME Day, for the 21st time. In the once again well-filled Hall 9, Tobi Wolf opened the event with his thoughts and humorous associations on the conference theme, which he recorded using multimedia. People often feel powerless in everyday life, Wolf reported, e.g. as a new father faced with a crying baby who can't be calmed down by anything. However, there are various factors for power: reach in social media, a lot of money or, more recently, data. Tobi Wolf also presented several findings from the annual SME Day study, according to which 6% of the entrepreneurs surveyed feel powerless in a professional context very often and 40% feel powerless at least sometimes. The three most important issues, situations and factors that lead to powerlessness are a shortage of skilled workers, technological changes and changes in the needs of employees. In addition, 44 percent of the SMEs surveyed believe that the balance of power has shifted to their disadvantage. In summary, Tobi Wolf noted that feeling powerless does not have to be synonymous with "being powerless".
From natural (football) power to artificial intelligence
Then a personality made his appearance who has already been ranked in those Forbes lists of the most powerful people in the world: Josef "Sepp" Blatter, former FIFA President. Visibly aged, he nevertheless recounted with a touch of mischief his career, how he developed Fifa from an SME into a global organization worth billions. When Blatter joined the organization in 1974, Fifa had just 11 employees. He joined as the twelfth man. And this is where the power man Sepp Blatter briefly shone through: He emphasized that he did not want to see himself as a "substitute player" who only intervenes in the game towards the end. According to Blatter, success starts with believing in yourself and your own abilities. He describes how he dealt with the loss of his position in 2015 with the words: "I never resigned, I made my mandate available." And he borrows a quote from Nelson Mandela, who said: "Forgive, but do not forget."
Miriam Meckel and Léa Steinacker, researchers and successful authors, then addressed the question of "how artificial intelligence is changing the world and what we can gain from it". They argued that artificial intelligence should be seen as a basic technology like electricity and less as a threat to people or jobs. We need to learn and practice when to rely on humans and when to rely on AI, and they emphasized: "We decide how we use the technology and we invented it." The two speakers concluded by saying that it remains important to continue to be creative. After all, without enough new real data, generative models would fall into an "autophagic loop" and their quality and diversity would continue to deteriorate.
Global political coffee grounds reading and learning from a profiler
Presenter Fabian Unteregger, who hosted the entire day, talked to Prof. Dr. Claudia Brühwiler, a specialist in US politics, and Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schmid, an expert on Russia, about the current political situation in the world. The focus was on the presidential elections in the USA on November 5, 2024 and the situation in Ukraine. In which direction will the balance of power shift? Neither the specialist nor the expert had a conclusive answer. No forecasts are possible for the US elections. However, Claudia Brühwiler said that the initial euphoria surrounding candidate Kamala Harris had fizzled out. Ulrich Schmid, on the other hand, noted that we will probably be confronted with a war of attrition in Ukraine for a long time to come - although the Kremlin is likely to have the longer breath here. What the outcome of the US elections and the armed conflicts in Eastern Europe ultimately mean for entrepreneurs in Switzerland could perhaps have been answered in more detail.
As an experienced profiler and criminal psychologist, Thomas Müller gave advice on how to assess other people and their behavior and in which situations it is best to get to know other people. He highlighted the greatest contradictions of our time and focused in particular on the topic of "resilience". In his experience, this is based on four pillars: the willingness to develop oneself further, the willingness to dare to change one's perspective, the knowledge of how one's own self-esteem is distributed and the open, honest and fair way of communicating. According to Müller, everyone's biggest enemy is their own ego.
Kitro wins startup pitch
For the fifth time, three start-ups presented 10-minute pitches to the audience in the "Inspiration Session" after the lunch break. This year, it was Nicholas Hänny and Robin Gnehm from Nikin, who have been planting a tree for every (textile) product sold for 8 years and now want to create 100 % circular products, Christian Naef from RY3T ONE, who uses waste heat from computing power to heat houses, and Anastasia Hofmann from Kitro, who is trying to solve the problem of food waste in the hospitality industry with artificial intelligence and data. The SME Day guests were most impressed by Kitro's business idea, as the live voting in the hall revealed.
Humorous nuances and exciting "SME talk"
Timo Wopp from Berlin offered a mixture of keynote speech and cabaret, combining juggling with a firework display of humorous content and receiving much applause in return. Among other things, he exposed many coaching wisdoms as empty phrases and created some himself, because: "A little trumpeter doesn't shy away from the fog around the unicorn."
For the second time, there was also the "SME Talk": Fabian Unteregger interviewed Martin Kelterborn and Lea von Bidder (former CEO of Ava) about their very specific experiences with power, powerlessness and entrepreneurship: both spoke authentically about how they gave up power in their (former) companies and in which situations they felt helpless, e.g. in the case of a cybercrime incident, as experienced by Martin Kelterborn. Lea von Bidder, on the other hand, whose highly praised (and thoroughly successful) company Ava ended up with an insolvent investment company, described her greatest strength as the knowledge that you can always do something new. Accordingly, she is now on the road with her new company Expeerly.
More information: www.kmu-tag.ch
"No other conference brings Swiss SMEs closer together"
The next Swiss SME Day will take place on Friday, October 24, 2025. The conference has been organized since 2003 by the Swiss Institute for SMEs and Entrepreneurship at the University of St.Gallen (KMU-HSG) and the communications agency alea iacta ag. The Swiss SME Day is under the patronage of the Swiss Trade Association (SGV), economiesuisse, the St.Gallen-Appenzell Chamber of Industry and Commerce and the St.Gallen Cantonal Trade Association. The event is supported by long-standing main sponsors for whom SME issues are very important: Helvetia, Raiffeisen, OBT, ABACUS and Swisscom.
