Leaders and "Influencers" of tomorrow selected

If you want to succeed as an influencer in social media, "you have to be able to identify trends quickly and implement them at lightning speed," keynote speaker Julia Graf told the illustrious audience at the Tonhalle St.Gallen. Julia Graf should know: After all, she is Switzerland's most successful influencer. Her YouTube videos with beauty and lifestyle tips have been clicked 184 million times so far.

Quickly recognizing what is at stake and applying the right tools in practice from the pool of learned theory at lightning speed: This is what the 52 teams who qualified for the WTT Young Leader Award 2018 with practical projects in market research and management conception had to do. As a rule, they put in at least 800 working hours in one semester to do so. Six student teams were ennobled with the nomination for the award, and two have now been crowned.

Concrete recommendations for action

The victory in the market research category went to the team that conducted a multi-stage survey for its client Rhomberg Schmuck from Marbach to find out how the customers of one of the largest Swiss jewelry manufacturers shop today. The result: highly diverse. While the Rhomberg catalog is still important for older customers, younger customers inform themselves via social media channels. But one thing is the same for all age groups, as FHS student Bernhard Oberholzer noted: "Trying on jewelry and getting individual advice is high on everyone's list." The recommended action of combining the advantages of online presence with the strengths of the branch network with "click and collect" is therefore already being implemented.

Second place went to a team that clarified the market potential of a new drug for Bioforce, a Roggwil-based manufacturer of herbal medicines. Third place went to a market research project for Thyssenkrupp Materials Switzerland, which wants to supply metals to medical technology companies.

International exchange

Many of the practical projects vying for the WTT Young Leader Award are international collaborations, and the project teams are made up of students from different countries. This is also the case with the winning project in the management concept category. Together with colleagues from Shanghai University, FHS students investigated the flow of medicines in Chinese hospitals for Swisslog Shanghai, a company that specializes in automating the supply of medicines. FHS student Ferdinand Gross, as project leader, spoke of "countless hurdles" that had to be overcome in this intercultural project. The team invested a good 2,000 working hours in their project, the fillet piece of which was probably the difficult field study in a hospital in Shanghai. "The problem was that the interviewees didn't want to give any information at all," said project coach Andreas Löhrer, adding that the students therefore had to work their way to the desired information using indirect questions.

In the second-place project, a measuring instrument was created that the Romanshorn-based integration company Brüggli can use to document its impact. Third place went to the team that developed a bonus system for managers at M&M Militzer & Münch International Holding in St.Gallen that integrates different incentives in different cultures.

Get-together of current and future leaders

The head of the FHS Knowledge Transfer Office and host of the event, Prof. Peter Müller, welcomed around 650 participants, including many invited guests from business, science and politics. After the ceremony, these cultivated an intensive exchange at the aperitif. The special thing about one of the most important networking events in eastern Switzerland: The focus is not on the present leaders of today, but on the students of the FHS who are preparing to be the leaders of tomorrow.

Information about the winners and their projects is available at here.