Projects

CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS:

  • MAIN-STREET / WALL-STREET – Ongoing

Prof. Dr. Winfried Weber

“Main-Street vs. Wall-Street – Understanding Each Other or Drifting Apart”

As a resonance of  a 2012 round table of the Peter Drucker Society of Mannheim e.V. we prepare an anthology with views from economists, social scientists and practitioners from Main-Street and Wall-Street.

  • LEADERSHIP AND MODERN PRODUCTION SYSTEMS – Ongoing

Prof. Dr. Winfried Weber

In cooperation with Daimler AG, Freudenberg & Co, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, John Deere,
and  Institut für Produktionssysteme und Organisation/PSO
and Kompetenzzentrum Moderne Produktionssysteme, HS Mannheim

Leading questions
1. Values
2. Leadership and production systems
3. Organization,  process structure/ project structure
4. Roles and tasks of effective management and production systems
5. Tools for effective Leadership/Change Management
Job Design, Self-Assessment, Learning organization, Lifelong Learning, Feedback processes, management ratio; Shopfloor-Management (Genji Genbutsu, …); zero defects; vulnerability, robustness, ambiguity
6. Communication

Photo:
Modern Production Systems, Kyung Hee University Seoul

  • SOCIAL AND CIVIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP – Ongoing

Prof. Dr. Winfried Weber

2020-2023 “Social & Impact Entrepreneurship” (SIE)

Mannheim Institute of Applied Management Research at Mannheim University of Applied Sciences is active in the sector of Social Entrepreneurship with a global perspective since 2008.
The city of Mannheim is a “global village” where fortysix per cent of the citizens have an immigration background. This microcosm offers us a good setting for finding innovative founders and solutions for a global social cohesion.

In a new pilot program “Social & Impact Entrepreneurship” (SIE) from February to May 2021 we offered a practical orientated incubation program with a global perspective and invited 45 students from ten faculties from four continents and 29 countries. During the program, students work in teams to create ideas for social innovations and develop them to a level where they can be implemented. The students gain a deeper understanding of the potential of SIE to deal with social problems and become a  change maker. Professors and lecturers from a global network support the students as mentors and coaches during the program.

In a world where social cohesion is a resource for each society – and which became knowledge societies – the crucial focus is how to allocate knowledge to productive application. Therefore students deal with both poles of social entrepreneurship: how to become an expert of social problems (theories, models, wording and communication) and of entrepreneurial managerial tasks, how to build up a social start-up and in the future an organization which is effective and efficient with results and performance. A key factor is the global view. From a social problem in a specific country can emerge a global crisis. Our students get a global view for social cohesion from the beginning.
The SIE Program has been developed by Winfried Weber (iniciator and project leader) and Harlad Bolsinger (project leader) in a partnership with:

Project Partners
Prof. Dr. Harald Bolsinger (project manager, head teacher), FHWS University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Germany; Prof. Dr. Inge Vervoort, Thomas More University of Applied Sciences, Belgium; Prof. Dr. Liv Marit Kleppe, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway; Prof. Dr. Andrés Arias Astray,Universidad Complutense Madrid, Spain; Prof. Dr. Tokie Anme, Tsukuba University; Japan; Femi Odebiyi, LCC International University, Lithuania.
Networking Partners:
Dr. Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien, Club of Rome, Ghana; Raïssa Mpundu (PhD candidate), University of Burundi, Burundi
Video Introduction
https://studio.youtube.com/video/HM6oIldhfdk/edit

Social Entrepreneurship 2008-2023

The project studies how local social innovations emerge.
We use and develop new models of lecturing with the focus on “Solving social problems and encouraging social innovation”

We offer a continuous Entrepreneurship-Lab with steps like
-Define your social innovation
-Design your social innovation
-Pilot your social innovation
-Scale your social innovation

 Social entrepreneurs teach us two things. They demonstrate how to obtain enormous impact with limited ressources and we can see that they emerge solutions from their entrpreneurial thinking, especially in the field of social solutions, no one would have thought about in the ivory tower.

The economist Schumpeter described what marks entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs do not only change their organizations and their industry, but our patterns of behaviour and perception. Social and economic entrepreneurs have a lot in common. Their wish is to achieve the largest impact possible. Entrepreneurs change their environment by perserverence, endurance, readiness to assume a risk and refusal to settle for existent solutions. They have chutzpa, are obsessed by an assignment and commit themselves to the implementation of their innovation for life.

Especially in complex or even hopeless situations social and civic entrepreneurs need to reach out to people using less money and ressources. Mere innovative entrepreneurs manage this challenge. Social and civic entrepreneurs rise the performance of a society, as Peter Drucker once said.

With this research project current development in Germany is being investigated and student projects at the University of Applied Sciences, faculty of social sciences will be supported. The project has to be understood as an entrepreneurship-lab, in which entrepreneurial action gets linked with academic laboratory. Entrepreneurship will be trained exemplarily by assignment of tasks. The students develop business models, strategic objectives, clarify the mission of the enterprise and the first steps of a foundation. A similar approach of social entrepreneurs, the civic entrepreneurs, navigate through the treacherous waters of bureaucracy. They develop new models and effectiveness and efficiency in the public sector.

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