There are a few important developments that I need to cover here….
——
Saab have recently brought home what could be the last of the operations outside of Trollhattan, when several marketing, admin and PR people moved from their Pixbo facility at Mölnlycke, near Gothenburg.
Around 100 employees had their last day at Pixbo last Friday.
——
Saab have recently received a grant to promote entrepreneurial thinking and projects amongst employees.
A translation from TTELA:
How do you create a spirit of entrepreneurship and at the same time an effective organization?
Saab Automobile, The City of Trollhättan, Lear Corporation and ANA Trolhättan (the local Saab dealer in Trollhättan) seek answers to this question in a competence development project (called Entré), which on February 25 received 17 million kronor in EU aid and will reach 4,000 employees.
With Saab having cut the moorings from GM, business development and innovation is a foundation need in order to survive. There has been talks of a special Saab spirit that has been reinforced in the very shaky journey the company has made over the past year – a crisis of consciousness that can embed a new creativity and ingenuity.
A project aimed at getting the very creative process of undertaking the project entrance as just been granted 17 million through the Swedish ESF Council with funding from the European Social Fund. With the three companies involved and Trollhättan city’s own resources there is a total project budget of 31 million kronor – Saab accounts for the lion’s share and is also the workplace where the project will have the greatest impact.
The project is to enhance entrepreneurship among all employees within an organization – or intrapreneurship, which it is usually called when we talk bout entrepreneurial thinking and innovation within an existing company.
- The project includes for example training in models and structures on how to harness ideas and thinking on these issues, “says Kari Jansson, Saab’s training manager.
Among other things, the project includes an entrepreneurial school and provide leadership training in entrepreneurship. Furthermore, it will have an exchange with an entrepreneurial university in LIUC Castellanza outside of Milan in Italy.
The project, which will be able to touch many departments at Saab, is also addressing Enterprise Lean, a model that works more efficiently in order to remove non value adding processes and process steps.
The project leader Anders Isaksson, from the Saab competence management department, talks about the project as part of the wider work to turn Saab into a dynamic, entrepreneurial company, after a more passive culture as part of the GM organization.
- This may be a small part, but an important tool towards that goal.
——
And finally, a quick from the BBC.
This one goes out to all the naysayers who reckon you can’t be profitable being small.
Jaguar Land Rover turned in a profit of £55m in the last three months of 2009 after a loss of £60m in the previous quarter.
The company’s owner, India’s Tata Motors, said the bounce back was thanks to stronger market conditions.
It added that its range of new models had helped its performance.
Of course, they will need to be more profitable than that to develop new models, as will Saab, but it’s an encouraging message nonetheless.
Thanks to Dave for the link.
Related posts:
.
{ 34 comments }
Entrepreneurship in a socialist state? They have their work cut out for them, from what I can see. With most people being taken care of by big government over there, this is very difficult. Swedish design has become more and more simplistic and plain and lacking in creativity. Something definitely has to be done.
Would be intresting if Saab comes out with any Information about Geneva Motor Show which begins on tuesday. I don’t expect any new model – despite the NG9-5 sedan – there, but maybe they surprise everyone?!
I would say that this comment from you Mr. vagabond was one of the more stupid I have read on saabsunited. I should not really reply so I would only like to ask us all to say away from a political flame war.
You know, with statistic figures you can prove anything, so if the public health care cost related to the Gross National Product (GNP) would be an indication on if a country is a socialist state or not I guess the U.S.A. would be on the higher end of that scale.
Public health care cost U.S.A. – 17% of GNP
Public health care cost Sweden – 7% of GNP
Take care Mr. vagabond.
aaahh my friend…. lets us not feast on those who chum the waters.
aaahh my friend…. lets us not feast on those who chum the waters.
aaahh my friend…. lets us not feast on those who chum the waters.
aaahh my friend…. lets us not feast on those who chum the waters.
aaahh my friend…. lets us not feast on those who chum the waters.
aaahh my friend…. lets us not feast on those who chum the waters.
McCarthy died in ’57. It would have been nice if his stupidity died along with him, but apparently some people still feel the need to judge the world by his ideas. Go live in Sweden for a couple of years, and then judge their socialist state. It’s not heaven on earth, but it’s not what you make of it either. And remember: assuming that your nickname has a relationship to your nationality, it’s very easy to bounce the ball and start a discussion on which country and which economical system was responsible for the financial and economical crisis we’re now in.
Come on Fellas… Lets not feed off that post about Socialism and keep this on topic and avoid nation bashing as well as bashing one another.
Come on Fellas… Lets not feed off that post about Socialism and keep this on topic and avoid nation bashing as well as bashing one another.
Come on Fellas… Lets not feed off that post about Socialism and keep this on topic and avoid nation bashing as well as bashing one another.
Come on Fellas… Lets not feed off that post about Socialism and keep this on topic and avoid nation bashing as well as bashing one another.
Come on Fellas… Lets not feed off that post about Socialism and keep this on topic and avoid nation bashing as well as bashing one another.
Come on Fellas… Lets not feed off that post about Socialism and keep this on topic and avoid nation bashing as well as bashing one another.
Niche profitability is precisely what GM didn’t understand about Saab.
GM’s business is boom and bust. One year they’re selling as many Traiblazers as they can at $40,000 a pop (which must be triple their cost), and the next year nothing’s moving and they lose billions.
The Saab (and Porsche and Land Rover) model is completely different: make a good car, don’t flood the market, make a reasonable margin. You’ll never have years of obscene profits that way, but you won’t flirt with bankruptcy every time the stock market sneezes either.
The website of the Geneva Auto Show states that there will be a Saab World Premiere in Geneva: a new Concept Car!!
LINK
I’ve just booked a flight to Geneva for the 12th, so I hope I can enjoy not only the new Saab 9-5 but a splendid concept car too!
Great. All the good employees will become entrepreneurs, start their own company, and leave SAAB.
They’d better be careful about thosefancy corporate Enterprise Lean techniques and other buzzwords. That’s what had been implemented in Toyota very deeply (we all know about how’s creativity related to Toyota) and may have caused hiding of the possible technical issues due to overstimulating the growth and other results.
Stimulating “intrapreneurship” is a good thing, but following the theories blindly and forgetting about the human nature obviously leads to bad things.
Here’s an interesting article on this theme called A Think Piece: How HR Caused Toyota to Crash by Dr. John Sullivan:
http://www.ere.net/2010/02/15/a-think-piece-how-hr-caused-toyota-to-crash/
I think there may be some disagreement about what political systems foster entrepreneurship. I think that we can all agree that innovation is a hallmark of entrepreneurship. Furthermore I’m sure most SAAB enthusiasts appreciate SAAB’s commitment to innovation. I believe that SAAB has a better chance of bringing innovative ideas to market, Norse oppression and all
than it ever did as an engineering sweat shop for GM.
Go Rover! I saw about a dozen new Rovers one day this week. Morning carpool at a couple of the local private grade schools is an interesting way to catch automotive trends. I need to go off and research Land Rover and financing … but I’ll give SCNA another couple months before I pull the trigger on a new vehicle.
Speaking about Swades wonderful trip to Sweden. Yesterday I also had a SAAB related trip to Sweden returning home with my 9/3 SC 1,9 Tid after a nice ski vacations in Austria. We started 05:00 in Ischgl Austria and drove almost 1600 km through Austria, Germany, Denmark and finally arrived at 20:00 in V
I am guessing you are a troll…and a rude one at that. I believe your post violates the posting guidelines and would suggest familiarizing yourself with them before participating again.
Sorry if this has been addressed before and I missed it, but does anyone know if the Saabs in the GM Heritage Collection were included in the sale to Spyker? I would imagine if so they’ll be moved to the Saab Museum in Trollhattan, which could use some expansion to accommodate the additions…
I know that GM sold some of those cars to private collectors, but I think it was only a small portion of the entire collection.
I remember booking a flight to Geneva for the new 9-5 debut last year. I wonder if this new concept has anything to do with the new 9-3!
That would be a shame if that were the case. I can understand GM wanting to keep something for historic reasons, but truly they belong with SAAB.
According to Dagens Industri in Sweden, Saabs is showing up in Geneva….
http://di.se/Nyheter/?page=/Avdelningar/Artikel.aspx%3Fstat%3D0%26ArticleID%3D2010%255c02%255c28%255c371711%26SectionId%3DBilMotor%26menusection%3DBilMotor%3BBilMotornyheter%26o%3Dsp4
A dealer here in Sweden told me yesterday, that we will finally see some official NG 9-5 prices in connection with the Geneva show.
Thanks for the link Michael. As I’m deeply involved in the Entr
“Entr
Project Entr
saab is going to show the world how business can truly bring out the best in people. so exciting!
Comments on this entry are closed.