I always think of Siemens (Peter Loscher, CEO) as an icon of German engineering, and indeed of Germany’s global industrial footprint. A leader in industrial automation, energy generation, and healthcare technology, Siemens had a market value of $80 billion at the time of Forbes annual listing of the world’s 2000 largest public companies (published 21 April 2010). This makes Siemens the most valuable German public company. Siemens ranks number 50 on Forbes’s global list, which weights sales, profits, assets and market value equally.
The company’s business is global. Its 2008/9 revenues were 76 billion Euros, of which 11 billion (15%) came from Germany, 43 billion (57%) from EMEA, 21 billion (27%) from the Americas, 13 billion (16%) from Asia Pacific. Siemens had 405,000 employees at Sept 30, 2009, of which 277,000 were outside Germany, including 30,000 in China, 16,800 in India, 64,000 in the US and 17,000 in the UK. Siemens notes that it has been active in China since 1872, and now has more than 90 operating companies and 61 regional offices there.
From reading its web materials, Siemens clearly prides itself on its engineering skills, its internal innovations, and its research and development. In fiscal 08/09, it says its people formally reported 7700 significant innovations , 35 per working day. Patent applications were 4160, 19 per working day.
Still, Siemens did not make the list of BusinessWeek’s global 50 most innovative companies. Although the corporate website is beginning to talk about open innovation, I could not find a working portal for outisders to contribute innovative material. The process of opening up to working with outsiders, though established as a goal, still seems to be work in process.
As its core, Siemens states that it seeks to be
- Responsible
- Excellent
- Innovative
Some interesting quotations from the website, bearing on corporate culture:
“We stand beside our customers in the search for perfect quality, coming up with solutions that exceed expectations.”
“Excellence demands we define a path of continuous improvement, constantly challenging existing processes. It also requires us to embrace change so we are in the right place when new opportunities open up. Excellence also means attracting the best talent in the marketplace and giving them the skills and opportunities they need to become high-achievers. We are committed to living a high-performance culture.”
I see Siemens as a great, historically successful company: global, European, German. The degree of its future success will be an interesting benchmark, particularly for European companies, as the “West” comes to grips with a “flatter” world.
The growing list of Interesting Communities of Leadership is athttp://lovingwork.org/interesting-communities-of-leadership
Scott is scott@lovingwork.org and @scottdowns3 on Twitter.
business · community · customers · global · innovation · leadership · Siemens · value · values
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