Breaking through the boundaries of the business world: Breaking Business Borders at Campus Day 2016

"Breaking Business Borders" was the motto of this year's Campus Day, presented by the student organization Business Talks. When the Co-President of Business Talks, student Lea Antonia Varga IBM 4, asked in her speech at the Campus Day opening event "Where will I be in 5 years? And in which company will I work one day?", she hit exactly the right note at this year's Business Talks conference. The day offered various answers to Lea's questions. The working world is changing, faster than ever. The complexity, fast pace, multicultural workplaces and virtual work environments mean that students today need to keep their finger on the pulse of industry to be best equipped for the world of today and tomorrow.

The Business Talks conference on 13 April as part of Campus Day offered inspiration to everyone on the Schwenningen campus, exemplary cases from everyday life in the company and insights from dynamic and experienced players in the international business world.

More than 450 students and lecturers were present at the guest speeches: Matthias Schrepfer from Zalando spoke about IT process optimization, Marius Gelhausen from the FDM Group about stress management, Daniel Kaltenbach from HP Enterprise challenged the audience with questions about the Internet of Things and the future of successful companies. Many participants stay until the end to win an HP tablet or Zalando voucher at the big raffle.

For the third time, Business Talks staged the panel discussion with graduates, the "HFU STARS ALUMNI Panel", in addition to the individual guest speakers in the morning, with supervisor Prof. Nikola Hale as moderator. Here the internationally experienced former students of the HFU Business School from different study programs such as MBA, IBW, IBM, IB and BBA shared their experiences, motivators, projects, dreams and key insights. The statements of our graduates reflected exactly the statements of the study quoted by Prof. Hale, "Wertewelten Arbeiten 4.0" (Worlds of Values Working 4.0) from the German Federal Ministry of Labour, which stated that wishes, dreams, ideals and visions vary greatly from person to person nowadays. There is no longer just one definition of success, as a complete CV in "right" order. The question of fulfilment, of happiness and of "what is enough?" is manifold and was experienced live during the panel discussion.

v.L. Allan Mutagwaba, Caroline Mora, Rene Becceril, Prof. Nikola Hale, Erik Holzmann, Dennis Damer, Nico Köllner

Some of the worlds of values in the BMAS study, (2016:5) were clarified during the panel discussion. "Successfully shaping his management career" was the topic of Nico Köllner, who discovered his vocation as a future manager at E.ON in Nottingham. Many of his listeners found it particularly exciting how Nico shared his "personal experiences, mistakes and insights to illustrate how important it is to know oneself in order to be able to lead others.

"Working in a strong community" was described by Allan Mutagwaba, who appreciates this not only at MHP-Porsche but also as an entrepreneur in the sustainable coffee business. He said that in the course of his career it became increasingly clear to him "how important it is to help his community at home to develop and strengthen itself as well".

MBA Rene Becceril from Framo-Morat shows how to "achieve high performance with commitment" and has successfully developed from a mechanical engineer in the automotive supplier world in Mexico, USA and Australia to a manager in Germany. 

Caroline Mora, at the FDM Group, has made it her mission to support graduates and develop the workforce. She encouraged students to "engage in other social or business activities outside of their studies in order to show more experience and commitment later on".

Dennis Damer, with 10 years of work experience in China, managed the major change of location and profession back to Hamburg, in order to now work as a manager with heart and humour. He emphasized that it is "very important to find balance and compensation outside of the job".

As early as 2003, Business Talks was the only English-speaking institution on campus to organise conference meetings on its own; until five years ago, Business Talks and Campus Day had joined forces for the event. Now Business Talks continues to surprise every year, offering budding business people and engineers the opportunity to ask themselves, "Wow, could this be me in 5, 10, or 15 years? And "what exactly does it mean to work in leveraged buyouts or international management of German subsidiaries in China, in OEM production, in B2B marketing or as an entrepreneur? Fully occupied lecture halls showed.