SPEAKERS

KARL-HEINZ STREIBICH

Chairman of the Group Executive Board

Karl-Heinz Streibich, born in 1952, assumed the position of CEO of Software AG in October 2003. In this role he is also responsible for the following functions: Corporate Marketing; Audit, Processes & Quality; Legal Affairs; Corporate Office and Corporate Communications.

Before joining Software AG, he served as deputy Chairman of the Board at T-Systems GmbH. Mr. Streibich launched his career in 1981 at Dow Chemical Company in Rheinmünster, Germany as a software development engineer.

His next assignment took him to ITT Industries in London as a Product Marketing Manager, in 1984. He then joined ITT-SEL AG (now Alcatel-Lucent) in Germany as Managing Director of the PC business.
In 1989, he joined Daimler Benz AG, where he served in several IT related executive positions. These included deputy Member of the Board at AEG Olympia Office GmbH, Chairman of the Board of debis Systemhaus DCS (Distributed Computing Services) GmbH and VP of Sales and Services at debis Systemhaus CCS (Computer and Communications Services).

In 1996, he assumed a seat on the debis Systemhaus GmbH Board of Directors. From 2000 to 2002, he served as Chairman of the Board at debis Systemhaus where he was also responsible for the integration of debis Systemhaus GmbH with T-Systems GmbH, a division of Deutsche Telekom.

Mr. Streibich holds a degree in communications engineering (Dipl.-Ing. Nachrichtentechnik) from the Offenburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany. 

DR. WOLFRAM JOST

CTO R&D and Product Marketing

Dr. rer. nat. Wolfram Jost, born on August 6, 1962, has been a member of the Executive Board at Software AG since August 2010, responsible as Chief Technology Officer R&D as well as Product Marketing.

Dr. Jost studied business economics, majoring in economic information science and marketing, at the University of the Saarland, from October 1983 to April 1988. After graduation in 1988 Dr. Jost worked for the Institute of Economic Information Science (IWi) at the University of the Saarland, where his duties included supervising and holding classes, heading projects in the field of Computer Integrated Manufacturing and organizing scientific congresses.

Dr. Jost completed his doctoral thesis at the Law and Economics Faculty at the University of the Saarland in November 1992 on the topic of "Computer-based CIM Planning - Conception and Realization of a Tool for Analyzing and Planning CIM Systems".

In 1992 Dr. Jost joined IDS Prof. Scheer GmbH, Saarbrücken. Here he was initially the head of ARIS Product Development before taking over as the head of ARIS Product Strategy in 1998.

In 1994 he was promoted to a senior management position, a post he held until he was appointed to the Executive Board of IDS Scheer AG in 2000. He will remain a member of the IDS Scheer Board until the takeover of IDS Scheer AG by Software AG has been completed.
Dr. Jost has written numerous articles for books and magazines and has also (co)authored more than ten specialist books. 

CLEM SUNTER

Guest speaker - The Mind of a Fox

If anything has supported our approach of thinking like a fox as opposed to a hedgehog, it is the series of momentous events that have rocked global financial markets since September 2008. Virtually everything about the future is uncertain and beyond the control of individual players in the economic game (other than their own responses to the changing environment).

Isn't it therefore amazing that most of the leading business schools as well as best-selling business authors in the world still advocate the hedgehog approach of focusing on a single path into the future? Jim Collins in his book 'Good to Great' says, "for a hedgehog, anything that does not somehow relate to the hedgehog idea holds no relevance".

We would respectfully suggest that there are plenty of big picture uncertainties that are of huge relevance in figuring out the best strategy for handling the medium to long-term future. Moreover, it is precisely because CEOs of certain financial institutions have behaved like hedgehogs that these institutions have disappeared.