The first impressions of Bavaria’s regional capital at July 13, a Friday afternoon were a cloudless sky, the Celsius thermometer beyond 30°C and pulsating veins of Downtown Munich. Also the arrivals detected our executive committee was held up by the Friday afternoon traffic, too. Caused by the fact the two Munich SPAIR directorates asked the Stuttgart SPAIR directorate to welcome the group in Munich. That little anecdote on the verge of a really with great engagement organized seminar by our executive committee.

Inside the Siemens Forum our whole group dove directly into the world of the Asian metropolis Shanghai. Our guide inside the Siemens Forum - the dimensions of that rapid developing 20 million city cast still a spell over him - pointed out the enormous challenge of mega cities for man and machinery by means of various impressive samples.

Concerning the topic “product piracy” our guide just replied by saying the “Global Player” Siemens has a product life cycle of three years. Therefore the innovation velocity and the innovation capacity safe-guard Siemens’s competitive advantage. After that felicitous introduction it had to be gone into a beer garden to join the Bavarian fashion. In a relaxed atmosphere everybody enjoyed it to meet old friends and to make new acquaintance. Returning from a short side trip to our hotel, the “Parkhotel Schwabing”, we met us again for having a Tai dinner at the so called restaurant “Nam Nam”. Eating delicious food the clubbable during the evening increasing society lasted long. Against midnight some attendants concluded the evening by having a drink at “Sausalitos”, for others it was the diving board into a club night.

At the next morning the breakfast buffet, which left nothing to be desired, revitalised our partial bleary-eyed souls. That day our domain was going to be the assembly room on the supreme floor of our hotel with a panoramic view of downtown Munich and of the Alps. At half past nine we were welcomed by our executive committee, the three organisers, Aline Krämer, Friedemann Pfeiffer, Joo-Hyung Maing and by our treasurer Otto Stein. After a short briefing about the tight schedule of our convention and an introduction into SPAIR’s foundation, structure and club activities Mr. Ulf Baecker travelled intellectually with us through Asia.

It was imperative to follow closely Ulf Baecker’s explanations about the different stages of development concerning the countries Brazil, Russia, India, Japan, Korea and China and out of it the effects and trends both for our global and for the Asian world. Furthermore Mr. Baecker highlighted the must for worldwide operating companies not only to possess a “Global Strategy”, as measured by excellent Asian market knowledge nowadays, but also to be a member of the innovation world champions. After a short coffee break Christian Rieck was able to uphold our conference at a high level. He fascinated the audience with his remarkable knowledge about India and China and let appear his time allotted for speaking not very generous. The respective active discussions after the lectures showed not only the speakers have reached their audience, but also have been willing to examine their point of view controversially.

These talks couldn’t be disconcerted by the following lunch break. At two o’clock freshly invigorated and tanned the specific preparatory stage began for the HPAIR conference 2007 in Beijing and Hongkong.

Having at all times an adequate supply of writing materials, beverages and appetizers and of course our photographer Tom Sander contributed to the professionalism of the event. Also the results of that afternoon demonstrate that there has been worked in a good atmosphere motivated and successfully. Unfortunately these pleasant results meant at the same time the end of the summer seminar 2007 in Munich. It has been an event with very interesting attendants and guest speakers, who formed very quickly a harmonious unit, which let appear these two days way too short and made us feeling like meeting us again.