More than 150 business practitioners, faculty members and students interested in CEE business listened to top-class speakers from academia and the business community at the congress in the Wiener Konzerthaus on November 18, 2010. Below please find a brief overview of the program, selected presentations and links to the congress website and photo gallery.

3rd GROW EAST CONGRESS

"Restarting Growth in Central Europe and South-Eastern Europe"

This congress is focusing on the question how firms operating in CEE will restart growth again after this region was hit 2009 by the worst recession in the post-transition period. The future of the CE/SEE markets will be discussed from different perspectives. The macroeconomic perspective is represented by Prof. Marcin Piatkowski, Kozminski University, Warsaw, who will talk about the coming golden age of New Europe. He is convinced that the New Europe will soon be back on a solid growth path and continue to outperform Western European economies. Tobias Schediwy, head of the consumer tracking unit of GfK, the only market research company covering the whole region, will give an overview of markets and consumer attitudes after the great recession. Jaroslav Bartak, the CEO of Kofola a.s., will show how the Czechoslovakian nostalgia brand Kofola had been relaunched and how it is now successfully competing against global brands such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Other business insights are delivered by CEE experts from Beiersdorf CEE, Erste Group Bank, Kapsch AG and Nespresso CEE. The current challenges for the human resources management in a new growth phase, in particular the issue of talent attraction, will be addressed by Günther Tengel, General Manager of Amrop Jenewein, a leading executive search company.

The GROW EAST CONGRESS is a joint project of Dr. Arnold Schuh, Director of the Competence Center for CEE at WU Vienna, and Dr. Manfred Berger, CEO of Draftfcb Partners. This is already the third congress since 2007. The main goal of this congress series is to provide insights into the current developments in the emerging Europe and to highlight the challenges international and CEE companies face when expanding into and penetrating these markets. GROW EAST offers a platform for the exchange of ideas and experiences between representatives of companies operating in CEE, academics and business students with a strong interest in the emerging markets of this region.

For more information please go to: http://www.groweast.at/home/