Jürgen Bleicher  Ph.D., Germany

Geschäftsprozessarchitekt und Compliance Officer Finance Controlling,
ZF Friedrichshafen

The extremely friendly and competent care he experienced at the HFU right from the start quickly made it obvious to him that he had found the right place to realise his plans (expand his international business skills as well as his social competencies).
"The studies are organised in such a way that – provided one is willing to perform – one can obtain a valuable and internationally recognised qualification very quickly. In addition to the excellent infrastructure, the close contact with professors and staff is an essential factor which facilitates both the high quality and the high speed of the studies", is how Bleicher explains his decision.
At the beginning of 2006, Jürgen Bleicher was given the opportunity to temporarily reduce his position at ZF to part-time, in order to pursue his doctorate studies at the University of Phoenix.
„The MBA degree has enabled me professionally, academically and personally to meet the demands of this challenging goal. The value of my HFU degree has really become clear to me since I started working for my doctorate. So far, I have been able to obtain excellent results in this English-language study program which does have very high fail rates otherwise“, Jürgen Bleicher states with satisfaction. For him one thing is clear: his MBA gave him the "linguistic, inter-personal and academic grounding for constant development".

Oliver Krone Ph.D., Germany

  IT Consulting Company, Germany


As a social scientist I intended to work in a commercial setting, but without a business relevant background the labour was inaccessible. Searching for programs allowing gaining profound general management knowledge I became interested in the Furtwangen MBA. The curriculum and staff allowed me combining a social scientific background and business knowledge thereby raising the awareness for intercultural differences, not only on a national-cultural level. In January 2001, right after graduation, I joined COLT Telecom GmbH as a trainee for process design. Focus was on order management processes and their software support. Within four years I rose to the rank of a lead business-analyst in a Pan-European, department spanning ERP implementation in the corporate Information Technology department. Due to corporate developments, in the period from January 2005 to June 2007 I wrote and worked physically at University of Lapland, Finland. There I completed my doctoral dissertation, which extrapolates features from the MBA thesis and incorporates elements from the MBA curriculum. Whichever direction I will take for my future career I perceive the Furtwangen MBA as a big bonus. It is a live time experience, and asset that offers more then a title; but it needs to be nourished.

Elena Parfenova, Russia

International Sales Manager for Eastern Europe, CIS and Latin America,
Peter Huber Kaeltemaschinenbau GmbH, Offenburg 

The program changed me and my life dramatically: I have grown up in business skills, in career, in understanding of different cultures. I have got a new view on the business development: before MBA I could evaluate the performance of my department - now I have the strategic view for the whole company.
Actually, since the school is not well-known yet, I did not expect to get such a high professional approach  of teaching. I work nowadays with people who  graduated from MBA schools from UK and USA. I was surprised that we got the same level of knowledge regardless the location of the school. We operate with the same terminologies and have similar level of understanding of business processes. 

Sarvi Ali,  Iran

Marketing Manager,
Ambulatory ECG Europe, Middle East and Africa

When I look back, what I liked a lot is the diversity and careful selection of the students with wide cultural and career backgrounds. The small group size and friendliness of the faculty and the staff made HFU an approachable, friendly place. I truly felt individual treatment in several instances.
Beyond the academic topics, literally all the faculty bring invaluable real life business experience into the class discussions and because of the small size, every student is encouraged to participate. On top of the fundamental MBA courses, the curriculum offers courses and workshops such as managing cultural diversity that greatly help the soft skills.

Clue Renslow, USA

Purchasing
ZF Getriebe, Saarbrücken

The MBA Program at the University of Furtwangen was an enlightening cultural experience.
By being put into a group of so many different types of people, it helped me to learn not only about the personality and culture of each very different individual; it helped me to see extremely important things that we all have in common.  By being placed in such a mixed class, every student was put in the position were they could no longer act or interpret the words or actions of another simply by placing/classifying the situation in the social context that they come from. In other words, they were forced, possibly for the first time in their lives, to figure out for themselves, what their own personal values were, AND had to listen very carefully on a very human level, to understand where others were coming from. This process helped me to grasp much better who I am. I also learned to listen to people closer, with less cultural interpretation.  I noticed how important concepts such as respect, success, face, and security were to everyone, albeit with each person having a slightly different definition of what these things were and a different value ranking for each concept. 
My experiences in the MBA program have helped me to look for common ground with everyone I encounter while holding appreciation and respect for our differences.  The knowledge I gained through my cultural experiences has helped me learn much quicker what motivates or de-motivates a particular individual. This has helped me to figure out what effect different reactions (actions, words, posture, gestures) from me would have on different people.  

Farkhod Abdullaev, Uzbekistan

Sales Manager
Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices and Diagnostics/Uzbekistan

The course has a great curricullum, excellent professors and close partnerships with the industry, which makes the value of studies really high. The university is very close to Tuttlingen, which is known as one of the worlds largest medical clusters, and this helped me to work with two big german medical enterprises on development of market entry strategies for emerging market of Russia.
During my study, I had the opportunity to learn different cultures, to understand different ways of thinking and to build my personal life principles.  The beautifull Schwarzwald environment, the wonderfull culture of Germany and the best beer makes the free time really interesting :) .
Upon return to my home country I received the job offer from Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices and Diagnostics. Today I am representing this great company in my country, changing the healthcare standards and improving the quality of medical care.  I would be always thankful for the great experience I got at the HFU.