Committed to progress
Outstandingly innovative – stoba receives the 3rd TOP100 Award in a row
On June 24, the two Managing Directors Gerhard Firlbeck (COO of the stoba Group) and Christian Peschke (Managing Director of stoba Precision Technology in Backnang) once again received the TOP100 Award for outstanding innovative strength. The award ceremony by science journalist Ranga Yogeshwar took place in Frankfurt and was hosted by long-time TV presenter Linda Zervakis. Following the 2020 and 2021 awards, this makes stoba one of the 100 most innovative SMEs in Germany for the third time in a row – a great success.In this interview, Managing Director Gerhard Firlbeck explains how he perceived the event and what he thinks makes stoba so innovative.Mr Firlbeck, three TOP100 awards in a row – what is the decisive factor that has enabled stoba to achieve this? Innovation is something that is in stoba’s DNA. For several decades now, we have made it our mission to do pioneering work and develop technologies that really bring progress. Our principle is to always think one step ahead and to continuously improve. The basis for this is, on the one hand, our committed employees and their high level of expertise. On the other hand, we work together with our customers on innovations in the early stages of development in order to bring successful products to the market.Actually implementing innovative ideas is a crucial sticking point in many companies. Inyour opinion, whatdoes it take? This is probably a little different in every company. At stoba, we have the great advantage of having three specialist departments at a total of seven locations worldwide, whose expertise we combine under one roof.
The networking of these locations and specialist departments and thus the exchange of ideas works very well. Not least because we have deliberately chosen management teams everywhere that come from the technical-innovative sector and can create a correspondingly future-oriented breeding ground. At the same time, however, our employees are the main drivers of our innovative strength, as they work on new solutions for our customers with great motivation and perseverance every day.In the past two years, the TOP100 Awards ceremony could not take place on site due to the coronavirus crisis. What was the event like for you? Of course, an event like this with well-known people such as Ranga Yogeshwar and Linda Zervakis is something completely different to receiving the award by email or video. As other award winners also took part, you could really feel the conviction and motivation to create something new. It was a great experience and of course it’s nice to know that stoba is part of it. This spurs us on to continue working on innovations with maximum performance.What does the future hold for stoba? We will not stand still in the future. In the coming years, our focus will be on further developing our technologies and gaining a foothold in new markets. To this end, we will certainly continue to work on international cooperation between our locations and further intensify the advantages that this interdisciplinary cooperation offers us. And then next year we will once again be among the TOP100 most innovative medium-sized companies in Germany. Image source: Please always note the photo credits when using the photo: KD Busch / compamedia