The award recognizes enterprises throughout Europe, in industry and the services sector, for exemplary management quality with a focus on “top-down & bottom-up” implementation of strategy.
A jury chooses the winner of the competition on the basis of a questionnaire and an on-site tour of a representative part of the value chain. Among other things, the decisive criteria include sustainable business growth and competitiveness through clear strategic focus, fair leadership behavior, continuous improvement of all processes and comprehensive commitment on the part of all employees. The WHU start-up HelloFresh was particularly persuasive on the strength of its exemplary revenue growth, its data-driven customer focus and the high speed of the B2C delivery process.
As the world’s leading supplier of boxes of ingredients for meals, the German winner for 2018, HelloFresh, delivers fresh, healthy and individually assembled ingredients to the buyer’s door, including the recipes. The company delivers to customers in the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Australia, Austria, Switzerland and Canada.
Co-founded by Professor Dr. Arnd Huchzermeier, Chairholder of the Chair for Production Management at WHU, the industrial competition has been conducted since 1995 by European business schools in partnership with media partners such as Bloomberg or Harvard Business Review. Participating business schools from Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Great Britain, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the Netherlands, including WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, then select a respective national winner. The national winners then face off every autumn in a competition for the European Industrial Excellence Award.