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It is without a doubt Georg H Endress' endless energy and his enormous drive that allowed Endress+Hauser to grow and to develop over more than 50 years. Even though 'GHE' retired from active day-to-day business years ago, handing over the company to his eight children and the Georg H Endress Foundation he set up, the special 'Spirit of Endress+Hauser' that he established is ever-present and is being carefully nurtured.
What really drove him on? No-one can see into a person's heart and he has not yet written his autobiography. So we can only conjecture. He is definitely an entrepreneur as described by Joseph Schumpeter in 1912: "A man of action” whose main characteristics are "firstly, the energy of business and secondly, a special way of motivating people”.
These and all the other characteristics this pioneer of modern economics wrote of an entrepreneur certainly apply to a great extent to GHE, but fail to explain the whole story. Nor does the mention of early streetwise experience as a result of his obviously dominant father moving home several times - this may help to explain the beginnings but not the reason why this drive was sustained for over four decades.
As it is obvious to anyone who knew and knows him, it would be easier to refer to his charisma - to his ability to bind people to him emotionally and by example in such a way that they identify with his vision and his ideals, and work for them over and above what is expected. Endress+Hauser's surges in growth and innovation are linked to the names of many such people.
Georg H Endress has paid thanks to many because he knew and knows that it was and is the many people at Endress+Hauser and their identification with the vision, the strategies and objectives of the company that makes this company so unique in the eyes of its customers around the world. However, the many thousands of people at Endress+Hauser (and many more besides) also know what they have to thank him for.
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