Field of Expertise
«Entrepreneurial Leadership and SMEs»

The field of expertise «Entrepreneurial Leadership and SME» studies, reflects and inspires the entrepreneurial leadership and strategizing practice, with a special focus on SMEs, and in particular on strategically creative and innovative organizations. 

Effective leadership and entrepreneurial value creation

We research and inspire how an effective leadership practice translates a convincing value system into attractive value creation, which leads to strong value appreciation among customers and other stakeholders. How «value» is interpreted and enacted shapes any entrepreneurial leadership practice in fundamental ways. 

Creative strategies and strategic creativity

We study and reflect, how owners, entrepreneurs, executive teams and supervisory boards enact the future value creation of their enterprises and thereby strengthen their entrepreneurial space of possibilities, through mobilizing creative strategizing practices and grounding them in routinized strategy processes, in resonance with relevant strategic contexts.

Creative Economies and aesthetic practice

We partner and dialogue with entrepreneurs in diverse creative and cultural contexts, studying and developing how they enact, experience, value, and take decisions in the face of multiple uncertainties. Through a strong repertoire of individual and collective practices, in a intense interplay between meaningfulness and sensuality. 

Effective leadership and entrepreneurial value creation

• Fueglistaller, Urs (2019): KMU und konsequente Kundenorientierung – Wirkungskonsequenz gegenüber Kunden im Kontext der Führungskompetenz (SMEs and consistent customer orientation – consequence of impact on the customer in the context of leadership skills). SMEs and consistent customer orientation (2. Auflage.). St.Gallen: KMU Verlag HSG.
• Fueglistaller, Urs; Fust, Alexander; Halter, Frank & Schlegel, Pascal (2024). KMU-Führungskompetenz: ein Rahmenkonzept für das Führen und Reflektieren im unternehmerischen Alltag (4. Auflage). St.Gallen: KMU Verlag HSG
• Fueglistaller, Urs, Fust, Alexander, Müller, Christoph, Müller, Susan, & Zellweger, Thomas (2020). Entrepreneurship. Modelle – Umsetzung – Perspektiven. Mit Fallbeispielen aus Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. (5. Auflage). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
• Fust, Alexander; Fueglistaller, Urs; Brunner, Christoph; Züger, Thomas & Graf, Alexander (2024): Schweizer KMU: Eine Analyse der aktuellsten Zahlen (Ausgabe 2024). St. Gallen: OBT AG
• Grand, Simon (2021): Routine Dynamics and Management Practice. In Feldman, Martha S., Pentland, Brian T., D’Adderio, Luciana, Dittrich, Katharina, Rerup, Claus & Seidl, David: Cambridge Handbook of Routine Dynamics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 397-406
• Grand, Simon & Ackerert, Adrian (2012): Management Knowledge: A Process View. In Schultz, Majken; Maguire, Steve; Langley, Ann & Tsoukas, Haridimos (eds.): Constructing Identity in and around Organizations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 261-305
• Grand, Simon & Bartl, Daniel (2012): Executive Management in der Praxis: Entwicklung – Durchsetzung – Anwendung. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus Verlag.
• Griesbach, David & Grand, Simon (2013): Managing as transcending: An ethnography. Scandinavian Journal of Management, (29), 63-77
• Rüegg-Stürm, Johannes & Grand, Simon (2014): Das St.Galler Management-Modell, 4. Generation – Einführung, Bern, Haupt.

Creative strategies and strategic creativity

• Grand, Simon (2016): Routines, Strategies, and Management: Engaging for recurrent creation ‘at the edge’. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar
• Grand, Simon (2016): What if? Strategy Design for Enacting Enterprise Performance. In Brenner, Walter & Uebernickel, Falk (ed.): Design Thinking for Innovation. Heidelberg: Springer International Publishing, 103-113
• Grand, Simon (2025): «Strategy-in-use»: Strategien nutzen statt besitzen. In: Bieling, Tom; Brandes, Uta; Christensen, Michelle & Jonas, Wolfgang (Hrsg.): Nutzen statt Besitzen: Michael Erlhoff Revisited, BIRD 31, Basel, Birkhäuser, 125-134
• Grand, Simon & Bartl, Daniel (2019): Making New Strategic Moves Possible: How Executive Management Enacts Strategizing Routines to Strengthen Entrepreneurial Agility. Research in the Sociology of Organizations. Routine Dynamics in Action: Replication and Transformation, (61), 123-151.
• Grand, Simon & Fust, Alexander (2011): «Unternehmerische Strategien» versus «Strategic Entrepreneurship»: Zukunftsperspektiven für die unternehmerische Forschung und Praxis. ZfKE Zeitschrift für KMU und Entrepreneurship, 59 (3), 185-202
• Grand, Simon, Von Arx, Widar & Rüegg-Stürm, Johannes (2025): Constructivist paradigms and their relevance for strategy-as-practice research. In Golsorkhi, Damon, Rouleau, Linda, Seidl, David & Vaara, Eero (eds.): Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025
• Grand, Simon & Weckerle, Christoph (2025): Strategic Creativity: How to shape the future to change the present, New Jersey, Wiley
• Grand, Simon; Weckere Christoph (2024): Strategische Kreativität: Zukunft gestalten, um Gegenwart zu verändern, Zürich, Versus Verlag

Creative Economies and aesthetic practice

• Fueglistaller, Urs (2021): KMU und Ästhetik: Filigraner Grundpfeiler konsequenter Kundenorientierung. SMEs and aesthetics (1. Auflage.). St.Gallen: KMU Verlag HSG.
• Grand, Simon & Fueglistaller, Urs: Die Kunst des unternehmerischen Handelns, Working Paper
• Schwendener, Andreas; Grand, Simon (2024): Strategic Improvising: A Routine Dynamics Perspective, in: Mahringer Christian A., Brian T. Pentland, Renzl, Birgit, Kathrin Sele, Spee, Paul (Hrsg.): Routine Dynamics: Organizing in a World in Flux, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 88, pp. 179-202
• Sele, Kathrin & Grand, Simon (2016): Unpacking the Dynamics of Ecologies of Routines: Mediators and Their Generative Effects in Routine Interactions. Organization Science, 27 (3), 722-738

• Urs Fueglistaller (as of 2025), Alexander Fust & Pascal Schlegel: «KMU Führungskompetenz» (Master in General Management)
• Alexander Fust, J.-Michael Gasda: «Capstone-Projekt» (Practice-oriented seminars at Bachelor level)
• Simon Grand: «Research Process I & II» (DOK Seminar, with Patrik Aspers, every two years)
• Simon Grand: «Strategische Kreativität / Kreative Strategien» (MOK focus course, with Joana Racine)
• Simon Grand: «Strategien erforschen: wie Unternehmen ihre Zukunft gestalten» (MOK practical project, with Andreas Schwendener)
• Simon Grand: «Kreative Zerstörung: Unternehmerische Innovation für die Creative Economies» (planned compulsory elective course, Master in General Management, starting in 2027)

• Experience groups of entrepreneurs
• Study block in «Intensivstudium KMU»
• Consistent customer orientation