Women in Business

At the conference organized by the magazine Lider, under the title “ Women in Business”, owners, directors and managers of the companies in the region gathered, with the aim to share the successful experiences, bring together and connect business women in the region and to motivate new ventures and  encourage the initiative for a greater representation of women in decision-making positions. At the round table, under the title “Women and Innovations”, apart from Ericsson Nikola Tesla President, Gordana Kovačević, MSc, who is this year once again at the very top of the most powerful women in Croatian business, based on the survey conducted by the magazine Lider,  Malin Elisabeth Holmberg, Tele 2 Croatia Chairman of the Board, also participated, together with two young innovators from Vienna,  Ana Burica and Josipa Majić and Saša Cvetojević, the founder of the Zagreb Entrepreneurship Incubator.

The topic discussed was women and innovations, in which all the panelists expressed their view on the role of women in innovation teams. In an impressive presentation, Gordana Kovačević shared her opinion related to prerequisites for creating an innovative culture in all sectors, including the business sector. She highlighted that at Ericsson Nikola Tesla, 28 percent of all employees are women, which is better than the average in the ICT industry, which employs 22 percent of women, because women are less likely to opt for technical colleges. She emphasized that in team work, there are no differences between male and female jobs, and, quite the contrary, they create a synergy, leading to joint success. She believes there are no gender based related differences among innovators,  and that anyone can be “A Person with an Idea”.  She specially highlighted the following: “Women play an increasingly important role in society. However, in order to achieve success, strategic competence development with good mentoring is essential. Our female employees participate as equals to their male colleagues in teams that achieve top results. This is due to motivational and innovational environment in our company, where we try that each employee comes to the fore at his best. Despite of the crisis, this year we hired 150 new employees, of which 30 percent are young women engineers.”

Malin Elisabeth Holmberg’s interesting experiences on positive practices from Scandinavian countries, which surely have done the most in the sense of opening opportunities for women to hold managerial and executive positions,  even using the so called “Quotas for Women”, which is regulated by law in Norway; a wonderful global success of young innovators,  Ana Burica and  Josipa Majić, with their so called “Teddy the Guardian”, which, except being a children’s toy, encompasses additional functionalities for measuring temperature,  and similar, and sends the data to the physician; to practical issues which women, but also men, face, when it comes to operationalization  of the idea in an innovation which serves its purpose, about which Saša Cvetojević spoke, summed up a joint conclusion that the road to success for women is especially demanding, however possible.

Communications Ericsson Nikola Tesla