from Simon Kucher & Partners. He speaks with us about mid-sized firms.PART 1: DW-TV: And I am joined now by Harald Schedl, Managing Partner of consulting firm Simon-Kucher and Partners, and you also work with many small and medium sized companies. You consult them, give them advice. What would be your advice for an innovative company like RENA? Harald Schedl: At the moment, continue innovation, of course, and expand internationally. Lots of their business is in the solar industry, and this is becoming increasingly an international and global business, so they are already quite international for their size but they have to increase their presence in the world. DW-TV: That means they would have to do what other big groups have done already, like Siemens, outsource production to countries like China? Because the big thing about RENA so far has been that they could stay in Germany in a small little region. Harald Schedl: I would not recommend them to outsource their production to China at the moment. They are in the machinery industry, and the machinery industry has always been a global business, so you can export machinery from Germany to any country in the world. What is very important is to keep your core competence near to the production, so research and development and production is, I’m sure, one of the success factors of RENA. DW-TV: Okay. That's their secret of success, and of course they do have enough skilled workers. How do they manage to keep them there, in that small village in the Black Forest? Harald Schedl: One of the key principles is the company's growing. So the people that work for RENA increasingly have opportunities to grow as well personally. So they can, for example, travel abroad as sales people and also get new experiences in the sales shop. And that's very important that a growing company can offer interesting jobs to people. DW-TV: And how is it possible that a company like RENA hasn't been affected by the global financial crisis? Harald ...