In
a world where many people cannot even spell entrepreneurship,
let alone understand the subtle nuances, Professor Dr. Gunter
Faltin has spent almost a complete lifetime demonstrating its
benefits to anyone who will stand still long enough to hear him
out. Gunter Faltin is as much a visionary as the great prophets
of history, but Gunter Faltin is not prepared to wait to see his
concepts become accepted in retrospect. He wants it now. He is
an agent of change.
He was born towards the end of WWII in a
small Bavarian town. His father was an engineer, while his
mother was a housewife - but no ordinary housewife. She ran a
housewife’s club for the women in the town, organizing tourist
vacations to Italy for women that otherwise would have been
stuck at home. Her work in the ‘liberation’ of women from
the kitchen sink predates many of the big ‘names’ in the
women’s movement. She also made an impression on her younger
son.
He was no ordinary son either. “I was
really bad at school. It was very traditional and it was very
boring.” His hobby was economics, but his passion was making
practical economics work. He put his hard earned pocket money to
work by entering the stock market when he was 14 years old. This
was considered ‘strange’ by his teachers, but he persevered.
“I was not really successful. I had to gain all my knowledge
myself, so I made all the beginners mistakes.”
When he finished school he went to university
to study this all consuming hobby of his called economics. “I
came to university full of ideas in studying economics, but I
was surprised to find that economics at university was dead
boring.”
He sat down and examined the situation and
came up with another finding. Perhaps the economics was not
boring, perhaps it was the delivery of the knowledge. With the
proposal that the teaching was, in his words, “nonsense” it
is also not surprising that his professors were not enamoured of
the young man, but the students were. He was not a rebel, but he
became a student leader. He was prepared to question that which
was up till then considered to be sacrosanct. “The student
movement was not a ‘Socialist’ movement at that time. It was
antiauthoritarian,” he said by way of explanation.
Despite this, or perhaps because of this, he
continued on at university, determined to get his Ph.D. For his
thesis he chose consumer behaviour, again producing debate and
dissent. Some of the examiners considered this to be more in the
field of psychology than economics, but eventually he was given
his doctorate.
Now as a university teacher himself, he
continued to criticize where he felt it was necessary. In a
seminar in Berlin he gave a scathing discourse on how
universities should really be run, gaining enormous support from
the student body, and hatred from certain sections of academia.
However, there were some who appreciated the winds of change
heralded by the young academic, and he was given lifetime tenure
as a professor.
Suddenly the 31-year-old professor realized
that he would literally have to put his money where his mouth
was. “I decided I would have to do things in a different way.
In economics I wanted to create a new promising business idea,
and that’s how I started. I founded my own company. I wanted
to create a company that had a superior approach.”
Even that was not as simple as it sounds.
Certain sections of the university complained that this was
against the law, but by delving into the constitution he found
that universities had been freed from legal constraints. He
began a tea company. He was a coffee drinker. He did not even
drink tea.
Contrary to the usual practice, this tea
company did not offer a range of teas of different types and
packs of all different sizes. The concept was one leaf and one
large pack size. The concept continued down the line of superior
approach and it was decided that only the finest leaves would be
sold. “People laughed at me. Even the students didn’t think
it would work.”
But it did work. A teaching professor had
founded a company that was successful, countering the usual
concept that university professors were good in theory, but no
good in practice. “We became the biggest mail order tea
business in Germany and the biggest importer of Darjeeling tea
in the world,” he said with obvious pride of accomplishment in
his voice.
Professional academics know each other and of
each other, and Gunter had a friend teaching at a university in
Bangkok, and so he visited the kingdom. It was 1978 and he liked
what he saw. “I liked the nature of the people. A curious
child-like approach to the world. This makes the world nicer and
more fun. I never got bored coming here.”
He still does not get bored and has been a
visiting professor to universities established here, in between
his commitments in the Freie Universitat in Berlin.
So does he lecture over a pot of Orange Peko
Darjeeling tea? No he does not. The tea business is not what it
is about. It is about the concept of the creation of ideas,
their development and refinement. “That is my special
field.” For our visiting professor, success in his special
field is seeing his students put the knowledge he imparts to
good use. “I like my students to become enlightened
millionaires. I want people to understand the difference between
entrepreneurship and business management.” For Professor
Gunter, it would appear that the former is exciting and the
latter is boring. Professor Gunter works in ideas, not in
day-to-day details and tedium, even though it is needed to
‘manage’ the business.
Does he have a hobby now? “My hobby is my
work,” he said, just as enthusiastic today as he was 30 years
ago. A remarkable man!
