Volkwagen Group of America President Stefan Jacoby gave a powerful and upbeat keynote speech at today's Spirit of Innovation Awards luncheon. His talk caught the spirit of the event, complimenting
Chattanooga's vision and commitment to creative thinking, risk taking, and fresh ideas.
The two award winners were DJO Chattanooga who received the Kruesi Award and Adaptive Methods received the Early Innovator Award. The webcast production linked below includes some excellent and informative video about all the award nominees.
Mr. Jacoby said this spirit of these unique awards ties in well with the corporate culture at Volkswagen and was one of the reasons that Chattanooga was selected for its new US automotive manufacturing plant.
He said the decision to select Chattanooga was made "by the head and also by the heart. Chattanooga met all the specifications for the plant site, but also just felt right for Volkswagen."
He specifically associated the idea of the Spirit of Innovation event and the Kruesi award as matching the spirit of Volkswagen.
He spoke about the commitment to education, cooperation between educators, government, and industry - a true strength of Chattanooga.
He called Chattanooga a big part of the Volkswagen plan to grow to a market share of 1 million cars. He said that VW is making a $1 billion investment towards that goal and towards the future of the company, the community, and the country.
He did discuss current market conditions, but said VW is in a position to take advantage of the opportunity that is inherent in today's economy.
He spoke of Volkswagen's commitment to research and development. Chattanooga's prototype automobile is in development right now. VW is engineering for a new automobile.
He did indicate that recent reports of expanding the plant to 300,000 cars are a part of the strategic planning, but initially the production goal remains 150,000.
It was an exciting event speech, made even better by the first webcast presentation of the event. Congratulations to the award winners and to the award nominees.
Kris Simmons of Fire Eye Productions, Inc., an award winning, Chattanooga based video production company, produced the webcast, and graciously gave permission to post a link to the webcast. You can find out more about Fire Eye Productions at their website, www.fireeyemedia.com .
Hi Richard, This was an interesting post and very upbeat. Glad to see that at least some of our country's corporate heads are talking abut growth and a stabilizing economy.
William,
VW obviously sees opportunity, and so does Chattanooga.
Thanks,
Richard