At 4:00 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, when most German workers have long departed for the weekend, the mini-cafés sprinkled throughout BMW’s sprawling R&D center in Munich are jammed with engineers, designers, and marketing managers deliberating so intently it’s hard to hear above the din. Even the cappuccino machine is running on empty. It’s an atmosphere far more Silicon Valley than Detroit.

At lunch and breaks everyone is discussing ideas and projects all the time. It’s somewhat manic. But it makes things move faster,” says BMW chief designer Adrian van Hooydonk.

The intense employee buzz at BMW is hot management theory in action. Top consultants and academics say the kind of informal networks that flourish at BMW and the noise and borderline chaos they engender in big organizations are vital for innovation—especially in companies where knowledge sits in the brains of tens of thousands of workers and not in a computer server. Melding that brain power, they say, is essential to unleashing the best ideas.

HANDS ACROSS DIVISIONS. “Cross-functional teams look messy and inefficient, but they are more effective at problem solving,” says James M. Manyika, a partner at McKinsey & Co. in San Francisco who has studied the effectiveness of such networks. Companies such as BMW that leverage workers’ tacit knowledge through such networks “are widely ahead of their competitors,” Manyika adds.

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The latest-generation Mini is a baby BMW more than ever before.

It takes more than a glance to recognise the new Mini from its predecessor, but the car is not only 98 per cent new, the company admits that despite launching the last model back in 2001, this is also the first Mini that’s 100 per cent developed by BMW.

“We [BMW] took over very late with the first [new] Mini,” says Mini product manager Marcus Krieg, referring to the Munich company’s decision in 2000 to sell British car maker Rover and take over full development of the first new Mini just the year before its launch.

“This is the first time we really did the complete project from the very beginning to market introduction. So, yes, this is the first [Mini] that’s 100 per cent from BMW.”

While BMW still heavily supervised Rover during the British car maker’s creation of the first major generational change of the Mini since the iconic small car launched in 1959, this time the car is not only designed entirely in Munich, it’s also powered by BMW engines.

But the German manufacturer has been careful not to tinker too dramatically with a car that has achieved global success.

The new Mini – which retains some of its British roots by continuing to be built in Oxford, England – is now sold in 70 countries, reaching impressive sales of 875,000 since its launch. And customers told BMW they didn’t want any major styling changes for the new car.

While every body panel is new on the 2006 Mini, they are mainly a consequence of the longer and higher front end – necessitated by the need to meet 2008 pedestrian-impact regulations and fit the all-new BMW-Peugeot joint-venture engines.

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It was the most hideous hairdresser’s car on the market. It made a pudding-bowl haircut look like the height of fashion.

The mangled, bulbous concoction that was the Z3 Coupe looked like the deformed lovechild of a delivery van and a Bladerunner hearse, and was as polarizing as a pair of sunnies.

In fact, the only way to look at it without a grimace was to wear shades with a very, very dark tint …

In contrast, the new Z4 Coupe is sharply focused, and its hard top and rounded bottom is no longer a nasty afterthought.

It is now something to have nasty thoughts about.

The Z3, both in Roadster and Bread-van M Coupe form, was not the success BMW had hoped for, particularly in this country. Of course, the Yanks loved it.

The next-gen Z4, released in 2003, has been another story.

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BMW enthusiasts can now look forward to the sleek design and unlimited power with a driving experience nothing short of exhilarating. The BMW M6 Convertible combines impressive driving dynamics with supreme exclusivity and aesthetic looks with dynamic elegance through and through. The open-air version of the BMW M6 high-performance sports car makes open-air motoring an absolutely unique experience and is unprecedented in style.

“This is a dream car for the genuine enthusiast seeking to combine supreme power and performance with a particularly stylish rendition of open-air motoring. Together with the excellent suspension and the 7 speed Sequential M Gearbox (SMG) complete with Drivelogic, this supreme power unit turns the large convertible from BMW M into an open sports car able to accelerate to 100 km/h in just 4.8 seconds”, said Guenther Seemann, Managing Editor, BMW Group Middle East.

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