Blum – Masters of Their Own Destiny

Starting in a devastated, rural country with a largely illiterate population, right after World War II, Emerik Blum created a large and successful global company, Energoinvest, which operated worldwide with billions in profit. Taking advantage of Yugoslavia's unique position between the East and the West, socialism and capitalism, the company ran on a globally unique business model based on workers' participation in both management and profit-sharing. Blum transformed a small engineering workshop into a thriving enterprise by operating under the workers self-management model, where all employees in a factory have a say in decisions regarding the company. This highly democratic model worked exceptionally well in this case but is largely forgotten today.