Customer expectations are increasing and changing rapidly, while the availability of disruptive technologies is becoming faster and faster. For this reason, business reinventing is vital to company longevity, but it is not an easy task.

In recent years, a considerable amount of capital has been injected into industries and the implication is that new business models are going to emerge. At the beginning, they will be nascent, but in the next 5-10 years from now, some of those will become relevant.

Incumbents need to consider this point and invest in actually innovating their business model, otherwise they will not be able to participate to the competition.

Business reinventing, Organic growth, Innovation management

Although large food companies were historically very successful in innovation, they have struggled in the past few years, and smaller companies have been gaining relevance in the food innovation arena.

Many food organisations have created structures that are very efficient in innovation, which they have ever been, giving the impression that they are getting closer to the consumer. However, often those structures are not truly effective, blinding them to the simple truth: They have to recapture the passionate energy of start-ups.

The sweet spot is often the intersection between R&D and innovation arenas, and this is where innovation becomes a true profit centre. In fact, the connection between the technical and commercial sides of innovation is often a challenge for a food company.

Food innovation, Innovation ecosystems, Start-ups

According to recent research conducted by the American Psychological Association, the modern business landscape seems to be too fast-moving and changing for a single CEO. The demands have become too high for a single person to set up an organisation, oversee a multitude of internal decisions, and manage all stakeholders.

It should be noticed that, in recent years, several important organisations in various business sectors had implemented and then abandoned the Co-CEO model, among them, for example, Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, Luxottica and Finmeccanica, while other companies are recently resurrecting this management model, such as Netflix, Unicredit, and Pirelli.

Co-CEOs, Leadership, Management model

The management of business transformation programmes necessarily implies the management of relationships with different interlocutors involved in the project, or stakeholders, who have different positions, attitudes, and interests towards the programme itself.

Among them are, for example, investors, top managers, project sponsors, function managers, project team members, employees, R&D partners, business partners, suppliers, and others. All these stakeholder groups will evaluate the business transformation programme in different ways, considering that they have diverse backgrounds and conflicting interests.

Some of them will support the transformation, while others will try to hinder it; we may define them as positive and negative stakeholders, respectively. The level of influence that derives from them can increase or decrease during the programme life cycle, depending also on how relationships are managed.

Project risk management is one of the most relevant components of project management. It is the process of identifying, analysing and then responding to any risk that arises over the life cycle of a programme or project, to help strategy execution stay on track and meet its goals.

Risk management is reactive and proactive. It should be part of the planning process to figure out the risks that might happen during the project life-cycle and how to control these risks if they in fact occur.

A risk is anything that could potentially affect the timeline, performance, or budget of a project. Risks are potentialities, and in a project management context, if they become reality, they become classified as issues that must be addressed. Therefore, risk management is the process of identifying, categorising, prioritising, and planning risks before they become problems.

Project management, Risk management

Companies consider organisational changes of the supply chain when particular situations occur.

It often happens when management notices signs of ineffectiveness, such as new product launches that take too long to scale up, or when decisions made in cross-functional committees fail to be executed on the ground in an effective way.

Moreover, another typical situation occurs when operations are radically changed through the digital transformation of processes or when the value chains are reconfigured, or even when the organisational structure deeply changes, for example, due to mergers or acquisitions.

Redesigns of supply chain organisations usually start with a benchmark of organisational models, followed by an attempt to replicate what appears to be the best practices. However, several studies demonstrate that there is no correlation between the type of supply chain organisation and the bottom line results.

Core Business Operations, Supply chain, Organizational change, Value chain

Smart use of automation can enable governments to provide outstanding levels of citizen experience, driven by innovation.

Citizens expect an integrated offering, while the complexity of their needs is growing, including ageing populations that put increasing challenges on health and social services. However, government leaders face challenges as they have to compete for talent despite fund constraints and while data is stored in isolated silos. Considering all these aspects, it is no surprise that there is space to improve the citizen experience provided by government.

Public-sector leaders around the world recognise that the outstanding citizen experience has become paramount. It is driven by the need for governments to maintain the trust of their citizens that has been eroded in many countries.

Public services, Government, Process automation, Citizen journey

The odds of success with a new business are quite low and only 20-25% of new businesses launch successfully, gaining product and market fit, scaling up, and becoming viable companies.

According to a recent survey, many incumbents have been slowly expanding their portfolios of corporate ventures with dedicated budgets, governance, and even operating models. Recently, the global economic situation has even accelerated this trend, with a 21% increase in companies citing new business building as one of their top strategies (McKinsey, New Business Building Survey, 2020).

It must be noticed that, despite general belief, technical feasibility issues are not among the most common causes of failure, but are flawed assumptions about the desirability of the new product or service for customers. In particular, incumbents face a challenge here for many different reasons.

Innovation. New business launch, Customer engagement, Minimum viable product

It is well known that the effects of stress can lead to loss of productivity, absenteeism, turnover, and higher health-related costs, all of which negatively affect the workplace. Constant work pressure and the constant race to stay ahead of the competition could lead to emotional and physical exhaustion.

Many believe that meditation and business are distinct domains with little or no scope for overlap. While meditation is regarded as a personal quest to get in touch with the inner being, businesses are treated as rational entities driven primarily by profit.

The truth is that with increasing work pressure, more and more employees are looking for jobs that add meaning to their lives and contribute to their overall well-being. They no longer regard work as just a source of income, but rather as an opportunity to realise inner satisfaction and mean towards a bigger end.

Meditation, Well-being, Sense of fulfillment, Job satisfaction, Stress reduction, Improved concentration, Resilience

All organisations have the ability to be smarter than the sum of intelligence and capabilities. In fact, good ideas can come from all corners of your organisation. Encouraging a culture of collaborative innovation and free-flowing ideas will foster innovation.

Your organisation needs to communicate strategically and openly about innovation, building a common language that allows would-be innovators to propose new ideas and develop a strong strategic argument.

Innovation, Collective intelligence

In times of crisis, a lot of decision-making is done through negotiation. A good approach in negotiation is to focus on how to maximise potential gains for each side, looking at the potential impacts in the long-term scenario and considering also the unintended consequences of what we decide today. However, in moments of crisis, this win-win approach is often more geared toward minimising potential losses.

Under these circumstances, timeliness of action is paramount, especially when early measures can make a difference, but the stress of the situation could lead us to concentrate entirely on securing the immediate because the long-term seems too far away and we can have the perception that tomorrow may not come at all. In addition, the involved stakeholders could have very different time pressures, due to diverse business cycles and time horizons.

Decision making, Crisis management, Collaborative negotiation

One of the legacy of the pandemic is that the retail market has been rocked by the need for more disruptive business models.

In recent years, the degree of focus on generating new ideas and turning them into businesses has increased by a considerable factor, and many companies in the retail business are rushing to build digital businesses that address changes in customer behaviour.

Digital business building is no longer viewed as an experiment or an innovation to the side, but on the contrary, it has become now a necessity for retailers in the short term and, more importantly, a differentiating capability for long-term success.

Retail business, Disruptive business model, Digital transformation

Growth-hacking was the entrepreneurial mantra of the early 21st century, and it has led to the creation of tech giants and entirely new business sectors. At that time, growth rates were at the heart of most venture capital conversations.

Fortunately, times have changed and the era of ‘move fast and break things’ is over. Customers prefer companies that address economic, social, and environmental issues, knowing that the technologies of tomorrow will deeply impact our lives. Tech start-ups cannot ignore the societal impacts of their innovations anymore.

In addition, VCs are sensitive not only to market size and product viability, but also to the unintended consequences of new businesses, and even more to understand whether founders demonstrate awareness on this issue.

Entrepreneurship, Start-up, Value creation

In all industries, customers seek more information about the supply chain, and the reputational risk of not meeting these demands can be high.

In the food sector, for example, customers seek information on ingredients, food fraud, and animal welfare, while in the fashion sector they are more careful about the treatment of workers and the company’s efforts to improve working conditions.

According to a study by MIT, customers may be willing to pay 2% to 10% more for products from companies that provide greater transparency in the supply chain.

Core business operations, Supply chain transparency

Different situations call for diverse leadership styles, while there is no leadership approach that works well for everyone at all times. The truth is that we need to adapt our style based on who we are and the context in which we are leading.

The ability to move between different leadership styles is fundamental. Sometimes, we need a transformational leadership style to stimulate and inspire collaborators and followers to achieve extraordinary results and develop their own leadership skills to evolve and become leaders in turn, while aligning the goals of the group and the organisation. In contrast, in other situations, a more directive and transactional leadership style is more appropriate.

In the middle, there is reality with many possible combinations, depending on the organisation, the context, the company, the people, and the traits of the leader.

Leadership styles, Self-awareness

Few companies can actually operate as pure-play disrupters at a global scale. Just to be clear, pure-play disrupters are companies such as Uber or Spotify. Even more rare are the ecosystem shapers that set the standards and lead markets creating hyper-scaling digital platforms.

For many companies, digital transformation is often less about a radical rethinking of their business than about figuring out how to leverage digital technologies and tools to better serve customers. In this view, the success of these digital initiatives depends on many key factors. Here you can find some practical insights.

Digital transformation, Customer digital journey, Digital strategy, Collaborative culture, Process automation, Innovation ecosystems

Many companies have long been striving for greater agility while assuming that they must choose between much needed flexibility and speed, on the one hand, and stability and efficiency of scale, on the other.

Let us take the example of start-ups. They are notoriously well known for acting quickly, but once they grow beyond a certain size, often they struggle to maintain that initial speed and agility.

Similarly, large and established companies often look at fixed organisational structures and standardise processes to guarantee stability and capture the efficiency of scale, thus gradually becoming bureaucratic due to the rules, policies, and management layers and ultimately hampering their own ability to move fast.

Agile organization, Antifragility, Agile transformation, Organizational change

To succeed and thrive in this new era, it is fundamental to continually learn, experience, and relearn. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest, however, few people realise it. Learning is the best investment of our time that we can make.

We are living a great cultural shift toward a savvier quest for knowledge. The verses of Dante seem to fit it perfectly.

“Consider your origins: You were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge” (Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto XXVI)

Continuous learning, Life-long learning, Knowledge economy

Digital transformation is now an imperative, and an increasing number of companies are adopting digital transformation strategies to evolve the way they create and acquire value.

The technologies underlying digital transformation are available and mature enough to be adopted, and the next decade will bring more technological innovation than has ever been generated in the last half century.

However, successfully implementing a digital transformation initiative represents a significant challenge, because the change involves the very core of the company, its capabilities, and its way of operating in the market, reshaping business models in entire sectors, and rapidly increasing the gap between successful businesses and others.

In addition to the choice of the most suitable technologies, there are other important strategic, organizational, and cultural aspects that play a fundamental role.

The masterclass presented at SMAU is aimed at entrepreneurs, managers, digital professionals, and technology suppliers, and offers food for thought on the most critical aspects to be taken into consideration in the digital transformation of businesses and on the good practices they have. proven to be effective in practice.

Digital Transformation, Strategic Innovation, Business Transformation

Technologies driving digital transformation are widely available and robust, and a growing number of firms have been adopting a digital transformation strategy to evolve how they create and capture value while radically reshaping business models and operations. Digital transformation can lead to relevant advantages, such as a faster innovation process with reduced time to market, products and services more efficient and consistent with customer needs. However, starting with a digital transformation initiative can be a big challenge due to new technologies and associated business process changes that transform the core of the organisation, its capabilities, and assets.

Digital Transformation, Business Transformation

A company cannot build an evolutionary advantage without and innovation advantage, and it cannot build an innovation advantage without an inspiration advantage.

The entrepreneurial mindset is a way of thinking that enables people to overcome challenges, be decisive, manage risk, and accept responsibility for outcomes, while fostering an experimentation and innovation mindset, continuously learning from mistakes, and cultivating the ability to translate inspiration into business value.

It is time for a human revolution, and cultivating the entrepreneurial mindset within the organization is the first step in activating change.

Entrepreneurial mindset, Breakout thinking, Lateral thinking, Collective intelligence, Resilience, Agility, Adaptivity, Emergent strategies, Community, Collaboration, Transparency, Trust, Open innovation, Continuous experimentation, Cross-learning, Personal growth, Start-ups.

Firms have legal and ethical responsibilities to customers, employees, business ecosystems, society, and the natural environment. Should a company go beyond these responsibilities and manage its business in the interest of these diverse stakeholders?

The shareholder primacy as a prevailing model is a failed doctrine that has been shown to destroy social cohesion and natural resources. It is clear that the interests of society are not best served by firms that only maximise profits to shareholders.

Companies are called to include a wider set of stakeholders in their value creation and decision-making approaches, beyond just their shareholders. For today’s value-minded executives, stakeholder capitalism is a real opportunity.

Long-term value creation, Stakeholders capitalism, Sustainable growth.