Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2019 i The European Business Review

Across industries, organisations are in search of new ways to enhance their competitiveness in the midst of digital disruption and a changing competitor landscape. To guide organisations through the turbulent waters of the digital era, we need new frameworks to help shape organisational strategy and decision-making. In this article, we introduce a new strategising framework that is designed, developed and tested to support organisations to navigate and maneuver in digital spheres. The nature of competition across many industry sectors is changing. Organisations that were traditionally archrivals are now driving innovation together through collaboration. This is prevalent in the automobile industry where new partnerships are forged between some of the industry’s strongest incumbent players, for example BMW and Mercedes, with a view to share resources to push forward new vehicle platforms,…

An online trade platform designed and introduced by Kemiex and Atradius is revolutionising the B2B global trade landscape for APIs, vitamins, and other food and feed additives by integrating digitalisation and credit insurance in a sophisticated network ecosystem. In this complex environment, trading network Kemiex and credit insurer Atradius are the first to offer an online trading platform that helps to easily identify reliable and compliant counterparties and conduct trade in a safe way at the click of a button. The annual trade volume for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), vitamins, and other food and feed additives is estimated at USD 300 billion, of which approximately 90% are traded based on long-term contracts. With a secular shift of production to China and India and increasingly volatile markets, the share of spot…

Since its establishment in 1990, Cambridge Judge Business School has always been a leader in innovation and new knowledge creation. Executive Education at Cambridge Judge Business School continues to hone executives and organisations to be instruments of change and contribute to society through its rigorous curriculum and world class learning environment. We had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Kishore Sengupta, Cambridge Judge Business School’s Director of Executive Education, and he shared with us his views on the state of Executive Education and how Cambridge Judge combines research excellence and practice expertise to meet the demands of business in the face of the rapidly changing world. “Cambridge’s excellence in research is internationally recognised, and our programmes are all based on original thought leadership and subject expertise to harness that…

There are some executives that like to look at academic journals but unfortunately, the crossover literature has not reached them enough. In an effort to enhance the knowledge of executives worldwide, this article blends scholarly concepts with real world applications. With a clear understanding of the concept of knowledge management, executives can make more effective managerial decisions. Knowledge within Companies Executives across the globe have found that knowledge management is critical to business success. Knowledge, in and of itself, is not enough to satisfy the vast array of changes in today’s organisation. Therefore, knowledge management is only a necessary precursor to effectively managing knowledge within the organisation. First, executives must have an understanding of the concept of knowledge itself. Knowledge is identified as a multifaceted concept and is distinct from…

One of the biggest challenges in a multiparty negotiation is to ascertain the interests of everyone at the negotiation table. Soft skills, like negotiating, have become increasingly important in creating personal relationships and fostering opportunities for your business’ long-term success. While it is easier to formulate agreements between parties, diffusing differences and managing cooperation from multiple parties are far more complex, yet the most common in today’s business world, even in the daily transaction of our lives. In this article, the authors discuss the techniques on managing and leading multiparty negotiations. Two sisters are fighting over an orange. Their mother intervenes and discovers that one sister wants to have juice while the other needs the peel to make a pie. The mother appropriately shares the two parts of the orange…

Organisations need to urgently take action to address the communication and skills gap between their corporate leaders, key decision makers and AI developers, in order to reap the full benefits of AI innovation and transform into an AI-competent organisation. What lies at the root of the gap between the promise of AI and the practice of an AI–based strategy? As recent evidence-based inquiry suggests1 , companies widely report that the adoption and use of AI techniques significantly lag the promise they were led to believe AI holds for making work more efficient and productive. The answer is not technical. It is organisational and cultural: A massive skills and language gap has emerged between key organisational decision makers and their ‘AI teams’. It is a barrier to innovation in the workplace…

In today’s rapidly-changing corporate world, it’s imperative for businesses and organisations to respond and adapt more quickly than ever before. Digital transformation provides opportunities by optimising resource usage, innovating capabilities and creating lasting relationships with customers. Throughout the organisations’ journey in digital transformation, agility is one of the most important aspects to be looked at. In this interview, we had the pleasure of a conversation with Vlerick Business School’s Professor Stijn Viaene, who talked to us about the importance of agile transformation and how it drives and delivers digital transformation. Q Scaling agility is a huge topic right now, especially to organisations during their digital transformation journey. Could you tell us exactly what this is about? Does it matter to all organisations? The importance of aligning, coordinating and integrating work…

The crowdfunding industry in Germany is doing what many European banks are afraid to do — creating value by combining technology and banking. The authors explore the rise of Germany’s crowdfunding industry and how it has affected the way people obtain financial services. Value creation and profitability at European Banks has languished behind their American counterparties ever since the industry was shaken up following the Global Financial Crises. Contrary to the advice from Winston Churchill, “Never let a good crisis go to waste”, senior management of large continental money banks have done exactly that. They appear to have missed the opportunity to adapt and reinvigorate their business models according to technological changes after the crisis. In an upcoming study by Professor David Young and Dr Boris Liedtke, both from INSEAD,…

A common mistake in industries faced by severe performance pressure is to turn to well-known innovation tools and strategies. Especially in sectors where innovation is not at the core of the business, a new approach is required. A proven method has entered the race – so far, with impressive results. It is undisputed that innovation is a key driver of corporate growth and performance. It is equally widely accepted that installing and maintaining an innovation capability is a non-trivial, organisation-wide endeavour. However, what tends to be overlooked is that not all organisations can – or should – innovate using the same tools. Instead, for innovation to generate the necessary business outcomes and organisational benefits for the long term, a different type of path should be explored. First stop: In-house innovation…

For all organisations and managers failure is a recurring reality. But despite failure being all pervasive, few individuals or organisations respond positively. Making failure work productively requires managers to recognise that plans need to be adaptable; failure must be built into the culture and everyone attuned to fail fast, adapt and learn. “We’ve long believed that over time organisations tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes. But in the technology industry, where revolutionary ideas drive the next big growth areas, you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant,” noted Larry Page on setting up Alphabet as a collection of companies including Google and a host of others – from Calico to Waymo.1 Alphabet companies are a constantly moving portfolio of impressive, wild and…

There has been increasing attention to self-driving cars, but business is still missing some key insights into how it will disrupt the industry landscape. This article shows how autonomous driving technology will disrupt several related industries, and proposes that “transpitality” (transportation + hospitality) will emerge as one of the new forms of business. What Could Future Travel Look Like? The following is a scenario of what future travel could look like. Jennifer, who lives in Las Vegas with her husband and daughter, is planning a business trip to San Francisco the next morning. She decides to use Autonomous Mobile Hotel, a specialised travel vehicle operated by the Autonomous Hotel Group. Using an app on her smartphone, she types in her itinerary and selects a single-occupancy mobile room. Expecting that she’ll…

The Industrial Internet-of-Things (IoT), also known as Industry 4.0, provides new opportunities to harness data-driven insights to improve business performance. In reality, operational technology, production equipment, and other “things” already provide data that can improve – even transform – company operations. By answering four key questions, business leaders can benefit from this “dark data” today. Enter the Industry 4.0 Era Today by Using “Dark Data” You Already Have The Industrial Internet of Things (IoT), also known as Industry 4.0, provides a new opportunity to improve business performance through data-driven insights. A quick Internet search provides many details about the transformative potential of the IoT. Wireless sensors on patients will help hospitals to predict heart attacks before they happen, enabling preventative emergency measures.1 Companies will equip employees with uniforms that detect…

The average lifespan of companies is becoming shorter. For them to survive the competition it is important to learn to jump across knowledge disciplines and create new knowledge about how a product is made or a service is delivered. Using the Leap Readiness Index, the authors measure the readiness of financial institutes to leap to a new frontier of know-how to prepare for the future. It’s common knowledge among executives that while humans now live longer, companies die faster. In 1958, the average lifespan of companies listed in Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was 61 years. Now it’s less than 18 years, according to a study conducted by McKinsey. Others have suggested that nearly 50% of the companies currently in the S&P 500 Index will be replaced over the next…

The digital revolution is making a significant impact on every industry, and IDnow, being the leading provider of Identity Verification-as-a-Service solutions with more than 250 customers including N26, Commerzbank and UBS, has impressively boosted digital transformation in the financial industry and beyond. We sat down with their new CEO Andreas Bodczek to discuss how IDnow is pushing the boundaries of the digital identity market. Q Thank you so much for your time, Mr Andreas Bodczek. We would like to congratulate you on your new appointment as IDnow’s new CEO. Certainly, being busy is about having amazing opportunities and potentials, as such we are interested in knowing how you jumpstart your day? A An ideal morning combines an early morning workout and breakfast with my kids, before heading off to the…

Leadership style and strategy that luxury brands should keep an eye on in order for them to ensure that their business philosophies and brand proposition are effectively conveyed and their brand is well presented to their target market. In this article Prof. Ashok Som weighs up the changes and challenges ahead for the luxury industry as it moves into a global mode and sets out the skill sets luxury brands will require of its employees both onboard and onboarding. Luxury has changed: bring on the Hydra In order to thrive in the transformation of local sales and local business model to global perspective and initiatives, the industry needs talents with specific and versatile skill sets that are entirely new to luxury while enabling the existing talent pool to adapt and…

It is well known that everything in life changes and the only constant thing is change per se. So, in order for organisations to survive, prosper and remain competitive, they need to change. Much has been written about the role of leaders to bring about change (radical and incremental) to their organisations. Nonetheless, few explored how leaders can lead a dual transformation type of change. Here, the author will shed light on and discuss the challenges encounter leaders who lead dual transformation. Dual transformation is a type of change when two major transformations are being undertaken simultaneously. Transformation A considers repositioning the core business model to the modified marketplace. Transformation B is about creating a separate disruptive business through innovation to become the source of future growth.1 Apple is a…