Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2025 i The European Business Review

Europe's Opportunity, the World's Gain “Europe stands for climate action.” – Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University. Public policy analyst and former director of The Earth Institute, expert on the topics of sustainable development and economic development. Speech to the European Parliament in May, 2025. The Energy Transition is the most important initiative in the history of the world and the ambition needed to implement it is daunting. The stakes couldn’t be higher, as well as securing our own future and that of our children, the Energy Transition is also an opportunity to establish European energy independence. The urgency of this has been made starkly evident by recent events in Europe and their geopolitical impact. There is very good news though. Europe does indeed stand for climate action and much progress…

AUTHORS When talking about leadership in business, many refer to those who are in positions higher up in the hierarchy of an organization. As a result of this kind of thinking, leadership is often seen as a role one can occupy at one point in one’s career. It is viewed as a position that is created and given by those running the company. In this article, we argue that leadership is not really bestowed. In its true essence, it is realized. To become a leader and guide others, you must first understand yourself: your strengths, values, and purpose. True leadership emerges from self-awareness, the courage to embrace your unique path, and the resilience to grow through challenges. Over the years, we’ve learned that leadership is less about external validation –…

AUTHOR The ballroom at the luxurious Fullerton Hotel in Singapore was full, with an invitation-only C-suite and senior HR leaders from across multiple industries and sectors. The coffee was still finding its way to everyone’s bloodstream. The HR 360 organized by the NBS morning panel was warming up, and the event theme couldn’t be more apt: “Driving Workforce Transformation Amid AI and Geopolitical Challenges.” Then, Chris Ong, Managing Director of DHL Express Singapore, took the mic. CRISIS IN THE AIR: THE 2008 TURBULENCE Chris walked the audience through a tale that felt like corporate survival training mixed with a leadership masterclass. During the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, DHL faced deep turbulence. The US business was bleeding. The competition was fierce. Tough choices were made. Billions in assets…

AUTHOR In recent years, the term “brain rot” has gained traction as a way to describe the mental fatigue and cognitive decline associated with the overconsumption of digital content. From endless scrolling on social media to binge-watching low-quality entertainment, the impact on our minds is undeniable. But what about the heart? While we focus on the deterioration of our cognitive faculties, we often overlook the emotional toll of living in an increasingly digital, fast-paced, and disconnected world. Emotional instability, exhaustion, loneliness, stress, and depression are on the rise, and they demand just as much attention as the cognitive consequences of our modern lifestyle. THE EMOTIONAL TOLL OF OVER-DIGITALIZATION Despite being more “connected” than ever before, many individuals are feeling emotionally distant and fragmented. Emotional shattering refers to the deepening fragmentation…

AUTHOR When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Jane was already feeling stressed about her job as a high school teacher. The latest technology implemented by the school – using learning management systems to organize assignments and keep track of lessons – felt like one more thing to add to her alreadybusy plate. But what she loved most about her job was spending face-to-face time with the teenagers and engaging in class-wide conversations, so she stayed on. The situation grew worse, however, when the pandemic forced schools to shut down and move classes online. Instead of giving lessons in person, which often relied on the interaction of students and the back-and-forth discussions between them, Jane now found herself alone, in her apartment, giving monologue-like lessons to her computer screen and observing her…

AUTHOR In an industry dominated by behemoths such as Apple, Samsung, and Huawei, entering and sustaining a position in the mobile device market is a daunting task for any small company. Yet, HMD, the Finnish company responsible for the resurgence of Nokia-branded smartphones, provides an intriguing story on how to thrive in this challenging environment. Established in 2016, HMD has leveraged strategic partnerships and differentiation strategies to compete in a saturated market. This article examines the company’s collaborative origins, its focus on reparability and mental health as differentiators, and the broader implications for small businesses aiming to survive against corporate giants. THE GENESIS OF HMD: A COLLABORATIVE FOUNDATION A Bold Vision for Nokia's Revival HMD was formed with a singular goal: to bring the iconic Nokia brand back into the…

AUTHORS INTRODUCTION The metaverse has vast possibilities in creating a virtual space where individuals can cooperate and create without seeing each other in real time and interacting with one another with their chosen avatars and holograms. In that universe, we have customized avatars; we can buy property, visit various places, meet people, and spend money (e.g., cryptocurrencies). As Dwivedi et al. (2022) state, virtual environments and immersive games (such as Second Life, Fortnite, Roblox, and VRChat) have been described as antecedents of the metaverse and offer some insight into the potential socioeconomic impact of a fully functional persistent cross-platform metaverse. The authors classify the definitions of the metaverse into four types—environment, interface, interaction, and social value. Summarizing each characteristic of the metaverse in a similar way to the real world…

AUTHORS Introduction In a rapidly changing job landscape, embracing the future means adapting to new skills and opportunities. The title “Equipping for Tomorrow: Unlocking New Skills for the Future of Work in 2033” not only captures the essence of our message but also instills a sense of optimism and preparedness for what’s to come. We hope this article will encourage you (the reader) to view the future as a realm of opportunities rather than challenges, and invites you to explore how you (and others in your firm) proactively cultivate the skills necessary to thrive in the evolving workplace. According to Fred Eichwald in a recent German article, we can anticipate that by 2030, a staggering 70% of job skills will transform. He emphasizes that essential soft skills—such as adaptability, empathy,…

AUTHOR I had the same job at the same place for nearly 40 years – a whole working life. I was lucky; I found a job which suited my ambitions, temperament, and values. But, like everyone else, I had short, holiday, and part-time jobs which taught me a great deal about the world of work. They helped me find my real vocation, passions and, more importantly, dislikes. They taught me about skiving, liberating stock, and what good supervision and management looks like. I went to university too young; I was 16 when I arrived. When parents come to me now for advice about their children’s choice of course or university, I recommend what used to be called a “gap year” between school and university. I recommend the same between under-…

AUTHORS INTRODUCTION High-performance transformation is at the heart of teamwork. While working as senior corporate executives, we realized that self-managed teams may be self-managed but may not be high-performance teams. This led us to change the name from self-managed teams to high-performance teams. John Kotter, in 2007, coined the term “Leading Change: Why Transformational Efforts Fail” in the Harvard Business Review. Since then, many authors implemented different applications of this idea, which is easily transferred to organizations and companies in a practical and virtuous way. With Michael as Andreas School of Business senior faculty professor and Mostafa in a senior management consulting role in Australia, we guide managers toward the goal of transformation using high-performance teamwork by expanding on Kotter’s model of change. In this article, gained from our consulting…

AUTHORS Regularly reading the trade press and listening to Europe’s top executives makes it clear that logistics is a crucial factor in the success of the retail sector—whether offline, online, or both. A seamless supply chain, optimized inventory levels, and strict delivery management are generally considered essential for ensuring customer satisfaction, maximizing company profitability, and delivering strong returns to shareholders. In e-commerce, the quality of fulfillment operations is often highlighted as critical for building a sustainable competitive advantage1. However, this dominant view overlooks a far more complex reality: powerful large retailers are thriving despite logistics that, by conventional performance standards, would be deemed “chaotic.” Yet, rather than being a weakness, these inefficiencies appear to drive sales. This raises an intriguing question: could what is typically seen as logistical underperformance serve…

AUTHORS There is a clear gap between the adoption and excitement about AI and the translation of these investments into corporate profits. Why is this the case, and what can companies do about it? THE LAG IN VALUE CREATION Signs of corporate AI adoption are increasing every day: new software versions are released regularly, start-ups see their list of corporate clients grow bigger, and cloud providers report doubledigit growth rates, so much so that the technology can no longer be described as emerging. For example, the 2025 AI Index Report by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI estimates that 78% of organisations now use AI - a significant progress compared to 55% in 2023. We should expect this rapid adoption to translate into higher corporate profits. This is true for…

AUTHOR GenAI: a General-Purpose Technology with democratic access The article draws from the latest research by the Startup Thinking Observatory at the Politecnico of Milan University to outline how companies can move beyond novelty and start integrating Generative AI as a structural component of their innovation systems. GenAI shares the core traits of General-Purpose Technologies (GPTs, which is not the acronym of ChatGPT), such as electricity and the internet: it is versatile, scalable, and capable of enabling complementary innovations across industries. However, it introduces an additional, unique dimension: accessibility. Thanks to intuitive interfaces and relatively low barriers to entry, non-experts can now leverage GenAI for sophisticated tasks, a phenomenon rarely observed with other transformative technologies. According to Microsoft’s 2024 Work Trend Index 1, 75 per cent of employees already use…