The world is changing fast, and digital technologies are both driving the chaos and offering the key. But what’s behind the buzzwords?
SparkOptimus Insights provides expert perspectives and practical know-how on how to make disruption work. Take control and lead the change.
Since taking the helm as CEO at Henkel in 2020, Carsten Knobel has been a driving force behind the company’s Purposeful Growth agenda. In this Interview with managing partner and co-founder of SparkOptimus, Alexandra Jankovich, he discusses the progress made over the last two years, the five key elements behind the agenda and what the future holds.
In this interview with managing partner and co-founder of SparkOptimus, Alexandra Jankovich, Henkel’s CEO Carsten Knobel discusses diversity, sustainability, digital transformation and the way Henkel uses digital to serve their consumers and customers better.
Nancy McKinstry, CEO of Wolters Kluwer propelled the company from the print age into the digital era while growing the share of digital revenue from ~30% to ~90%. In this interview summary, McKinstry explains the crucial steps of the transformation. She talks about the benefits of diverse teams, speaks about how she kept shareholders on board and shares what she would have done differently.
Nancy McKinstry, CEO of Wolters Kluwer shares her key insights from 18 years at the top. How did she lead the company from the print age into the digital era while growing the share of digital revenue from ~30% to ~90%? Watch the full interview for the key insights of this digital transformation journey, the role of diversity, portfolio, revenue reinvestment, talent and much more.
CEO of Nestlé, Mark Schneider believes the best of digital is yet to come. As he leads the transformation, he shares key digital insights with Alexandra Jankovich: how consumers now move seamlessly between opportunities, why businesses need to reconfigure fast, and how mindsets are shifting from forward-looking market research to real-time data experimentation.
How did Just Eat Takeaway.com become Europe’s #1 food delivery marketplace? Founder and CEO Jitse Groen speaks about his approach to conquering new markets, how he adapts his leadership style over time, and he reveals the two key performance indicators he looks at every day.
Heineken’s former CEO, Jean-François van Boxmeer and Alexandra Jankovich, Co-founder & Managing Partner of SparkOptimus are looking back on the past 5 years of global partnership. Together they discuss digital initiatives, transformation strategies and innovative start-ups and what it takes to lead in digital as one of the world’s largest brewers.
As Heineken’s former CEO, Jean-François van Boxmeer doubled revenues while leading digital transformation. Looking back on the past 5 years of global partnership with SparkOptimus, he talks about embracing technology, digital leadership, and learning from failures.
Hanneke Faber, President Global Foods & Refreshment at Unilever, and listed by Fortune as one of the world’s most powerful women, discusses her leadership style with Alexandra Jankovich, as well as how she’s getting out on the edge with sustainability, technology and cultural change to win markets and do good.
Embracing disruption: In 2017, Edeka – Germany’s largest supermarket chain – partnered up with online supermarket Picnic to disrupt its own market. Joris Beckers, co-founder of Picnic, talks about the partnership in our new video.
Eddie Perdok, CEO of Kramp, took sales from 0 to 95% online, tripling turnover in ten years to become Europe’s largest supplier of agricultural parts. He talks to Alexandra Jankovich about how he’s now building for the future, heading off disruption from Amazon, and why to be a leader in digital, you need to think people first, digital second.
For many decades, banks, insurance companies and mortgage lenders enjoyed dominant positions in high-margin markets, protected by strict regulation, strong customer lock-in and high capital requirements. However, even they have not been immune to disruption.
Over the last decade, the traditional strengths of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies have been slowly eroded. Companies no longer need to own factories to produce goods, Amazon sells anyone’s products, the power of mass-marketing through traditional media is dwindling, talent favours startups, and innovation happens increasingly outside corporate R&D centres.
By the early 2010s, global ecommerce sales had already grown to a significant size. Front-running disruptors such as Amazon and Zalando were aggressively tearing down consumer adoption barriers, for example by offering free shipping and free returns, and it was becoming increasingly apparent to incumbent retailers that the shift to online could no longer be ignored.
Around the start of the century, travel was ripe for disruption. Booking a holiday meant a trip to the travel agent, involving long queues, poor information and high cancellation fees. Fast forward to 2020 and the industry has changed dramatically: booking takes place overwhelmingly on digital platforms and suppliers have lost market share to a slew of independent high-quality operators.
It’s an interesting time in today’s pension market. By 2025, a new legal framework will come into play that makes one’s pension more personal but also more risk-carrying. This is against the backdrop of a population that increasingly got used to being in control of its own life decisions. Be it execution-only mortgages, do-it-yourself investment platforms or Siri/Cortana as the PA-for-all.
By the mid-2010s, consumer adoption of digital was widespread, but in industrial B2B markets it was still in its infancy. However, strongly influenced by their consumer experiences, business customers were starting to ask why their B2B interactions were so slow, opaque, and dated in feel in comparison.
Companies are increasingly using corporate venturing as a tool to expand on internally motivated innovation initiatives. Being a serious player in corporate venturing, however, requires governance rules and cultural dynamics that do not always fit into the existing corporate context. This is the sixth article in our series on corporate venturing. As we’ve already touched upon […]
90% of ventures fail sooner or later, and there’s no shame in that. Many things can go wrong when building and scaling a venture. Although a lot has been written on this topic by the brightest minds in the industry, many founders continue to fall for the same mistakes when building a venture. Where the […]
This is the fourth article in our series on corporate venturing. The ‘Lean Startup’ book was published more than a decade ago. By now, many people know how to get through the first stages of exploring new corporate venture ideas. The “MVP” terminology has been used and abused and many corporates have added ventures to their […]
This is the second article in our series on corporate venturing. As a C-level executive or head of strategy, you are continuously on the look-out for disruptive trends and want to understand how to effectively tap into an environment that is continuously changing. You may already have specific ideas in mind on how to do this, […]
This is the first article in our series on corporate venturing, see the full series below. This article is the first in our new series of articles on ventures and scale-ups in a corporate setting. In this series, we will share our insights from working with clients around the world to build new disruptive ventures, and help […]
What happened Early disruptors were often owned by private capital or visionary private equity firms. As these disruptors scaled, more capital was needed, and with sufficient backing some were able to overthrow existing markets and create new ‘blue oceans’. Encouraged by such tech success stories, private equity funds began to see the potential of high-growth […]
No industry is safe from disruption. This is because disruptors have consistently found a way – using technology – to serve customers better, faster and cheaper. Over the last ten years industries have fallen one by one: first travel and media, and then retail electronics, fashion, food, and so on; initially in B2C, and then […]
To centralize or localize digital activities? Companies across all industries are facing versions of this dilemma – each organization with a different set of caveats. Why language and local regulation are not relevant and which factors should be considered instead.
