Daniel Ropers led bol.com from less than €10m to more than €1.7bn in sales, successfully turning disruption into growth. He explains how in conversation with Alexandra Jankovich, showing that to seize digital opportunities, you must be continuously ready to make changes, update goals, and explain why.
Joris Beckers shares how the online supermarket Picnic is becoming the best milkman on earth. Amongst other initiatives, they offer minute-precise delivery, eliminate food waste by using data, refund customers without asking questions, test new concepts first and ask for “permission” later, and only sell products that customers really want.
Petri Hofsté (Supervisory board member Rabobank, Achmea, Fugro, and Pon Holdings) talks about responsible leadership and advocates for a new way to approach education in the future, closing the gap between need and supply of knowledge and skills. “The responsibility aspects of leadership should be more prominent and in the crisis period they are now becoming more prominent, as of course the prime focus is on the well-being of people, their health and safety. Without that there is no continuity of the business.”
André Hoffmann (Vice-Chairman of the Board, Roche Holding Ltd): “We have decided some years ago that the only way to measure business is for financial flows, but we do not account at any stage of the impact our businesses have on social systems, on human systems, and our natural system. As a shareholder, I would like to know the impact that the companies I’m invested in are having on the planet.”
Benoît Coquart (CEO, Legrand): “You need to be humble enough to understand: if [your product] doesn’t fulfill the need of the customer, it will be good for the books, but not for the business.” Benoît Coquart explains how to stay relevant and serve the customer while being “technology-agnostic”.