Summary of the European Executive Forum 2019

Next on the agenda was a speech of a Special Guest – Nicolas Colin, Co-founder and Director of The Family. The speaker started with a brief introduction presenting a historical outline of previous technological revolutions. According to Nicolas Colin, we are now in the fifth revolution, which includes the development of digitization and digitalization. According to the futurist, the development of new technologies has a great impact on enterprises and the economy and resulted in the creation of digital economy. The speaker stated that in this type of economy more power is located outside of enterprises, as they are created primarily by users. One example is Facebook, which currently has over 2 billion users who decide what they do and do not like and whether they still want to use its services. A lot depends on customer experience, which should be developed at all levels of business operations (not only in the service department). Another interesting example of meeting the expectations of customers is Netflix, which was the first platform to release entire seasons instead of forcing the audience to wait for each episode in a series. Currently, enterprises from the area of digital economy also have a big advantage over the industry, because they do not require initial investments in expensive durable goods, such as airplanes. The very large accumulated capital in the form of savings around the world and the ubiquitous globalization (over 8 billion mobile phones in the world) provide excellent conditions for the development of Internet enterprises. Nicolas Colin said that we live in a time when corporations compete with one another not with assets or access to information, but with entrepreneurship – the ability to create quality goods on an adequate scale.

The moderator of the second discussion panel was prof. Witold Bielecki, Rector of the Kozminski University, who invited the following panelists to the discussion: Jarosław Broda – Vice President of the Management Board for Asset Management and Development, TAURON Polska Energia SA; Nicolas Colin – Co-founder and Director of The Family; Michał Kurzelewski – Director for Medical Affairs, Pfizer Polska; Sylwia Toczyska – Director Client Services, Vistra Poland, and prof. Cezary Wójcik – Founder and Director of the Center for Leadership. The panelists began the discussion from innovation in practice. They discussed the story of the iPod, which was initially designed by Sony. This brand, however, was already producing Walkmans and CD players and was mainly focused on their improvement. Therefore, it decided not to mass-produce the new player. According to the panelists, this resulted from the fear of the innovative solution, which was treated as a threat to the popularity of existing devices. The idea was taken over by Apple, which focused on the production of the new device. Sony lacked a clear strategy, leadership, and answer to the question: if a given organization does not implement an innovation, will it still be done in the future? According to the panelists, the answer to this question is “yes”. They also stressed the role of cooperation between enterprises and universities as the source of innovative solutions. When it comes to the implementation of innovations, the panelists advised against deliberations with the management, which take a lot of time, and preferred the establishment of separate budgets and special purpose vehicles to deal with the implementation of specific changes. There are also companies that have to be innovative because of the very specifics of their industry. In summary, regardless of whether innovations are inside the company or are implemented slightly on the side, they are an inherent feature of all industries.