Entries by Janka Krings-Klebe

Digital Transformation in Action

Digital transformation is a process of rethinking and adapting a company’s strategy, culture, and operations to leverage digital technologies and meet rapidly evolving market demands. This transformative journey consists of digitalization (the process of converting analog information into digital format) and transformation (preparing the company for future business). A successful digital transformation enables companies to […]

Dancing with Platforms

Digital platforms and their ecosystems are outgrowing all other businesses, usurping their market position, commoditizing their products, slowly squeezing them out of negotiating power and hijacking their profits. Or not? Is there a way to escape their grasp? Some kind of strategy for long-term success? How about this: Stop dancing around them. Dance with them instead.

Making Management Great Again

Management, as taught at business schools, is on the way to irrelevance. Today it no longer solves problems. It creates them. So-called “best practices” of management have caused a multitude of problems that only became apparent with a delay of decades, but now they are making themselves felt with force. They fall short in dynamic market environments. They stifle innovation with bureaucracy and rigid processes.

Digitalization or Transformation?

There is a world of difference between increasing efficiency in existing business and developing the company for future business. And yet these approaches are mixed up in the discussions surrounding digitalization and digital transformation. As a result, ideas and expectations diverge accordingly. And there is correspondingly great uncertainty about the extent and significance for one’s own company. This article provides a very pragmatic distinction between digitalization and digital transformation and uses examples to show how implementation can be successful.

Growing Innovation

Open business ecosystems are not limited in their possibilities. Flexibility and speed in cross-company collaboration is what distinguishes them from other business setups, making it simple to quickly grow promising innovations to profitable size. In practice, corporations struggle in participating in those ecosystems and setting up joint business operations. Their management and governance practices are not build to adapt to the required speed and flexibility.

Embracing Uncertainty

European industry is under threat from massively growing uncertainty. Trade tariffs, technological disruptions and fast-moving competitors on digital steroids cut deeply into predictions about business development. German managers report that their decisions can’t keep up with the pace of change in their business environment; they feel as if they have lost control. Uncertainty is so […]

Event Series with Trade Mission of Israel in Germany

New event format accelerates build up of business cooperations. Business opportunities in Israel, the possibility to meet high tech startups from Israel and to initiate business cooperations with them – this attracted international investors, companies from southern Germany and the Israeli Ministry of Economy and Industry to the urbanharbor in Ludwigsburg on June 7th. Organized […]

Back to Day One

After one year of exciting and challenging work, Laurence is happy: He just got praise from a customer who his company was unable to acquire for years. Now Laurence feels like he is back in the early days of the company, where flexibility was the norm. A time when it was not bogged down by processes […]

The Future of Businesses – Marketplaces of Shared Capabilities

Some days ago, we read about Amazon’s latest acquisition, Whole Foods Market, an organic grocery chain. From the perspective of established business, a cross-industry acquisition like this is unexpected and seems somehow strange. From the perspective of Amazon’s goal, becoming “the marketplace for everything”, this acquisition was a logical step. Amazon aims to provide everything […]

Book Announcement: Future Legends – Business in Hyper-Dynamic Markets

We are proud to announce our upcoming book Future Legends – Business in Hyper-Dynamic Markets. Future markets will become hyper-dynamic – fueled by digital technology deeply intruding into the life of consumers and businesses. Hyper-dynamic markets challenge businesses to become radically more adaptable and innovative than they are today. This book gives business leaders a strategic […]