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Couldn’t make it to the launch but you’re interested in buying the book? Get more info on the website www.corporateventuring.co or buy the book through Amazon or Die Keure.
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On June 25th the official launch of the Corporate Venturing book by Dado Van Peteghem and Omar Mohout took place at Meetdistrict in Ghent. Over 140 people attended this event filled with keynotes by the authors, a networking event and attendees received a free copy of the book. The launch was a great success thanks to the great cooperation of the authors, Dado and Omar and the publisher Die Keure.
A big thanks go out to our keynote speakers and authors Dado Van Peteghem and Omar Mohout, Jeroen Deleu for the introduction speech and Ward Hemeryck for being the moderator of the evening. And last but not least the people of Die Keure for making this event possible.
Of course a video tells more than a thousand words, so check out the aftermovie!
The book is not the hype story of how cool startups are and why you should invest in them with a fund or set up an accelerator. Corporate Venturing is so much more than CVC – corporate venture capital.
The aim of this book is to provide insights in the different strategies and tactics to accelerate innovation and growth through collaboration, as well as plenty of cases as examples where these methods are successfully applied. This is not a book for people that are looking for complex innovation theories around venturing. Rather it’s a no-nonsense, ready-to-apply comprehensive guide for creating and reviewing your corporate venturing strategy as a strategic instrument to thrive in this fast-changing world.
The book will provide guidance, insights, perspective and inspiration for anyone who’s interested in corporate venturing as a strategy to accelerate growth. Whether you are a large corporate or an upcoming player in the market.
Dado Van Peteghem is one of the leading experts in the digital sector. He is a frequent keynote speaker and entrepreneur. He’s the co-founder of Duval Union Consulting & several startups like Social Seeder, Speakersbase and Trendbase, giving more than 150 speeches per year internationally.
Omar Mohout is well known as technology entrepreneur at Sirris, author, C-level advisor to high growth startups and Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Antwerp, Antwerp Management School, ULB and Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management. He is a keynote speaker and panelist on technology, entrepreneurship and innovation topics at leading conferences.
I guess you see now why they decided to write this book together. Dado and Omar know each other for a long time and according to them they are the perfect team to write a book about Corporate Venturing.
Couldn’t make it to the launch but you’re interested in buying the book? Get more info on the website www.corporateventuring.co or buy the book through Amazon or Die Keure.
Corporate Venturing is already happening in many companies and industries, but not necessarily in the right way. Below, we list 5 of the main bad practices we encountered during our experiences.
A lot of companies invest in or acquire startups that they encounter due to pure coincidence. Even in very large companies, it’s often the nephew, neighbor or best friend of an executive running a cool business that suddenly gets the attention. Just because of the relationship. Or a startup that knocked on the door on a blue Monday morning, and which somehow stumbled into a meeting with the CFO. It’s very often first-come, first-served without a real analysis, comparison or strategy behind it.
For every AI, Blockchain, AR … company you come across, there are many others you should investigate before making the call to move forward. Don’t let things depend on coincidence, set up a thorough analysis process and surround yourself with subject matter experts.
Once an investment or acquisition has been made, many companies feel the urge to ‘professionalize’ the business they’ve attracted. Processes are put in place, roles are reshuffled, offices are moved to a corporate-like environment, they have to connect to big IT systems … All of this happens with the best intentions, but in many cases, it’s killing the vibe and soul of the startup.
It’s very good to help a business take the next step, but always let freedom of execution rule. Don’t hug them to death. Have clear conversations with the venture on how much of your involvement they want and in what area they will need it. This will help both parties to manage their expectations and hold each other accountable when they are crossing the line.
Many companies ask what the financial ROI is of investing/acquiring startups. The return of Corporate Venturing is, however, multi-fold, the potential financial upside is just one dimension. Unfortunately for many companies, it’s the only dimension, the investment or acquisition is done by financial departments and from there on it’s just looking at the numbers on a regular basis. But both parties, the startup and the company can benefit so much from each other in terms of knowledge sharing and culture.
Corporate Venturing is not just a financial thing, it’s a way to drive new knowledge, spirit and culture throughout your company. Make sure it’s not just a box in an Excel sheet for the nance people, exploit the collaborations throughout your whole organization.
Startups have become a cool concept over the years, so collaborations are often misused for PR reasons. Companies want to show off their innovative image and try to impress the market by doing things they actually don’t fully understand. This often leads to zero-impact venturing, as it’s more about the image then the core business, not to mention the disillusionment for the startups.
Go for real value, not PR value in your Corporate Venturing activities, it will only backfire in the long run.
In most cases, the investment or acquisition is seen as the endpoint, while it should actually be the starting point. If you take a 25% stake in a startup, it is in your best interest to also think about the next steps: are you going to invest further? Do you want to buy the whole company later on? Do you want to go for an exit strategy? How do you want to relate to other investors that will join later on? Try to be clear what your end game is towards all the partners around the table. The people in a startup are its true asset, so avoid miscommunication and false expectations.
Every collaboration should have a clear way forward, not just for yourself but also for the startup you’re partnering. Don’t expect the business to figure everything out by themselves, they will need you for guidance and you need them too.
The newest book of Dado Van Peteghem (from Duval Union Consulting) and Omar Mohout (Sirris) provides insights in the different strategies and tactics to accelerate innovation and growth through collaboration, as well as plenty of cases as examples where these methods are successfully applied. It’s a no-nonsense, ready-to-apply comprehensive guide for creating and reviewing your corporate venturing strategy as a strategic instrument to thrive in this fast changing world.
If you want to read the 10 key learnings about the book Corporate Venturing, check out the e-book here!
The book will provide guidance, insights, perspective and inspiration for anyone that has an interests in corporate venturing as a strategy to accelerate growth. Whether you are a large corporate or an upcoming player in the market.
Dubai Technology Entrepreneur Center hosted a talk about how innovation in tech is impacting the Retail Industry. Major UAE actors of the retail were discussing the future of their industry. The event inspired us to write the below short article.
Imagine if you could enter into a store, find the exact location of the product you want, receive a personalized notification on your phone with a coupon for something you are usually buying and leave the store without any delay or friction.
This is how Iot and data will revolutionize the retail industry by offering customers more personal and tailored experiences.
The data collected by IoT sensors, beacon and smart cameras will also help retailers successfully manage their stores by producing new insights related to in-store advertising, merchandising and customers shopping behaviour.
We already wrote about it here
As connected stores will be generating a high volume of data on throughout the customer journey, Artificial Intelligence will allow retailers to generate actionable insights by processing data better than any human can do.
Online, AI and machine learning will continue to help retailers to create a personalized experience and improve customer retention.
Today, Amazon, Alibaba or Zalando are already taking the best of AI to offer to their customers’ tailored experiences while optimizing sales.
Contactless payments are gaining traction and At ENBD alone, they represent more than 10 per cent of the total transactions. This trend is set to amplify especially with the growing adoption of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Emirates NBD Pay.
With the launch of Amazon Go in Seattle in January 2018, Amazon is showing the way of the future with their unique Just Walk Out technology based on artificial intelligence, computer vision and data to offer customers a fluid retail experience where mobile and physical environments roll together.
Retailtainment is the fusion of retail and entertainment.
Behind this buzzword, it is a new opportunity for retailers to boost store traffic and get customers to purchase their products through the use of ambience, emotion, sound and activities.
In the UAE, mall developers understood early that the mall of the future needs to incentivize its visitors by offering them curated entertainment activities and experiences. It’s just about time for retailers to replicate this model and bring unique experience into the stores of the future.
To illustrate this, Tmall opened 60 physical pop-up stores in 52 malls in China powered by Alibaba’s retail technologies including AR and mobile payments. By blending technology and entertainment, we can reinvent the customer experience in-store.
We are new-style management consultants focusing on transforming and growing organizations in a digital-first world with offices in Europe and the Middle East. New-style? Co-created business strategy, custom-made transformation trajectories and actual experienced business advisors are only some of our differentiators and why clients love to work with us. We design the future of your business together.
Click here to find out more on how we can help you make your company future proof
Nils van Dam, seasoned business leader with over 30 years’ experience in the Food and Beverage industry, joins Duval Union Consulting as the global Head of Food and Retail. He has occupied senior positions on a local, regional and global level at Unilever, AB-Inbev and Censydiam. In his last role as CEO Unilever Belgium & Luxemburg he initiated the vital transformation to guide the company into the future. For six years, he also used to be board member at BABM (Association for Belgian Brands) and Fevia (federation of the Belgian food industry).
Food and beverage companies and food retailers are facing tumultuous times. “Most companies are aware of the challenges ahead but have no clear strategy to thrive in this disruptive world.”, says Jo Caudron (co-CEO Duval Union Consulting). That’s why Duval Union Consulting decided to set up a new global branch with a leading expert in food and beverage to help these companies to become future-proof.
Nils van Dam: “I’m excited to embark on this journey together with Duval Union Consulting and help the food and retail industry to tackle disruption.”
Duval Union Consulting helps traditional companies enter the digital first world with a future-proof strategy and makes companies self-reliant to successfully cope with permanent change.
Duval Union Consulting has been dealing with digital transformation since Jo Caudron and Dado Van Peteghem first published their book “Digital Transformation: a model to master digital disruption” in 2013. Today, this book has found its way to over 10k readers in over 55 countries. In the meantime, the strategic consulting framework described in the book has been adopted by 150 companies in many different industries: retail, banking, healthcare, automotive,etc. The Duval Union Consulting-team has grown to 25 people and has expanded its action radius beyond the Belgian borders, with offices in Ghent, Dubai and Amsterdam.
With the launch of this new global branch and Nils van Dam joining their team as Head of Food and Retail, they are taking another step in their digital transformation journey.
Dado Van Peteghem (co-CEO Duval Union Consulting) remarks: “Our mission is to help companies become future-proof in a world of constant change. We strongly believe that this new practice in Food and Retail with Nils as global head will be an important step for the transformation of the food and retail world in Europe and beyond. We’re looking forward to start this journey together.”
Duval Union Consulting (with offices in Europe and the Middle East) is a team of passionate and result-driven management consultants, focusing on transforming and growing organizations in a digital-first world. Co-created business strategies, custom-made transformation projects and experienced business advisors are just a few key differentiators.
Contact us for more information:
Jo Caudron, jo.caudron(at)duvalunion.com
Dado Van Peteghem, dado.vanpeteghem(at)duvalunion.com
Nils van Dam, nils.vandam(at)duvalunion.com
Click here to find out more on how they can help you make your company future proof
Compared to angel investors or VCs, corporations can offer more of the ‘smart’ in ‘smart money’ and longer time horizons, say the authors of the new book Corporate Venturing Dado Van Peteghem and Omar Mohout.
When a startup needs a specific asset or a capital-intensive infrastructure, corporations might even be the only option. For instance, a chemical company can open their R&D infrastructure in order to grant startups access to labs and testing facilities. Another example is the extensive data asset that an insurance company can offer to data analytics-driven InsurTech startups.
By accessing a corporation’s resources, scale, power, and the processes needed to run a proven business model efficiently, a startup can create an “unfair advantage” against its competitors, which the founder of Smartbear and WordPress platform builder WP engine, Jason Cohen, says is one that cannot easily be copied or bought. An unfair advantage is what every startup is looking for, to acquire or cement a leading position. The startup has none of what a corporation can bring to the table. While capital is always welcome, it is all the other support corporations can offer that should smooth the path to success.
Using motherships and speedboats as an analogy, we summarise the most frequently asked questions we’ve encountered during our presentations and workshops on corporate venturing:
There is no exact number as everything depends on the size and ambitions of the company. As a rule of thumb, there are two things to keep in mind: You should try to ‘chat’ and ‘date’ as much as you can with startups, but only ‘marry’ a few. Let’s say you ‘chat’ with 100 startups, ideally you ‘date’ (setting up a project, proof of concept, test ) with about 20 of them and you actually ‘marry’ (invest, acquire) two of them. That’s a conversion rate of two percent. Be critical!
Secondly. always focus on quality, not on quantity. Make sure you’re scouting work is building a valuable funnel of interesting startups and be critical where to invest time, especially the further you’ve moved in the ‘chat, date, marry’ funnel. It’s our belief that focusing and committing to a smaller number of startups to work with will create maximum value. After all, consider the law of diminishing returns and the Ringelmann effect (people become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases).
You need to differentiate between the chat, date and marry stage. During the chat stage, even pitching is a kind of (soft) collaboration. Any type of structural or commercial collaboration will lead you from the chat to the date stage. As for the marry stage, that’s simple: once a startup reaches product/market t and has a proven business model ready to scale. Are there exceptions? Yes, acquires or IP/ technology acquisition can occur prior to product/market.
Although it’s true that proximity counts, it’s also true that ‘speedboats’ need to keep a safe distance of the ‘mothership’. Nevertheless, to positively impact the mothership culture, frequent and meaningful exchanges are a must. So, the key is to invite both parties to visit each other often instead of merging them in the same location. If you set up a specific location (a ‘home for radical innovation’) to foresee housing for the startups you work with, make sure the location of the startups is not too far away from the company itself to allow a real connection between both worlds.
Do you want to read the rest of our key learnings? Drop your name and e-mail adress down below, get the e-book about our 10 tips and other Corporate Venturing insights for free!
Download our e-book with the 10 tips for free!If you want even more thorough insights, you can buy the Corporate Venturing book by Dado and Omar through these links.
Click here to buy the digital copy of Corporate Venturing Click here to buy the paperback of Corporate Venturing
This was an excerpt of their book Corporate Venturing, which Dado and Omar recently wrote together and they’re launching it officially in Ghent on June 25th. You can still get your tickets here, but get them quickly, places are limited!
Last week there was an article in De Tijd (a Belgian newspaper that mainly focuses on business and economics) in which Peter Himpe, CEO of Volvo Trucks Belgium, describes the steps that his company has taken and is still planning to take in order to become future-proof.
In 2015 Volvo Trucks Belgium and Duval Union Consulting worked together on a strategic project. Together, we created a future vision, strategy and a concrete roadmap of actions that would set Volvo Trucks on a path of successful transformation. Today, we’re happy to see the first fruits of our collective labor and we’re very proud that our client is seizing every opportunity become future-proof.
The proverb goes: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime” and we stand by this philosophy when dealing with companies. This is a prime example of a company that took a chance and worked hard… and it pays off.
The biggest part of Volvo Trucks’ income still comes from very traditional revenue streams: 95% is generated from the truck sales and spare parts, the remaining 5% is generated by the fleet management system: Dynafleet. Dynafleet monitors trucks, their location, consumption, emission,… in real time. That last part will systematically go up in the coming years. The demand for these services is gradually increasing. The early adopters are often companies for whom transport is not the core business and does have any added value. They prefer an invoice per ton, kilometer or cubic meter.
“We are evolving from selling trucks to providing services with self-driving trucks as a lever”, says Peter Himpe. “Once the trucks are connected with the cloud and can drive autonomously, drivers will no longer be required. I even believe Volvo Trucks can become a carrier in the future.” The current carriers will have another role. “They will become agents or middle-men that form a bridge between the truck manufacturer and the client. That is an opportunity that we really need to grasp. Technically this is already possible, but because of legislation there is still a long way to go.”
“I believe Volvo Trucks can become a carrier in the future.”
Demarcated areas, where legislation is less of an issue and companies are much more autonomous, will be used to test with the first self-driving vehicles. “We have the advantage that we also build busses, dumpers, cranes and bulldozers. So our clients will only need 1 supplier: us.”
The gradual transition to the rental model is already there. “Big international companies do not longer ask to deliver a truck. They ask us an invoice per ton they mine. It doesn’t matter if we deliver them a truck, dumper or crane. It’s up to us to make the most efficient choice.”, says Himpe. Other Belgian companies are already using the test project. “A carrier calculated that in an ideal scenario, he would need 2.3 trucks from us. Connected vehicles and KPI’s give us and our clients the opportunity to organize this more efficiently. In this situation we are their coach”, according to Pieter De Bruyn (Digital Officer Volvo Trucks)
“It doesn’t matter if we deliver big international companies a truck, dumper or crane. It’s up to us to make the most efficient choice for them.”
Partnerships are high priority. Volvo Trucks is partnering with IMOB (Institution for Mobility) and D’hondt Insurance to build a Driver Community that helps reduce emission and accidents. The app monitors the driver’s behavior. Driving economically earns points that can be changed for f.e. free coffee, buying a suit case,… “Drivers are already being monitored, but there is nothing in it for them. Maybe with this app, employers can build a kind of bonus system around it”, says Himpe. Volvo wants to open up the app for other truck builders. “With this move we are losing our competitive advantage, but the added value is so much bigger. Drivers would be able to use the system to warn each other for delays or road works,…”
“Drivers are already being monitored, but there is nothing in it for them. Maybe with this app, employers can build a kind of bonus system around it.”
Volvo is currently investing billions in hardware to reduce the emission with 1 or 2%. “Drivers have a gigantic impact on emissions (potentially 10 or 20%), but nowadays nobody invests in drivers. Organizations will be very excited to become member of the driver community, which will help reduce emission and cut a lot of costs.”, says Himpe.
>> Read the full article (in dutch) here
A year ago we sat down with Peter Himpe to talk about the Digital Transformation project we did together.
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Our newest book on Corporate Venturing just hit the shelves and we’re so thrilled to invite you to our book launch June 25 at MeetDistrict Ghent!
We want to provide you with lots of value and insights on corporate venturing with keynotes from Jeroen Deleu and authors Dado Van Peteghem and Omar Mohout. Whether you’re a large corporate or an upcoming player in the market, you need to attend this inspiring event!
18:30
Welcome
18:50 – 19:00
Introduction “Business of the future” – Jeroen Deleu (Director Strategy & Corporate Development Sirris)
19:00 – 19:45
Keynote “The corporate venturing landscape in figures” – Omar Mohout (Author)
19:45 – 20:30
Keynote “5 things you didn’t know about corporate venturing” – Dado Van Peteghem (Author)
20:30 – 22:00
Network, food & drinks
For only €30 you can join this inspiring evening (signed book included).
Watch out: be fast because places are limited!
The book is not the hype story of how cool startups are and why you should invest in them with a fund or set up an accelerator. Corporate Venturing is so much more than CVC – corporate venture capital.
The aim of this book is to provide insights in the different strategies and tactics to accelerate innovation and growth through collaboration, as well as plenty of cases as examples where these methods are successfully applied. This is not a book for people that are looking for complex innovation theories around venturing. Rather it’s a no-nonsense, ready-to-apply comprehensive guide for creating and reviewing your corporate venturing strategy as a strategic instrument to thrive in this fast-changing world.
The book will provide guidance, insights, perspective and inspiration for anyone who’s interested in corporate venturing as a strategy to accelerate growth. Whether you are a large corporate or an upcoming player in the market.
Dado Van Peteghem is one of the leading experts in the digital sector. He is a frequent keynote speaker and entrepreneur. He’s the co-founder of Duval Union Consulting & several startups like Social Seeder, Speakersbase and Trendbase, giving more than 150 speeches per year internationally.
Omar Mohout is well known as technology entrepreneur at Sirris, author, C-level advisor to high growth startups and Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Antwerp, Antwerp Management School, ULB and Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management. He is a keynote speaker and panelist on technology, entrepreneurship and innovation topics at leading conferences.
I guess you see now why they decided to write this book together. Dado and Omar know each other for a long time and according to them they are the perfect team to write a book about Corporate Venturing.
For only €30 you can join this inspiring evening (signed book included).
Watch out: be fast because places are limited!
Can’t join the launch event but want a copy of the book?
CLICK HERE TO BUY THE BOOKIt shouldn’t be ‘game over’ for traditional taxi companies, if they reinvent themselves and take their customer experience to a new level, that is.
Luckily this week’s taxi strike was announced in time, so I could relocate my morning appointment on 27/03/2018 from Brussels to the virtual world. A meeting with four people, each in a different location. So 2018. What if, from now on, a meeting location would be ‘online’ by default? Oh, not really what you were aiming for, dear taxi drivers? And those short videos explaining ‘What is Uber and how do I use it’ in the primetime newscasts were a bit unfortunate too?
Uber is not perfect. And I do not agree with every decision the company makes. But Uber does, just like many popular start- and scale-ups today, understand perfectly that success lies in applying digital technology to drastically improve the customer experience. And if we’re being frank, a traditional taxi ride rarely results in an ear-to-ear smile.
When I’m traveling from La Défense in Paris to Gare du Nord, the Uber-app tells me exactly when I will be arriving. So, if needed, I can reschedule my Thalys back to Brussels. Upon leaving the Uber, the payment is automatically processed via our company account and the receipt is already back in Gent when I enter the train station. The only thing I should worry about is catching my train. I booked my ride while I was saying goodbye to my client. I only leave the building when my driver has already arrived. I know exactly who my driver is, what his name is, what type of car he’s driving, what his license plate is. And what other customers think about him.
A superior customer experience: easy, transparent, no stress, no worries. And the price? In Paris it’s mostly in line with a traditional taxi. I would even be prepared to pay more for this kind of service, that so perfectly caters to my needs and expectations.
‘Game over’ for the traditional taxi companies? No. On the condition that they reinvent their service and boost their customer experience to a higher level. And not this one time, but continuously. Today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. You can’t stop the waves of digital transformation, but you can learn how to surf.
Solutions
How? Continuously scan for new innovations that can solve current issues, reverse-engineer and copy the success model of Uber, Lyft and others (there’s more to it than just building an app), look for solutions that go further than ‘driving from A to B’, become a partner with other mobility providers and build your future starting from your own strengths. But go further. Much further.
Connected taxis that map traffic congestion in real-time and provide smarter routes than Waze? A multi-lingual Alexa in every taxi that makes interaction with tourists possible? VR-glasses that recognize the landmarks while you’re driving by them?
Legislation should provide a level playing field. But then it is up to the taxi industry to take their (digital) future into their own hands. A lack of energy or passion will not be the issue. That too, we have been able to witness on March 27th 2018.
Last year, in Zürich there was the Product Management Festival, a conference aimed at anyone involved with the management of (primarily digital) products.
What’s intriguing is to see that many of the major digital players we know today (Facebook, Google, Flipkart, …) have similar beliefs in how product teams should operate. I’ve collected some of my favourite take-aways.
When we look at the future, we strongly believe that a new disruptive force will occur which will affect companies globally.
Within tech, we see tremendous amount of innovation primarily because of organisations embracing to be product-driven. This means that unlike having a single product, like your traditional e-commerce or retail business, major players own a number of different products and verticals and continue investments in these and new products or services.
This to capture either more market value, for example AirBnB has now also included experiences and restaurants to their offering beyond just providing a place to stay.
Google is another great example of this. A lot of their original products built beyond their search and advertisement business were built to support their advertisement business by collecting more insightful data. For example: Using Google Maps for navigation-purposes means you’re giving a lot of information about your own habits (and travel location) to Google, which improves their advertising business.
Hence, I strongly believe that organisations of the future will have a portfolio of different products. Either to support their main source(s) of revenue, or to partially prepare for waves of innovation. For example, for Apple Music it’s totally fine that their subscription service cannibalises iTunes. It’s preparing for the incoming wave of innovation which will sharply reduce the revenue from purchasing music anyhow.
With other words, investing to be a product-driven organisation will help you to become future-proof and tackle areas of growth heads-on.
Luckily, within product (value) creation, most of the process is pretty clear:
The above process can be quite useful to internally communicate with your team how to approach building a new product.
One of the misconceptions within product management is that your product vision is crucial to guide your team. The reality is that your product vision comes only after your belief as a company is crystal clear.
A product vision often changes over time and that hurts your team and corresponding processes while scaling up. Especially as your organisation grows and you house multiple product teams.
Beliefs on the other hand is something shared company-wide and remains solid, despite which direction a product might take.
While your product vision might be to build a platform which connects people, portraying the belief that a connected world is a better world will build a grander perspective for employees (and can drive multiple ideas for products). Now, the best type of products don’t just come from ideas though. They start with clear, validated people problems. Something to keep in mind!
Start with your belief, your product vision will follow (and evolve!) naturally.
Anyone who works within digital products will tell you that the creation of minimum viable products are important and that your assumptions should be tested with experiments.
What can be an incredible differentiator is speed. Upfront you know that 90% of your tests will fail (VWO, 2016). The question is how you can get to that 10% of learnings in the shortest amount of time?
Now, even smaller changes count for an experiment. Did you know that booking.com has 1000 running experiments at the same time? Continuously improving your product produces the best results, bottom-line.
This is why so many products see the light of day in tech organisations: Building a minimum viable product is quick, the success of a new product provides tremendous amount of value and the insuccess of a product provides value in the form of data and insight as well. With other words, there’s little to lose when starting a new product experiment, as long as you can contain the resources invested (people, time, money).
An important lessons as well: Quantitative data is not a substitute for qualitative insight.
There are many ways to collect and handle data while working with digital products. A common trap is to focus purely on revenue as KPI.
Metrics should be taken more broadly. It should be defined as something which has impact and is time-bound (eg. 7 days, a month, …). This can go beyond the traditional revenue such as understanding your user’s retention rates or general engagement rates. I like to think about value per user. Where the definition of value can change depending on the type of product.
Sometimes, it’s also not the goal of a singular product to provide revenue, but rather to provide data and/or traffic to your main product(s). For example: Unsplash started as a free photography site, primarily to attract attention to the freelance marketplace Crew. Funny enough, Unsplash is it’s own separate business now. Sometimes supporting products can grow larger than the product they were supposed to support.
When you’re steering a product organisation which expands, autonomous teams are a necessity. This is why a belief-driven company is so crucial, this way the company can steer in the right direction and everybody shares the same beliefs.
Otherwise, it becomes tricky to set up multiple product teams which individually run different types of experiments. One of the core questions often posed by management teams in this type of environments is how you can achieve trust. This is primarily achieved by building accountability frameworks within your organisation.
In a world where machine learning has become commercially viable and data science has become more critical within organisations to replace decision-taking processes, it’s only a matter of time before human labour in regards to decision-taking processes will be replaced.
One of the missing pieces in the technology right now is empathy. This is where humans still will prove to be valuable in data science.
Hence: data is one aspect, and handling that date is a whole other aspect. In automising your organisation, do not forget the core value of empathy, otherwise automising your business will make your products worse.
Now, if you read all of this and wonder – where should I start with my organisation? It boils down to something really simple: Start with a new minimum viable product. Make your small, insignificant idea a reality. Then, understand how it can run independently, affect your company vision and ultimately it’s culture.
A successful minimum viable product, being run successfully from other processes within the organisation can be excellent lever to push for change. This results in effective stakeholder management by standardising the process in a way that minimum viable products are built and scaled and how these independent product teams work within the organisation. That’s creating change bottom-up.
Of course, if your management team is hugely interested in making a shift to a product-driven organisation, setting out a company belief and building a roadmap is a great stepping stone to start building products.
Humble beginnings make for great endings!
We are new-style management consultants focusing on transforming and growing organizations in a digital-first world with offices in Europe and the Middle East. New-style? Co-created business strategy, custom-made transformation trajectories and actual experienced business advisors are only some of our differentiators and why clients love to work with us. We design the future of your business together.
Click here to find out more on how we can help you make your company future proof
Sven is a management consultant with a love for design. He is deeply interested in building better digital products.
As is true for any traditional retailer today, AVA too is seeing the impact of digital disruption in their industry.
Pure online players are entering their market while introducing new conditions.
Smaller local shops are using the power of online to expand their territory.
Competition is becoming more fierce as the market becomes more saturated and price comparison becomes the norm.
Loyalty is becoming more important, yet harder to nurture.
The identity of shops is transforming from point of sales to experience centers.
Consumers’ preferences are changing as they are switching from paper to digital and quantity over quality. Where they previously depended on their direct network and store expertise, they are now influenced by a wide range of actors from all over the world.
AVA has always been able to build its brand on a strong local presence and mainly mouth-to-mouth advertising. Today, AVA understands that to maintain their position in a digital world, a new strategy will become necessary.
Inspired by our book on Digital Transformation, AVA reached out to Duval Union Consulting to guide them on this new but interesting journey.
Together we held an intense 2 day workshop session to increase insight into the impact of digital disruption and create a north star vision and strategy for the future of AVA.
We discussed AVA’s ambitions with regard to their competition, the relationship with the customer, new products and business models and the change needed within the organization to make everything happen.
During these 2 days, DUC introduced the concept of the Hybrid Customer Journey. The hybrid journey is our vision to future proof traditional retailers to re-claim their position by investing in new retail real-estate only available to those with a great local presence.
We concluded the session with a North Star Vision for AVA to become empowered in a digital world and a digital agenda listing the different programs to tackle to make the transformation happen.
Today we are happy to see that the enthusiasm and sense for initiative is strong within AVA. We are proud to have been given the opportunity to be their partner in this journey and continue to closely follow their progress.