For this fifth interview of a transformation leader, I met with Karin Parmentier. Do not be fooled by her French-sounding surname she is a straight talking, to the point, Dutch woman who developed her HR transformation expertise with Deloitte, and now with her own company and partners, she is transforming
Even more aggressively than Amazon, Alibaba positions itself from an e-commerce platform to a full-fledged retail operating system. This is not so much about the shiny tech toys embedded in flagship automated stores but absorbing every mom-and-pop store with a fully integrated OS. This paints a future where the smallest
Strategy
I try to avoid talking mathematics when I address innovation strategy. As soon as I do it I’m victim of a very personal impostor syndrome (I’m not a mathematician) while realizing I’m going down deep, deep rabbit holes. As a matter of fact, when writing about Monthy
My first MBA class a long time ago was about finance. I was explained that the simplest (and probably most accurate) definition of finance is « Money over time ». It struck me yesterday that the simplest definition of innovation is “ Customers over time”.
If you’re trying to understand how retail tries to adapt to an always-on, always connected customer base, US department stores are fantastic case studies. Macy’s, the largest of them [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macy%27s], went probably through all the cycles of digital trends you can
Strategy
When we arrived in the Netherlands two years ago, we adjusted our mode of life immediately. The key thing was to get rid of our cars. Who needs one if you live in Amsterdam? But this mobility paradise didn’t happen just because « Dutch love bikes ». There were actually many
Strategy
I’ve seen and read a lot of nonsense lately on how China is building a global surveillance network of its citizens through social scoring. Truth be told, it is not a simple issue, and I was glad to get myself a better perspective on what it means through Rogier
My IRU World Congress keynote in Oman is coming up next week on Nov. 6 Here is what I can share for now: These last few years have been quite hectic for many markets such as real estate or retail, where new entrants such as AirBnB or « older » new entrants
Strategy
We idealize startups as young (start-), fast-growing companies (-up) that innovate with new technology. In Europe, most of the startups you meet don’t grow fast. And to be clear, fast would ‘just’ mean reaching the first million euros in sales within a year or two. Such speed usually requires
Two weeks ago I had to rent a car from Hertz. It was one of the blandest experience I’ve had with a customer desk in a very long time. This is not a rant on Hertz or this particular team. I could guess that my customer experience by all
Strategy
Most of the innovation programs that I encounter are still organized as R&D programs. We often call that the innovation pipeline fallacy. It's primarily due to the fact that most organizations don't get that innovation is not R&D and that consecutively innovation
During the past few years, whether discussing mentoring programmes or cultural transformation with large corporations, I am faced with a disproportionate belief in “tools”. I think I need to clarify that it is not because as consultants we use tools that we sell tools. A keynote from Frédérique PAIN [https: