This is great advice and I’m sure anyone wanted to do more speaking can take notes here. I love that you said it has to be like a movie, it is my methodology too. You have to be able to engage the audience and do a bit of storytelling for your information to stick.
Emre, we met when we were both attending the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as guests of Huawei Technologies as we are both global key opinion leaders. What does it mean to you to have access to these companies around the world, to be what we call now an “influencer"?
Opinions and experience differ from one region to another. This is the beauty of the world, also the challenge. Global firms have to be aware of the local facts and the differences. Because all of the local details will give a global idea, moreover a universal idea.
A product or service has to be found “useful” from Alaska to Singapore. I mean, it has to be a solution for a particular problem or need and they vary from one region to another. Me, being a Business Influencer, I also try to position myself as a solution. While encountering local experiences of global firms I learn a lot. I am not doing this to teach, not to counsel. This is a continuous learning process which creates benefits for both sides.
In Barcelona, there was a lot of talk around 5G and Digital Transformation. Can you share your views on how these areas will change the way the world operates? Are we overusing the words "disruptive innovation" when talking about it or are we truly moving into a new era?
The dispute between Taxi Drivers and UBER all around the world is a strong evidence of "disruptive innovation". A company that owns neither vehicles nor drivers manages to become a competitor of the ones owning these two. The same goes for Airbnb. They do not operate hotels yet they too managed to take a groundbreaking step in "disruptive innovation" with the accommodation they provide, a big rival of regular touristic facilities. But how and when this situation has first emerged?
''I advise many companies today, to boost pilot projects. And each project is managed like an independent entity. Even 3 project out of 10 is successful, they will find themselves in the champions league of their sector.''
The world is becoming more and more digitalized. But this can't be considered a standalone reason for the above-mentioned phenomenon. The fact that technology companies now rank first among the most valuable companies of the world is the unstoppable change affecting our lives. If we reduce the industry 4.0 to a simple definition, “a system solely designed to meet customer satisfaction and integrating artificial intelligence and supply-demand balance”, we will notice that the importance of the factory within the value change will slowly diminish.
In the 1970s, the share of production in the distribution of value-added was not very large however the preeminence of pre-production and post-production services have eventually became indisputable, which means companies must attach more importance to services to the services I mentioned above, including the logistics of the product, right financing so it can be bought by the consumer or the retailer, right advertising policies, digital applications, whether the product has a universal design, or whether its R&D function is designed to “make it better”, if it has a chance in the global competition...
In general, how do you think technology is impacting the way we do business now and in the future?
I don’t have a concrete answer to this but, it is envisaged that in 2027 the number of freelancers will surpass the number of employees on the payroll in the US.
Given the fact that we know many businesses that we are supporting, providing with incentives or limitless funds today will cease to exist in a foreseeable future where robots will dominate the manufacturing industry, the number of workers on payroll will diminish slowly, and many professions will fade into history and be replaced by new ones, what should we do then?
These are all very critical questions and providing an answer to each and every one of them is absolutely more important than keeping daily track of economic developments.