“Digital is everything. Understand your customer. Win or learn.”, was the headline of the first guest speaker’s lecture of the digital food business week 2020.

Manuel Nappo came up with the very first question: how the future will look like? Nobody knows what to expect. The picture of “The New Yorker” from 2017 looks as though robots will be walking around like individuals. They don’t seem to be connected among themselves. And even dogs will be replaced by robots. And less fortunate people will be sitting on the floor and begging for money. It is difficult to predict where the digital transformation leads us in the future. But digital forces us to think very differently.

Linear thinking is over…

For most of history, our experience has been linear. From generation to generation we did not have big changes. We used the same tools, ate the same meals, and used similar channels to communicate with another.

This changed severely in the last decades. The web came up in the 90s and was built around us. Since then, there is no way for us to get away anymore. The media consumption is just every time and everywhere.

…today we think exponentially

Against our intention, today the future grows exponentially. Technology is growing rapidly and digital has so many opportunities. These reasons make it very difficult to predict what will come and how the social life will change. In other words, the past was easier to predict. Imagine you make 30 steps on a road. After 30 steps you are 30 meters from where you began. This linear thinking suited for the last hundred years. Digital transformation forces us to change our thinking. Imagine, setting anatomy aside, and you could double the length of your stride. However, not considering anatomy right now, imagine you could double the length of your stride. By step number 30, you more than a billion meters further then where you started.

Source: https://singularityhub.com/2016/04/05/how-to-think-exponentially-and-better-predict-the-future/

Disruptive thinking

Thinking outside the box is required to find innovations that create a new market and disrupt an existing one. As digital grows exponentially it is extremely important to think in a new and disruptive way.

Source: https://www.hwzdigital.ch/corporate-disruption/

Having a look into the past, we see as an example a disruptive innovation which changed our behaviour. It was Kodak who invented the first digital photo camera in 1975. At that time the analog photo cameras worked still very well. Only about 25 years later digital cameras overran the analog ones. That was exactly the reason why Kodak went bankrupt after that. It is not only about disruptive thinking it is also about coming up with it at a suitable time, in the right place, and then actually doing it.

No progress without any change

Everyone likes progress, but no one likes changes. That is why leadership is so hard. Digital leadership starts with culture that needs a vision. We need to know what our aim is or how the world should be that we want to get. We should not ask what we do, but it is essential to ask and answer why we do. Therefore, having leader who is a good example is much more effective than an assertive boss.

Be more Alfred!

Alfred Escher is kind of the Swiss version of Elon Musk. Already 150 years ago he had disruptive ideas which forwarded Switzerland in a high extend. He was the one who had the great idea to build the Gotthard tunnel. Because there were no engineers, he founded ETH. Because there was no capital available for such a big construction, he founded Credit Suisse. And because the social security for the workers was not sufficient in those days, he founded Swiss Life.
If we want to shape our future, we may not be simple bystanders. We have to look for the right questions, share knowledge, promote a collaborative environment, and build ecosystems. Never underestimate the ideas and the power of new and small players. The best defense is a great offense. Always remember wherever the digital transformation will take you, don’t forget to have fun, you cannot avoid it.

Image Source Cover: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/23

Author: Monja Züst