EAE News
"Intuition is no use without specialization", Marc Sansó
11 de April de 2019
The Director of the MIB led a new session of the Focused Program aimed at EAE's Alumni Community.
The series of EAE Alumni activities includes live-streamed training such as the latest session of the Focused Program led by Marc Sansó, the lecturer on the Master of International Business at EAE Business School. Entitled "Team Management in the Digital Age", the new session discussed key aspects for executives to take into consideration so that they are ready to anticipate and tackle disruption successfully.
The Professor and consultant began his presentation by analysing the key developments in the history of mankind, their capacity to improve people's quality of life and their traceability. He went on to discuss the Human Social Development Index created by the Research Institute for Social Development in Massachusetts to measure the evolution of mankind using parameters such as life expectancy, the capacity to trade and the power to treat illness. Within this historical context, the Director of EAE's MIB focused on the great turning point represented by the invention of the steam engine, the first truly disruptive industrial revolution in the 18th Century. In 1983, with the development of the first computer and the emergence of digitization, Sansó heralded the start of the second industrial revolution.
Although many changes still lay ahead in the years to come, with the exponential onslaught in the development of digital technologies, Marc Sansó explained that both (steam engine and digitization) are disruptive technologies that trigger experiential impacts, adding that we are "compelled to undergo flat growth to the extent that nothing seems to be happening and then, suddenly, growth rockets".
Aimed at executives, entrepreneurs and consultants, the webinar focused on the need to keep one step ahead and anticipate changes "because timing is everything in the current competitive environment. It is important to predict disruptive changes and their application in terms of customer behaviour", explained Marc Sansó, before discussing how to tackle this from an active and also incremental perspective. "It is crucial to identify the effects of competitive disruption in order to be prepared for the changes".
Marc Sansó went on to mention Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Professor and creator of disruptive innovation theory, to answer two key questions: how to anticipate disruptive changes in competitive environments, and how to gauge the disruption's impact on each industry specifically. In answer to the first question, to anticipate changes, Sansó recommends listening to the customer, analysing the reactions of the big players to the disruption and examining the evolution of certain key technologies to analyse their application. "Disruptive changes always begin in specialized segments that are insignificant in terms of volume, and the reaction they provoke is often rejection", explained Marc Sansó.
To tackle businesspeople's vulnerability with respect to disruption and anticipate the technological changes in the short run, Marc Sansó emphasized cost items such as friction, search and objective. "Digital transition really favours the emergence of new kinds of competitors that attack the vulnerabilities of the established models", he explained.
Digital business is evolving and there are still many developments yet to occur. The outlook is dynamic and what we understood as digital business a few years ago is not how we see it now. "Unless we can grasp this, we will not be able to understand the second industrial revolution or digital competences in this competitive environment". In the new industrial paradigm, evolution is constant. "Every industry may be affected by the disruption because its ripple have a domino effect", emphasized the expert leading the online training session.
Although the more heavyweight industries are harder to disrupt, this does not mean that it will not happen eventually. The Director of EAE's MIB advised the Alumni Community to predict what is going to happen and understand what is happening now through a lens of knowledge and analysis (metrics). "Keep one step ahead because it is a matter of disrupt or be disrupted", he added.
We are standing at the threshold of a disruption that is set to changes our customer relations, monetization model, value chains, business models and cost structures. Faced with such a scenario, there are really only two options, "If we grasp the impact of technology on the industry, we will be prepared. Otherwise, we will find ourselves in a tricky position. Set against this backdrop of confused change, it is essential to have a specialist to count on in the context of decision-making".
Marc Sansó gave his followers a number of strategic recommendations. "It is great to have intuition as executives but, if the rules of the game change completely, intuition is no use without specialization". Moreover, he advised them to concentrate on the tasks that really have the power to create value in terms of the strategic evolution of the industry. "Thinking, delegating and monitoring requires strategy, execution and monetization".