Serial entrepreneur and thought leader Peter Hinssen has seen a dramatic change in the way traditional firms have embraced new technology to emerge as phoenixes in an ever-shifting business environment. He talked to Silicon Luxembourg ahead of his Luxembourg speech at Springbreak 2022.
Jess Bauldry: You’ve published five books about entrepreneurship over the past ten years during which you have changed how you talk about change management. You went from referring to the future as the day after tomorrow to living the never normal. Can you tell us more about this concept of never normal?
Peter Hinssen: I love technology and innovation and when you’re living the startup life, that’s just the most natural thing for you. You get excited about something new and then you introduce it. But then, after three tech startups, I decided to completely change my life. I had the opportunity to join the London Business School, and then later on MIT. And all of a sudden I wasn’t working with other technologists or other tech founders anymore. I was working with people who have traditional careers, in banks or in retail or in insurance companies, and they’ve worked in large organisations. I was fascinated by the fact that I could get really excited as a tech entrepreneur about new ideas and technologies and then do something with that and try to make it into something that works. And I really didn’t understand why these people who had traditional lives and careers didn’t automatically get as excited as I did. The first couple of books were about trying to get that technological spark of innovation across to people who were a little bit afraid of technology or innovation and had difficulty in getting that scaled inside their company.
What changed to make you shift your focus?
What I started to see is that there were reasons why these traditional companies have difficulty in reinventing themselves. You can easily bitch and moan about corporate policies or bureaucracy or old-school thinking, but how can you actually make that work? So the last book that I wrote, The Phoenix and the Unicorn, was about the fact that there are unicorns out there who have no legacy and who can easily scale. But then there are traditional companies that are capable of reinventing themselves.
Can you give an example of a phoenix, a company that has successfully reinvented itself?
I took Walmart as the main example of a company that is the largest company in the world: 2.5 million people. And if you think about what they have done in the last five years in completely reinventing themselves to be able to fight against Amazon. I think it’s one of the most spectacular transformations I’ve ever seen. I think the older I get, the more affinity I have with people trying to really pivot one of those traditional organisations.
What needs to happen for big companies in Europe to take inspiration from the unicorns and seize on the opportunities provided by constant change?
I think we’re going to see the corporate world adapting to that constant change. But whether we can do that as a society and as the fabric that binds us, that’s going to be a different question altogether. And I think that’s where we might have to really step up our game.
To what extent will talent continue to be a pain point?
The war on talent is only going to intensify. One of the elements I think is going to be really interesting is education because education is still the slowest moving piece in almost every geography. Are we capable in a world that is constantly evolving to train the next generation to better deal with that? Are we going to be able to ignite that creativity and passion that we need to actually have that next generation really make a difference? I think that’s where I get a little bit worried because the tech startups have done it, the corporates are doing it. But can we do that in every fabric of society? And that’s where I think we’re going to see that we probably need to take it to another level.
As a Dutch-Belgian national, you’ve spent a lot of your career in the US in Silicon Valley. Can the European tech market ever hope to catch up with the US tech market?
I am more optimistic than I was five years ago because, having spent so much time in the US and being European, I think that I understand the complexity and challenges on both sides. And I think one of the things that always strikes everyone when you visit places, whether it’s Boston or San Francisco, is the enormous upbeat optimism about being able to make a difference. Whereas in Europe, there was a general gloominess and pessimism. I think that’s slowly changing. And it’s deeply cultural. I always make the joke that if you go to the US and meet people that are giddy about the future, it’s because they are the descendants of people who, 300 years ago, were optimistic about getting onto a boat and risking their lives. While we, here in Europe, are the descendants of people that said, ‘I’m not getting on that boat’.
What are the key factors for changing this mindset?
I think one thing is the idea of celebrating success and role models. What we’ve seen in the last five years is the number of companies that are capable of scaling to become global players, has dramatically changed in Europe. Five years ago, you only had Spotify and that was basically it. But now there are plenty of examples of European companies that have been able to really do it on their own, without the idea that a European startup is just born to be acquired. I think celebrating those successes and role models is a really important thing. It’s not easy for us Europeans to do that because we tend to always look for the negative things.
What trends are you most excited about in terms of technology and entrepreneurship?
One of the things that I find fascinating now is this idea of superfluidity, constant change and this necessity to look outside of our normal swimming lanes. It means the blurring of boundaries. Walmart used to be a retailer and is now becoming a really big player in logistics and last mile delivery and e-commerce. But it’s also really into figuring out what for example, a Metaverse future could be for a company like Walmart, or thinking about what a token economy could do, where they could play a really important role. And I think that means that it’s not just the retailer that does retail, we’re going to see a blurring of boundaries. And that’s going to create enormous opportunities.
And how do you see the scramble for tech talent playing out?
The war on talent is going to intensify like crazy. We’ve had talent agents for a long time that if you want a star for your Hollywood movie, or you want a top basketball player, you have talent agents to actually take care of you as an athlete or an actor. You now have tech talent agents that are using the same type of mechanism that they would use to put Tom Cruise in the movie.
So it’s not just a great resignation, it’s an intensification of that talent war, that is going to become challenging and I think this is where the fight between the unicorns and the Phoenixs is going to make a difference. I mean 10 years ago, it would probably still be okay to join the bank. If you graduated five years ago, all the really cool kids were joining startups. But, now I think we’re going to see the Phoenix phenomenon playing out where yes, it’s a lot of fun to be in a co-working space and to do a startup with three people. But if you can have the chance to really change a company that has been around for 100 years and have all the resources at your disposal, that’s pretty cool as well.
Peter Hinssen is a thought leader on radical innovation who has published five books on leadership and business innovation, including his latest The Phoenix and the Unicorn. A Dutch-Belgian national who grew up in the US, Hinssen founded a number of startups, including Alcatel-Lucent, Across Technology, Porthus and e-COM. He currently runs Nexxworks, helping organisations to become fluid, innovate and thrive.
Click here to register to hear his keynote speech at Springbreak, at Luxexpo, at 6pm on 10 March.
