2023: prediction is hard, but …

The baseball player, Yogi Berra, famously said “Prediction is hard. Especially about the future.” That is of course entirely correct. Who of us predicted the COVID pandemic or the way the stock market tanked in 2022? Of course, there are always doomsayers who continuously predict these things, but they are right in the way a … Read more

Reflecting on 2022

As 2022 is moving towards its end and this post is supposed to come out on Christmas day, I felt it might be worthwhile to share some of my reflections on 2022. In many ways, it has been a bit of a strange year in my view in that we on the one hand moved … Read more

10 product development fallacies

During the last months, several companies connected with me to help them with their product development process. Typically, these are embedded-systems companies with strong stage gate processes dictated by the challenges associated with mechanics and electronics. Their challenges are typically associated with procurement and manufacturing. The reason that these companies reach out is the increasing … Read more

Boost your digitalization: concluding thoughts

Having worked on the digitalization topic for the last decade or more, with dozens of companies and in a variety of capacities, ranging from researcher to consultant, I keep being amazed at the multi-dimensional, highly interconnected nature of the challenge as well as the lack of understanding and the confusion around the topic. Of course, … Read more

Boost your digitalization: platformize

Many of the companies I work with aspire to build an ecosystem around their product portfolio. The idea of having others complement your offering and increasing its stickiness while taking a cut of the revenue generated by these complementors is, of course, incredibly appealing. As with most things in life, if something sounds too good … Read more

Boost your digitalization: ecosystem dimension

Western civilization is built on the notion of the sovereign individual: each person is unique with his or her rights, responsibilities, dreams and fears standing separate from others. Buddhist dogma takes the exact opposite perspective: the notion of self is an illusion and the goal of meditation and other religious practices is to free yourself … Read more

Boost your digitalization: process orchestration

There’s little doubt in anyone’s mind, I hope, that automation lies at the heart of all the progress in human well-being and economic development. It started with outsourcing physical labor to machines, initially through watermills and windmills and later through the use of internal combustion engines and electric motors. Later on, also “white collar” work … Read more