Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
It was certainly more than once that you could hear top people in companies panicking: “We need to digitize or we will lose our position in the market!!” But what exactly does that mean? Is there a magic formula on how to transform existing analog business into digital?
Modern business is facing radical changes that occur daily and are the result of digitization. Existing methods of brand communication are no longer adequate and do not reach the modern consumer. Large companies are often ‘paralyzed’, while ‘small players’ and start up projects are shaking the world of business in its foundations … Uber, AirBnB and Tesla have become part of our everyday lives. The topic of how to adapt business to digitization was discussed by some of the leading figures of German and Serbian economy on the panel “Turning analog world into digital” at the CATCH 2016 Pitch Challenge Conference, organized by FoundCenter Investment.
One of the participants was Stefan Parhofer, part of Siemens’ project “Next 47” whose task is to foster relationships of this company with start-ups. Parhofer says that large companies, accustomed to one way of doing business, are finding it difficult to adapt their strategies to digital. “We need to learn from start-up projects that are no longer young entrepreneurs from some garage, but have become big players.”
Lothar Eckstein (Mixedzone), agrees with him, pointing out that the digitization is a process. “We adapt every day, we change our business models to meet the challenges set by the digital”, said Eckstein, and added that today a good team is much more important than a good idea, “because a good team will know how to recognize a good idea, while a bad team could reject it.” Therefore the key is in integration of business with digitization, supporting start-up projects and giving opportunities to people who have ideas. “We all know that the big Apple was created in a garage,” emphasized Christian-Alexander Vry, well-known investor from Found Fair Ventures, and added: “but no one knows that the giant like Siemens was also created in a small room.”
Advertising industry was among the first to begin transforming its business models and adapting to new technologies, primarily in order to properly meet the needs of large companies and bring their brands closer to the new generations who “live in the virtual world.” Srđan Šaper, founder of I&F McCann Grupa said that digitalization reminds of electrification: “when electricity first appeared, it was also something invisible, but something that changed our lives, and now we can’t survive without electricity. The same goes for digitization, it is also invisible, but it’s changing us every day. And just as a company can’t operate without electricity, it can’t operate without digitization.”
Large companies are therefore increasingly turning to start up projects, supporting innovative ideas that they will know how to use and incorporate in their operations and products. It is no longer enough to have development sectors within your company, it is necessary to look for people with ideas “outside your backyard.” And that is the goal of CATCH 2016 Pitch Challenge conference, at which the best business start-up projects will be granted funds in the total amount of one million euros, provided by the leading investors of the German economy.