You had been building this amazing 5 year plan. Business was growing, your ambitions were high and then all of a sudden a gigantic meteorite called COVID-19 struck our planet and caused a major standstill of life and business. The world will never re-start in the old mode. You have loads of questions. How will the post-COVID-19 world look like? What can companies do today to survive, strive and win after the harsh winter of COVID-19?

In this keynote, Rik sets the scene and warns leadership to not just freeze a company in a temporary coma, but to act right now and at full force. There never was a better moment to make companies future proof. He shares valuable tips and tricks to prepare every company to be ready for The Day After COVID-19.

The business environment has been reshaped dramatically in between 2000-2020 due to technological waves that have changed people and society way faster than most companies were able to cope with.

We have entered the era of the Smart Ecosystems Economy. Smart healthcare, smart logistics, smart retail, smart agriculture, smart food, smart mobility, smart cities, smart education, smart banking, smart insurance, smart utilities,… will become our daily reality.

Big Data, AI and Robotization will lead to a data-driven world in which mass production will be replaced by mass hyper-personalisation and as all companies will be fighting for data, this will lead to a devastating blurring of old industry lines. The new competition will be one between ecosystems. Business leaders and management teams know that they need to become platform players and be part of ecosystems.

In this hands-on keynote, Rik explains the simple rules of the game and how to play it.

Why did Nokia loose the smartphone battle? Why did Kodak fail? What happened to Xerox? Why did Chernobyl turn out a disaster? Change the culture is the key.

The old normal is not fully dead and the new one is not fully born. We have entered the Twilight Twenties: the in-between zone. There are no scripts for that twilight zone and those that travel it based on assumptions, will not survive.

The good old normal culture was inside-out, top-down, balanced scorecard driven, hierarchical, rigid and based on patterns and assumptions. It was killing companies in the past and it will be killing even more companies in this era of lightspeed changes times. Change it while you still can and start very simply by implementing one essential new KPI which is the perfect antidote for the old normal culture: the Net Curiosity Score (#NCS).

The scripts for the New Normal are in the making, the game will be won by those that know how to adapt to the new rules. It will be the curious ones that will re-write those rules. In this keynote, Rik explains the why, how and what of the new culture that companies need to adapt and why curiosity is the leading force to make that change.

The Day After Tomorrow will be here soon. Managers shouldn’t be taken by surprise. Having been a managing director in the ‘good old’ textile industry for over 25 years, Rik does understand how challenging these fast changing times are for managers and their teams and why they do ask these questions: “Will my company still be there in 2035 or are we going to be crashed by digital disruption anyway?”; “How are we still going to be relevant to people and society by then?”; “What is real and what is not, what is relevant and what is not in this vast jungle of hypes, buzzwords and new technological developments?”; “Where and how should we start?”.

The answers are simple: Yes, every company can still be around and relevant in 2035. Understanding the physics of the New Normal, is key. Once you ‘think new normal’, it is just a matter of re-composing your assets and building blocks to design the right business model, to develop the right company structure, culture and management style and the right skillset to make your company future proof.