Interview
| Hillenraad100 | 2016 | 7
The expiration date of the dutch agriculture and horticulture industries
After eight years, Dr. Willem Vermeend is stepping down from his position as chairman of the Committee of Experts. This does not, however, mean that he will be slowing down. On the contrary. His agenda is packed with boosting start-ups and his role as professor of Economics 4.0. He has also been the special FinTech envoy on behalf of the Dutch government since February 2016. His urgent message to the Dutch agriculture and horticulture industries is as follows: ‘Standing still once meant going backwards. Now it means going out of business, so get a move on!’ As a professor, Willem Vermeend must have said the following to beginning students a number of times: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a new year. I do not want to discourage you, but by Christmas half of you will be gone.’ The stronger students saw it as an incentive to do their very best, and that is the exact advice the outgoing chairman of the Committee of Experts of the Hillenraad100 would like to give the reader. ‘I spoke some time ago with a top executive at Google,’ he recalls. ‘I expressed the idea that he and Google had nothing to worry about. A massive company like that has today become part of the landscape. He had to laugh: ‘Willem, at this very moment there are thousands of brilliant people sitting in attics thinking about how to replace us. Just one of them is enough to bring us down. We have no illusions.’ It is this attitude I’m missing in all too many entrepreneurs in the Dutch agriculture and horticulture industries. ‘Things are going well, aren’t they?’ say many. ‘We are turning a profit again and the recession is over.’ I tell them they are seeing nothing more than a revival of the Old Economy. I give it ten years and the world will look unrecognisably different than it does today. Ten years. You should probably start adapting your business model tomorrow.’
On to the Economy 4.0
In his characteristic rapid speaking style, Willem Vermeend explained what will affect each company in each sector. ‘First, we will see an accelerated advance of digitisation. The phablet, the big brother of the smartphone and the little cousin of the tablet, will for billions of people be the multifunctional window onto the world. Retrieving information, communicating, receiving education – it all goes through that single device. In India I saw that the phablet has taken the place of our old textbooks; children follow entire courses on it. Also remarkable: India skipped the laptop in one powerful movement. Emerging economies are capable of that like no one else: immediately embracing innovation while we are still suffering from the law of the handicap of a head start. Secondly, we will see an influx of new, disruptive technologies: the Internet of Things, everything that has to do with big data analysis, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, drones, robotics etc. The combination of these two movements
is the fuel for the Economy 4.0. I’d emphatically add a third pillar to it: agreements made in Paris during the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference. This trio will have a huge impact on the world economy and each one provides opportunities for the Dutch agriculture and horticulture industries. To my regret and surprise, I actually do not see much of it in the sector as a whole. Here and there, an individual company is doing something with drones, sensors and robotics, but it has not yet been happening across the board. And you can no longer tackle tomorrow’s world on your own. Forget the chain. Start thinking in terms of networks, because everything and everyone is tied together. Whoever does not wake up, can forget about it.’
satisfies a growing global need, i.e. reducing CO2 emissions through technology. CO2 is increasingly becoming an expense companies want to be rid of, including for image reasons. If you can come up with clever solutions to that, the world will queue up for you and your product. Start looking today for start-ups that will challenge logistics, finance or marketing. In doing so, retain those aspects of your current business model that are good and apply those parts of Economics 4.0 that bring you further. Look for partners that are currently outside your field of vision. Examples include the Alibaba trading platform. If you can and may conduct online business there, you will have more success than at the retailer around the corner.’
A new Hillenraad100?
‘Standing still once meant going backwards. Now it means going out of business, so get a move on!’ The jackpot: 13 trillion dollars
The strength and scale of the Dutch agriculture and horticulture industries are also their Achilles heel, says Willem Vermeend. ‘It all looks so solid, who could possibly mess that up? Well, for example, one of the many start-ups that I see at work in the UK, who capitalise on the opportunities offered by Climate Change. In the coming decades, 13 trillion dollars will be spent on this development. As a self respecting Dutch green company, you really should be part of that! In the past, small fish were eaten by the big fish; now, the slow fish are being hunted and eaten by the fast fish. Too many business owners still believe in the idea that you have to be big to survive. No, you have to be fast. So quickly take notice of the many things those greentec startups are thinking of. They see what many have yet to: greentec is booming because it
Although (and perhaps because) he himself is a former politician, Willem Vermeend recommends not waiting on politics. ‘While politicians discuss, the world is developing. So do not fixate on the top sector policy and choose your own route. Do not get annoyed by the fact that education is no longer producing the right people, but instead educate them yourself. There are already plenty of companies running colleges, because the established order is not meeting their needs. And finally, I would not be surprised if next year, the Hillenraad100 began measuring companies by the criteria of the Economy 4.0. How do you score on the application of new technology, how open are you to greentec, what are you a pioneer in: big data, sensors or drones? I think that seed companies will still score quite well there, but that innovations like a differently shaped or coloured flower are no longer enough. Because in the end, it is all happening at a higher level: where is your network, what is your connection to the future? I therefore look very much forward to a Hillenraad100 that assesses companies more on future prospects than on current results. Because when I look at myself, I too once thought in terms of five-year plans. But they became threeyear plans, one year, one quarter. Tomorrow, you may have been overtaken and as such, the Hillenraad100 will become a disruptive list.’