Heraeus_GB15_Magazin_EN_RZ_29_04_lowRes - THINGS MUST CHANGE …

29 HERAEUS | MAGAZINE 2015 | ESSAY 29 HERAEUS | MAGAZINE 2015 | ESSAY D id you know that the TUI Group, a multinational travel and tourism company, began as a mining company operating as Preussag AG? Or that Nokia, once the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones, earned its first profits mak- ing rubber boots in the Finnish taiga? One must wonder at such turns of events. Certainly, not all companies undergo such radical changes in the course of their history. But versatility, along with innovative activity, remains a cornerstone of success in business. Standing still has always been tantamount to sliding back. Some of us are old enough to remember the companies AEG, Borgward and Telefunken. Because they failed to read the signals from the market, they have now disappeared. I am hearing more often these days that it was precisely our stability that enabled our company to grow and thrive. I agree with this, in view of our ability to respond to changing markets and new opportunities. Constant change has been a factor in the success of Heraeus over the past 165 years. Without it, a pharmacy in Hanau could not have become the global technology company we are today. But let us not confuse stability with lethargy! Those who make that mistake miss out on the future. Nokia, which I mentioned earlier, missed the smartphone revolution starting in 2007 and has been struggling ever since. THINGS MUST CHANGE IF THEY ARE TO GET BETTER by Dr. Jürgen Heraeus We recognize that the disappearance of a large company is not uncommonly related with its inability to adapt nimbly to a changed environment. And how many firms have run aground on the requirements of the globalized market, which relies on entirely different supply chains and cost structures than a domestic market? When we look at digital business models, we cannot fail to notice the number of traditional department stores that have closed their doors since the development of e-commerce at the start of this millennium. The disruptive moment of digitization It doesn’t necessarily have to happen, as the Otto Group in Hamburg demonstrates. People there recognized early on that the traditional catalog business which did so well for decades would give way to online sales. Their entire strat- egy, including their management structure, was realigned toward online commerce. Not everyone at the family-owned company was in favor of this entrepreneurial change. Yet today, Otto is second only to Amazon as an online retailer of fashion and lifestyle products for European consumers. And nobody asks for a mail order catalog any more. However, while digitization has been most obviously disruptive in the retail sector, its effects do not stop there. The increasing reliance on networking and digital data to improve a company’s business activities is also a factor in industry. An important driver is the Industry 4.0 initiative,

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