Keynote SpeakersStéphane Garelli is a world authority on competitiveness, having pioneered research in the field for over 30 years.
Professor Emeritus at IMD (Institute of Management Development) Lausanne, where he has founded the World Competitiveness Center, Garelli is also Professor Emeritus of World Competitiveness at the University of Lausanne.
Professor Garelli is closely connected to the world of business. He was, among others, Chairman of the Board of Directors and shareholder of “Le Temps“, the leading French-language Swiss newspaper, Chairman of the Board of the Sandoz Financial and Banking Holding, and Member of the board of the Banque Edouard Constant.
Professor Garelli was the Managing Director of the World Economic Forum and of the Davos Annual meetings for many years.
He was also a permanent senior adviser to the European management of Hewlett-Packard.
He is a member of a number of institutes, such as:
- China Enterprise Management Association
- Board of the Fondation Jean Monet pour l’Europe
- The Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences
- The Mexican Council for Competitiveness
- Advisory committee member of the Thai Management Association
He is also a member of the International Olympic Committee commission on Sustainability and Legacy.
Stéphane Garelli reads today’s global economic picture better than anyone else – he is an exciting speaker who combines content with an entertaining approach to complex issues supported by his trademark graphics.
His presentations on competitiveness provoke companies and individuals to think “outside the box”, and to confront their strategies with recent market trends and new competitive pressures.
In 2006 he published his best-selling book Top Class Competitors – How Nations, Firms and Individuals Succeed in the New World of Competitiveness with Wiley.
His latest book “Are You a Tiger, a Cat or a Dinosaur?” is published in several languages and available on Amazon.
Speaking topics include:
Competitiveness: A New Mindset
This world competitiveness landscape implies new attitudes and new approaches to managing people. It is not only being good at “what you do” that counts, but also being good at “what you are.” Winners will need to deal with more uncertainty and a higher degree of discomfort. They should nurture a healthy sense of ambition for their organization and themselves. Resilience and the ability to quickly re-invent oneself are crucial to success.
Companies need to stimulate a mindset of imagination (why not?), energy (why not now), and commitment (why not me). Companies are increasingly questioned, especially by the millennials, about their contribution to society, beyond their financial results. The “legality” of the actions of companies – conforming to the law – is no longer enough in a world where public opinion also demands “legitimacy” – adapting to a higher standard. In such a world, companies will need to answer the broader question: why us?
THE MEANING OF A “K” RECESSION
2021 will be a time to look at the world differently. Previous recessions’ underlying question was their duration: from V, the shortest, to L, which never ends. From this perspective, all firms were in the same boat. There was what economists call an aggregate of economic data.
Today it is different. It is a “K” recession. One part of the economy is on the brink of bankruptcy, such as air transport, tourism, events, and culture, while another, e-commerce, food and of course pharmaceuticals, is booming. Economic forecasting is thus complicated since you must deconstruct the figures sector by sector to get a clearer picture.
THE MONEY MUST CONTINUE TO FLOW
The lesson from past crises is that money must continue to flow into the economy. Since 2008, central banks have pursued a loose monetary policy (quantitative easing) and low interest rates. However, this time, governments have joined the effort by making credit and cash available to companies endangered by the successive lockdowns. The traditional fiscal rules, such as a maximum public debt of 60% of the GDP, have disappeared – and for a long time. The OECD estimates that its members’ total public debt reached some 137% of their combined GDP in 2020.
THE NEW NORMAL
While experiencing the Covid crisis, the economy is opening a new chapter in globalization. The last one was characterized by one global market with cost-efficiency and high profits. It could be summarized as “Just in Time”. The new chapter is characterized by a decoupling of economies and a duplication of technologies. The aim is to reduce the overdependence on supplies from other nations. The objective is to develop a “Just in Case” model, more secure, more resilient, and more expensive.
Besides, since crises may continue to occur in the future, a new concept is emerging: disaster management. It implies the management of events with low probability (a pandemic) but very high impact. It will imply the allocation of resources blocked for a long time (such as stocks of masks, vaccines, etc.), and thus more cost.
TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES ARE BREAKING THE ENTRY BARRIERS
Global technology companies now can extend their business reach far beyond their initial industry sector. Amazon is a world leader in cloud technology; Google and Facebook in digital advertising, Tesla in batteries and solar panels, and Amazon now produce more watches than the entire Swiss industry. Size matters. Ant financial, the electronic payment company of Alibaba, is 16 times larger than Paypal. The entry barriers in many businesses are thus falling and can also affect public institutions, for example, in the case of the creation of digital money (Libra). The challenge: who will be my competitors tomorrow, where will they come from?
A BLACK HOLE ECONOMY?
A few large companies concentrate on technology and financial power. The combined market capitalization of the ten largest global technology companies is over 9 trillion dollars, which is more than the combined value of their equivalent in the banking and pharma sectors. Technological giants do not only innovate, but they have also engaged in a strategy of buying promising start-ups, often above market value. They use about 25% of their financial resources to buy successful innovative young companies all over the world. They are engulfed in a sort of economic black hole managed by a few companies. As a consequence, many nations now run the risk of losing promising young companies which would have had the potential of becoming large national champions.
NEW BUSINESS MODELS
New business models flourish and surf on new technological platforms. The “free” model offers services as a counterpart to accessing personal data (Facebook), the “subscription” model locks consumers into a long-term relationship (Spotify). The “licensing” model only offers the use of a product, but not its ownership (Microsoft, Netflix). These business models change the relationship between companies and consumers. One objective is to lock consumers in a proprietary relationship, providing an ecosystem of products and services. In short, “you have the choice, provided that it is mine.”
