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Henrik Naujoks, who leads Bain's Financial Services practice in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, discusses optimism at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, and explains how new technologies are affecting business models around the world, creating new opportunities.
Read the transcript below.
HENRIK NAUJOKS: I'm surprised about the level of optimism that I'm experiencing in all of my discussions. Despite all of the fragility, despite all of the uncertainties that we see, there is, different to last year, there is a level of optimism and of confidence in the future.
I'm most inspired by the impact of technology. And we have discussed different technologies—whether it's blockchain, whether it's the data economy—that [are] basically changing the rules and opening up totally new opportunities, either in business, in political work, in social work.
And to be aware of that, and reflecting [on] the discussion that we had here, I have to say, we as business have to really think through how these technologies will impact the different areas of life, whether it's business, whether it's governmental, whether it's social. There are important learnings for my client work here, coming from Davos. Especially the discussions with the people here around new technologies, [which] made me very much aware that we have to talk about how to implement them. How to generate real business impact out of these technologies.
Because there's little debate about the "what"—new technologies will change business models, et cetera. But there is a lot of uncertainty around the "how."