About
Rik Vera
Rik Vera is acknowledged as being one of the world’s leading authorities on extreme customer centricity and building antifragile ecosystems in both, B2C and B2B (it is all H2H anyway). He is internationally renowned for helping his client base to understand the new customer, the digitized society, and business canvas, as well as the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in the OMO world.
With over 20 years experience in C-level positions at global manufacturing companies and over 10 years of deep dive into the universe of the Big data, AI and robotization driven new normal, Rik displays this unique blend of understanding the old normal and how to manage a company today and the impact of digital on people, society and business. He uses that vast experience and his talent to be creative with existing building blocks, to explore, explain and design how to build extremely customer centric and antifragile ecosystem based business models that are profitable, future proof for the day after tomorrow, and good for the people and planet.
For over 10 years now, Rik has been inspiring and advising some of the biggest brands in the world in various industries on extreme customer centricity, artificial intelligence, innovation, digital transformation, new business models and the physics of the new universe, in which companies can develop their interface with their customers and outsmart competition. Rik can zoom into the very details of every single aspect that shapes the new normal.
Rik is a serial producer of new ideas, quotes, theories, models (like the ecosystem canvas), formulas (like the TREE formula and c2MxEi) and KPI’s (like the #NCS). He is a best selling author, author of business bestseller “Managers The Day After Tomorrow”, and sought after, experienced inspirational keynote speaker who engages audiences all over the globe. He is a highly rated guest speaker at the most influential business schools. His performances, workshops and coaching sessions are not only insightful and thought-provoking, but are infamous for their sheer energy, entertainment, passion and that unique ‘Rik Vera signature’.
In 2020, from his high tech home studio, Rik performs digitally, into homes and offices across every continent. Now considered one of the world’s most inspiring and energizing virtual speakers, he continues to engage and inspire audiences as he does on a live stage.
Rik is member of the jury of Deloitte Best Managed Companies in Belgium, and is active in Advisory Boards and Boards of Directors. He is also a frequent lecturer at the London Business School. Rik has delivered over 1000 keynotes and has energized and inspired audiences in over 40 countries.
1. Buisiness and Live - The Day After Covid-19
The Day After Tomorrow has been given a name. It has become The Day After Covid-19. When the meteorite struck planet earth and killed the dinosaurs in a short period of time, those little rats, that we now call mammals, were already around.
The same is going to happen right now. We are not going to witness a brand new economy or a brand new customer. We are not going to have to interact with that customer in a brand new way. Every aspect of the post-Covid-19 era was already around, but it had to fight the old normal of old business models that were still making money. People and companies that were locked in fixed patterns did not know how to escape the boxes they created themselves.
Nobody likes to kill the old to give birth to the new. Rik predicted the ‘Twilight Twenties’: a decade of in-between zone. He was wrong. The Covid-19 lockdown will be our devastating Twilight Zone. That is what Covid-19 will have done: kill the Old Normal and make way for what was already there. The boxes are gone. The future will be here at full force.
What does it mean for a company? What does it mean for you and me that are in business? The answer is simple and not new at all. More than ever: extreme customer centricity is a must. Connect to many will be easier than ever before and engage individuals will be more important than ever before. Combining both is a matter of survival.
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.
2. Managers The (New) Day after Tomorrow
In January 2018 Rik finished his book “Managers The Day after Tomorrow”. He had been struggling with the fact that writing a book about technological changes and fast changing times is an almost impossible mission by definition: a book is static. The recent happenings about the pandemic however, are a pretty good reason to re-discover the book.
The content of the book has evolved as the context has changed over time and so has the meaning of the content. In this keynote, Rik revisits Managers The Day After Tomorrow from the perspective of the new challenges to better understand the new Day After Tomorrow and how managers should prepare for that New Normal.
“Time corrodes both content and structure. Today, faster than ever before.
What is the best strategy for the digital world? How can you deal with unpredictability? How is it possible, both as an entrepreneur and as an enterprise, to keep in sync with the outside world, the world of technology and the world of the consumer? Where do you focus your attention? Which of the countless possibilities do you explore? How can you redesign your company to make it sustainably relevant? Which technological wave do you need to surf? What do you have to build up and what do you have to tear down?
(…) it is a feature of our rapidly changing world that there is no longer a single answer to any of these questions. The moment you give one, you already need to think about how you can best modify it. It is impossible to work with a prefab design when developing a strategy for the digital world. You need to build systematically, block by block, adjusting and amending as you go, so that you can keep up with the changing fashions and opportunities of the day.” (Managers The Day After Tomorrow)
The questions that Rik wanted to answer in his book are more relevant than ever before as the changes in the outside world and those of the consumer are more devastating than we could ever have imagined in 2018. The waves of change are not only driven by technology, but are being amplified by the disruptive force of a virus that has killed the world as we have known it for many decades in just a couple of weeks. And that has created room for a completely new world of unknown ecosystems, business models and customer behaviour.
In this keynote Rik re-visits his book and re-defines what management should be like for Managers in this New Day After Tomorrow.
3. Curiosity did not Kill the Cat
We know that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. But are we aware that a culture can kill companies in no time? The good old ‘robust’ culture was killing companies in the past and it will be killing even more companies in this era of lightspeed and devastating changes to come. Change that culture while you still can and start very simply by implementing an essential new KPI, which is the perfect antidote for the ‘robust’ culture: the Net Curiosity Score (#NCS).
We have entered the Twilight Twenties. It is the time of monsters and creeps. There are no scripts and those that travel it based on assumptions will not survive. Assumptions will kill.
The good old ‘robust’ culture was inside-out, top-down, balanced scorecard driven, hierarchical, rigid, no longer in tune with the outside world 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. Change it while you still can and start very simply by implementing one essential new KPI which is the perfect antidote for the ‘robust’ culture: the Net Curiosity Score (#NCS).
The scripts for The Day After Tomorrow are in the making, the game will be won by those that know how to adapt to the new rules and 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.
What is curiosity? How to create it? How to measure? How to enhance it? What are the enablers and what are the barriers?
4. The Smart Ecosystems Economy (Build Antifragile Systems)
The business environment has been reshaped dramatically in between 2000-2020 due to technological waves that have changed people and society. Due to big data, AI and robotization, we live in a data-driven world what will lead to a blurring of old industry lines. The new competition will be one between ecosystems. COVID-19 will be a tipping point: the world came to a standstill and when it reboots, it will reboot in a variety of small and smart ecosystems. We are just witnessing the opening moves of a very exciting endgame that is going to unfold in the next decades to come. Companies need to play the game. Not playing it is not an option.
This is the era of the Smart Ecosystems Economy. We need companies to be ready to cope with randomness and unexpected events. We need companies to be systems that are not eaten by chaos, that do not think they can control chaos, but companies that are antifragile and grow by randomness.
We all know that antifragile systems are the answer, but how do you actually build them?
In this hands-on keynote, Rik explains what it takes to become antifragile and how to build an antifragile system. He will explain what “smart” is and how to build a smart ecosystem or how to participate in one. Rik will help you to solve this antifragile mystery and turn it into actionable building blocks.
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