The Fightback Summit

100 industry leaders, investors, and tech entrepreneurs met behind closed doors, in workshops, to find new approaches to remain competitive

It all started in Berlin, on the 12th of June 2019, when 100 tech entrepreneurs, CxOs, investors, and policy-makers gathered under a common banner — to create a better future for Europe. The Fightback Summit, distinguished itself from other events with the openness and honesty of the engagement, provoking vibrant conversations with connections that will be the bedrock of Europe’s digital fightback.

It was with the complex mission of ensuring prosperity for individuals, organisations, and for Europe that the assembled group of diverse individuals, who often think very differently went into their different impact sessions after a rousing speech from Felix Staeritz, Founder and CEO of FoundersLane. The cozy atmosphere at The Grand, which has hosted events since 1842, emboldened guests to leave their titles at the door — Dr. Brigitte Mohn was just Brigitte for the day. The higher purpose of ensuring that Europe remains competitive in the global digital race, dissolved many professional boundaries.

Once the preamble was complete, participants found their way to colour coded rooms, each with a different theme of central importance to the future of Europe. Innovate Europe, with Annika Brack from the World Economic Forum, was a hotbed for discussion on the need for a pan-European ecosystem. In Session 2: digital platform businesses were deconstructed, under the stewardship of Michael Jacobides, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at London Business School. Another session guided guests through the design, structure, and execution of digital platforms, with some actionable learning points from Simon Torrance — author and presenter of the New Growth Playbook.

Session four centred around promoting corporate and entrepreneur collaboration through new innovative business models, one of which was the co-creation model — where an established company works with a tech entrepreneur to create a digital offshoot, which can engage in a market fact finding mission, and if it works can produce a standalone entity, that has both the financial backing/market access of a big corporate and the entrepreneurial mindset of a seasoned tech founder — could this be Europe’s way back to global digital leadership?

Of course, there is no easy solution to how Europe can remain competitive. Many guests alluded to the fact that there is a different risk culture in Europe and this manifests in investments, which are too small, in comparison to the US and China. However, given the relatively low ratio of VC investment in start-ups to GDP, European VC investment is likely to grow fourfold in the coming years.

There is also a question of risk avoidance within large organisations.

Fear of failure

Failure is not part of the executive playbook. As one founder in attendance said, failure is good, you learn more from your failures than when everything goes to plan. Perhaps CxOs should be rewarded for their failures and for their wins. Indeed, this portfolio approach to risk can be learned from the venture capitalists at the event. They know that if you make multiple bets, you are more likely to get a win, despite multiple failures.

Indeed, it is risky to challenge the status quo, but this is at the core of the Fightback Movement. As Simon Torrance, Managing Director at FoundersLane, venture builder, mentioned, initiatives like the Fightback Movement “enable traditional corporates to break free from old ways of thinking and acting to create business models fit for the future.”

Torrance is an author / presenter of the New Growth Playbook (www.newgrowthplaybook.com) and co-author of an upcoming book called ‘FightBack’ (How Traditional Corporates can Win in the Digital Economy.) The Fightback Movement set in motion a chain of events to get European businesses back in the driving seat.

The movement is underpinned by a need for: collaboration, entrepreneurship, cultural change, digitalisation and responsibility. The agents of change are the business leaders, politicians, and tech entrepreneurs who can galvanise people and assets to overcome the challenge of digitalising businesses in Europe.

Fostering a deeper understanding is a big part of the movement. There are dozens of incumbents who are already investing in digital projects, but these investments are often sub-scale and fragmented. Without a clear understanding of how new digital business models can generate value, these investments will continue to be suboptimal, where a significant impact cannot be realised.

Two important factors to mitigate this fear are: honest dialogue and support networks. Workshops can be highly effective for executives to learn the specific mindsets and behavioural shifts, for them to gain ownership of digital change. Support networks both internal and external can help alleviate the uncertainty that leaders will experience and provide an invaluable pool of knowledge for taking the first steps or for more complex undertakings.

Following the Fightback Summit, Fightback the book is due to be published in January 2020. The book is written in collaboration with serial entrepreneurs and promises to be an essential tool for corporate leaders to drive disruptive growth within their organisations.

The book solves the problem of how corporates can compete in the digital economy through digital platform business models, flywheel ventures and together with entrepreneurs can build a competitive edge in Industry 4.0.

FightBack is brimming with inspiring case studies, insights and learnings from some of the world’s leading entrepreneurs, corporate execs, academics and policy-makers, who are driving the next wave of innovation and growth to advance digital transformation across Europe.

The Fightback Movement has planned various other initiatives like working groups and meet-ups. This is the beginning of an important wave of change for Europe: and what better place for it to start than Berlin, the centre of Europe, a city steeped in history.

Stay tuned for the next event!