Interview with Anders Hvid

What do future leaders need to do?

– We are living in a time of upheaval. It is no longer sufficient to continue what has worked so far. Leaders of the future need to articulate an attractive journey to a shared future. The charismatic leader takes over, and leaves the rational leader behind.

– Certain jobs will be extended by technology. Today, I will only consult lawyers and doctors that have been extended by technology, and never the ones that haven’t been. This is already the case today, but it will increase and extend as AI develops.

Will hierarchies survive?

– The organizational immune system exists. If somebody presents a new idea in a designed organization, it will likely face a hard time. Risk is minimized to safeguard existing value creation.

– New thoughts and ideas are challenging existing dogmas, but they face difficult circumstances in the large organizations. We have built to scale not experiment and change.

Is being small a good thing?

– The power of capitalism is being challenged. Today, it is much less of a problem to be small. Small is more agile. You can move fast; that is difficult for the big corporations. Is the size of companies right as it is today? No, scale is becoming less of a competitive advantage.

– We tend to talk about the performance of rapidly developing technology and less of the cost. The plummeting prices are interesting as well as they are creating a democratizing effect. Technology becomes available for the individual. Not many years ago you would have to be a superpower to go to space. Today we are commercializing space. Companies are doing what countries used to, small companies are global and even individuals are doing what used to be a job for a large organization.