INTRODUCTORY NOTE
I am living through one of the most significant moments in the history of the company of which I am CEO.
In my case, however, “CEO” does not stand for Chief Executive Officer, but for Chief Evangelist Officer: the person whose role is to imagine the future and shape the company’s long-term vision.
The company is going through an extraordinary period of transformation and, perhaps for the first time with such clarity, I can truly see the direction in which it is growing.
This reflection was born from that very moment.
There is a principle of economics that is as simple as it is counterintuitive: growth does not arise from stability, but from change.
The most dynamic economies are not those in which companies remain unchanged for decades. On the contrary, they are those in which new ideas continually replace old ones, new products supersede existing ones, and new business models render obsolete those that, until only a short time before, had seemed unbeatable.
This principle has become known as creative destruction.
The expression may sound negative, yet it describes one of the most powerful forces behind economic development: every significant innovation inevitably makes something that existed before obsolete.
The companies that lead an industry are not those that perform traditional work better than everyone else.
They are those that redefine the very meaning of that work.
Every important innovation makes a product, a technology, a working method, and sometimes even an entire profession obsolete.
Yet it is precisely this continuous process of replacement that creates new wealth.
Many companies, however, interpret this principle by looking only outwards.
They believe that it is their competitors they must outperform.
In reality, the most dangerous competitor is almost always the company we were yesterday.
Every organisation accumulates experience.
Experience becomes method.
Method becomes procedure.
Over time, procedure risks becoming rigidity.
That is the moment when yesterday’s success becomes the greatest obstacle to tomorrow’s growth.
The best companies understand that every operational activity is also a research activity.
Every project generates data.
Every piece of data generates experience.
Every experience makes it possible to develop new methods, new indicators and new standards.
In other words, every problem solved enables us to understand something that we did not know the day before.
Knowledge possesses a remarkable characteristic: it grows every time it is used.
If it remains confined to people’s memories, its value is inevitably limited.
If, instead, it is transformed into procedures, models, indicators, decision-making tools and organisational know-how, it becomes a genuine competitive advantage.
Over time, the value of this intellectual capital exceeds that of the operational activities that created it.
This is the deepest meaning of creative destruction.
It is not about destroying what others do.
It is about making one’s own business model progressively obsolete and replacing it with one that creates greater value.
This principle applies to every industry.
At first, a company sells a product.
Later, it sells a service.
Then it sells a solution.
Finally, it sells knowledge.
It is in this final stage that the most difficult competitive advantage to imitate is created.
Machinery, software and technology can be purchased by anyone.
Organised, validated and continuously enriched experience, however, cannot be copied so easily.
For this reason, the companies that endure are not necessarily those that perform a particular task better than everyone else.
They are those that, through that very work, build new knowledge every day and have the courage to use it to question themselves continuously.
True innovation does not consist in doing what has always been done, only better.
It consists in creating something that makes yesterday’s way of doing things obsolete.
The companies that lead change do not wait for the market to make them obsolete.
They do it themselves.
Because, ultimately, the most valuable asset a company possesses is not what it produces.
It is what it learns by producing.
CLOSING NOTE
I remember that, many years ago, my colleagues were trying to identify a leading company to look up to, a clear benchmark in the market on which to model both their work and their corporate philosophy.
I said to them:
“Do not look ahead of us.
Look behind us.
We are the ones leading the market.
It does not matter how small we are.
We are the ones with the ideas.
And we are the ones with the courage to put them into practice.”
Fifteen years have passed.
From being a micro-enterprise, we have grown to serve more than 50% of the market.
But the real objective has never been to become the biggest.
It is to remain among those who have the courage to make yesterday’s achievements obsolete in order to build something better tomorrow.