Adjust or die

Adjust or die

That’s investor Mikael Krogh’s advice to both start-ups and already established businesses facing the future.

Last Friday, NBAS and Innovation Norway, hosted a Breakfast Talk at the Fullerton Hotel in Singapore.

Technologies, such as the Internet, mobiles, IoT, social media and information flow are connecting and radically changing and redefining businesses and industries. How should businesses use these massive developments to their advantage?

— You have to examine yourself - what kind of business model is my business in? Make sure that you are positioned correctly. If you’re not, you need to take steps to see how you should allocate resources internally in order to move into more valuable business models, says Norwegian investor Mr Mikael Krogh, Director and Founder of Investigate.

Krogh spoke about connectivity, the network orchestrator business model and its benefits. He advises companies to take advantage of the network they have access to through innovative technology.

Find the value

Krogh then continues along the lines of interactive business, saying that a business owner should map everything that has value in their business, including their network.

— “What's the value of the user? What's the value of the middlemen?” he asks.

The investor uses Amazon as an example. Through Amazon, the users are given the opportunity to both buy products from Amazon, from other regular users, and selling items themselves to Amazon’s customers.

— Amazon is sharing the value proposition with their suppliers and customers. That has a much greater value for me as a customer as well.

Krogh does not have any doubt when asked what the biggest sin in business is:

— The most dangerous thing is to do nothing. Then you will die sooner or later as a business.

Listen to the users

The Talk was then followed by a Pitching Session by four Norwegian tech start-ups. Motitech was one of them. Motitech also reached top ten in the international Slush Pitch competition in Singapore last week.

With custom-made app/software and an ergometer bike, the company offers a ride to familiar places for elderly people.

Jon Ingar Kjenes is the CEO;

— We spent a lot of time visiting nursing homes. We interviewed nurses about their challenges and requests for specific exercises and physical activity for the elderly, Kjenes explains.

The entrepreneur says that this was crucial for the further development of the product.

— We saw that the most important thing was the social part, and we had to remove a lot of the technical stuff from our list that we were thinking of developing because it would not add value for the elderly, he says.

Mikael Krogh agrees with the concept of changing focus area.

— Always have your network in the centre - not yourself. It is a completely different way of thinking. If you don’t take advantage of what technology gives of opportunities, someone else will.

By Margrete Sveinsdatter Rydjord

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