We spoke with São Paulo based Strategy Partner Roberto Werneck about his experience and perspective in connected industry. His international background has cultivated an appreciation for diversity, while his experience helping scope out new business opportunities across Latin America informs a collaborative and disciplined approach to creating value. He discusses the relative state of core industries in Brazil and shares key lessons from Latin America.
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Roberto Werneck Strategy Partner, Sao Paulo |
What has shaped your views on Connected Industry?
I am originally from Brazil and when I was 9, my mother sent me and my 11-year-old brother to the US to study English with a bunch of teenagers and it whetted my interest in the global environment. I started my career in a traditional industry – construction – in the early days after I started my civil engineering course. I worked in the industry for 8 years - I worked in financial and performance management and soon found myself working in international business. I found I really loved diversity and improving the as-is, and led process improvement initiatives in several countries in South and Central America, Portugal and Guinea. I implemented EVA in the company, which was not just a financial but a cultural change. After this experience, I spent 2 years attending an MBA in the US focused on my goal in management consulting and landed in McKinsey. I worked in basic materials industries (mining, steel, oil & gas and pulp and paper) focused on operational excellence programs, helping large companies improve operations and increase production through adoption of lean philosophy.
I then went to work in agribusiness at Syngenta, where I spent 10 years - this helped me learn about a new industry, on which secures one of the most important basic needs of people – food. I started with strategic planning, followed by a mission to create the company’s new business development area for the region. We launched a new business in the plantation forestry industry focused on launching a portfolio of product categories that were not available in the market. My third role was running a high-growth business unit for Syngenta that increased to a $55mn run rate. What I learned was that there was so much white space that we learned to prioritize and implement fewer growth initiatives before starting new ones.
How do think about how to enter a new business for a company with so many options?
Prioritization and discipline are the two key concepts. We applied a set of criteria to help us compare the growth options, usually grouped in two dimensions: attractiveness and chance of success. Attractiveness includes potential sales and margins, synergies and contribution to company’s reputation. The chance of success encompasses comparative competitiveness, risks and time to market. Having the discipline to incorporate new ideas when they came enabled us to have a continuous inventory of opportunities while keeping the teams motivated and recognized for their contribution to the company`s long-term growth.
How have things changed in agriculture-related to Connected Industry and Technology?
Agribusiness has good traction for Connected Industry. The industry has undergone a big technology upgrade from biological and chemical technologies over the past couple of decades, which significantly drove crop yield increases, made food safer and helped managed environmental impact. As a result, the industry is more receptive to digital technologies. A key example is when Monsanto bought Climate Corp, and currently, we see lots of startups in the digital technologies space applied to Agribusiness. There are opportunities to increase productivity and reduce costs and environmental impact by reducing inputs – using less water, fertilizer, and chemicals. We start to see an increasing number of Ag Startups in Brazil, both Brazilian and foreign ones.
What about Manufacturing?
For manufacturing we are still in early days for leadership to fully understand the implications and return from Industry 4.0 investments. The good news is that large and mid-size companies are really helping to become ambassadors and influencers for the next wave of connected industry.
How about Construction?
In construction the potential value creation is huge, by significantly eliminating waste of materials, labor, machine, and time, all translating into lower costs, higher sustainability. The problem in Brazil is that the construction industry is still undergoing a crisis from the economic recession and the corruption scandals. The level of public investments in infrastructure has especially decreased. There is a clear movement to privatize public infrastructure through concessions, but it’s difficult to assess how fast this will happen.
Interestingly, the energy sector is moving fastest of all, through concessions of generation, transmission, and distribution, keeping considerable investments in new construction projects.
Can you share some of the lessons you’ve learned from Latin America relevant to the US and Europe?
One advantage for Brazil and other Latin America countries is learning to manage through the diversity of conditions and cycles. We’ve dealt with hyper-inflation, government instability and other challenges. We’ve not solved many problems, but such an environment has enabled us to become very entrepreneurial, versatile and creative. This has already been shown to benefit the startup and connected industries ecosystem.
Can you recommend any resources?
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek is really powerful, and I highly recommend this . Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck is also excellent. I am happy to have been able to apply learnings from those books to both my personal and professional life.
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