Personal Blogs

As Europe quietly reshapes its industrial vision through Horizon Europe, the focus is shifting away from efficiency at all costs toward deeper questions of purpose, resilience, and societal value. Yet many organisations are still operating with assumptions shaped by Industry 4.0.

What makes this shift particularly significant is that it changes how success, innovation, and responsibility are understood - not just in policy, but in practice. For those working in research, education, and strategy, this raises uncomfortable but necessary questions about relevance, impact, and long-term value.

What’s really changing - and why does it matter now?

 Read the full perspective on Industry 5.0 here:
https://betterorganisations.co.uk/articles/industry-5.0-a-horizon-europe-perspective

Many entrepreneurs I know exhibit a significant level of emotional attachment to their businesses.

You might wonder, what’s the issue with this?

- Firstly, such detachment can hinder objective evaluations, potentially leading to costly errors. 

- Secondly, it can adversely affect mental well-being. 

- Lastly, it can complicate the process of exiting the business when the time comes.

Recently, I’ve been asked how one can achieve emotional detachment from their business. In this video, I explore the psychological dimensions of this topic and offer practical strategies for managing it: Watch the video here.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this matter. Is emotional detachment something you grapple with? What are your experiences in dealing with it?

The modern world is changing faster than ever. In order to be able to respond to these changes and to adapt well, we as business people, entrepreneurs need to be flexible and agile. Sounds obvious, isn't it?

The challenge is about every day of execution. Being persistently and methodically flexible and agile day by day - in order to understand the reality and to adapt to it. In other words that simply means: being able to understand what people need and if they are willing to pay for it, finding if there are enough such people. And then embedding this into a right business model to be able to operate at the right scale.

That is a process - a real job every entrepreneur needs to do - regardless if the one is engaged in a startup or mature company.

What happens when this is neglected?

Disastrous things are happening. Recently I recorded a video about an entrepreneur who invested 50k in a retail business just to get 3 customers in 3 weeks after launching (you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/gDEH2Xk7m0g ).

You can say: how it is possible (BTW I have answered this question in a video)? That has to be just bad luck. Unfortunately it is not. Believe me it is pretty common. Definitely more frequent than it should be. I learnt plenty of such case studies in my professional practice.

So, yes, agile approaches can help us to succeed and/or avoid a big failure. And this is what I intend to write about here - if I stick to my resolution

Thanks for reading.

Witold