This is a podcast on innovation in M&A and integration with Toby Tester. Innovation plays a very central role in many mergers and acquisitions. Thanks to the rapidly changing world of digital technology, the importance of innovation in recent times have increased tenfold. But what exactly is innovation? And what does it mean in the broader M&A context? Toby Tester says that innovation is one of those words that get so heavily used, it has become a bit of a cliché these days. Simply put, ...
Jan 11, 2022•41 min•Season 2Ep. 10
This is a podcast on leveraging the agile approach in M&A and integration with Kison Patel. The initial conversation was centered around due diligence. Most companies use excel trackers for diligence. The problem with the approach is that when you need to place follow-on questions, clarification questions, and try to communicate with the excel tracker, this can turn into a disaster. Later, Kison also talks about his book on Agile M&A and mentions what inspired him to write this book and ...
Nov 19, 2021•45 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Interview on "M&A Stories on Importance of Technology in M&A Integration" with Hutton Henry Show Notes: M&A Integrations most often miss out on the “people” element. And if you miss this early in the integration process, it tends to come back and hurt you in a much bigger way. Cultural sensitivity is a key part of any integration especially if it is an international acquisition. Left unaddressed it can quickly turn into animosity amongst people from the acquired company towards the a...
Sep 16, 2021•46 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Interview on "M&A Stories on business strategies on growth and importance of integration" with Dirk Hendrickx Show Notes: Mergers and Acquisitions can play a big part in the growth strategies of companies but it is the integration where you actually create the value. Companies need to start thinking about aspects of integration even before the due diligence process. Companies shouldn’t have M&A as the only strategy. However, M&A can help accelerate growth, it can help to enter a new ...
Aug 12, 2021•34 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Interview on "M&A Stories on importance of integration management tools in M&A" with Dharmendra Singh Show Notes: M&A Integrations have a lot of challenges so when Dharmendra came out of a corporate job, he decided to address some of those issues. Integration processes in many organizations are not harmonized or don’t get shared between different teams. Even if there is a playbook, deployment and tracking always remain a challenge. Integration management tools are not necessarily und...
Jul 24, 2021•40 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Interview on "M&A Stories on importance of value creation and post-merger integration" with Pirita Näkkäläjärvi Show Notes: Getting a perspective from an M&A (pre-deal closing) practitioner on their perspective on post-merger integration. Organizations tend to overlook the integration side of things. In fact, it is hardly given any importance in the pre-deal stage in most instances. Often only one page is dedicated for post-merger integration. New value either does not get created or the...
Jul 14, 2021•47 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Interview on "M&A Stories from Leadership and Cultural Perspective" with Richard A. Vincent Show Notes: A large number of uncertainties in M&A happen due to cultural differences e.g. when a Dutch company buys an Asian company. Leadership can define the strategy but leadership also defines the culture. How do people behave? How do people act together as a team? Do they operate in siloes or do they act as a cohesive leadership team? Culture is usually an afterthought and most often, the ef...
Jun 22, 2021•33 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Interview on "M&A Stories from HR, People, and Cultural Perspective" Show Notes: Overall 70% of M&A deals fail as per Harvard Business Review. When these deals fail, the impact of these failures tends to be in millions of dollars. They affect employees, leaders, other staff members, contractors as well as communities. A significant number of them can be attributed to people, organization, and cultural issues. This means it is important that these issues are addressed up-front during an i...
Jun 13, 2021•45 min•Season 2Ep. 3
interview on "M&A Stories from International and Cross-Cultural Acquisitions". Understanding culture and international business practices are key to a successful cross-border M&A transaction. In this interview, Greg Meseck shares it all on how international M&A transactions must be handled, what pitfalls must organizations be looking for, and most importantly, how you can learn from his experience to avoid these costly mistakes. Greg Meseck is an Executive Advisor - M&A, Finance ...
Apr 06, 2021•53 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Interview on "Why is Culture the biggest uncertainty in M&A Integration?". Culture is often the biggest hurdle to conduct an M&A Integration. But what is culture? Some people term it "the way we work here". While it may sound simple but in reality, it is a combination of several elements. In this interview, Karunesh Prasad, Founder and CEO, Change Et Al, delves deep into what culture is and how organizations must approach cultural integration. Show Notes: While there are commonalities am...
Mar 16, 2021•56 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Video interview on "Is Artificial Intelligence really that Intelligent?". Artificial intelligence (AI) is being touted as the biggest technology game-changer of the current times. AI is supposed to change the world around us. Whether it is healthcare, aviation, traffic or business problems, AI seems to be the answer to all. Is that really true? Or is it just another statistical technology tool to get statistical solutions? Is it just a more novel way to drive automation? In this interview, Jaspe...
Nov 21, 2020•49 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Interview on How to "manage knowledge in the 21st century using chatbots in an organization". While chatbots are being used for a number of years, this interview focuses on KLoBot which is a Do-It-Yourself “no-code” Chatbot Builder platform. Any non-technical user can create a chatbot using KLoBot and deploy it for use on their favorite channel like Slack, Teams, SharePoint, Facebook, etc. (depending on target user audience and use case) In this interview, Ragav speaks about how organizations ca...
Sep 09, 2020•39 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Interview on How to "Catapult to the top organizational performance with process mining" techniques. Process-mining is a process-based engineering discipline for managing, discovering, analyzing, and improving real processes by extracting information from event logs from ERPs, CRMs, and other information systems. Process mining can offer a significant number of opportunities to increase organizational, operational, and functional performances radically. Instead of the prevalent practice of point...
Aug 11, 2020•36 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Interview on Why Cloud computing is a must solution for businesses, no doubt on that. Cloud computing is one of the front runners of digital transformation that is revolutionizing the business world. Enterprises are taking advantage of this highly flexible, agile, and business-enabling technology solution for all of their IT infrastructure needs. Whether you need digital storage, computing power, or temporary surge requirements, cloud computing gives you a huge array of selection. With players l...
Jul 31, 2020•32 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Interview of How to grow your company with Enterprise Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be one of the defining technologies of the coming decade. Enterprises across the globe must take heed and prepare themselves on how to adopt AI in their organization. Gone are the days when all the expertise could be developed and kept in-house. Now you need highly specialized companies to help you with your AI journey. This interview is one such specialized company that is helping cl...
Jul 22, 2020•24 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Interview of How to improve company performance through Simple Automation and Flawless Data. Technology is evolving rapidly all around us. Yet, all organizational performance improvements do not need sophisticated technology. In fact, many of the improvements can be achieved by simple tools but with a changed mindset. And that is the essence of "Simple Automation and Flawless Data". This interview "Anirvan in conversation with industry expert" is with Gonzalo Arribasplata, a well-known expert on...
Jul 09, 2020•37 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Interview of How to accelerate performance through cloud documentation, process knowledge management, and inter-enterprise wide collaboration. In the digital, multi-party world, one of the key pain points continues to be document and process-knowledge management platforms that can be easily shared and collaborated upon. This interview "Anirvan in conversation with industry expert" is with Walter Bril, a well-known expert on process knowledge management. Walter is an acclaimed evangelist of eleme...
Jul 02, 2020•34 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Interview of How to create a high-performance company with digital innovation. This interview "Anirvan in conversation with industry expert" is with Adi Mazor Kario, a well-known expert on digital innovation. Adi has helped a number of companies to create a high-performance future and lead in their market. She helps in accelerating product design and go-to-market strategy with the most experienced professionals in the field, using the most up-to-date methodologies only found in companies like Fa...
Jun 26, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Interview of How to create a high-performance Blockchain organization. ***Discount offer below in the message*** This is part of the "Anirvan in conversation with industry expert" interview series. In this episode, we interview Paul Bessems, a well-known expert on Blockchain organizing. Blockchain Organizing is a combination of a fundamentally new organization model (Weconomics) with a disruptive organization technology (blockchain technology), to address challenges like purpose of work, product...
Jun 17, 2020•40 min•Season 1Ep. 4
This is an interview with Eduardo Gomez Ruiz on user experience or UX. This specific episode is based on UX can be used to create a defining competitive edge in today's digital age. Based on Eduardo's experience in Uber and other organizations, he talks about various aspects that organizations need to keep in mind while embarking on their own journeys. Eduardo's answers provide unique insights. He talks about using an RFC (Request for Comment) instead of ROI (Return on Investment) model, being a...
Jun 07, 2020•52 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Interview with an industry expert, Lakshmi Venkat on how to innovate in the digital world using Blockchain in an Industry-Value-Chain. The world of supply-chain is filled with challenges whether due to fraud of spare parts, expensive shipping delays, maintaining over-size inventories, wrong administration of vaccines, fake medicine, and the list goes on. The mother of all challenges would the blame game across different parties. Businesses struggle to maintain a consistent cordial relationship w...
May 23, 2020•40 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Interview with Nico Eggert, Expert on Digital Innovation through Co-Creation. The current COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need to transact businesses in the digital world. Most non-native digital businesses are woefully unprepared to conduct business in the current crisis. The world is not going to be the same again when we emerge from the crisis. There will be a NEW NORMAL. And Digital 2.0 (anytime, anywhere interconnected app world) will be the core of this new normal. Is your business p...
May 08, 2020•52 min•Season 1Ep. 1
