Kintsugi in Business – embrace the flaws

30 aprilie 2020

 

by Marina Dumitrescu

 

The business environment is asking itself how it will deal with the losses gained during the state of emergency and until all restrictions are lifted, when it is supposed the activities shall be conducted under normal parameters, hoping that the new “normal” shall be better than the one crushed by COVID-19.


This period, a worldwide test or not, challenges everybody to take quick decisions under stressful conditions. You all remember the phrase in the CVs “efficient under stressful conditions”? Now we see clearly who was honest in his/her CV, either we talk about an entrepreneur who needs to adapt extremely quick so his/her business has to suffer as little as possible, or about an employee who needs to be efficient working from home, with at least 1 child who only wants to play, or about the ones whose jobs are temporarily suspended and need to find something to do during their free time, this stranger a few weeks ago. It is important for all of us to get off this period in a good shape, mentally and physically, with as little losses as possible, acknowledging that things will not be as they were and maybe they don’t even need to be as they were, remaining optimistic and hoping that we can build the future as we want to. The return shall demand each of us to get out of the comfort zone, which means evolution, first and foremost a personal evolution, bringing the light of hope that things should be better than before.


Considering that the business environment is extremely affected by the global pandemic, various situations are born:

  • The company who wanted to take control of Victoria’s Secrets seeks to cancel the takeover,
  • Facebook wishes to acquire 10% of Jio Platforms hoping to gain a larger revenue from the Asia-Pacific zone, investing 5,7 billion $, the biggest transaction of Facebook since purchasing Whatsapp in 2014,
  • Netflix is raising 1 billion $ in debt offering for “purchases related to content”, but considering the traffic of Netflix during this period, it rather wishes to be prepared for opportunities of acquiring companies or content at the prices generated by the moving sands of the nowadays economy,
  • The food delivery platforms JustEat (UK) and Takeaway (Netherlands) are merging for joining forces and offer better services to their clients,

and examples can continue.


In Romania, from one week to another, the companies are having results unpredictable a month or even a week ago: on the dairy market there are growths up to 67% from one week to another, the activity of the banks is decreasing considerably, the behavior of consumers is changing on a long term, being very hard to predict in which way due to the fact that nobody knows how the consumer reacts under the current conditions and in the conditions of the new ‘normal’, however that will be. The growth and expansion predictions of 2020 are, in the best scenario, halved, or, on the contrary, are growing because the businesses have been already adapted to the market.


Under these conditions generated by the pandemic, we will face on one end with an explosion of mergers and acquisitions, and, at the other end, with insolvencies, in between being the businesses directly adapted to the new market. Nevertheless, all the affected businesses can be conducted under the Kintsugi concept which is “the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum” according to Wikipedia, the result being more valuable than the initial object. Each entrepreneur and manager has the option to choose in applying the Kintsugi technique on its business which was ‘broken’ by the pandemic, and, through adaptability and decisions, can become more valuable than it was in the near future.


We are aware that the best decisions are taken when you have all the information you might need. Therefore, we will help you in this regard by writing about the steps and outcomes of the mergers, acquisitions, and insolvency procedures, for making you available the best tools for Kintsugi.


Until then, you can write us your questions regarding these procedures so we can be of real help.