Technical jargon: What does "speedboat" mean?
Everyone is building them at the moment. In particular, large corporations in all industries that are being forced into action by digitization and are suddenly expected to be agile and disruptive, but cannot be because of their size, inertia, and hierarchical organization.So speedboats are needed: fast, agile, powerful teams (boats) that are let off the supertanker to explore and conquer the ocean of digitization. On these speedboats, there is usually an excited confusion (network) instead of hierarchy, everyone is allowed to do and must be able to do everything (empowering) instead of constant control as on the mother ship. There is experimentation instead of planning, and there is no privacy either, because everyone sleeps outside, if they get to sleep at all. But it "rocks". Unfortunately, not every large corporation has people who are willing to sit in such a speedboat, let alone steer one. You could get wet! So one buys some in addition.
*Benno Maggi is co-founder and CEO of Partner & Partner. He created the section "Vom Fach" in the NZZ FOLIO and was in charge of it for years. He presents and decodes words and terms that can be used either for small talk, being important, getting excited, playing Scrabble or simply for fun.
Capers instead of building yourself
The open sea of the free market is teeming with them. If a supertanker has spotted a suitable speedboat, it is often captured (bought) for far too much money and incorporated. What then happens is one of the great phenomena of the economy at present: the structuralists in the supertankers try to put their system over the crew of the speedboats, forgetting that in doing so they cripple their engine.But perhaps that is precisely the goal. Because those who were able to sell their speedboat are happy about the cash. And those who bought it with corporate money are happy that they can prove that it is not so easy to become big or to stay fast.
