The companies of the future are the "bionic" companies. But what is a bionic company? To define it, and to explain the recipe for its success, is a curious study by the Boston Consulting Group, entitled "How Bionic Companies Translate Digital Maturity into Performance". Bionics, according to BCG, are those companies capable of integrating human and artificial intelligence in a more efficient, productive and innovative organization: these realities, able to best combine technology and human skills, are almost 2 times as profitable as their competitors. "The possession of this ability already conferred a formidable competitive advantage in the past, but after the pandemic crisis it can really determine the success or decline of a company", confirms the research, which also estimates the right "dose" of the various ingredients: 10% of algorithms, the 20% of technology and informatics, the 70% of industrial activity and human capital.
Where are these companies currently located, which can be defined as "digitally mature"? Certainly not in Italy, and not even so much in Europe or in the United States itself: in our continent there is still a lot of delay in public administration, while overseas the problem is excessive polarization, i.e. the gap between the well-known tech giants and all the others. The champions of digital are therefore the Asians, above all the Chinese: "The thrust of the Chinese technological tigers - writes Boston Consulting - is dragging all the industrial sectors of the country into the bionic era: from finance to healthcare, from manufacturing to insurance". It will be good to catch up, given that the data leave no room for interpretative doubts: in the last three years, bionic companies have increased their Ebitda at a rate 1,8 times higher than latecomers, spent 1,5 times more on research and development and thus increased its rating at more than double the rate.
Not only that: about half of the bionic companies dedicates over 15% of operating expenses to digital, in particular to technologies, data and cyber security, and assigns to these roles a similar share of employees trained to acquire innovative skills and to experiment with agile ways of organizing work. They have thus managed to digitally transform at least 25% of their production processes ea cut operating costs by 5%., against 14% and 1% respectively obtained by latecomers. In this way, bionic companies have freed up resources to attack new sectors: 61% generate a tenth or more of their turnover from businesses adjacent to their core business. Very valuable sources of revenue in case of sudden business interruptions, as is happening during the Covid-19 pandemic.
