Renewable Enterprise – Being the Fox & the Hedgehog

A popular debate on leadership at B-schools is the mid-1900’s expounded analogy Isaiah Berlin proposed on the world being divided into two categories of the hedgehogs who are focused and view the world through a single defining idea and vision; & the foxes, who study widespread cases, are flexible and believe that reality is a consequence of several interactions between agents and forces, producing unpredictable outcomes rather than a unifying concept.

In 2019 when Capgemini launched its Digital Core with SAP S/4HANA^® offer leading to the Renewable Enterprise, I saw the Foxes and Hedgehogs come together. On one hand with the Highway to SAP S/4HANA offer was the pursuing of simplification, reduced costs and an accelerated coherence to a single vision, on the other hand, with the Intelligent Enterprise offering, were challenges on differentiation, innovation & faster speed to market giving a blended perspective with the foxes ideologies life.

How else could one explain the need to standardize processes across geographies, remove the bespoke around the core processes, move away from legacy to a modern platform-based ERP streamlining the multiple interfaces across business process streams? The “Foxes” look for fast, real-time data, distributed broadly so teams can react to patterns and decide for themselves what to do in the spur of the moment. The “Hedgehogs” anticipate living in the connected world and are moving from the old idea of systems of record inside a single platform to a future-proof Digital Systems of Intelligence built on a Single Integrated Architecture.

To blend the Foxes and Hedgehogs, the Capgemini SAP Center of Excellence created it’s Enterprise Architecture for SAP S/4HANA transformations – the Multi-Pillar SAP S/4HANA Architecture (MPSA). MPSA helps transform YOUR business needs with heterogeneous extensions & supports continuous integration, continuous delivery (Agile and DevOps), Design Thinking, prototyping, platform based approach causing a positive and collaborative change in mindset of business and IT. MPSA designs an architecture, providing guidance and governance specific to a client’s IT & Business requirements.

Governed with a microservices architecture acting like a switch to turn on & off functionality based on need to change and customization, the speed to market depends on the agility of organizations ready for disruptions with maximum reuse and modular changes with time.

Being the Fox or the Hedgehog – isn’t about you alone. It’s about having the team that renews themselves to ‘run better’ with a ‘human-centered approach to technology’! Are you looking to become an intelligent & renewable enterprise? For more on how the foxes and the hedgehogs can help you with the business case, assessment, strategy, build & deployment of accelerated innovation on SAP S/4HANA, contact my colleagues Elisabetta Spontoni, David Lowson, Vivek Dsilva or me (Aditya Kamlapurkar) to begin your journey!

Aditya Kamalapurkar

Expert in Digital Transformation, Strategy & Transformation

I lead the Go-To-Market for the SAP Centre of Excellence. I am responsible for the marketing and strategy of our portfolio of offers.