Dear Horst,
Thank you for asking me to write the introduction to “Product and Commerce Strategy”. I'm happy to do it, after all, we've been working together for almost 15 years! When we met, Steve Jobs had just launched the iPhone - now 90% of people look at their smartphone every few minutes. It's incredible how the world has changed in such a short time!

Today, everyone knows that companies cannot escape this change in behavior, and a large global industry has developed that earns its money from it. You and I, Horst, are part of it, too. We all want to provide our customers' customers with a surprisingly simple and attractive information and shopping experience - not only on the smartphone, but on all channels.

I observe that we are succeeding quite well. That can also be read in your publications. But a more fundamental challenge is becoming apparent: the ability of companies to act. The many projects of the last 15 years have produced and continue to produce good results individually, but as a larger whole they function only very slowly and are too costly. This is another reason why most companies can no longer adequately follow the changes in the market. They have more meaningless data than utilized information, more isolated systems than networked platforms, more tenacious dependencies than transparent processes, more frustrated employees than thoughtful contributors, etc. This is incredibly cumbersome for the business and uninspiring for the customers.

So how can a company regain its ability to act, especially in the further development of “product and commerce”? The majority of colleagues in the digitization industry have identified “artificial intelligence (AI)” as the answer and extol this miracle cure at every available opportunity. With it, we can simply get the best answer to any problem - just like a chess player gets the best next move suggested by a chess computer.

AI is primarily good when the rules of the game and the goal are clear. Then the AI takes over the next step of automation. That's great. But even if “everything” were automated, it would still be a matter of knowing what we want and actually doing the non-automated things.

This brings us back to the company's ability to act. Because the solution to this challenge already exists: it requires good collaboration. Good collaboration in complicated systems - a company is a complicated system - needs a common language so that a common overview and adaptability - in other words, the ability to act - can emerge. This ability to act has become fundamental or even necessary for companies to survive in order to remain relevant throughout the entire life cycle of products and customers.

In other words: a clever “product and commerce strategy” is important and makes a company more successful. But it can only take the company so far if the foundations for the ability to act have been laid. The ability to act in dealing with data, with systems, with processes, with the organization, with the channels and in interacting with customers. Because this work involves many people, the company needs a common language to pursue multiple and sometimes divergent goals. The common language enables decentralized behavior, meaning faster and more deliberate decisions and more resilient outcomes for the whole.

Companies develop this language best first in pilot projects, e.g. in the context of “Product and Commerce”. These projects are therefore particularly well suited because they require dealing with data all the way to the customer. We both, dear Horst, can sing many songs about exactly such projects. It's nice that this issue also recounts some examples of this.

Thank you, Horst for the many years of good collaboration and I look forward to many more encounters in the coming 15 years.

Cordially, Jonathan