Save Up to $1,321 on a Caribbean Hotel With Private Plunge Pool
Save Up to $1,321 on a Caribbean Hotel With Private Plunge Pool
Courtesy of Zemi Miches
https://www.fodors.com/world/caribbean/dominican-republic/experiences/news/zemi-miches-dominican-republic-deal-save-up-to-1-321
Treat yourself to a deeply discounted three-night, all-inclusive Caribbean escape for two at the brand-new Zemi Miches resort, featuring an upgraded suite with a private plunge pool starting at $1,129.
For travelers craving a premium Caribbean escape without the astronomical price tag, this Travelzoo offer brings massive value. You can book a three-night, all-inclusive luxury stay for two guests at the newly minted Zemi Miches All-inclusive Resort Curio by Hilton starting at $1,129. With peak-season rates normally soaring to $2,659, this promotion allows you to shave off up to $1,321—translating to a 30% to 40% discount—while treating you to an upgraded room with its very own plunge pool.
A Quieter Slice of the Dominican Republic
If the bustling, cookie-cutter mega-resorts of Punta Cana no longer hold appeal, Miches is the island’s rising star. Recently highlighted as one of The New York Times’ 52 Places to Go in 2026, this region swaps heavy crowds for lush coastal tranquility. Located about an hour and a half from Punta Cana International Airport, it strikes the perfect balance of feeling beautifully isolated without requiring a multi-leg travel headache to reach. The property itself sits right on Playa Esmeralda, where towering palms and pristine ocean waters take center stage.
The Deal Details
The package covers a three-night stay for two guests (pricing is based on up to two guests per room, rather than per person) and wraps in all meals, unlimited drinks, taxes, and gratuities. You can choose between two room categories and travel windows:
Plunge Pool Tropical View Room: Unwind with either one king or two queen beds, plus a furnished patio and a private plunge pool. This runs $1,129 (down from regular rates up to $1,888) for stays through October, and $1,338 (down from up to $2,659) for stays between November 1 and December 20.
Plunge Pool Partial Beach View Room: Upgrade for a glimpse of the ocean along with your plunge pool. This tier costs $1,249 (down from up to $2,224) through October, and $1,459 (down from up to $2,770) from November 1 through December 20.
Add-ons and Perks: You will receive a $100 resort credit strictly valid for food-and-beverage extras, applied at checkout (any unused balance is nonrefundable). Need more time in the sun? Extra nights are available starting at $376 per night, provided they are tacked onto your initial three-night voucher.
Deal Alert: We must note that the deal details provided do not specify an expiration date for purchasing this voucher. Because of this missing booking window, the sale could be pulled at any moment, meaning you should secure your dates immediately to lock in the savings.
Courtesy of Zemi Miches
Taíno Culture Meets Luxury Amenities
Opened in June 2025, Zemi Miches is the Dominican Republic’s very first all-inclusive Curio Collection property, and it leans heavily into a genuine sense of place. Rather than feeling like a generic beach compound, the architecture pays homage to local Taíno heritage. Foodies will love having 17 different restaurants, bars, and lounges at their fingertips. You can start the day at the vintage-inspired Royal Palm rooftop for panoramic coastal views, and end it at Boba with Thai-inspired cuisine and live music. If you want to elevate your relaxation, the Acana Spa is built to resemble a natural cenote, offering a stunning, cave-like water sanctuary.
While the vibe leans tranquil, boredom isn’t an option. Spend your days drifting between the four sprawling pools or heading out onto Playa Esmeralda with included non-motorized water sports like paddleboarding and kayaking. Families traveling with energetic kids have access to a massive array of distractions: a full waterpark with waterslides, padel courts, laser tag, mini-bowling, arcade games, escape rooms, and dedicated clubs for teens and younger children. If you want to venture off-property, the hotel is perfectly situated for day trips to Los Haitises National Park, the natural pools of Caño Hondo, Laguna Limon, and Montaña Redonda.
Courtesy of Zemi Miches
The Fine Print
If these dates work for your schedule, head via Travelzoo today to claim this voucher before it disappears. Be aware of standard caveats:
– Availability: This offer is subject to availability and terms may change.
– Blackout Dates: Exclusions apply on October 29–31, 2026.
– Membership: While the deal is strictly for Travelzoo members, non-members can easily join for an annual $50 fee or try a 30-day trial for just $1.
– Cancellations: Travelzoo offers a full refund within 14 days of purchase as long as you haven’t locked in a hotel reservation. Once you confirm your travel dates, any modifications or cancellations are bound by the hotel’s specific rescheduling policies and could result in fees or the forfeiture of your voucher. (Should you need a refund on a booked voucher, you must cancel directly with the hotel first).
Some or all of this article was crafted with help from AI. All deal content comes from Travelzoo, and all destination content comes from Fodor’s Travel. An editor reviewed and vetted this article before publishing.
The CEO’s critical role in building new businesses
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/business-building/our-insights/the-ceos-critical-role-in-building-new-businesses?
By
Venture building works best when it’s part of a dual-track strategy—launching new businesses alongside the core—with clear oversight from the CEO on capital allocation, culture, and capabilities.
Growth is harder than ever to find, which is precisely why corporate venture building is gaining steam internationally: In recent McKinsey surveys, about 40 percent of global CEOs continue to cite new-business building as one of their top three strategic priorities despite cost pressures (Exhibit 1).
Exhibit 1
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This prioritization is largely driven by leaders’ desire for growth and innovation as they attempt to keep up with gen AI and other technologies and external forces. Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a good example of the promise of such an approach: Originally designed as an internal resource for Amazon’s technological infrastructure, AWS has evolved into a platform generating more than $70 billion in annual revenue.
Even in the current volatile business environment, pursuing new ventures remains a sound strategy: According to McKinsey’s most recent survey on new venture building, even in uncertain times, roughly half of reported new businesses meet or exceed expectations, and those that succeed are reaching $10 million in revenue faster than ever—on average, in just 31 months.
Still, many new corporate ventures struggle to scale—not because ideas are weak but because there is typically no system to support those ideas. The incentives, governance, and cultural norms established for the core business often are at odds with the speed, risk, and autonomy that new ventures require.
Leaders across the organization, including the chief marketing officer, CFO, and chief human resources officer, should collaborate and coordinate efforts and activities associated with launching and scaling new ventures; such large transformation initiatives must be symbiotic. However, it’s the CEO who plays the most central role in resolving the timelines and tensions between new growth and the existing business, although resource allocation decisions cannot be their only focus. Strategy, culture, and governance are just as critical for the CEO to own. Indeed, our research shows that those companies in which CEOs personally prioritize venture building consistently outperform their peers, with new businesses contributing nearly 20 percent of enterprise-wide revenue within five years.
Our own experience in the field shows that venture-building works best when the CEO behaves less like an operator of the business and more like an architect of a portfolio of future businesses, where the CEO typically must make (and continually revisit) a series of hard choices: For instance, how much capital and talent should the CEO divert from core businesses? How aggressively should the new venture be allowed to cannibalize existing revenue? And how can the CEO help the organization address the common collective action problems that often keep new ventures from achieving their full potential?
Trade-offs aside, there are four areas where the CEO’s attention matters most: setting venture building as a top strategic priority; deciding where to play and what to build; committing capital with patience; and creating the culture, capabilities, and partnerships required for new ventures to thrive.
In this article, we explore those four focus areas as well as some of the trade-offs CEOs may need to make to move fast on new ventures without compromising the parent company’s brand or operations.
Setting venture building as a top strategic priority
There’s been perennial debate about whether to keep transformation efforts in an organization separate from the core business or integrate them. McKinsey’s research points to the importance of linking transformation efforts with day-to-day operations; it’s the only way to ensure that change sticks.
Similarly, new venture building can only scale when it’s explicitly treated as part of the overarching corporate strategy rather than just a side effort. The entire organization must see the value of continuous innovation and entrepreneurship and commit to the actions required to seize new business opportunities when they arise.
As the “keeper of strategy,” the CEO is best positioned to send the message that building new corporate ventures, and not just pursuing geographic or product line expansions, is central for growth and that some trade-offs may be required vis-à-vis the core business. In some cases, the core business itself can become the biggest obstacle to building the next one.
The CEO’s framing and conversations with the board, members of the senior leadership team, and employees must echo the organization’s first principles of strategy. Specifically, the CEO should be able to codify the scope and strategic intent of new business building and tell a compelling story about it:
- Scope and intent. The CEO will need to set parameters for new ventures being proposed: For instance, is the goal here to generate incremental revenue, defend market share, adopt technologies that can help future-proof the organization, or seize another strategic advantage? Should new ventures be designed to complement the core business, replace parts of it, or disrupt it altogether?
- When Procter & Gamble’s A.G. Lafley became CEO, innovation at the company was stalled, and growth was inconsistent. Rather than simply tell employees to innovate more, he established strategic guardrails for how and where P&G would build new businesses. Among other rules, he defined specific customer segments and unmet needs to target, prioritizing categories such as home care and beauty. He set new metrics and expectations for where growth would come from: About half of all innovation should come from external partnerships, and growth potential needed to be large scale rather than incremental. Over time, Lafley’s “strategy as choices” model helped P&G significantly improve productivity and growth.
- Storyline. Just as important, and in collaboration with the CMO and other communications professionals, the CEO must tell a story that convinces investors, employees, and partners that business building is a core growth pillar. For instance, in CEO Andy Jassy’s quest to turn Amazon into a portfolio of AI businesses (a platform, a series of custom chips, infrastructure build-outs, and strategic partnerships), he has explicitly and repeatedly framed AI as a once-in-a-lifetime growth opportunity in conversations with critical stakeholders. Jassy is consistent with the narrative, regardless of channel or audience. For instance, he structured his annual shareholder letter to convey the six simple truths about AI. In town halls and other public forums, he built credibility with investors and employees by openly acknowledging the tensions between high capital expenditures associated with AI growth and near-term margin pressures.
Deciding where to play, what to build
Organizations that pursue new ventures must decide which customer segments, geographies, and business models will yield the greatest opportunities for growth. In many cases, they must look beyond their core identity and devise new ambitions for where to play and what to build.
In both instances, the CEO holds significant sway—after all, the chief executive is the only one who can sanction bold moves to step away from business as usual. And given the CEO’s oversight across teams, functions, and geographies, they are best positioned to resolve questions about permissions and boundaries:
- Where to play and what to build. The CEO’s most important initial act is deciding where to play and what to build. In our experience, the leaders who are best at building new corporate ventures tend to approach these questions with a venture-capital-style mindset and encourage their executive teams to do the same. That is, they manage a portfolio of bets and launch multiple ventures at once rather than looking for a single winner. McKinsey’s latest research on corporate venture building shows that such an approach can enable faster learning and more effective reallocation of resources and can enable companies to outperform: Organizations launching three or more ventures at once can achieve up to 30 percent higher revenue growth over time than organizations that only launch a single initiative.
- Rather than pursuing isolated bets, the CEO and leadership team at Saudi Telecom Company implemented a multiyear, multipronged strategy for launching new businesses that combined a dedicated venture capital (VC) arm, a robust internal incubation pipeline, partnerships, and spin-offs. The CEO didn’t just launch ventures; he built a system for continuous new-business building that is paying off: The subsidiaries are growing between 10 and 15 times faster than the core, contributing double-digit revenue growth and supporting margin expansion.
- Setting boundaries. The CEOs who are best at new-business building also work in short review cycles (stage gates designed to test a small set of measurable hypotheses), and they aren’t afraid to kill weak ideas and shift resources to higher-potential opportunities. Indeed, given the speed of change, as well as the speed of opportunity, it’s incumbent on today’s CEOs to embed agile practices and mindsets across teams and functions. As ideas for new businesses emerge and develop, outcomes may dictate the need for course corrections. The best venture-building CEOs treat failure as a normal part of the process. They make commitment-rich choices to launch, then “tack” the underlying thesis as circumstances shift and new opportunities surface. They never confuse adaptation with a lack of resolve, however. Only the CEO can hold both halves of that tension at once.
- Underneath that tension is an interesting question for the CEO—not “Should we pivot?” but “How should we pivot without destroying trust in the organization’s next big commitment?” That was the situation facing Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella in 2014. Microsoft had invested $7.2 billion to acquire Nokia’s handset business, betting it could build a competitive mobile platform from scratch. When it became clear the venture had no viable path to scale against iOS and Android, Nadella chose to write down the entire investment and exit mobile hardware completely, rather than continue adjusting course. The reason? To simply keep patching a failing venture would erode trust in the cloud-first strategy he was asking the entire organization to commit to.
- The most successful venture-building CEOs know the organization’s limits—identifying, for instance, the number of new businesses the organization can realistically sponsor all at once, the maximum number of losses the parent company can absorb, and the minimum evidence required before another tranche of capital is allocated to new ventures. They understand that most bets placed will fail, but what’s most important is reallocating capital, talent, and other resources quickly.
- Under CEO Jeff Bezos, for instance, Amazon launched a range of businesses that closed quickly when customer demand and strategic fit proved to be weak—think of the Fire Phone and Amazon Destinations. But given Bezos’s “fail fast and move on” philosophy, where he treats new ventures as options rather than commitments, Amazon has been able to maximize its learning while concentrating investment on eventual success stories like AWS and Prime.
Committing capital with patience
Related to decisions about where to play and what to build, CEOs must be realistic about their capital commitments, especially in the face of economic uncertainty and cyclical pressures on P&L.
In our experience, the CEOs who are best at achieving growth through new business building are more likely than others to accept some level of short-term risk (again, understanding that not all bets will pay out). They tend to be champions for the long game, understanding that while many ventures nowadays tend to break even within two years, those programs still need sustained backing to scale (Exhibit 2).
Exhibit 2
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Additionally, these VC-minded CEOs tend to be more willing than others to explore different funding dynamics. They are deliberate about how and where venture economics show up. They denote, for example, when costs sit with the parent, when they sit with the venture, and what should be treated as capitalized investments versus near-term operating expenses.
Most of these CEOs eschew fixed budgets and, as mentioned previously, allocate capital dynamically. They rely on stage-gated funding for projects and allocate more capital only when certain thresholds are met. Others have explored partnerships and sponsorships to co-fund and derisk new ventures. The venture-building arm of a global technology company has done a combination of both: Rather than making large up-front investments, the CEO and team have created and tested a series of small ventures internally, and increased funding at various milestones. They also partnered with external investors to mitigate risk and build up organizational tolerance for failure, recognizing that not every experiment would pan out. In this way, the technology company has been able to evaluate a large pipeline of ideas, launch numerous ventures across different sectors, and build a meaningful portfolio or growth business over time.
Setting the right culture, talent, infrastructure, and partnerships
Success with new-venture building requires sustained commitment. Running episodic pilots or focusing only on short-term experiments will not be sufficient. Because the CEO is the main touchpoint and convenor for all key stakeholders, only the CEO can achieve this level of commitment among members of the top team, board directors, employees, and investors.
Culture: Taking risks, sometimes over and over again, is a central tenet of new business building, and yet a lot of organizations still pay only lip service to the idea of psychological safety; employees are often penalized rather than rewarded for experiments and attempts to innovate.
As MIT Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee notes in his book The Geek Way (Little Brown, 2023), the CEO’s role here is to legitimize risk-taking as a corporate value, not a career liability. This may mean diverging from corporate rules around incentives, compensation, and operating norms. For instance, in some companies, venture leaders get equity shares or rewards tied to the new venture’s valuation or revenue beyond their base salary or bonus. In other companies, venture builders are given longer-term incentives—as one technology leader did, linking executives’ rewards to the long-term growth of its cloud business. Still other companies have created new “founder track” career paths for employees.
Talent: In many cases, the skills required to launch new ventures may not exist in the organization. Despite any desire to upskill and create internal mobility, CEOs shouldn’t hesitate to look outside for the right skills, even leadership skills. The search for top external talent should be considered a normal if crucial input into the venture-building process. Some CEOs pursued secondments with partner organizations to help transplant important production or engineering practices into their new ventures. Still others have created equity-like upside, earn-outs, or milestone-based compensation to attract external builders.
In all cases, it’s incumbent upon the CEO to find and appoint leaders who can combine start-up agility with corporate strength, regardless of background or function.
Banco de Crédito del Perú (BCP) did just this when launching Yape, a start-up-like organization within its walls. Yape, a mobile wallet provider, was staffed with product development, engineering, and design talent rather than traditional bankers. The company targeted candidates with an entrepreneurial mindset rather than just functional expertise. It organized teams into small, cross-functional squads and gave them clear and complete decision rights on product development. Teams’ performance was measured according to product outcomes, such as user growth and engagement with the digital wallet. Over time, Yape scaled to more than 18 million users and became an important source of growth for BCP.
Infrastructure, governance, and partnerships:New ventures also thrive when CEOs ensure they have the right scaffolding. This may involve setting up “innovation factories,” as the CEO of a large insurer did to accelerate scaling. He organized a shift from legacy systems to modular, API-based architecture, so that new ventures could reuse core capabilities such as payments, identity, and risk. He encouraged organization-wide adoption of cloud, agile and DevOps practices, which would allow for rapid development, rollout, and scaling of new products.
CEOs may also need to set up a separate governance structure for new ventures—where such ventures can remain close enough to the core business to leverage it as needed but independent enough to move at start-up speed. Striking this balance is critical: Overintegration can slow down ventures, but excessive isolation can limit their ability to scale.
The CEO at a large commercial bank in the Middle East worked with others in the company to remove many of the organizational barriers that typically slow business-building efforts. For instance, he established protocols for cross-functional collaboration across business, technology, and risk functions, and he supported a stage-gated funding model that allowed teams to drop weak ideas early, thereby improving capital efficiency. In this way, the CEO shifted performance expectations toward rapid experimentation and delivery. He protected pilots from bureaucracy and ensured that the successful ones were ultimately embedded within core operations.
Both cases make the same point: Balancing speed with risk, compliance, and financial control isn’t a trade-off to manage once; it’s a structural choice about who sits at the table, made early enough that it doesn’t have to be relitigated every time the venture moves fast.
Indeed, it’s important to remember that product–market fit is not the finish line; it is the handoff point. The most successful venture-building CEOs recognize this and routinely ask themselves four important questions related to venture integration, ownership, and time to scale:
- Will the venture remain stand-alone, be folded into a business unit, or become a shared platform?
- Who owns the P&L and the customer relationship—venture leadership, a business unit president, or a combination of venture and sponsor?
- How can leaders reconcile the incentives associated with the venture with those associated with the core business without stripping the venture team of upside rewards too early?
- How does governance need to change so the venture can maintain production speed while still paying attention to nonnegotiable elements such as risk, compliance, and financial control?
Without answers to these questions, ventures will remain orphans, and CEOs and leadership teams will face conflicts among teams within the same organization that are competing in the same channels, for the same customers, with similar brands.
Two key enablers of building new businesses: Technology and board support
The four business-building priorities for CEOs—setting venture building as strategy, choosing where to play and what to build, committing capital with patience, and building culture, capabilities, and partnerships—do not play out in isolation. Two forces increasingly determine whether the CEO’s actions will result in scaled businesses: how ventures use technology, especially AI; and how leaders and boards judge new ventures’ progress when traditional corporate metrics don’t fit.
Using the latest technology
Technology, and AI in particular, must be a strategic input into CEOs’ decisions about where to play and what to build. AI is reshaping customer propositions, operating models, and industry economics. It is also allowing serial business builders to stand up new ventures more quickly through reusable data, modules, and platforms.
In fact, AI is changing the build-versus-buy equation for many CEOs and leadership teams. Historically, there has been a bias toward “buying” rather than “building” new assets as a means to enter an adjacent market or geography. It’s the quickest path to initial scale given built-in talent, revenues, and other factors—or so the logic has gone. Now, however, AI is reducing the cost of experimentation, accelerating building phases, and enabling AI-native business models. Increasingly, CEOs and teams are more likely to emphasize “building this right from the get-go” rather than acquiring an asset and having to go back and rewire it.
It should come as no surprise, then, that 56 percent of the more than 700 companies polled by McKinsey in 2025 said they were planning to build AI-driven ventures within the next five years, and nearly all expect AI integration to be mandatory.10 In fact, more and more CEOs are reconsidering not just how they build new ventures, but, in this age of AI enablement, how many new businesses they can pursue in parallel and how quickly capital and talent can be allocated across initiatives.
Using the right performance metrics
CEOs need committed partnership from boards and investors, but only if all players adhere to the concept of “patient capital” and agree to assess new ventures’ performance using the following stage-appropriate markers:
- Validation. The venture has achieved product–market fit.
- Momentum. The venture is scaling faster than competitors.
- Sustainability. The venture is meeting early profitability and operational-excellence goals.
- Evolution. The venture has expanded into adjacent markets, product lines, or geographies.
The CEO will need to advocate for the use of such markers, rather than corporate P&L expectations alone, to prevent premature pressure from the board for profitability from the new venture, while still maintaining clear accountability. As a venture moves from validation to momentum and sustainability, boards and investors should expect the CEO to establish a new baseline and assign new owners to ensure that performance metrics still make sense in the new context and to explicitly acknowledge that the venture is crossing from an option to an operating reality.
The CEO is the only one who can keep new-business building anchored as a core strategic priority, not a siloed innovation effort. They can set clear guidelines for how ideas are tested and scaled. They are singularly qualified to tell the “right” story—one that convinces investors, employees, and partners about the benefits of growth and the potential outcomes from new-business building. And they are best positioned to step in with authority when important decisions stall. As allocator in chief, the CEO can commit capital ahead of outcomes, enforce investment stage gates, and kill underperforming projects despite internal politics. They can unlock the parent company’s decisive advantages—in customers, data, and capabilities—and help turn those assets into repeatable pathways for new growth.
Ultimately, only the CEO can turn business building into a durable operating capability: funding the talent, platforms, and governance needed to consistently create and scale new ventures.
Europe on the move: A conversation with Hitachi Energy’s CEO
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/insights-on-europe/podcasts-and-videos/europe-on-the-move-a-conversation-with-hitachi-energys-ceo?
Andreas Schierenbeck is CEO of Hitachi Energy. Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Milan office.
As the world enters what the IEA calls the “age of electricity,” Hitachi Energy is leading the evolution of the energy system for a fully electrified world—making electricity abundant and more accessible in Europe and worldwide.
Electricity is the foundation of modern life and the essential force that underpins progress around the world, but the grid’s ability to evolve and scale is the bottleneck to growth. Global leader in electrification Hitachi Energy is spearheading these efforts worldwide. CEO Andreas Schierenbeck recently sat down with the leader of McKinsey’s Electric Power & Natural Gas Practice, Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi, for the inaugural Europe on the move podcast. Schierenbeck discussed the challenges facing Europe’s grid and the urgency to make electricity abundant, secure, affordable, and sustainable.
Energy as a defining imperative
Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi: We are here today with Andreas Schierenbeck, CEO of Hitachi Energy, as part of our series on lifting Europe’s ambition. Andreas, welcome. Why is energy so important to lifting European ambition?
Andreas Schierenbeck: That’s a good question. Normally, we don’t think about energy, but it actually drives our entire society. It’s responsible for economic growth, and cheap energy is a prerequisite for being competitive. It must not only be affordable, but safe, secure, and sustainable. That’s what we are working on at the moment, both here in Europe and worldwide.
The need to overhaul Europe’s electrical grid
Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi: Europe finds itself at a critical juncture, with many forces converging on the continent as we speak. These challenges include affordability, rising inflation, geopolitical uncertainty, technological changes, and an aging population. What’s your sense of the priorities Europe should address to deal with these uncertain times in the next three to five years?
Andreas Schierenbeck: That’s a very complex question, and I think that time frame is a little bit too short. Because, for the first time in a while, we are acknowledging that energy means safety and security, yet it also poses a risk. And the magnitude of energy safety and security is probably bigger than any EU member state can handle on its own. We all know that achieving consensus in Europe on anything is never easy. And when you talk about electrical energy generation and the grid, everything we produce has to be transmitted, because the European grid is not very well interconnected. It’s not inherently bad, but it was created for a different purpose.
Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi: We talk a lot about growth, scale, and European leadership. What do you think the level of European ambition should be?
Andreas Schierenbeck: The level of ambition for Europe and its energy concerns means that we need to agree on one strategy, figure out how we want to supply Europe, and determine what resources we have. This is what every region of the world is doing, be it China, India, or the United States. Everybody is figuring out what they have and what they can use.
We also need to ask ourselves how we are derisking our portfolio, because nobody wants to be dependent on a single source of energy. We have learned that this may not be a good idea. Then, of course, you have to decide what kind of grid you want.
European grid planning was done in a completely different time, for a different purpose. Now we need to take interconnectivity, resiliency, energy exchange, and the learnings from the Ukraine war into consideration.
So, we need a different grid, and we have to agree on how to build it. The US grid package is a good start, defining corridors and bringing the market together. But that’s a different discussion, and these things take time.
Tackling Europe’s energy trilemma
Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi: You mentioned greater integration and agreeing on a diversified strategy. These are ingredients needed to solve the energy trilemma, right? In other words, making sure European energy is secure, affordable, and decarbonized. What other ingredients should we bring into the solution?
Andreas Schierenbeck: I would say I have a different opinion. The energy trilemma cannot be solved. It’s like a three-body problem. It’s unstable. You have to make compromises about affordability, safety, security, and sustainability. There is no perfect solution. And you have to keep asking what you want and how much you are willing to pay or sacrifice for safety and security.
So, the trilemma is always unstable and needs to be negotiated again and again. For example, Germany relied on Russian gas for a long time. Now the situation has changed, and Germany no longer wants to be dependent on Russia.
One thing is for sure. If Europe wants to move forward, it has to become faster and more competitive. It’s just not feasible to wait three, four, five, or six years for various permissions in the future. I know it’s not easy, but I think we have to face these questions. We are spending too much time on bureaucracy and other considerations instead of saying, “We have to define what we want and execute on that.”
And we have shown that we can do this in times of crisis. We can also build things rather fast, even in the last couple of years. But we have to change our speed and the gear, because the world is not waiting for us.
If Europe wants to move forward, it has to become faster and more competitive.
Building the future by investing in footprint and people
Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi: In this context, Hitachi Energy is playing a pivotal role in solving what you call an unstable trilemma, but a trilemma that is important to address to ensure an orderly energy transition. Hitachi Energy also faces several challenges, including debates over affordability, supply chain constraints, and the need to hire and train talent. So, in that context, what actions is the company taking?
Andreas Schierenbeck: First, we are investing because we know that we need more equipment for the grid, of which we are one of the biggest suppliers. We also invest the largest amount in the industry to produce more energy.
But I don’t agree that affordability and grid investment are a contradiction. Every euro you spend on the grid saves two to three euros over the long term, because you eliminate grid congestion, when you’re paying for energy you’re not using.
Every euro you spend on the grid saves two to three euros over the long term.
So, from that point of view, having a stable grid for the right purpose saves you money. If you look at energy prices across all EU member states, you shouldn’t underestimate how prices are determined. The grid is not the highest cost in that equation, and a properly defined one can actually save money.
On the other hand, we are also investing in people because investing only in machinery is not enough. We have strong European roots, having been founded in Sweden and Switzerland before becoming Hitachi Energy. We remain committed to Europe and are hiring more than 5,000 people globally each year over the next couple of years.
We are also investing in people because investing only in machinery is not enough.
Competitiveness through high-voltage connections
Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi: You touched on affordability. Could you share some examples of what Hitachi Energy is doing to address this?
Andreas Schierenbeck: We’re always looking for better solutions to reduce costs, such as what we are doing with high-voltage direct-current [HVDC] links connecting countries or offshore wind parks. The latest auctions in the UK have shown that the price of offshore wind parks connected with HVDC can be very competitive. Connecting different states and regions across Europe with HVDC links is also helping bring down energy prices.
Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi: Andreas, what about innovation? HVDC systems are very complex. The energy system is becoming increasingly complex as energy flows decentralize. What is Hitachi Energy doing in terms of innovation?
Andreas Schierenbeck: We pioneered HVDC a long time ago, and I would say the next decades will be the age of HVDC. Of course, we’re always looking to improve our ability to supply energy to the grid. Power quality also plays a big role as the number of solar systems and onshore and offshore wind increases, so we now have more grid components to compensate for.
We’re also looking at integration, software, and AI because the grid was designed a long, long time ago for a kind of central generation, transportation, distribution, and consumption. Now the grid is changing, because everybody with a rooftop solar panel is generating and probably selling energy. So, software innovation using AI to improve efficiency is one example of innovation.
Moving from transactions to partnerships
Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi: Andreas, you mentioned a lot of initiatives underway at Hitachi Energy, but you are also intensifying your partnerships with both the public and private sectors. Could you tell us a bit more about these partnerships and what drove your decision to offer customers a better value proposition through them?
Andreas Schierenbeck: I think it’s part of this age of electricity, as it’s called by the IEA [International Energy Agency]. Electricity demand is growing faster than ever before, much faster than primary energy. And it’s changing how we work together. The energy market used to be very transactional. If you needed some equipment, such as a transformer, you ordered one and got one because there was spare capacity. Now everybody in the industry, not just us, is fully booked.
And even though we are still investing, we are only investing in bankable business cases. That means we have to know who is buying what. Which means we have to ask our customers and partners, “What do you need, and when?” Otherwise, we wouldn’t invest. So, it’s completely changing the way we work together.
So, we’re moving from transactional relationships to partnerships. You tell me what you need, when you need it, and we reserve it. We also save time and money because I don’t need as much time engineering as before. I can order long-lead items in advance, put them in stock, and invest in additional capacity.
We’re moving from transactional relationships to partnerships.
And while it changes how we work with our traditional customers, there are new customers like the hyperscalers building data centers. This opens up new possibilities, because you have much more freedom to design the systems in a more cost-effective way, as long as it’s faster.
But from my point of view, the central challenge in this age of electricity is learning to work together and move from transactions to partnerships. Because that’s the only way we can cope with the rising demand, since supply and demand are not in balance today.
Satisfying the growing need for services
Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi: How does this change the way you work with your customers? Historically, you sold them equipment, but now you offer them a revised value proposition that includes services to help them manage systems over their entire life cycle.
Andreas Schierenbeck: Yes, services are another way to help our customers. Why are services more important than before? Our customers face big challenges and are now spending three to four times as much on capital expenditures as before.
If you’re spending three to four times more than you have ever spent in a year, you need more people. Which means you have to recruit your own people, such as maintenance crews and project managers, to run these new initiatives instead of providing services. So, there is an opening for the industry to fill that need for services.
On the other hand, our customers also face an aging employee population. And as older employees retire, a lot of experience is leaving these companies as well. So, it makes sense to turn to companies like ours, which have experience with this equipment and can scale it.
The benefits of corporate synergy
Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi: Hitachi Energy has a deep European heritage with ABB, but so does the global Hitachi Group, which is active in many areas, including industry, mobility, digital, healthcare, and building systems. How is that helping you offer better value propositions to your customers?
Andreas Schierenbeck: Being part of a larger company is always helpful because it provides easier access to financing and resources like software, which can be rather difficult in this era of AI. If you have it all in-house, it’s so much easier.
Our AI-powered HMAX solution, for instance, is based on an innovation developed by our rail colleagues. HMAX gathers, processes, and analyzes data from sensor platforms to make propositions. So, that’s not something new.
There are a lot of synergies to take advantage of in such a large group. And, of course, we have a wide footprint because we are active worldwide, although not everywhere.
The power of taking time to slow down
Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi: Finally, allow me to ask you a more personal question. You lead a business that is active in roughly 140 countries, and you oversee more than 56,000 employees. You also need to balance the short-term deadlines for delivering products and services to your customers with the long-term investment decisions you make every day. How do you strike a balance, given the ambiguity of the current environment? How do you deal with that?
Andreas Schierenbeck: First, I’m not doing it alone. I have a great team and great colleagues worldwide who make decisions daily and work with customers. I see only the tip of the iceberg, and probably most of the problems, because bad news always travels to the top.
But this is normal for every top manager. We are here to solve problems, find solutions, and change the culture, because we are in a transition—and culture is the most important factor for an organization, especially as it grows.
Ultimately, you have to find that balance in the business between running fast and not overextending teams or overinvesting. I try to find the balance in my personal life as well. It’s not always easy, but there are two things I do that help.
When I’m home, I often walk my dog because he slows me down. He stops at every corner and sniffs around, so if you want to walk fast, forget it. He sets the pace, which gives me time to think and slow down. I’m also into running. And although I’ve downgraded from running marathons to half marathons, that’s good enough.
Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi: With your dog or without?
Andreas Schierenbeck: I’ve tried to run with my dog once in a while. After 100 meters, he looks at me with an expression that says, “What are you doing?” Forget it.
Lorenzo Moavero Milanesi: We covered a lot of ground. I see three themes from our conversation regarding attributes for leadership from a European champion.
The first is resilience, especially in dealing with this ambiguous environment we find ourselves in now. The second is the capacity to always innovate and learn, especially in an ecosystem of increasingly diversified partners.
The third one is the importance of talent, and how you are hiring and training a lot of new people in Europe, as well as how you are working with your leadership team to navigate the current environment. Thank you so much for this inspiring conversation, Andreas.
Andreas Schierenbeck: Thank you for having me.
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