While asset-light models in the manufacturing industry can be a beneficial way to reduce costs and increase efficiency, it is important to be aware of the potential significant drawbacks. Companies should carefully evaluate their asset-light model strategy to ensure that it is cost effective and beneficial to the business. This process of evaluation should never be done from the sole perspective of opportunity cost! Just in the last 2-3 years or so, we have seen startling examples of asset-light model projects. Effect: Clients lose the possibility to create really strategic scenarios, because only tactically determined actions exist. Creativity in free fall.

How dangerous can paradigms be in a crisis?

Can an industry-wide paradigm lead to business blindness? Under what conditions has a paradigm developed?

If you think about costs too late, you ruin your company. Those who always think about costs too early kill creativity. Cost-cutting measures must be taken when you are earning a lot of money. Once you're in the red, it's too late. Many years of experience can sometimes narrow the view. There are people who think they know the bird very well because they have seen the egg from which it crawled out.

Sometimes you have to pull out trees to see if the root is still there. After many years of the paradigm of uncompromising outsourcing of all functions, we realize after many projects that this way has to be decided anew in every case and has to be checked at regular intervals for its still existing advantages. Paradigms must not be retained for convenience.