talking heads

New Kudelski Group directors look to the future

Alex Osadzinski and Yves Pitton have recently been appointed members of the Kudelski Group Executive Board. Below they outline their plans for Nagravision and what they predict for the future.

 

---

So, you’ve both been recently appointed as new board members. Congratulations! What are your new roles within the group? Alex, let’s start with you.

Alex: I have two roles - a governance and an operational one. The first is as a member of the Kudelski Group's Executive Board, providing core internal governance, guidance, leadership and strategy team for the group. The latter is as executive vice president of product for the digital TV (DTV) business. This role was created as part of an organisational change effective from 1 January this year. As our DTV business grows in size, breadth and complexity, we've grown the DTV executive team, and our overall aim is to continue to develop our end-to-end product capabilities.

Yves: As for my role, as well as being a member on the Executive Board of the Kudelski Group, I’m now also senior vice president of corporate development. This means that I’ll be leading business development, strategy and the CTO office. I’ll also be running Abilis Systems, a company providing single-chip solutions to enable digital TV broadcasts on any electronic device with a display - from smart mobile handsets to media players, notebooks, set-top boxes and PCs.

Globally, my responsibilities can be broken down into three main areas. Firstly, to develop our mid- and long-term strategy and strategic plans. Secondly, to acquire the competitive and business intelligence to better understand business, technology and security trends. And thirdly, to identify and develop new business and technological opportunities in the areas of innovation, knowledge management and business development.

Sounds like you’re both going to be rather busy. How did you come to join Nagravision and the Kudelski Group in the first place – what are your respective backgrounds and how will they help you in your new role Alex?

I grew up in the UK and have lived in California for the past 18 years working in the software, systems and digital media industries. I’ve actually known of Nagra since the age of eight - I was an audio geek, and would have loved to own a Nagra recorder! It was the absolute best that money could buy. In my previous venture capital roles, I missed being involved in building a business and managing a team directly. Being offered such a job with the Kudelski Group fit perfectly with what I wanted to get into.

With my start-up, VC and technology experience and Silicon Valley perspective I think the Group’s strategy and approach to the market can be more targeted. While the DTV industry as a whole is still largely custom-engineering focused and I don't see it moving to a turnkey, standard product, I do see it moving to a more efficient platform-based model, with customisation as required. I'd like to be able to combine my product experience with Nagra's technology experience, to help make us more agile and responsive to ever-increasing and complex customer needs.

And Yves, you’ve been with the company since 2006 when you joined as group vice president in charge of special projects and then moved on to business development. What other experience do you bring to the table?

Before joining I spent five years working for McKinsey & Co in Europe and in the USA focusing on TV, new media, hi-tech and industrial businesses in international environments.

The Kudelski Group has experienced tremendous growth over the last decade and to continue this growth the group now needs to reinvent itself to match business complexities and structural changes in the market. I believe I’ll provide strong contributions based on my international, hi-tech and broad consulting experience to sustain the group in the long run.

What challenges do you see the DTV industry facing over the next year and how do you plan on helping your customers overcome these?

Alex: The elephant in the room is the worldwide economic crisis. It presents extraordinary challenges to every company but also unusually strong opportunities. It's easy to say that, even in a crisis, people continue to watch TV. But advertisers vanish, sometimes overnight, and so in many cases our customers' revenues will be at risk.

Paradoxically, this may drive their business models to subscription/pay TV versus ad-subsidised TV, which increases the need for our solutions that help generate and protect customer revenues. The best way that we can help our customers is to be more efficient, flexible and better able to deliver to them the infrastructure for innovative end-user offerings. The winners in an economic crisis are those that adapt to it quickly and invest intelligently in anticipation of the inevitable upturn. Our goal has to be to help our customers do that, while we do it ourselves too.

Yves: I agree with Alex. Over the next 12 months in particular we can expect significant financial and operational challenges for the DTV industry as a whole. Financially, credit risk, cash flow management and structural changes and consolidation of the market might have an impact on companies along the value chain. No one should be naïve in that respect. On the operational side, with the transition to digital, new emerging ecosystems and alternative solutions for end-users’ content consumption patterns, the new competitive landscape is pushing for operational efficiencies. So we need to do things better, faster and more cheaply. Re-thinking our product offering and value proposition by taking an integrated and total cost-of-ownership based approach should allow us to align our efforts in the best interests of our customers.

And what does this mean for the future of the digital TV industry? Is digital convergence still a buzzword and will it be affected by the changes in the economic market this year?

Alex: We can expect profound long-term changes to technology and product offerings. One thing that won’t happen is the death of television, which has been touted for the past ten years or so. Do I believe that in 10 to 20 years from now people will still watch television? Of course they will, but in ways that we can only partially predict. I can’t see the primary consumption mode being via two minute clips on your phone. However, this will become a new way of consuming content, along with other ways, which will be vitally important to commercial success. Being flexible and ready to evolve is how we can make the most of this.

And Yves? How do you see the future of DTV evolving?

This is a very broad question, and no one has a crystal ball. However, we can clearly see key business and technology trends emerging. All these trends and others will have a significant impact on the business models of our partners and customers, as well as on us. While this will force us to evolve, it’ll also present huge opportunities to capitalise on our skillset and reinforce and strengthen our position as a strategic partner and thought leader. It’s up to us to make the Kudelski Group stronger and continue its growth.