Start smart, scale fast: how to go faster by taking the first steps more carefully

Where to start? · Point of view · 2 min read

Thinking big and starting small is not the problem. Starting in the wrong place is. Four questions every electrification journey has to answer before the first order is signed.

The paradox of speed

During Smart Freight Week in Amsterdam this April, I heard the same challenge from shippers, logistics service providers, vehicle manufacturers and new entrants: how do you go faster by taking your first steps more carefully?

Fons Trompenaar would probably not let me call it a dilemma. But the tension is real. The market is hot and the sense of urgency is high. Yet the organisations that will move fastest are not necessarily the ones that order first. They are the ones that know why, where and how they will scale before they start.

Think big, start small: that is not the issue

Everyone agrees you should think big and start small. The real question is where to start smart, and how to design for scale from day one.

• Which lanes, customers and depots make the strongest first business case?
• Which technology do you start with, and which foundations do you need to stay resilient as you grow?
• How do you keep pace with your customers, competitors, technology, legislation and infrastructure all at the same time?

Without a strategy and a roadmap, electrification remains a series of pilots. With one, it becomes a competitive advantage.

“Thinking big is not the problem. The issue is where to start smart, and how to design for scale upfront.”

Haijo Kampinga

Four questions that keep coming back

In a single week I spoke with the regional board of a leading global logistics service provider, a European building-materials company working on its 2030 electrification roadmap, vehicle and charging manufacturers, and a range of start-ups. Different companies, same four questions:

• Where to start? Which operations, customers and sites create the strongest first case, and is the organisation actually ready?
• How to finance? CapEx or OpEx, subsidy or not, and who carries which risk? The building-materials company was asking exactly this: how to turn capex investments into one integrated opex solution.
• How to scale? Depots, grid capacity, energy and shared infrastructure that grow with the fleet.
• Who to trust? Which partners can really deliver, in a market that is still scattered and not very transparent?

These four questions, plus the question of why now, are also how we have organised this Insights library.

Courage, decisiveness and capital

Serving customers in Europe’s zero-emission zones will take courage, decisiveness and capital. None of those replace a plan. And no company has all of them in-house. Electrification is business, and no one can do it alone.