The world has become smaller in the past year. Although that does not sound positive, and some sectors were hit hard, it wasn't all bad. Skies were empty, smog disappeared, burglars could hardly find an empty house to rob. For some, times were more peaceful than ever, while others felt trapped in their own apartment.

By working from home, we also got used to new business meeting settings. Many found that the virtual meetings led to limited travel movements, which also saved time for other appointments, increasing the flexibility and efficiency of a working day. For example, working with Teams and video calling allows someone to coordinate with different people all over the world in one day. And of course, compared to the regular telephone calls, video also adds a personal impression to the call.

Meanwhile, our international expansion continued unperturbed. Although we settled in the US, the Nordics and Asia only recently, the growth is already visible there. An example of this is described in this edition’s client article about MODEC, a Japanese offshore company based in Singapore and carrying out many projects in South America. Together with the other client article on Royal FloraHolland, which is active in the global floriculture market, it symbolizes the flourishing diversity of our consulting areas.

Next to international expansion, we aim to continue our growth in the coming years with new product-market combinations and tooling. Here we assist our clients with robust project management frameworks as described in the third part of the series in which we introduce our testing approach.

Now that more and more vaccinations should lead us to a more open world, we all still wonder what the new normal will be like. In the meanwhile, developments in technology have not stopped and disruptive technology is changing business models. We share our vision on this in some of the articles too. For example, the Vision article ‘News sentiment analysis and credit risk’ discusses whether we still need humans to monitor and interpret qualitative data for our risk models, Also, in the columns on Digital Darwinism and on the bitcoin, we share some of our technological considerations for the future.

Most of us like travelling and some of us are used to flying all over the world. But during the pandemic restrictions, we have learned that if we travel less, this saves time for other meetings or – even better – practicing sports. Practicing sports is a very important way to stay healthy, but also an important way to bring people together. And if not practicing, watching it in good company is a great alternative. Many of you will be or have been watching and supporting your favourite teams or individuals during the events like the European Football Championships, the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Wimbledon or the Tour de France. It’s good to see that these sports help make our changing world bigger again!

I wish you healthy and sunny times, enjoy reading this edition.

Judith van Paassen