Welcome to the first episode of Ahead of the Herd, a series exploring how leaders are thinking about AI, ideas, and industry shifts that will shape the future. To kick things off, Yoav Naveh sits down with Stefan Borggreve, COO of Road, Rail and Express at Hellmann, to explore how AI is reshaping the logistics industry. Stefan shares why companies need to look beyond automating existing processes, how AI can create new services and customer experiences, what it takes to build an effective innovation team, and how the workforce could evolve in an increasingly agentic world.
Takeaways:
- AI is about more than automation. Instead of simply making existing processes faster or cheaper, companies have an opportunity to use AI to create entirely new services and deliver a different level of customer experience.
- Run practical experiments while reimagining the future. Stefan advocates pursuing straightforward AI use cases alongside greenfield projects. Practical applications build experience while more ambitious experiments reveal what the business could become.
- Innovation requires the right mindset. Building an effective innovation team is not just about technical expertise. Stefan emphasizes collaboration, curiosity, adaptability, and the ability to work closely with business teams to create real value.
- Operations will evolve around AI. As AI agents take on more transactional work, Stefan envisions teams shifting toward working "at the system, not in the system," continuously training, improving, and augmenting AI.
- The world will be agentified. Stefan sees the shift toward AI agents as difficult to avoid as model capabilities improve and costs come down. For companies, the challenge is learning how to navigate that transition while making smart decisions about technology, partnerships, and economics.
Quote of the Show:
- “What if we really leverage AI to its full extent?” - Stefan Borggreve
Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefan-borggreve-54200b79/
- Website: https://www.hellmann.com/en/#business
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