Frank Ridder

I am currently touring across Europe with a presentation on “Balancing Speed & Risk in Outsourcing”, targeted to sourcing executives and sourcing vendors. I start my pitch with 2 questions. Number one: “Which of you believes that we have passed the deepest point of the economic crisis”. The results across Europe are quite diverse. While in the UK and Paris the scepticism is very high (only 3-4% believe it’s over) it is a bit better in the Benelux countries with around 5% of “it’s over” believers. This week I was in the Nordic countries. Norway and Denmark around 8%, Sweden around 20%.
 
As this data points are hard to analyze as is, I asked a second question: “Who of you usually lives on the optimistic side of the life.” Broad consistency here. In all sessions around 80% of the people classify themselves as optimists. ..everywhere in Europe and people from oganizations and vendors dealing with Sourcing.

There is hesitation in accepting the few positive market messages shared in various industries. People believe more in the dark forecasts from economists and the governments in Europe. It seems wise to continue working on fighting the crisis but at the same time starting to prepare for the time after.