Business Talk Magazine

Henry Ford has well asserted, “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” It is more than easy to get disheartened in the competitive business world as an entrepreneur, but those who stand firm with their passion are the ones who create history. It is an undeniable fact that behind every successful and well-established company, there is a founder with great enthusiasm and dedication.

Business Talk has been an active witness of the success journey of numerous business ventures that have measured the journey from scratch to the sky. And here again, our team is back with one such tale of one of the leading business ventures in the market – 20blue. Their highly efficient business model and a team of versatile heads inspired us and made us feature them in our upcoming edition – ‘The Most Admired Companies to Watch.’ Our editorial team got the opportunity to arrange an exclusive meeting session with the Founder and Managing Partner of the company, Anja Mutschler. Being an enthusiastic shentrepreneur, Anja is one of those inspiring personas, who fill a next-level motivation in people with their actions. In the conversation with us, Anja shared numerous unknown facts about the success journey of the company so far. She also shared numerous valuable nuggets for the budding entrepreneurs and business enthusiasts. Further, the visionary leader spilled the secret sauce to start and sustain a business venture. We truly hope and desire that this fascinating read will not only add some extra value to the lives of our readers – but will also encourage them to break their barriers and chase their dreams.    

Company Overview

20blue is a leading research institute primarily offering consultancy on topics such as digital transformation and diversity. Giving a brief intro of the portfolio of 20blue, Anja asserts, “We’re accompanying decision-makers in political and economic organizations to find the best answers in their transformation processes. For more than 12 years, the company has been assisting relevant debates in the fields of science, the economy, and society with its specialist community of highly qualified researchers, content creators, country and industry experts, and translators. With nearly 300 hand-picked experts situated across the globe, 20blue is incredibly accessible and always at the forefront of emerging trends and news in a wide variety of industries. Since its establishment, the company has worked on more than 1,000 projects. Moreover, our values and mission are revealed in our company name 20blue.

20 is our symbol for taking a stand and bringing about change. In the 21st century, objectivity, academia, and expertise are under threat. We need change to make our political and economic systems fit for an ambiguous and complex future. To find the truth, we must bring together diverse opinions and perspectives, and be methodical in our approach. The 1920s were a time of cosmopolitan open-mindedness. Yet the brutal end to that decade in Germany shows us just how fragile a system can be. This is what the 20 stands for in 20blue. 20blue believes in keeping decision-making grounded in facts, not fear. Blue reinforces our mission to take a far-sighted view and seek clarity and balance. The color blue reflects the breadth of our expertise, with its vast array of connotations. The blue economy, blue-chip mindsets, sky, water, clarity, diversity, and unity. Blue is also about looking to the future. Our “blush”, a rebellious (and feminist) pink, in the logo stands for future and hope and the positive energy our team and output can spend.”  

Converting Challenges into Opportunities

Challenges and obstacles are a part of business operations, but true leaders own the courage to fight back against those obstacles and convert them into opportunities. This is exactly what 20blue is doing in its respective business arena. Anja says, “Globally, we’re fighting with everything science and knowledge-driven organizations are fighting: the unwillingness of people to challenge their own beliefs. But after 12 years, we see that there is a big need and with our long client relationships, we think we face this fight quite well. A more concrete challenge is that our service is usually not for fun: Not all of our clients come to us, because they want to – rather, they have to, because they need data and facts, they need the knowledge to proceed with critical projects. At the same time, it is our USP to bring experts and decision-makers at a table and find a language to transfer scientific knowledge into applicable expertise. At the beginning, some clients are afraid of the answers – but with a customer satisfaction of over 95%, the team is proud to say that we have a good way to make leaders see the obvious and make them understand how scientifically known and proven facts help them to make better decisions.”

Moreover, we asked Anja how the global pandemic affected the growth of the business and what key learnings she and her team got from the same. She explained that change has always been the focus element across the premises of 20blue and COVID-19 only did affirm that perception. As the company was already operating digitally even before the pandemic, the change of operations and organization during that time was not a complex task for them. Also, as the need for research and research-driven communication cannot be avoided by the business firms, 20blue finds its growth on that basis too. “The growth helped us to proceed with our re-branding from NIMIRUM to 20blue in 2020 and to shape our message to become the ‘community for creating change’. One could say: we’re prepared for a time of complex crisis, although we didn’t know before. Most growth came through existing clients but after the first shock, we also saw new leads coming back in. With a consistent marketing messaging we’re quite good to keep our sales pipe healthy even in harsh times.”

The Brain Behind the Brand

They say, “Behind every successful business venture, there is a passionate leader with a great mindset.” This fact proved to be true when we met Anja and found out about the 20blue success rate. The visionary leader has been giving her utmost efforts to bring the business to the next level with her enthusiastic approach to handling critical situations. She is the face of 20blue and is planning to come over at some stage in 2022 to talk about their knowledge-driven vision of collaboration. The idea that she had with a friend back in 2010 is very simple: we need to make scientists more accessible and society more knowledgeable.

Before signing off, Anja threw some light on her compelling work culture throughout the organization by affirming, “20blue is a community-based company which means that we’re always interested in different points of view and don’t consider them as threats. Hopefully, this makes it easy for everyone in the company to stand up for their ideas and be able to convey to us if we need to improve or change our strategy. We also have a routine of sitting together four times a year to only talk about strategy. And the most important thing: we realize the changes we committed to. Results always need action. We narrowed the gap between planning and acting by adding digital workflows in the last 12 months, as well.”

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