Faculty in the spotlight: Marc Feyen

Marc Feyen

At least 150 faculty work with MCE. Everyone has their own way of working, but they share a common passion : transferring knowledge. So, we decided to put each time a faculty in the spotlight to get to know more about them and about their expertise. 




Marc Feyen is delivering the Mini-MBA chemicals for MCE since 2013. He is delivering the part that is covering: Global Trends, Leadership, Strategy, Sales & Marketing and Supply Chain. The Financial section is delivered by a specific financial specialist. He offers a very pragmatic and result-oriented approach to coaching and developing leaders and managers to keep the business moving forward.

MCE: How this Mini MBA could help the future participants in their career, research?

Marc Feyen: 

1. First of all the participants will see all major parts of a company and business and importantly how they are “inter-connected”. This is crucial for potential and future leaders to understand this. They need this global view in order to successfully lead a business or company, especially when they are going through major changes, which can be a result of change in strategic direction or restructuring. The business environment is today so complex and quickly changing that a full understanding of ALL aspects of a business is inevitable for success.  

2. The Chemical industry is also a difficult industry. More strict regulations (f.i. Reach), sometimes still the bad image that the chemical industry has created in the past, the future challenges in new environmentally friendly technologies and products (read Bio-economy), requires strong and skilled leaders with a clear vision for the future. The Mini MBA for the Chemical industry will help them to understand and develop this further.

 MCE: As a trainer for this Mini MBA Chemicals at MCE, Could you tell us what is the “Future of the bioeconomy”?

            MF: During the next decades, the world will be faced with an increased shortage of natural resources, while the world population is further growing. So an increased competition for it will be the result of it.

            Therefore, a transition towards a more optimal use of renewable biological resources is an absolute must. Europe and the rest of the world will be forced to move to technologies and products that needs less input, requires less energy to produce, create less environmental impact and reduce further the CO2 emissions.

For Europe this will be a serious challenge as it will be a crucial element in order to keep her competitiveness towards other large economies. However, in my opinion, it creates also an unique opportunity for Europe to become a more resource efficient society that can rely better and more on renewable resources while still achieving economical growth.

The bio-economy is wide comprehensive: primary production and industrial into the food industry, waste treatment, pulp & paper, a large part of the chemical industry and of course the energy industry.
 

MCE: According to you what is the impact of the new technologies on the chemical industry?

            MF: It is estimated that the bio-economy represents a market value of more than 2 trillion Euro annually already today in Europe. It provides employment to more than 21 million people. These estimates makes it clear that the chemical industry can strongly benefit from it. The bio-economy will drive the companies to be more innovative, creative and very "open-minded thinking” in order to develop new sustainable technologies and products for the future. This will change the way of leading and structuring companies. It will require more R&D people, creative minds and innovators in the chemical industry. In other words: bio-economy is very much “Knowledge-based. The leaders of the future needs to be very much “Entrepreneurial” oriented in order to create (invent) new collaboration and business models. The bio-economy will be also very interesting, in my opinion, for the so-called “medium sized” companies. There are many companies in this segment, like f.i. agriculture industry. They excel mostly in their specific knowledge, but the commercialization is often difficult and expensive. Cooperation with larger companies is then needed to develop further and commercialize these new sustainable technologies. I strongly believe that not only in the food industry, but also in the chemical industry a very big future is ahead of them in the search for new, ecological sustainable product and technologies.