Kurt Baes
Managing Partner
Head of Arthur D. Little in Belgium and Luxembourg
Kurt advises energy, utility, aerospace, automotive and manufacturing companies on performance improvement, growth strategy, and large organizational transformation.
Areas of Focus
Education
Cornell University (NY, USA)
Master of Business Administration
K.U.Leuven (Belgium)
Master of Science in Applied Economics
Past Experience
Volvo
Various intern positions
Kurt is Managing Partner, leading Arthur D. Little in Belgium and Luxembourg and based in Brussels, with over 20 years of strategy consulting experience. He has lived and worked in Europe, Asia and North America. He is the local leader of various industry (Oil & Gas, Utilities & Alternative Energy, Automotive, Industrial Goods & Services) and functional (Performance) practices. He also heads our Global Competence Center Leader for Energy Transmission.
Kurt serves a broad range of Energy & Utility players and their suppliers in international assignments, such as:
- Strategy and business planning
- Global organization redesign
- Operational excellence/performance boosting
- Large capital projects & programs
- Engineering management
- Risk and portfolio management
- Asset management
Kurt advises large and mid-size global clients in the automotive and manufacturing industries (aerospace, construction, electronics) on assignments such as:
- Strategy and business planning
- Market analysis and entry strategy, including transaction support
- Industrial reorganization and operations turnaround
- Performance improvement
In addition, he advises in the area of Operations Management in international context cross-industry, covering Sourcing, Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management, and overall Performance Improvement.
How data sharing is essential to deliver industry-wide transformation
Industries from energy to healthcare are facing up to transformational change. This is driven by several factors: a need for greater sustainability, reinforced by regulation; changes in consumer needs and behaviors requiring greater flexibility and customer-centricity; and technological development, especially digital and automation. Current geopolitical and economic trends affecting energy prices, supply chains and inflation are acting as a further driver.
Appetite for disruption – Making the most of the future of food
Being the leader of a global food and beverage business has been anything but easy over recent years. Going back a decade, the industry had a reputation for being fairly stable and conservative, dominated by a limited number of global brands that delivered steady growth and margins. Since then, the industry has been shaken by a succession of disruptions, including sluggish demand for traditional core products, rapidly changing consumer patterns and preferences, accelerating technological developments, and evolving attitudes towards the environmental and social impacts of food production.
Green energy – How to outsmart disruption and future-proof business models
With more robust global political climate ambitions, green growth is an increasing driver of greater value for energy and utility companies, as well as for corporates across all sectors. With 2020 a green watershed, the authors outline key opportunities that leaders need to seize to futureproof their businesses and increase shareholder value.
Sustainability in the supply chain: The risks and the rewards
Supply chain sustainability risk management
Industrial energy management
With sustainability commitments on the horizon, how can industrial companies reach their targets cost-effectively?
Energy retailers: Facing the toughest transition in the energy sector
What’s next for TSOs?
Within the energy ecosystem, the transition towards a more sustainable future mostly materializes through rapid increases in renewable energy sources, distributed generation and energy storage at large. The increasing share of intermittent generation sources is redefining the rules of the game – roles and accountability within the energy value chain are turned upside down.
Flexibility services: Catch me if you can!
As utilities are exposed to bigger risks of supply-and-demand imbalance fueled by unpredictable, intermittent generation sources, they are searching for flexibility solutions to offset their open positions. In this market context, energy aggregators have emerged, and are taking an increasingly important role in optimizing electricity generation and demand volatility by providing the needed flexibility. Meanwhile, multiple traditional (integrated) utilities have developed similar demandside response (DSR) solutions and even acquired aggregators altogether.
Future of batteries
Battery technologies are central to delivering significant advances in a wide range of industries, from electric vehicles to renewable power. This has catapulted battery technology to the top of the priority list for many players, leading to a huge boom in investment, as companies try to build key positions in the market.
The Breakthrough Incubator - how to create and rapidly launch new step-out businesses
Despite businesses focusing their efforts on improving breakthrough innovation performance, many still fail to create sustainable new businesses of scale. The Breakthrough Incubator model, a new approach built on radical collaboration across the innovation ecosystem, covering the entire process from idea to commercialization, is already demonstrating that it can overcome the challenges that hold back performance.
Balancing the positives and negatives – The rise of the battery ecosystem
Expanding markets such as electric vehicles, renewable energy storage and consumer electronics are driving enormous interest and investment in the battery sector, from both incumbents and new players. Based on a new ADL study, this article explores the drivers, challenges and likely outcomes in the market, providing key lessons to inform future strategies.
Virtual Power Plants – At the heart of the energy transition
Energy utilities are evolving towards greater reliance on flexibility to respond to an increasing supply-and-demand imbalance. In that context, the role of aggregators has become predominant in optimizing electricity generation and demand through virtual power plants (VPPs) and complementing traditional power plants in the provision of flexibility.
Agility in managing electricity grids: The case for batteries
The rise in renewable energy has created unprecedented challenges for the planning and operation of an electricity grid that was built on the assumption of power being provided predominantly by large, centralized generation sources and consumed as soon as it is produced. As a means of addressing these challenges, batterystorage technologies are therefore attracting great interest, and this article looks at their future role and the drivers and barriers to their greater adoption in major markets.
Battery Storage: Still Too Early?
Renewable energy deployment over the last decades has posed unprecedented challenges for the planning and operation of power systems. In the context of increasingly decentralized and intermittent generation, power utilities1 and system operators need to rethink their portfolios, business models and positions in the market in order to be resilient to these changes and benefit from them.
Demand Side Management
In times of energy transition, when intermittent decentralized generation is on the rise and large traditional generation assets are retiring, electricity systems increasingly need flexible solutions to ensure security of supply.
Embracing complexity with value-based risk management
In the current environment uncertainties seem to be everywhere, making strategic planning more difficult than ever. Many companies use enterprise risk management (ERM) as a proven framework for managing risk. However, businesses are now looking to improve their track records when it comes to understanding and overcoming unwanted events. In this article the authors explore issues related to risk management and how the 6C framework can help.
Aerospace Supplier Squeeze – Ways Out?
This guest blog post at Aerospace Diary, an online forum for aerospace professionals, is based on Arthur D. Little's Viewpoint that takes the same title. The aerospace and defense (A&D) industry today struggles with a duality: defense-driven segments are taking hits due to significant governmental budget cuts, while commercial aircraft manufacturing enjoys double-digit growth.
Maximize value from quality-testing operations:
Quality testing in F&B is business critical to ensure consistent good end-product quality and protect the corporate brand. However, despite significant budgets spent, there is often limited clarity and transparency about the incurred costs and operational performance of their testing laboratories. Typically, over 90% of routine testing lead times are “non-value adding” and up to 20% of the staff in quality-testing laboratories could be smartly reallocated by redefining the organizational setup, refocusing activities and redefining key processes.
Keeping the lights on
Triggered by higher volatility in both supply and demand, the need for balancing services in high-voltage electricity networks is increasing. How can transmission system operators, traditional energy players and potential new entrants generate business value from this growing opportunity?
Kurt is Managing Partner, leading Arthur D. Little in Belgium and Luxembourg and based in Brussels, with over 20 years of strategy consulting experience. He has lived and worked in Europe, Asia and North America. He is the local leader of various industry (Oil & Gas, Utilities & Alternative Energy, Automotive, Industrial Goods & Services) and functional (Performance) practices. He also heads our Global Competence Center Leader for Energy Transmission.
Kurt serves a broad range of Energy & Utility players and their suppliers in international assignments, such as:
- Strategy and business planning
- Global organization redesign
- Operational excellence/performance boosting
- Large capital projects & programs
- Engineering management
- Risk and portfolio management
- Asset management
Kurt advises large and mid-size global clients in the automotive and manufacturing industries (aerospace, construction, electronics) on assignments such as:
- Strategy and business planning
- Market analysis and entry strategy, including transaction support
- Industrial reorganization and operations turnaround
- Performance improvement
In addition, he advises in the area of Operations Management in international context cross-industry, covering Sourcing, Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management, and overall Performance Improvement.
How data sharing is essential to deliver industry-wide transformation
Industries from energy to healthcare are facing up to transformational change. This is driven by several factors: a need for greater sustainability, reinforced by regulation; changes in consumer needs and behaviors requiring greater flexibility and customer-centricity; and technological development, especially digital and automation. Current geopolitical and economic trends affecting energy prices, supply chains and inflation are acting as a further driver.
Appetite for disruption – Making the most of the future of food
Being the leader of a global food and beverage business has been anything but easy over recent years. Going back a decade, the industry had a reputation for being fairly stable and conservative, dominated by a limited number of global brands that delivered steady growth and margins. Since then, the industry has been shaken by a succession of disruptions, including sluggish demand for traditional core products, rapidly changing consumer patterns and preferences, accelerating technological developments, and evolving attitudes towards the environmental and social impacts of food production.
Green energy – How to outsmart disruption and future-proof business models
With more robust global political climate ambitions, green growth is an increasing driver of greater value for energy and utility companies, as well as for corporates across all sectors. With 2020 a green watershed, the authors outline key opportunities that leaders need to seize to futureproof their businesses and increase shareholder value.
Sustainability in the supply chain: The risks and the rewards
Supply chain sustainability risk management
Industrial energy management
With sustainability commitments on the horizon, how can industrial companies reach their targets cost-effectively?
Energy retailers: Facing the toughest transition in the energy sector
What’s next for TSOs?
Within the energy ecosystem, the transition towards a more sustainable future mostly materializes through rapid increases in renewable energy sources, distributed generation and energy storage at large. The increasing share of intermittent generation sources is redefining the rules of the game – roles and accountability within the energy value chain are turned upside down.
Flexibility services: Catch me if you can!
As utilities are exposed to bigger risks of supply-and-demand imbalance fueled by unpredictable, intermittent generation sources, they are searching for flexibility solutions to offset their open positions. In this market context, energy aggregators have emerged, and are taking an increasingly important role in optimizing electricity generation and demand volatility by providing the needed flexibility. Meanwhile, multiple traditional (integrated) utilities have developed similar demandside response (DSR) solutions and even acquired aggregators altogether.
Future of batteries
Battery technologies are central to delivering significant advances in a wide range of industries, from electric vehicles to renewable power. This has catapulted battery technology to the top of the priority list for many players, leading to a huge boom in investment, as companies try to build key positions in the market.
The Breakthrough Incubator - how to create and rapidly launch new step-out businesses
Despite businesses focusing their efforts on improving breakthrough innovation performance, many still fail to create sustainable new businesses of scale. The Breakthrough Incubator model, a new approach built on radical collaboration across the innovation ecosystem, covering the entire process from idea to commercialization, is already demonstrating that it can overcome the challenges that hold back performance.
Balancing the positives and negatives – The rise of the battery ecosystem
Expanding markets such as electric vehicles, renewable energy storage and consumer electronics are driving enormous interest and investment in the battery sector, from both incumbents and new players. Based on a new ADL study, this article explores the drivers, challenges and likely outcomes in the market, providing key lessons to inform future strategies.
Virtual Power Plants – At the heart of the energy transition
Energy utilities are evolving towards greater reliance on flexibility to respond to an increasing supply-and-demand imbalance. In that context, the role of aggregators has become predominant in optimizing electricity generation and demand through virtual power plants (VPPs) and complementing traditional power plants in the provision of flexibility.
Agility in managing electricity grids: The case for batteries
The rise in renewable energy has created unprecedented challenges for the planning and operation of an electricity grid that was built on the assumption of power being provided predominantly by large, centralized generation sources and consumed as soon as it is produced. As a means of addressing these challenges, batterystorage technologies are therefore attracting great interest, and this article looks at their future role and the drivers and barriers to their greater adoption in major markets.
Battery Storage: Still Too Early?
Renewable energy deployment over the last decades has posed unprecedented challenges for the planning and operation of power systems. In the context of increasingly decentralized and intermittent generation, power utilities1 and system operators need to rethink their portfolios, business models and positions in the market in order to be resilient to these changes and benefit from them.
Demand Side Management
In times of energy transition, when intermittent decentralized generation is on the rise and large traditional generation assets are retiring, electricity systems increasingly need flexible solutions to ensure security of supply.
Embracing complexity with value-based risk management
In the current environment uncertainties seem to be everywhere, making strategic planning more difficult than ever. Many companies use enterprise risk management (ERM) as a proven framework for managing risk. However, businesses are now looking to improve their track records when it comes to understanding and overcoming unwanted events. In this article the authors explore issues related to risk management and how the 6C framework can help.
Aerospace Supplier Squeeze – Ways Out?
This guest blog post at Aerospace Diary, an online forum for aerospace professionals, is based on Arthur D. Little's Viewpoint that takes the same title. The aerospace and defense (A&D) industry today struggles with a duality: defense-driven segments are taking hits due to significant governmental budget cuts, while commercial aircraft manufacturing enjoys double-digit growth.
Maximize value from quality-testing operations:
Quality testing in F&B is business critical to ensure consistent good end-product quality and protect the corporate brand. However, despite significant budgets spent, there is often limited clarity and transparency about the incurred costs and operational performance of their testing laboratories. Typically, over 90% of routine testing lead times are “non-value adding” and up to 20% of the staff in quality-testing laboratories could be smartly reallocated by redefining the organizational setup, refocusing activities and redefining key processes.
Keeping the lights on
Triggered by higher volatility in both supply and demand, the need for balancing services in high-voltage electricity networks is increasing. How can transmission system operators, traditional energy players and potential new entrants generate business value from this growing opportunity?
More About Kurt
- Cornell University (NY, USA)Master of Business Administration
- K.U.Leuven (Belgium)Master of Science in Applied Economics
- VolvoVarious intern positions