Ranjay Gulati
The businesses of the food, animal nutrition, and mobility industries meet fundamental needs of the world’s growing population every day. This requires adapting to unexpected changes and rising to new challenges. In the midst of increasing uncertainty, it takes courage to act, but by doing so, the players in these industries can shape a better future and multiply impact together.
Janet Anderson, June 2025
First launched in 2016, Bühler’s Networking Days was conceived as an opportunity for businesses in the food, animal nutrition, and mobility sectors to come together and share ideas while inspiring and motivating change. As Stefan Scheiber, CEO of Bühler said at the inaugural event: “Let’s ensure that over the coming months and years we are creating the impact that is absolutely necessary.”
Scheiber’s call met with strong resonance across these industries. Since then, business leaders, start-ups, scientists, and academics have gathered every 3 years in Uzwil, Switzerland, with the aim of driving this important idea forward.
In June 2022, Bühler held its third Networking Days. A thousand representatives of businesses in the fields of food, mobility, and animal nutrition gathered to discuss how innovation, technology, collaboration, and education can address the challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and wealth inequality. As the event made clear, the tools to address these challenges already exist. To realize their potential, what was needed was even greater collaboration across sectors and industries to accelerate impact towards a more sustainable future.
Back then, Scheiber called on industry members to act together to create this impact and emphasized the importance of innovation. “In our industries, the innovation rate has never been as high as it is now. This creates impact. We need new technologies and widespread collaboration to tackle new challenges, and at the same time to secure the future of our businesses in a responsible way,” he said. “There is massive potential to drive meaningful change in so many important areas. Together we can, and we will, create a better, fairer, more sustainable world for future generations.”
Since 2022, the challenges have grown, and the world has become even less predictable. The future feels uncertain. In such a world, it is easy to become overly cautious. But it is essential not to submit to fears. “The currency to survive in an era of uncertainty is courage,” says Ranjay Gulati, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. “You have to act your way into knowing.”
Ranjay Gulati is the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and author of “Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies.” His new book, “How to Be Bold: The Surprising Science of Everyday Courage,” will be published in November 2025. Gulati is one of the world’s most influential thought leaders on innovation, purpose-driven business models, organizational strategy, and leadership.
This is a period defined by uncertainties – political, economic, societal, environmental, and technological. Businesses are accustomed to dealing with risks, but today’s uncertainties go beyond typical risks. Risks can be quantified; businesses can build models based on available data and calculate the probabilities of different outcomes.
Uncertainty is a different challenge altogether – it feels like entering unknown territory, there is little or no data, it’s not clear what the outcomes might be, and it is impossible to calculate probabilities.
The effect can be paralyzing. “You have to understand how the human brain responds to uncertainty,” explains Gulati. “We can handle risk, but uncertainty creates in our minds a sense of loss of control, and loss of control triggers a primal emotion, fear. Fear is a survival emotion that hijacks the brain and stops it working properly. We can’t process. We don’t know what’s going on. And we’re confused. This is hardwired in the human brain. We’re not very good with uncertainty.”
Humans, however, are great survivors, always looking for ways to overcome challenges. Curiosity, inventiveness, and optimism are also hardwired into us, it seems. And when the challenges feel unsurmountable, we have yet another tool at our disposal. “The way in which we deal with uncertainty, as individuals, leaders, and collectively, is through courage,” says Gulati. “Courage is taking action in the face of fear, learning to conquer fear.”
Now, more than ever, people running businesses and making decisions need to call on this special capacity of humankind. But is this something you can train and build? Can you become more courageous than you are? These are urgent questions that Gulati addresses in his new book “How to Be Bold,” which will be published later in 2025. The book offers a science-based playbook for cultivating courage to deal with uncertainty.
To find the answer to these questions, Gulati interviewed a range of people from a variety of backgrounds who have shown courage in the face of adversity. He discovered that these people did one of two things. One thing they all did, he found, is they created strategies to reduce the fear or tame the fear. They convinced themselves they had confidence. They said to themselves: I have a team, I have people behind me, I have a plan B, I’ve thought about scenarios.
But in some cases, even this was not enough. The people Gulati interviewed had tried to reduce uncertainty in every way possible, but sometimes they found they could not do it. And yet they went ahead and acted. This is where the second approach kicked in. “I started to see that in organizations, leaders not only had courage in themselves, but in their teams. In fact, their teams gave them more courage and they gave their teams more courage,” says Gulati.
This mutual support is a powerful way of overcoming fear and taking action. In uncertain times, leaders must empower people to be courageous. “When the outcome is not predictable, you have to create space for experimentation,” explains Gulati. “You don’t have all the data, you’ll never have all the answers, so you create the space and capacity for failing and learning.”
Testing the way forward is not just a means of finding a path through darkness. It is not just a means of survival. It is more than that – through experimentation we start to create a path where none existed. “Sometimes you have to act your way into knowing,” says Gulati. “You have to act, knowing that what you’re doing may not be right, but doing something will give you more data. You can use that data to take the next steps and correct your course if needed.”
Gulati likens this technique to the point-to-point navigation used by ancient mariners. They did not know where their ultimate destination lay, or if it even existed, but they could see the next island. So, they aimed for that and from there, with that new perspective and the data that they had gained, they set their course to the next point.
One thing is clear from this, says Gulati. If the only way to find the path in the dark is by taking the first steps, then the riskiest thing you can do is to do nothing. “In today’s times of uncertainty, it is very common for people to freeze up and do nothing, to wait, or run and hide,” he says. “We need courage in ourselves and in our leaders to take bold action. We are all more resilient when we are able to move forward in the face of uncertainty.”
2025 – the year in which Bühler holds its fourth Networking Days – has certainly started in a dynamic and turbulent manner for people and businesses across the world. The additional challenges it has created call for the kind of agile leadership that Gulati describes. If business leaders are courageous in their actions now, they will also discover new opportunities. “In these times, we need leadership with cool heads, strong hands, and warm hearts,” Scheiber says. “The ability to navigate successfully in these circumstances, not only seeing risks but also leveraging strengths, is a key success factor. We must pull together.”
Navigating successfully in these circumstances means not only seeing risks, but also leveraging strengths. This is a key success factor.
Stefan Scheiber,
CEO Bühler Group
Today, it is more important than ever for industries across the globe to connect, collaborate, and act as a unified force for good. By bringing industry members together once again at its Networking Days, Bühler aims to harness the collective power of courage, shared purpose, and optimism to drive meaningful and lasting positive change at scale and multiply impact together.
“We can ensure that systems use less energy and water, we can increase the efficiency of our value chains, and we can optimize our processes to produce less waste. We can invest in research and development to bring new low-emission solutions to market,” says Scheiber. “Our new technologies can make a big difference. As we say at Bühler, we make things happen. Now is the time for action. Together we will create the future.”
Gupfenstrasse 5
Uzwil
9240
Switzerland
