Travel in the new age of disruption

 
Doug Anderson, chief executive of American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT), knows a thing or two about disruption.
As a teenager in 1970, he watched his father give up his 405-hectare farm in Nebraska, the United States, because automation had made “smaller” holdings unviable. The typical farm size was a lot bigger.
Farming in America’s Midwest is done on an industrial scale. A single man in a combine harvester manages hundreds of acres in a day. 
Weed control? No problem, a machine does the work for you. Its sensors can tell wild plants from good plants. 
When a weed is detected, the machine drops more chemicals on the spot and moves on. Meanwhile, global positioning system satellites aid variable-rate seeding and fertilising.
And it just gets worse, or better – depending on which way you look at it – every week. When you have such levels of automation, you need scale. Or you get left behind.
All boys in Anderson’s growing-up years were expected to help out on the farm and seeing his father leave the land to take up a construction foreman’s job in Brownville was a lesson that struck home deeper than he probably realised at the time. 
Like many Nebraskans, Anderson’s aspiration was to go to the University of Nebraska in state capital Lincoln, famous for its athletes labelled Cornhuskers. 
This he did, emerging with a business administration degree.
During winter breaks, he interned with United Parcel Service (UPS), the logistics firm famous for requiring its executives to drive delivery trucks for six months, so they know the business from the ground up. 
Later, he would join UPS full-time, serving for more than a quarter-century in places as varied as Seattle, Hong Kong, Brussels and Atlanta - valuable exposure to the world. 
These days, he is watching UPS drivers facing disruption as America marches swiftly towards driverless vehicles, threatening the livelihood of more than two million truckers.
After a stint as chief financial officer for Sita Group, the information technology and telecommunications provider for the air transport industry, he moved to Eastman Kodak as director of finance and business transformation for consumer digital and film products.
The company could use his help. Kodak had suffered tremendously because of a reluctance to change with the times. 
It had digital technology early but was slow to introduce it to its product line because legacy systems were hugely profitable. 
Then came the shock when prices of photographic film fell catastrophically as digital raced ahead.
These surely are the factors that play in his mind as he settles into the job of CEO at Amex GBT, which he took last August, moving over from rival company Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT), where he had held a similar position for eight years.
“As I thought about it and faced challenges of disrupters coming into the market, it became evident that significant investment in technology was necessary for any business to thrive,” he said in a recent interview in Singapore, explaining his decision to leave a company where many thought he was a “lifer”. 
“The thing that attracted me to the company was its status as a spin-off and the capital that came with being GBT.”
Amex GBT was spun off as a standalone joint venture from American Express in 2014, when half its stock was acquired by a private equity group. It had billings of US$30 billion (Bt1 trillion) in 2015, the latest available figure, and 12,000 employees in 120 countries.
Last year, when it made the surprise announcement that it had hired Anderson from CWT, chairman Greg O’Hara said the appointment came as Amex GBT was poised to make “sweeping technology investments”.