Originally published in French in the economic daily newspaper Les Échos on September 11, 2026.
European industrial competitiveness has long been viewed through the lens of cost (labor, energy, taxation, etc.) and quality. These factors remain essential, but speed of execution is becoming a critical factor in staying competitive.
Speed is reshaping industrial competition
Chinese manufacturers no longer compete with European companies on price alone. They are shortening development cycles, launching new products, and adapting their industrial operations at a pace that European groups struggle to match. In the automotive industry, some Chinese manufacturers develop a vehicle in two years, compared with roughly twice that for traditional automakers. In nuclear power, recently completed Chinese reactors took an average of six years to build, compared with more than a decade for several major European projects.
This acceleration comes at a time when “permacrisis” (COVID-19, Ukraine, tariffs, Iran) has become the norm, undermining long-term assumptions. Ten-year projections remain essential when investing in a factory or a technology, but the path toward those goals can no longer be fixed. For European companies, with their outstanding engineers and efficient industrial assets, shouldn’t the priority be to rethink how they organize their work so they can turn decisions into marketable products more quickly?
How risk management slows decision-making and execution
Europe’s major industrial groups have not become slow through neglect. Their organizations were built to manage risk. Over the years, tighter controls and approval processes have improved quality, safety, and operational performance. They have also likely had an unintended consequence: longer decision-making and execution times.
How many projects spend months awaiting a decision? How many teams devote too much time to documenting progress? How many troubled projects are allowed to continue for too long? How many exchanges between industrial customers and suppliers become bogged down?
The answer extends beyond technology and increasingly involves organizational and cultural change. The aim is neither to copy the Chinese or American model nor to sacrifice quality or safety. It is to make speed of execution a consistent priority for companies and their leaders.
Making speed a competitive advantage
Treating speed as a decisive competitive advantage requires concrete changes.
The first step is to clarify who has the authority to make which decisions, so that every unexpected issue does not have to be escalated to senior management. Next, time must become an objective on a par with cost and quality across all functions, from project directors to leaders with P&L responsibility. Finally, companies must simplify whatever slows development, reuse proven technological building blocks where appropriate, and make interactions with suppliers more effective.
Rethinking risk to accelerate development and industrialization
Moving faster also requires a different attitude toward risk. By seeking to eliminate all uncertainty before making a decision, companies give competitors time to experiment and advance.
The same applies to digital capabilities. Waiting until an organization considers itself fully ready for AI or data science risks allowing it to fall further behind, even though these tools can substantially accelerate design, testing, and industrialization.
Giving industrial transformation a lasting mandate
Many industrial companies have already begun to accelerate. The growing presence of Chief Transformation Officers on executive committees reflects this shift: organizational transformation can no longer be an occasional exercise. It requires a strong mandate sustained over the medium term.
Awareness and initiatives are already there. The task now is to extend them across the entire company, while giving greater authority to those willing to take responsibility for delivering successful projects.
Fabrice Vigier, Cofounder of Avencore