On Monday, Ford replaced CEO Mark Fields with Jim Hackett, a former Steelcase CEO and Ford board member who had been running the company's Smart Mobility initiative.
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Ford is no longer just a car company (F)
Talking about Ford in terms of "core" and "emerging" businesses is an idea that has passed.
Ford CEO Jim Hackett.
Ford's stock has declined more than 30% since Fields took over as CEO in 2014, despite a record profit in 2015 and a near-record profit in 2016.
Since Fields became CEO, he pushed to present Ford as both an auto and mobility company. It was something of a mantra for the executive, who spent 28 years at the carmaker.
Hackett and Ford Chairman Bill Ford intend to change that.
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"Jim and I feel strongly that change and innovation has to happen across the whole business," Ford said in an interview with Business Insider, adding that new technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence would transform the core of the company.
According to Ford, the idea of talking about the company in terms of "core" and "emerging" businesses has passed.
"We've never been in times like this, with more opportunities and land mines," Ford added. "We need a transformational leader."
The goal seems straightforward. A car company that's more than 100 years old soon will stop being that, even as it continues to sell millions of vehicles worldwide. The era of Ford as an automaker is over.
It's a tall order. But Hackett often is credited with taking Steelcase from a company that made furniture to a firm that transformed the workplace. He's a highly abstract thinker who nonetheless can bring his ideas down to earth and figure out ways to execute them in a business context.
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"Jim has a unique capability to synthesize and bring everybody else along," Ford said.
Hackett has said Ford doesn't need to follow the Teslas, Googles, and Apples of the world but rather can go head-to-head with so-called disruptors and win. He didn't say, however, that he would immediately articulate a roadmap.
"It's not a function of a watch," he said. "It's a function of it being right. The real opportunities in our business are in the future. We plan to be a competitor."
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