with Simon Thorup
Founder of Enterprise Digital ApS and former Global Head of Digital & IT Strategy at Carlsberg Group
Simon Thorup previously served as Global Head of Digital & IT Strategy at Carlsberg Group. It marked his second tenure with the organisation, across different stages of its development.
He has been speaking to our Senior Technology Consultant in Food & Drink at MacGregor Black, Scott McGowan, about IT’s position in a global organisation and why technology should now co-shape long-term strategic options, as its compounding effect on both risk and opportunity is increasingly significant and too important to treat as secondary. That, he argues, requires IT to take shared responsibility for business outcomes, not just manage delivery, support and IT metrics.
There’s a quiet misconception still echoing around FMCG boardrooms that IT sits somewhere in the background, humming along, keeping the lights on. There when you need them, but boy do you miss them when they’re not.
Simon Thorup, former Global Head of Digital & IT Strategy at Carlsberg Group and an IT leader with experience across several industries, views things through a very different lens.
“The opportunities technology offers are evolving very fast and far beyond what we’re used to in FMCG.“
“We’re at an inflection point today. What AI has provided, in terms of opportunities and new use cases, means that digital and IT can create far more value than companies have ever been used to. And when there is significantly more value being generated, alongside an ever-decreasing cost of technology, everything related to IT suddenly becomes far more important.”
“And when it becomes that important, it has to be embedded within the strategy, because you need to define where you’re going, and you cannot do that without proper input from the IT organisation.“
For Thorup, this isn’t theoretical. It’s the lens through which he’s shaped a career spanning global FMCG, manufacturing, financial services, IT services and consulting, with digital transformation running across those industries. And the one thread stitched throughout his career? The concept of value.
From support function to strategic engine
Thorup joined Carlsberg Group at a pivotal moment of rebirth and reinvention. A new CEO in the hotseat meant a new strategic direction and a refreshing blank sheet of paper for Simon to be able to craft what part IT had to play in a vast organisation with significant global impact. It was that opportunity that brought him back to the organisation once again.
But strategy, he argues, remains only half the battle.
He explains:
“Strategy doesn’t really matter, no matter how good, if you don’t have a portfolio where you’re prioritising accordingly. FMCG is, by and large, a low-margin industry. That means that whatever funds you have to invest in the future need to be prioritised really well.”
“Often, there’s this notion that moving fast means making fast decisions. But actually, when it comes to prioritisation, the fastest way forward is to go slow. When you execute, of course you need to be fast. But when you prioritise, you need to give it the time it requires.”
It’s a subtle, yet significant flip of what many might perceive as the common method. The very name, fast-moving consumer goods, suggests any window for pause and reflection is a narrow one. Speed still matters, of course, but only once direction is clear. Otherwise, organisations risk sprinting enthusiastically in the wrong direction, dragging expensive technology decisions behind them.
The legacy trap
That tension between speed and structure is where many FMCG businesses quietly accumulate what Thorup describes as one of the sector’s biggest hidden liabilities: legacy.
“When you make very fast decisions, shoot from the hip, and drive everything bottom-up all the time, you create a lot of IT legacy. And nobody really wants that.”
“Firstly, because it means IT becomes very costly, and secondly the organisation as a whole can’t be agile, nimble, or flexible, as it’s tied down by legacy systems. That should be a nightmare for all FMCGs. But that is, in fact, what happens when you’re not prioritising properly.”
The same energy and pace that makes FMCG so commercially effective can, over time, harden into technical paralysis. Systems layered upon systems, each solving yesterday’s problem while quietly limiting what’s possible down the line. We’ve all been there.
Technology isn’t the hard part, says Thorup, but if there is a recurring thread through his thought processes, it’s this perception of value and what that can mean to others.
“It’s never really been about the technology for me. It’s always been about what value we can create with it. The interesting part is the value. And you can only create value when people actually adopt it. IT is no longer just business support and no longer just a business enabler. It should be addressed as a business multiplier. That makes it even more important that IT does not become a reactive island.”
“The best IT approach must be integrated and embedded within the business, not built as a separate island next to it. And that is difficult, because it forces senior leaders to put enterprise value ahead of personal territory, functional pride, and the instinct to own the visible parts while avoiding the difficult ones. It requires high ambition with low ego.“
Throughout our chat, it becomes quite evident that, despite the roles Simon has held, he comes without ego. Thorup’s point is not that technology leaders should claim more status, but that they should take more responsibility. For him, low-ego leadership is not softness. It is the discipline to keep enterprise value above personal positioning. There is little room, in his view, for leadership energy to be spent managing egos rather than moving the business forward. In his view, this is where digital transformations often stall. Not in code, but in culture. Not in systems, but in alignment.
Leading without spotlight
He explains his approach:
“It’s what I’d call low-ego leadership. It’s about acknowledging that when you’re hired into a company, there are two things bigger than you, and they are the value the company creates and its purpose. In IT especially, that means parking your ego and keeping the focus on the value you can create together.”
“In my career, I’ve seen big-name digital leaders come in and try to own everything, and it becomes a digital innovation island that nobody can penetrate or really wants to engage with. People struggle to understand how to contribute, and they have an even harder time adopting whatever comes out of it.”
Instead, Simon advocates for something more organic: cross-functional teams, mutual challenge, and trust in execution. A system where leadership removes friction rather than dictating outcomes.
Foundations over fireworks
If AI is today’s headline, Thorup’s message is almost deliberately unglamorous. Don’t chase the fireworks. Build the foundation.
“If I could paint the picture, I would say that in FMCG, we are currently playing with fireworks. And that’s important. You’re not moving and you’re not learning if you don’t do that.”
“But the really important thing is that you have to invest in the foundation now. Before AI, IT and digital were something that was quite often neglected. The foundation is what gets you to that target state. The shiny things are the small fireworks you learn from along the way.”
It’s a distinction that reframes the current wave of AI enthusiasm. Experiments matter, but long-term success will only be generated if the underlying architecture, data, and processes can support scale.
So what separates those who move ahead from those who stall? According to Thorup, it’s less about ambition and more about readiness.
“The companies that are furthest along with their foundations are also the ones best positioned to adopt the promise of AI and new technologies quickly, because they have the infrastructure to scale the value it brings.”
“If a company hasn’t invested sufficiently in its foundation, it simply cannot scale. If your customer data and product data are completely different in every market, how do you scale? You can’t. And if you try, you end up building separate solutions for every market, which is expensive and unsustainable.”
And yet, for all the emphasis on structure and foundation, Thorup doesn’t advocate caution as the sole pace of progression. Quite the opposite, in fact. Alongside strong foundations, he argues that there has to be space for the unpredictable, for experimentation, and for the fireworks.
“You have to create room in your organisation for moonshots. You need passionate people who invest their time and energy into building not just the next thing, but the thing after that, and the thing after that. And you have to reinvest in them and acknowledge them. Because if they don’t get that acknowledgement from the company they’re in, they’ll find a company that will.”
“At a minimum, you’ll learn a great deal from these people. And at their best, you’ll create entirely new business units, markets, and revenue streams.”
A different kind of transformation
Across the conversation, one idea surfaces again and again: The application of AI isn’t just another technology cycle. For Thorup, it’s a shift in what technology is.
“If you want to simplify it,” he explains, “ask yourself this question: If your organisation could have unlimited intelligence and unlimited automation, where would it be?”
“That is now, in fact, a realistic target state. Yes, perhaps a long way into the future yet, but it’s a useful frame to start thinking in. Because if that’s where things are heading, everything is going to change. The better you get at adopting technology, the further ahead of your competitors you’ll be. I’m afraid that’s a simple fact.”
For FMCG businesses, long accustomed to speed, scale, and brand power, the next competitive edge may look very different. Less about who moves fastest. More about who builds best.