Episode Summary
Bruno Viniciguerra - Bain, Sotheby's, Dell, Disney, Bonham's - he's worked in senior leadership roles at cool companies in cool industries. What did he learn? What does he know, and what doesn't he know? How did he learn to adapt to different industries, companies, and cultures? Bruno - one of Syd's favorite business thinkers - shares his wisdom, advice, and stories, on this episode of The Sydcast.
Syd Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast,The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Bruno Vinciguerra
Bruno Vinciguerra is the Global CEO of Bonhams. He was appointed in September 2018 to lead Bonhams after the auction house was acquired by Epiris, the UK-based private equity company.
Vinciguerra – who holds dual French-American citizenship and is a graduate in business administration and economics from ESSEC (Ecole Superieure des Sciences at Commerciales) in Paris – has offices based in Bonhams New York and London. He has led global businesses in the consumer, luxury and technology sphere such as Bain & Co, Disney and Dell. Vinciguerra's previous role before joining Bonhams was Chief Operating Officer at Sotheby's, which he joined in 2007 and where he was responsible for the global P&L and the management of the worldwide organization. His influence on complex deals, auction sales and staff around the world was instrumental in Sotheby's return to all-time high levels of profitability after 2009.
Vinciguerra also played a major role in Sotheby's expansion in Beijing, making the company the first international fine art auction house in mainland China, and in the development of the company's digital initiatives.
Insights from the Episode:
- How important creativity and intuition are in business and leadership
- The ways managerial skills can be successfully transferred to different industries
- How the art market exists, and how it has changed over the past years especially with the introduction of NFTs
- How listening to the expertise of someone else can change your perspective
Quotes from the Show:
- On how working for Bain helped him: “It was all about trying to understand a program that you don't have a lot of experience with, first hand. And working in a team with very smart people, focusing on the quality of your communication to convey a message to an audience you have a limited time with, and being effective at using the information you have and at conveying it.” - Bruno Vinciguerra [8:23]
- On why he loves working art auctions: It is thrilling, exhilarating, to see the best of human creativity through the ages, and that’s what I deal with on a daily basis. - Bruno Vinciguerra [9:08]
- On how one’s production shouldn’t define one’s career: “I think depending on who you are, you can live in this business of big events that can be triumphs, or could be moderate successes. Or you can be in a world of perfection and optimization where you know what you deliver.” - Bruno Vinciguerra [11:37]
- On the shift away from longer plans and towards new, faster forms of development: “I see with my team developing a website; there is a concept of ‘sprints.’ Six-week sprints, which is, they say, these small bites, these small projects. ‘Okay, what can we achieve in six weeks,’ and it is completely different, and it’s all the new programming.” - Bruno Vinciguerra [20:53]
- On how to keep up with changing trends: “To your question, the ultimate goal is to be flexible. To be able to get information as fast as possible, analyze it, and modify trajectory as fast as you can.” - Bruno Vinciguerra [25:22]
- On how difficult it is for new players to enter the art selling market: “This is not only a business about selling this is also a business about sourcing. And in the world of rarities, in the world of the exceptional, the success factor is having the best art to sell, or the best cars to sell, or the best jewelry to sell.” - Bruno Vinciguerra [26:48]
- The usual criteria for a collector to sell. “The four ‘D’s’, Death, Debt, Divorce, and Desperation.” - Bruno Vinciguerra [28:18]
- On why shifting to an online model of art auctions is working: “The secret of this industry is the following: you have 500, 600 people in an auction room during a great evening sale in the art world, maybe 5 people in the room are bidding. They are here for the entertainment, and the majority, the vast majority, I’m talking more than 90% of the bidders are either online, on the phone, or leave what we call an absentee bid, which means ‘buy it, to that level, for me.’” - Bruno Vinciguerra [35:50]
- People say ‘you know you’re going to pay 0 for a copy of a Picasso, so why do you pay millions of dollars for the original painting,’ and you say ‘Because it was painted by the hand of Picasso,’ and there is a reality to the object. - Bruno Vinciguerra [43:31]
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Bruno Vinciguerra
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