2023 Global Leaders in Consulting: Frederic Brunner

As CEO & Founder of Genioo, Frédéric advises and helps global corporations, and their senior executives to innovate, transform and grow more rapidly. Frédéric and his teams work to find new and smarter ways for their clients to think, plan and improve, creating a better future for the companies and its employees and shareholders.

Frédéric started his career as an orthopedic surgeon at Balgrist University Hospital, Zurich. He soon realized his desire to explore entrepreneurial paths and decided to pursue the business side of Life Sciences and Health Care and started his business career at McKinsey & Company, where he advised the top companies in health care, OTC, Pharma, and MedTech in all major markets for six years.

He then moved to Novartis Group where he held several top management and executive positions. He led Group Strategy, before becoming CEO of the high-growth BioSimilar Business Unit (EUR 150 m revenues then, EUR >1.5 bn revenues today).

Frédéric was then promoted to Assistant to the Group CEO and Chairman. In this role, he helped grow and transform Novartis — and it was in this role that he realized his talent is to advise and help Life Sciences and health care corporations to innovate, transform and grow/scale faster. He founded Genioo in 2012 to help ambitious leaders realize their visions.

What do you consider your greatest personal or professional achievement?

There have been a number of moments but they all have a common theme. And for me these have been the moments when we made the impossible possible. The most recent moment was when we helped our client to meet urgent worldwide demand for a vaccine. It was a very public project in the middle of unprecedented times, a worldwide pandemic. And we needed to help them to do something which, at the time, no one thought was possible, deliver a vaccine in 12-18 months – something which normally takes many years. In fact, many people thought it was crazy. But we did it. And I am incredibly proud of the work we did together. And my takeaway from this is, a crazy idea is only crazy when it's proven impossible.

What advice would you give a professional just beginning a career in consulting?

Consulting is a very broad term and can mean many different things and it is not one size fits all. My advice would be to think hard about the direction you want to go in life. Get clear on where your passions lay and what makes you feel excited. Is it a particular industry that excites you? Or maybe it is a particular type of work, for example marketing or product development or supply chain. Don't get too caught up in the brand or the size of the consultancy, choose one based on where your passion lies.

What have you loved most about your consulting career?

This is an easy one. I have had the absolute privilege to work with ambitious and inspiring leaders who are not afraid to take risks and are prepared to challenge the status quo to achieve their vision. That is what gets me out of bed every morning, the caliber of the people I work with. One of our values at Genioo is 'Go for Wow' and we talk a lot with our team and our client teams about being superheroes. When you have a critical mission, you want to go for wow with superheroes, and that is what I get to do every day. It is exciting, rewarding and fulfilling.

What's the best advice—personal or professional—you've ever received?

I would love to be able to give a one-liner here but actually, the best advice I got came from my former boss when I worked at Novartis and it came over a period of time. He instilled in me that what is really important in life is to go deep and really understand and be clear about what it is that you truly want. Not what others want for you, not what your family wants for you, your spouse wants for you, your boss wants for you but what YOU want. And to get comfortable with that. He taught me to really be honest with myself so that I could focus on what I really wanted in life.

What does being honored as a Global Leader mean to you?

Our phenomenal growth in the last 10 years, took serious investment of time and energy from the Genioo team to redefine how projects are run. What we do shifts away from the traditional consulting approach.

When the pressure is on for clients to deliver results fast, our 'go slow to go fast' approach – spending time on clarity of vision, defining the approach/resourcing, and ensuring teams fully align and engage before execution even begins – takes a daring leader to embrace doing things differently that demands implicit trust. I stand by our approach to deliver results, benefits without trade-offs, and to bring teams together with an exceptional and enjoyable project experience.

Recognition is critical to validate our innovative ways of working, close collaboration with clients, and to embed this into Genioo's DNA as our team grows.