Topic: Business Strategy
At Maison du Lion, we have spent significant time analysing the shifting economic foundations of the Belgian and French markets. Everyone’s talking about AI as if it’s the only game in town. But if you’re running a business in Belgium or France right now, you know that’s not the whole story. The next five years aren’t just about software. It’s more about how we deal with the world getting a lot more tangible and expensive.
We’ve spent the last twenty years moving everything to the cloud and now we’re seeing a massive move toward what is being called the “bio-digital” era, where digital design meets biological production. This includes everything from lab-grown textiles to carbon-sequestering construction materials. If you can grow a product instead of mining it or pumping it out of the ground, you will likely capture the highest margins.
For a long time, sustainability was merely a “nice to have” component. In 2026, it’s a hard requirement now. However, measurable growth isn’t going to come from just being sustainable, but from the infrastructure that makes the transition possible.
We need new power grids, new ways to store energy and new ways to track carbon through a supply chain. This is the “picks and shovels” strategy for the late 2020s. We anticipate massive capital flows into modular grid storage, transparent supply chain telemetry and industrial-scale circularity systems. If a business provides the tools that allow the rest of the economy to meet their 2030 net-zero targets, its market demand is effectively underpinned by European regulation.
We can’t ignore the demographics. Europe is getting older. Fast. Most people see this as a problem for the healthcare system and it is. But it’s also a huge market. This demographic holds most of the disposable wealth in the EU and has specific, unaddressed needs in sectors ranging from fintech to specialised housing. Most industries remain disproportionately focused on younger consumers, yet the real growth resides in tailoring high-value services to a generation that prioritises quality, health and longevity.
At Maison du Lion, we’ve noticed a lot of our clients are tired of “efficient” supply chains that break the moment a ship gets stuck in a canal. Clients are increasingly willing to pay a premium for “just-in-case” resilience. We believe growth over the next five years will be driven by local-for-local production and the shortening of supply chains. This is not the end of global trade. It’s just about being smart. Growth will come from companies that can guarantee their product will show up on time. People are starting to pay a premium for certainty.
It’s a strange time. The old ways of just cutting costs to grow aren’t working anymore. It’s going to be about who can handle the messiest parts of the physical world the best. At Maison du Lion, we find this to be very exciting.
from Maison du Lion