24/06/2025 by Ruud Schmeink
When strategy meets experience: the founder story
Our founder and managing partner, Ruud Schmeink shares why he founded Navoniq and why it's essential that strategy meets experience in today’s market.
Executive summary
In today’s Europe, performance depends on speed, knowing what truly works and getting it right the first time. Powered by expert partners, strategic tooling, and AI-driven analytics, we combine deep insight with executional strength. As a network of executive minds, we guide leaders toward a resilient, profitable, and responsible future. We deliver fast, measurable and lasting value for international companies facing urgent transformation.
Why I left Deloitte to start Navoniq
After many years as a senior partner at Deloitte, I felt a growing disconnect between the complexity of today’s challenges and the traditional consulting models. European businesses are under extreme pressure, particularly in the biochemical, food & pharma, ingredients, consumer goods, defense and aerospace sectors. Input costs have surged due to quadrupled energy prices and rising CO₂ emission costs. Many companies have reached the end of their ability to pass these increases on to customers.
What they need now is hands-on, targeted support from people who’ve walked in their shoes. That’s why I founded Navoniq together with Erik Delnoij and Jurjan Klep. We are a transformation-focused advisory led exclusively by seasoned executives with real international leadership experience.
What makes Navoniq different from classic strategy firms?
At Navoniq, every partner has led complex transformations from inside – mostly industrial and consumer goods - organizations. We've been there when margins collapsed, when global supply chains failed, and when Chinese competitors shifted entire demand curves overnight.
We don’t offer generic solutions. We offer performance diagnostics, value uplift programs, and market-based portfolio repositioning, all grounded in years of experience and battle-tested frameworks. More than anything, we understand how functions within global companies can or can’t transform. We call this “Navigating Performance”. It’s about delivering impact.
What challenges are your clients struggling with most right now?
The big question across the European industry is: How do we innovate while improving performance at the same time?
Many companies are stuck between managing today’s margin erosion and preparing for tomorrow’s innovation race. The DRAGHI report outlines that Europe must compete on innovation, not cost. But turning that insight into reality is complex. Performance has to be sustained during transformation, and that requires precision.
We help leadership teams structure that transition, by identifying value leakage, simplifying transformation architecture, and aligning their organization’s bandwidth with realistic implementation paths. Poorly designed transformation programs often fail not because of ambition, but because of flawed execution structures.
Which industries are you focusing on, and why?
We specialize in sectors undergoing structural turmoil:
- (Bio)chemicals: facing carbon cost explosions and innovation disruption
- Food & pharma ingredients: suffering from cost pass-through fatigue and global margin pressure
- Defense & aerospace: impacted by rearmament, reshoring, and demand volatility
- Consumer goods: challenged by shifting consumer behavior, margin erosion, and supply chain complexity
These industries are highly technical, globally entangled, and mission critical. Our partners have decades of leadership experience; Erik Delnoij in composites and fibers and Jurjan Klep in the global consumer goods sector. They bring the operational, commercial, and strategic experience to cut through noise and deliver results.
What is your ultimate vision for Navoniq?
Our mission is simple: create measurable value fast for our clients that must transform or risk decline. That requires deep understanding, fast diagnostics, and executional power.
Navoniq is not just a firm, it’s a network of executive minds and guide leaders who aim to chart a course toward a resilient, profitable, and responsible future. We’re building a closed community of expert partners and analysts supported by high-end methodology, AI-driven analytics, and strategic tooling.
Because in today’s market, performance is no longer a function of scale, it’s a function of knowing what works, doing it fast, and getting it right the first time.