Tassilo Festetics just might have beer in his blood — not because he’s been drinking, but because he has spent his whole life around beer. Long before he served as the head of global solutions at Anheuser-Busch InBev, his grandparents owned a brewery, and he sold beer to finance his education. Today, he can still fix a commercial cooler or a draft machine.
As someone who deeply respects the craft of beer, Festetics has used technology to grow AB InBev’s business capabilities and, over the past few years, has helped the company build a suite of in-house technology products from the ground up. He believes that connecting brewmasters, farmers, shop owners, and other supply chain members with technologies empowers them to spend less time on rote work and more time on tasks that propel the company forward, like dreaming up new beer recipes.
In this interview, the first in the LeadingWith Impact series, Festestics and Chris Clearfield, a contributor to MIT Sloan Management Review, discussed the innovation-driven approach that has helped the largest international beer maker and distributor make the pivot to also become a developer of cutting-edge technologies.