Gamechangers: Leaders of Innovation and Future Growth
March 14, 2016 at IE Business School, Madrid, Spain (3 days)
Across the world, new ideas, new businesses and new solutions are transforming every market. “Gamechangers” think and act differently. They innovate every aspect of their brand and marketing.
From Alibaba to Zipcars, Ashmei to Zidisha, Azuri and Zynga, a new generation of businesses are rising out of the maelstrom of economic and technological change across our world. These are just a few of the companies shaking up our world.
Gamechangers are disruptive and innovative, start-ups and corporates, in every sector and region, reshaping our world. They are more ambitious, with stretching vision and enlightened purpose. They see markets as kaleidoscopes of infinite possibilities, assembling and defining them to their advantage. They find their own space, then shape it in their own vision. Most of all they have great ideas. They outthink their competition, thinking bigger and different. They don’t believe in being slightly cheaper or slightly better. That is a short-term game of diminishing returns.
We asked 1000 business leaders to nominate the companies who they believe are creating the future in each different sector. The top 100 innovators are big and small, spread across every sector and continent, from Asia to the Americas, finance to fashion. And then we wanted to understand what they did differently.
They range from well known innovators like Amazon and Apple – the magic Dash buttons creating a direct link between consumer and brands, the ecosystems that go beyond devices – to new brands like Brazil’s Beauty’in fusing the world of food and cosmetics, or even Zespri redefining the obscure Chinese gooseberry as the superfood Kiwi fruit.
They capture their higher purpose in more inspiring brands that resonate with their target audiences at the right time and place, enabled by data and technology, but more through empathetic design and rich human experiences. They fuse digital and physical, global and local, ideas and networks. Social media drives reach and richness, whilst new business models make the possible profitable. They collaborate with customers, and partner with other business, connecting ideas and utilising their capabilities. They look beyond the sale to enable customers to achieve more, they care about their impact on people and the world, whilst being commercially successful too.
As they say in the GoogleX moonshot factory, in seeking to reinvent everything from cars to healthcare, “Why be 10% better, when you could be 10 times better?”
Watch this intro video from Peter Fisk:
Day 1: Innovative strategies for growth.
Making sense of fast-changing markets to develop better strategies for profitable growth.
9:00 – 11:00 Session 1. THINK: Change your future.
Out-thinking the competition, with ideas that can change the world. We live in an ideas economy, with possibilities limited only by our imaginations. The past is no guide to the future. What we can do matters more than what we have done. The best companies are guided by an inspiring purpose, exploring new possibilities, being curious and connected, daring and ingenious, working from the future back, to develop more audacious and disruptive ideas, to “out-think” the competition.
11:30 – 13:30 Session 2. EXPLORE: Change your market.
Making sense of the kaleidoscope, to shape markets in your own vision. Finding the best opportunities for growth in connected and fragmented markets, disrupted by tectonic shifts in power and new technologies. The best companies have foresight beyond traditional borders, geographies and categories. From masses to niches, averages to individuals, geography to global tribes. They look east and south, to digital natives and migrants, women and entrepreneurs.
14:30 – 16:30 Session 3. DISRUPT: Change your strategy.
Finding your own space, with a strategy that disrupts the future. Strategy is about finding your space in crowded and convergent markets. It cannot be an extrapolation of the past, nor a fixed point in the future. Through a more stretching vision and disruptive thinking, you choose your future – reframing your context, choosing a different audience, playing by new rules. Strategy is then about pivoting to this better place, from mediocrity to magic, staying focused yet agile as you progress.
16:30 – 18:00 AMPLIFY: Review of day 1.
- Finding the most relevant insights and ideas for your business
- Personal applications and actions to make happen
- My Gamechanger Plan
Day 2: Inspiring Customers.
Designing inspiring brands and business models, propositions and stories that engage people more deeply.
9:00 – 11:00 Session 4. INSPIRE: Change your brand.
Building brands about people not products, about making life better. Brands are about making people’s lives better. About me not you, what people want and aspire to, rather than companies and products. Brands are enriching and enabling, giving people the confidence, and helping them, to achieve more. They can reach into new spaces because they mean more. They are platforms that bring people together inside and out, engaging them in bigger ideas, collaborative and evolving over time.
11:30 – 13:30 Session 5. DESIGN: Change your business.
Innovating the whole company, from business model to customer experience. Innovation is about making the best ideas happen profitably. It uses design thinking to look beyond products, to rethink business models and customer experiences, hard and soft, and then the products and services to deliver them. Every aspect of business can be innovated, open and collaborative, simple and frugal. Innovation is driven by a human cause, to make a positive and profitable difference to our world.
14:30 – 16:30 Session 6. RESONATE: Change your story.
Tuning into the customer’s world with real-time and relevant content. Getting in sync with your customer’s world, engaging them in relevant and meaningful ways, about them, at the right time and place. Forget broadcast campaigns, advertising push. Think digital and physical, in context and on demand. Participation builds content that is liquid and linked, working across media, social and local, mobile and topical, articulated in stories that are authentic, collaborative, experiential and contagious.
16:30 – 18:00 AMPLIFY: Review of day 2.
- Finding the most relevant insights and ideas for your business
- Personal applications and actions to make happen
- My Gamechanger Plan
Day 3: Incredible Results
Driving growth through better customer experiences, market movements and sustained value creation.
9:00 – 11:00 Session 7. ENABLE: Change your experience.
Delivering customer experiences that enable customers to achieve more. Customer experiences are much more than the touchpoints that lead to a sale. That is just the beginning for the customer. They should do more, and go further. Educating or entertaining, supporting and enabling the customer to achieve more. They are intelligent and interactive, collaborative and personal. Through digital interfaces and physical theatre, big data and human service, they immerse people in a brand that enables more.
11:30 – 13:30 Session 8. MOBILISE: Change your relationship.
Growing further and faster, through social networks and collaboration. Customers have more in common, trust each other, and want to connect with each other much more than with any business. Advocacy, trust and loyalty between customers can be far more powerful than any CRM or loyalty card could ever achieve. Social and collaborative, brands and networks can support their desire to collaborate and share ideas, to build communities, or to empower movements with cause and passion.
14:30 – 16:30 Session 9. IMPACT: Change your results.
Delivering and sustaining a positive impact, human and financial. Value creation is about more than sales, it is about sustaining long-term profitable growth, which is good financially, and good for the world. Sustaining growth means being sustainable more broadly, through circular business models, and enabling customers to be better too. Happiness and health, social and environmental. Finding growth that is good, profits that are shared, achieving more together.
16:30 – 18:00 AMPLIFY: Review of day 3.
- Finding the most relevant insights and ideas for your business
- Personal applications and actions to make happen
- My Gamechanger Plan
As a little taste, here are some of the major “posters” of the program:
