Here’s to the transformative ones … the gamechangers, the future-back thinkers, the megatrend surfers, the self-disruptors and growth finders … who won’t be told it can’t be done.
May 10, 2024
Each year I get to work with a group of incredibly talented business leaders from every part of the world. We spend 9 months together, in person and online, exploring the future of business, the disruptions, the opportunities, and how they can change their worlds. This is not a normal program.
Participants need to rise above conventions and expectations, they need to stretch possibilities and practicalities, and ultimately explore how they can transform their business, and themselves. It is a journey of discovery, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes unknown. It demands that they let go of what has made them successful so far, and step up to imagine a better future.
This year the group represented 13 different nationalities, and 11 different industries. From Germany to Colombia, Netherlands to Saudi Arabia, Mexico to Denmark, Portugal to South Africa, they were leaders of diverse industries from energy and pharmaceuticals, to finance and agritech, telecoms and future tech, consulting and education.
On the final day of the journey, we call it Gamechanger Day, each participant gets to present their blueprint for the future of their business – how they seek to transform their business over the next 5 years. The goal is to be bold, disruptive, and go beyond the current paradigms of thinking within their organisation. It is the culmination of a 6 month project applying the best ideas from today’s business world to their own business and ambitions. It becomes their narrative, on which they can become leaders of the future.
This year’s Gamechanger projects were of a disruptively high standard as always … how can we reduce the cost of cancer therapies 10 times, making them significantly more accessible to the world’s population, and at the same time helping the pharma company multiply its own market value five fold … how to convert Europe’s largest oil refineries into renewable refineries, turning captured carbon into new materials … how to use blockchain to build a fractional-owned digital infrastructure to galvanise African society … how to accelerate the development of better strains of strawberries using CRISPR … reinvent airlines with a non-volatile revenue model by developing in adjacent market … how to take Latin America’s leading retail chain to the world … create roboboats to secure the Middle East … how to develop AI-based strategy consultants … how to reinvent shrimp farming … how to optimise clean energy consumption … and much much more.
This is all built on 9 months of stimulation – bringing together the best ideas in business right now, delivered by some fantastic experts from around the world, hosted by IE Business School.
We start in the future – future back strategies, building on megatrends, embracing tech possibilities. And then to business innovation, new business models, innovation concepts, growth accelerators. And framed around the bigger idea of business transformation. All brought to life through a fabulous 8 week simulation of the future mobility sector – exec teams competing to build a $50 billion valued business, while also leading the intricacies of corporate finance, strategic disruption, portfolio growth, and how to really work as a winning c-suite team. And of course, throughout the program, lots and lots about leadership, and how to disrupt yourself to be a better leader.
At the graduation, participants gain their wings, ready to step up as leaders of the future. We also ask them to put in words, what the program has meant to them. This year they brought together their takeaways from the program with poetic license, inspiring by Apple’s famous ad, Here’s to the Crazy Ones. It was a touching moment, a special moment for them, and myself. We’d been through so much together, and hearing how they now saw themselves, meant a lot to me:
Here’s to the transformative ones,
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