Peter Fisk

I first worked with Dorothy McKenzie and her team almost 20 years ago. Since then they have quietly gone about helping to design and evolve many of the world’s leading brands.

They combine the creative flair of an agency, with the practical rigour of problem solving. In particular, they have a conscience, that puts them at the forefront of creating more responsible brands.

But brands that are good for people, business and the world are a fragile masterpiece. Rather than going into detail, I’d recommend their new book. Business is Beautiful.

A one hour drive south of Barcelona takes you to the coastal town of Sitges. A fantastic place to run for hours along the coastal paths in the springtime Spanish sunshine. I’m here to explore the future of wellbeing, and how pharma companies like Spain’s Almirall, can evolve their business into a new world. Whilst many drugs become global commodities, other become highly specialized innovations. China’s WuxiPharma can easily beat anybody on price, whilst focused research like at Genentech develop new blockbusters.

The real challenge is beyond pharma. Healthcare markets are changing dramatically. Growing and ageing populations, the cost of new solutions, the intelligent diagnostics and treatments, change who, how, when and why healthcare happens. At the same time, regulation abounds, discouraging real innovation in business models and market models. But the best companies are recognizing a new future – customer-centric (in particular, patient-centric), with new channels, and new experiences, focus on prevention more than cure, adjacent products and new types of services. For innovators, the future of healthcare is full of possibilities.

Download an intro to FutureHealth and watch the VideoStories

Publishing is another being fundamentally disrupted. From booksellers to printers, the rise of the eBook has driven a huge fall in printed books. Yet at the same time there is more thirst for ideas and insights than ever. The problem, as ever, is that existing businesses like to hang onto their old ways, their existing revenue streams, what is easy for them. No change.

Canon is the world’s leading printer manufacturer. For printers, it’s multi-million dollar machines look more like spaceships. At their global hub in Poing near Munich, technicians walk around in white coats, as the sci-fi machines hum gently. Digital printing is still physical but transforms the economics of publishing. Small batches, print on demand, print on location, easy to update, customized to individuals, multi formats, instant translation, auto-restocking retailers. Yet most publishers just do a one-off print run of 10000 copies, standard, inert, stuck in a warehouse, and going out of date. Wake up!

Of course, this doesn’t address the challenge of ebooks. The real opportunity beyond printing is to create hybrid customer experiences. Books that capture core concepts, intelligent words, with inspired images and practical roadmaps, then linked to sister websites or smartphone apps with diagnostics, videos, and digital toolkits. They are living publications, for example, linking to realtime case studies, or authors on demand. They build communities of practitioners, not just readers. And they become brands not of books but of ideas with action.

Madrid, Spain.

Clay Christensen, the Harvard guru of disruptive innovation, and Thinkers 50 World’s #1 Business Thinker, says that education is perhaps the last sector to be disrupted.  But the world of business education is changing rapidly. As people evolve from life-long careers in companies, to a career of 4-5 different “phases” then rethinking and retraining becomes the norm throughout our lives. The average age of b-school attendees will move from 27 to 47 over the next decade.

Add to that, most businesses prefer applied learning, addressing real issues, and building teams not just talented individuals through what the school’s call in-company executive education. What they really want is enlightened consulting. Help in seeing the future, thinking different, inspiring their people, whilst also addressing their biggest challenges and opportunities, ready to make them happen. Yes it needs to be practical, but with better ideas and strategies too.

The third dimension is technology. MOOCs (massive open online courses) offered by Coursera,EdX and others have risen as a way in which b-school courses can be turned into online self-learning experiences, and accessible to anyone in the world. The business model and quality standards are still emerging. Perhaps most exciting is the blended learning. Let people learn the text books, case studies, and get the toolkits online, but then use the physical formats (inspiring events, fast incubators, facilitated networks) to bring people together with heads up, fusing their ideas and insights, to see the future.

IE Business School gets this. The Madrid-based b-school, already big in South America, Middle East and Europe, has transformed itself into a future school, and is ranked by Bloomberg and FT as the #1 business school in Europe. I’ve just recently agreed to join them as a Visiting Professor of Strategy, Innovation and Marketing with an agenda to develop new thinking, new programs and new leaders in those three areas. We’re developing a fantastic new portfolio of content and formats, available to companies anywhere in the world.

Download the brochure for “Gamechangers” program with IE Business School

Hatta, UAE

Driving east from Dubai for hours, there is nothing beyond the straight road but desert and an occasional herd of camels. Then we see mountains, some trees and water, like childhood stories of finding an oasis. This is Hatta, home for the next 5 days, and a desert retreat to build 21^stcentury leaders. I developed The Inspired Leaders Program to challenge senior managers to rethink their role, attitudes and behaviours in a new world of incredible change, challenge and opportunity. What does it take, personally and collectively, to lead a winning business today?

Almansoori is a real innovator in the world of oil drilling, providing the fast and practical support to the big oil companies to extract oil in the most efficient, safe, and environmentally responsible way. Imagine the cost of a lost production, or clearing up a spill. Their value is huge. But like most in the region, they have technical and operational skills, but less developed as leaders. Where to go next? How to take people with us? How to manage increasing complexity? How to innovate new services? The program is based on my Inspired Leaders model.

Download my Inspired Leaders model for leadership development

 

Disneyland Paris, France

Big data is a hot topic. Brands can now build mountains of data, from consumer needs to operational tracking, retail transactions to social media chat. SAS Institute is a leader in helping business to turn all this information into real insight that can drive useful and profitable action. But data is complex and intimidating which means too many business leaders, marketers and innovators steer clear. The thing is analysts can do the analysis, what they need is imagination.

Big Data + Big Ideas = Left brain + Right brain = Big Impact

How could you transform the customer’s experience? Where are the new revenue streams? How could you innovate your business model? What really drives customer advocacy? Here in Disneyland Paris I explored first hand, Disney’s new $1.4 billion big data investment. MagicBands could transform your next visit. No more queues, expensive food, impersonal service. Instead a “smart” experience that brings the magic to life just for you.

Download my keynote presentation on turning big data into business results.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” claimed Apple. “Simple is harder than complex. You have to have to get your thinking clean. But if you can, you can move mountains” said Steve Jobs. “Everything we do is about making things as simple and beautiful as possible” added Jony Ive.

In a complex world, simplicity stands out. Clarity instead of confusion, decision instead of doubt. It’s about getting focused in everything you do. Focusing on your best customers, so you can allocate more attention where it matters. Relevant not average. Focusing on your best products, eliminating those that add cost or confusion. Focusing on your message, simple and memorable. Focusing on your design. Stripping out clutter, unnecessary functionality, adding form and beauty.

Focus and simplicity creates the space to engage customers more clearly. But it’s about finding the right space, the one which matters most to our target customers and ourselves. It’s about finding purpose … A core idea that resonates with people much more strongly than products and prices, even service and incentives. At the heart of a great brand is an inspiring purpose – for Coca Cola its about “moments of happiness”, for Amazon “freedom of choice”, for Swarovski “sparkle everyday” … Why is your brand here? How does it make life better? … If your purpose resonates, then it can amplify emotionally, through products and networks, engagement and advocacy.

“The Magic Marketing Machine” is a fun way of capturing this dynamic – Focus, Simplify, Resonate, Amplify, Impact. Indeed the impact can be significant. New research shows that simplicity can add 5.9% price premium,  and 75% more people are likely to recommend the brand. German brand Aldi was voted the world’s most simple brand, not because it was cheap, but clear and relevant. Ryanair, with its hidden charges and arrogant leader, was found the least simple. Search and retail the best sectors. Insurance the worst.

Whilst in Istanbul, I will also be exploring a range of other topics – workshops on Marketing Genius and Customer-Centricity, special sessions on Innovation Strategy and Innovation Culture. At MCT’s International Marketing Summit, with around 2500 attendees as well as the “MMM” I will also be doing a “BrandLab” practical clinic on Brand Innovation – what I think is the most powerful and important capability for business in the coming years. And we’ll also be launching “Change the Game” next year’s Gamechangers agenda in Turkey … a nationwide competition, finding the local brands that are shaking up markets, workshops and programs, and a two day summit next year.

London, UK

“Thinkers 50” has established itself as the world’s leading authority on business thinking, scanning and ranking all the business gurus and their ideas from around the world. 15 years ago, Des Dearlove and Stuart Crainer, two London-based journalists and authors set out to build a ranking system, to effectively curate the management brain. From the Financial Times to Wall Street Journal, they asked readers to nominate those who articulated the best ideas. The bi-annual listing has become the most treasured prize of gurus from Peter Drucker and Charles Handy, Tom Peters to Michael Porter. But only one of them was on this year’s list.

This year’s awards were held in Drapers Hall, London, the former palace of Thomas Cromwell. Many of the world’s best thinkers attended, from Clay Christensen, the guru of disruptive innovation, to Roger Martin who brought design thinking to business,Pankaj Ghemawat on emerging economics, to Rita McGrath and the end of competitive advantage. It was a battle of business schools, with Harvard, INSEAD and IE particularly to the fore. Interestingly when the rankings started in 2001 they featured many CEOs like Bill Gates and Jack Welch who have now been replaced by more storytelling thinkers like Dan Pink and Marcus Buckingham. It features many more female and Asian thinkers too.

Here is the Thinkers 50 ranking of the world’s best business thinkers for 2013:

• 1. Clay Christensen (Harvard): “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” Idea: Innovate to disrupt
• 2. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne (INSEAD): “Blue Ocean Strategy.” Idea: Find new markets
• 3. Roger Martin (Rotman, Toronto): “Playing to Win.” Idea: Strategy is about choices
• 4. Don Tapscott (consultant, Toronto): “Wikinomics.” Idea: The power of networks
• 5. Vijay Govindarajan (Tuck, Dartmouth): “Reverse Innovation.” Idea: The $300 House
• 6. Rita McGrath (Columbia): “End of Competitive Advantage.” Idea: Strategy is innovation
• Innovation Thinker: Navi Radjou … “Jugaard is about simple, frugal, and flexible innovation”
• Strategy Thinker: Rita McGrath … “If competitive advantage is for seconds, think bigger”
• Global Solutions Thinker: Don Tapscott … “Network thinking can help society come together”
• Leadership Thinker: Herminia Ibarra … “You need to be brave to lead in the world today”
• Future Thinker: Nilofer Merchant … “The future is built on brilliant ideas”
• Best Business Book: Playing to Win … “Strategy should be simple, fun and effective”
• Breakthrough Idea: The Circular Economy … “Rethinking business to reuse everything”
• Lifetime Achievement: Ikujiro Nonaka … “We need to learn to make ideas happen faster”

Clay Christensen gave a deeply emotional acceptance speech. He described how in his early 40s, and with four kids, he decided to enter the world of academia, and how he depended upon many colleagues and iterations to turn badly articulated, complex and chaotic ideas into simple, powerful concepts. We all know his disruptive innovation theory today – that whilst leaders typically stretch for ever-better products, it is the less-good but good-enough products that typically disrupt their markets, and blow them out of the water. Tearfully he reminded the world’s best thinkers that they are still human, and that family and friends matter and help the most.

There were some great moments during a day of high-octane ideas jamming:

On Friday 15th June 2012, Elon Musk put down his SpaceX tools, stepped back from his Neuralink experiments, parked his Tesla car, paused his Twitter posts, and delivered a commencement speech to the graduating 2012 class of California Institute of Technology.

It wasn’t quite the Steve Jobs commencement speech of Stanford in 2005, with moments like “Your time is limited … the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

But Musk has time. Here’s the full speech, and the transcript:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxZpaJK74Y4&t=560s

All right. I’d like to thank you for leaving ‘crazy person’ out of the introduction.

So I thought — I was trying to think what’s the most useful thing that I – what I can say that can actually be helpful and useful to you in the future.

And I thought, perhaps tell the story of how I sort of came to be here. How did these things happen? And maybe there are lessons there. I often find myself wondering, how did this happen.

When I was young, I didn’t really know what I was going to do when I got older. People kept asking me. But then eventually, I thought the idea of inventing things would be really cool.

And the reason I thought that was because I read a quote from Arthur C. Clark which said that, “A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ And that’s really true.

If you go back say, 300 years, the things we take for granted today, you’d be burned at stake for. Being able to fly. That’s crazy. Being able to see over long distances, being able to communicate, having effectively with the Internet as a group mind of sorts, and having access to all the world’s information instantly from almost anywhere on the earth. This stuff that really would be magic – that would be considered magic in times past.

In fact, I think it actually goes beyond that, there are many things that we take for granted today that weren’t even imagined in times past, that weren’t even in the realm of magic. So it actually goes beyond that. So I thought, well if I can do some of those things – basically if I can advance technology, then that is like magic and that would be really cool.

I always had an existential crisis, because I was trying to figure out ‘what does it all mean?’ Like what’s the purpose of things? And I came to the conclusion that if we can advance the knowledge of the world, if we can do things that expand the scope and scale of consciousness, then we’re better able to ask the right questions and become more enlightened. And that’s the only way forward.

So, I studied physics and business, because I figured in order to do a lot of these things you need to know how the universe works and you need to know how the economy works. And you also need to be able to bring a lot of people together to work with you to create something. Because it’s very difficult to do something as individuals if it’s a significant technology.

If we can do things that expand the scope and scale of consciousness, then we’re better able to ask the right questions and become more enlightened. And that’s the only way forward.

So, I originally came out to California to try to figure out how to improve the energy density of electric vehicles – basically to try to figure out if there was an advanced capacitor that could serve as an alternative to batteries. And that was in 1995.

That’s also when the Internet started to happen. And I thought well I could either pursue this technology, where success may not be one of the possible outcomes, which is always tricky, or participate in the Internet and be part of it. So, I decided to drop out.

Fortunately, we’re past graduation, so, I can’t be accused of recommending that to you. And I did some Internet stuff, you know. I’ve done a few things here and there. One of which is PayPal.

Maybe it’s helpful to say, one of the things that was important then in the creation of PayPal was how it started. Because initially – the initial thought with PayPal was to create a conglomeration of financial services, so if you have one place where all of your financial services needs could be seamlessly integrated and works smoothly.

And we had a little feature, which was through e-mail payments. Whenever we’d show the system off to someone, we’d show the hard part, which was the conglomeration of financial services, which is quite difficult to put together. Nobody was interested.

Then we showed people e-mail payments, which was quite easy and everybody was interested. So, I think it’s important to take feedback from your environment. You want to be as closed-loop as possible.

So, we focused on e-mail payments and tried to make that work. And that’s what really got things to take off. But, if we hadn’t responded to what people said, then we probably would not have been successful. So, it’s important to look for things like that and focus on them when you seem them, and you correct your prior assumptions.

Going from PayPal, I thought well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity? It really wasn’t from the perspective of, ‘what’s the best way to make money,’ which is okay, but, it was really ‘what do I think is going to most affect the future of humanity.’

So the biggest terrestrial problem we’ve got is sustainable energy. But the production and consumption of energy in a sustainable manner. If we don’t solve that in this century, we’re in deep trouble.

And the other one being the extension of life beyond earth to make life multi-planetary. So that’s the basis for — the latter is the basis for SpaceX and the former is the basis for Tesla and SolarCity.

When I started SpaceX, initially, I thought that well, there’s no way one could start a rocket company. I wasn’t that crazy. But, then, I thought, well, what is a way to increase NASA’s budget? That was actually my initial goal. I thought well if we could do a low cost mission to Mars, Oasis, which would land with seeds in dehydrated nutrient gel, then hydrate them upon landing. And you’d have this great photo of green plants in a red background.

The public tends to respond to precedence and superlatives. And this would be the first life on Mars and the furthest life had ever traveled as far as we know.

And I thought well that would get people really excited and increase NASA’s budget. So obviously the financial outcome from such a mission would probably be zero. So anything better than that was on the upside.

So, I went to Russia three times to look at buying a refurbished ICBM… because that was the best deal. And I can tell you it was very weird going there in late 2001-2002 going to the Russian rocket forces and saying ‘I’d like to buy two of your biggest rockets, but you can keep the nukes.’ That’s a lot more. That was 10 years ago, I guess.

They thought I was crazy, but I did have money. So, that was okay.

After making several trips to Russia, I came to the conclusion that, my initial impression was wrong about – because my initial thought was, well, that there is not enough will to explore and expand beyond earth and have a Mars base, that kind of thing. That was wrong.

In fact, there’s plenty of will, particularly in the United States. Because United States is a nation of explorers, so people who came here from other parts of the world. I think the United States is really a distillation of the spirit of human exploration. But if people think it’s impossible, then well it’s going to completely break the federal budget, then they’re not going to do it.

So, after my third trip, I said, okay, what we really need to do here is try to solve the space transport problem and started SpaceX. And this was against the advice of pretty much everyone I talked to.

One friend made me watch a bunch of videos of rockets blowing up. Let me tell you he wasn’t far wrong. It was tough going there in the beginning. Because I never built anything physical. I mean I built like a model rocket as a kid and that kind of thing. But I never had a company that built any physical. So, I had to figure out how to do all these things and bring together the right team of people.

And we did all that, and then, failed three times. It was tough, tough going.

Think about a rocket, the passing grade is 100%. And you don’t get to actually test the rocket in the real environment that is going to be in. So, I think the best analogy for rocket engineers is, if you want to create a really complicated software, you can’t run the software as an integrated whole, and you can’t run it on the computer, it’s intended to run on, but, the first time you run it on the computer, it must run with no bugs. That’s basically the essence of it. So, we missed the mark there.

The first launch, I was picking up bits of rocket near the launch site. And we learned with each successive flight. And we were able to, eventually with the fourth flight in 2008, reach orbit. That was also with the last bit of money that we had. Thank goodness that happened. I think the saying is fourth time is the charm?

So, we got the Falcon 1 to orbit. And then, began to scale it up to the Falcon 9, with an order of magnitude more thrust, it’s around a million pounds of thrust. We managed to get that to orbit, and then developed the Dragon spacecraft, which recently docked to the space station and returned to earth from the space station.

That was a white-knuckle event. It was a huge relief. I still can’t believe it actually happened.

But there’s lot more that must happen beyond for humanity to become a space ranked civilization and ultimately a multi-planet species. And that’s something I think it’s vitally important. And I hope that some of you will participate in that either at SpaceX or other companies. Because it’s just really one of the most important things for the preservation and extension of consciousness.

It’s worth noting that Earth has been around for 4 billion years, but civilization in terms of having writing has been about 10,000 years, and that’s being generous.

So, it’s really somewhat of a tenuous existence that civilization and consciousness has been on earth. And I’m actually fairly optimistic about the future of earth. So I don’t want to people sort of have the wrong impression like we’re all about to die. I think things will most likely be okay for a long time on earth. Not for sure, but, most likely.

But even if it’s 99% likely, a 1% chance is still worth spending a fair bit of effort to ensure that we have — back up the biosphere, and planetary redundancy if you will. And I think it’s really quite important.

And in order to do that, there’s breakthrough that needs to occur which is to create a rapidly and completely reusable transport system to Mars, which is one of those things that’s right on the borderline of impossible. But, that’s the sort of the thing that we’re going to try to achieve with SpaceX.

And then, on the Tesla front, the goal with Tesla was really to try to show what electric cars can do. Because people had the wrong impression, and we had to change people’s perceptions of electric vehicle. Because they used to think of it as something that was slow and ugly, with low range, like a golf cart. So, that’s why we created the Tesla Roadster, to show that it can be fast, attractive and long range.

And it’s amazing how — even though you can show that something works on paper, and the calculations are very clear, until you actually have the physical object, and they can drive it, it doesn’t really sink in for people. So that I think is something worth nothing.

If you’re going to create a company, the first thing you should try to do is create a working prototype. Everything looks great on PowerPoint. You can make anything work on PowerPoint. If you have an actual demonstration article, even if it’s in primitive form, that’s much more effective in convincing people.

So we made the Tesla Roadster, and now we’re coming out soon with model S, which is a 4-door sedan. Because we made the Tesla Roadster people said, ‘Sure we always knew you could make a car like that, it’s an expensive car and it’s low volume and small and all that but can you make a real car?’ Okay, fine, we’re going to make that, too. So, that’s coming out soon.

And so that’s where things are and hopefully, there are lessons to be drawn there.

I think the overreaching point I want to make is you guys are the magicians of the 21th century, don’t let anything hold you back. Imagination is the limit. Go out there and create some magic.

Thank you.

Downturns are moments for rethinking, for focusing on what makes you special, for getting close to customers, for smart and bold moves, for shaking up the market, for asserting yourself competitively, for reaching out to new customers, for staying positive.

From Motorola to Tupperware, many great companies have their origins in downturns. They are moments when markets change, when competitors are reordered and when customers rethink what is essential, and what they’d love.

So here are 10 strategies for surviving, and thriving in a downturn:

1. Strength – downturns sort the wheat from the chaff, the robust business models from those developed on a wing and a prayer. Some companies will go under whilst others will be ripe for acquisition. Look at the airlines, the banks, the supermarkets.

2. Speed – some companies have the foresight and agility to respond to changing conditions, and others don’t. Virtual companies, franchised brands, and small businesses can flex business models, reduce costs quickly, and respond to changing consumer motivations.

3. Focus – we know we don’t need all our products, or even all our customers – 80:20 revenue, 90:10 profit – but we are usually too lazy to do the analysis, and make the hard decisions to focus on the value creators, and eliminate the value destroyers.

4. Icons – customers typically focus more on the big ticket savings – downsizing their houses, buying a smaller car, taking fewer holidays – rather than the small items, which can be less prone to reduction. Travel less, but still buy Starbucks.

5. Selective – whilst customers might buy less, they become more selective about where they spend money. In emerging markets, people might have little money but still want a Louis Viutton handbag or an Audi car.

6. Value – the mid market that combines smart quality with a good price becomes fashionable again, good quality and design but at better prices – a Swatch not a Rolex, Gap not Calvin Klein, Pret a Manger not Carluccios.

7. Innovation – applying innovation to other areas from business models to sales channels – reduce cost and risks by moving to a franchise model, improve speed and efficiency with direct sales, move to minimal (and eco friendly) packaging.

8. Upturns – follow downturns like night follows day – so as long as you can survive the slump, the winners in the next upturn are those who invest during the downturn, change the industry structures, redefine value. Low cost airlines become mainstream, online banking the norm.

9. Stories – brands are storytellers, typically about dreams, achievement, fulfilment – helping confirm to customers why they are buying. In downturns brands need to evolve to tell a different story – about practicality, restraint, choice and good value.

10. Champions – there is ultimately no better tactic than to be on the customer’s side during a downturn – emitting empathy and support, helping people to save money, in more human and collaborative ways, reflecting the time, balancing prudence and passion.