Peter Fisk

• Download Peter Fisk’s keynote “Pioneers and Transformers” for Airbus, March 2023.  

I work with many organisations – typically their boards and executive teams – to help them explore, define and shape their futures.

A typical project might start with “we need a new strategy” but that would quickly become more complex, as we realise that the organisation lacks a fundamental direction – purpose, vision. This gives us context and direction, a framework in which to develop a strategy. A strategic framework with purpose, vision, strategy and goals is a useful start.

Strategy is ultimately about making choices. What we will do and not. This is where is can getter harder, but also clearer. Many organisations lack a framework to make these choices – not just in terms of financial, but the broader value set, and stakeholder engagement, which determines which financials matter most.

However the most interesting discussion often becomes about culture, of the business holistically, and therefore of its leaders too. What’s their distinctive role? How will they behave, add value, and lead? The answers usually link to the strategic choices too.

A number of recent clients said their vision was “To be the pioneer in ….”. If that’s the case, how will the be a “pioneer”?

Airbus, for example, defines its purpose as “pioneering sustainable aerospace for a safe and united world”, or in the Middle East, Al Ghurair, who started out as pearl divers in Dubai Creek, seek once again to be “pioneers, in search of better”.

I’m not sure why pioneer has become such a popular phrase. I get that markets are complex and dynamic, that disruption is everywhere, but itself not the answer. I get  that most organisations need to transform themselves, to be fit for the future. But this word pioneer keeps coming up.

Look to the definition of pioneer, and you will find “a person who is among the first to explore”, or as a verb “to develop or be the first to use or apply (a new method, area of knowledge, or activity).”

Business Chemistry

So what does a pioneer look like in business, and particularly in the C suite of larger, mature companies?

“Business Chemistry” is a framework that describes distinct patterns of behavior that can be harnessed to improve individual interactions and influence strategy. Developed by Deloitte in conjunction with scientists from the fields of neuro-anthropology and genetics, The framework identifies four dominant personality patterns: Drivers, who value challenge and generate momentum; Guardians, who value stability and bring order and rigor; Integrators, who value connection and draw teams together; and Pioneers, who value possibilities and spark creativity.

Each of us is a composite of the four work styles, though most people’s behavior and thinking are closely aligned with one or two. All the styles bring useful perspectives and distinctive approaches to generating ideas, making decisions, and solving problems. Generally speaking:

• Pioneers value possibilities, and they spark energy and imagination on their teams. They believe risks are worth taking and that it’s fine to go with your gut. Their focus is big-picture. They’re drawn to bold new ideas and creative approaches.
• Guardians value stability, and they bring order and rigor. They’re pragmatic, and they hesitate to embrace risk. Data and facts are baseline requirements for them, and details matter. Guardians think it makes sense to learn from the past.
• Drivers value challenge and generate momentum. Getting results and winning count most. Drivers tend to view issues as black-and-white and tackle problems head on, armed with logic and data.
• Integrators value connection and draw teams together. Relationships and responsibility to the group are paramount. Integrators tend to believe that most things are relative. They’re diplomatic and focused on gaining consensus.

The Deloitte study found that two of the four personality types account for almost two-thirds of the sample: Pioneers (36%) and Drivers (29%), with Guardians (18%) and Integrators (17%) accounting for the rest.

Those results varied, however, across C-suite roles, as well as by company size, industry and gender. While Pioneers were more prevalent in the C-suite overall, for example, CFOs were more likely to be Drivers (37%) and Guardians (26%). In the largest organizations in the sample (those with more than 100,000 employees) the proportion of C-suite executives who were Drivers (38%) outpaced the proportion of Pioneers (29%). In organizations with more than $10 billion in revenues, Drivers and Pioneers each represented 34% of the C-suite.

A commentary in the WSJ suggests that while C-suite executives are similar in many ways to a typical professional in terms of practicality, duty, discipline, imagination, relationship orientation, openness to experimentation and expression, they differ in particular ways related to their perspectives on approaching problems and interacting with others. As compared with the general business population, C-suite executives in this sample are significantly more likely to:

• Be big picture thinkers who are competitive and willing to tolerate conflict
• Make decisions more quickly without worrying about the popularity of those decisions
• Be quantitative and comfortable with ambiguity

When 13,885 professionals in a separate study were asked what they most aspire to be when it comes to their careers, the overwhelming majority of Drivers (68%) and Pioneers (67%) chose “Leader.” Integrators and Guardians were more evenly split across a range of aspirations.

HP is one example of a large corporation seeing to rekindle its pioneering spirit.

They use Bill Hewlett and David Packard’s original garage, where they founded the business, as a symbol of what it takes to be a pioneer. Here with their “Rules of the Garage”:

Pioneering leaders

Pioneering leaders are adventurous — driven to keep seeking bigger and better roles, products, and experiences. They inspire a team to venture into uncharted territory. We get caught up in their passion to grow, expand, and explore.

Be aggressive about exploring opportunities

This is a great dimension to draw upon if you’re an entrepreneur in the first stages of building a business or brand. It’s also good to develop these behaviors during times when things seem to be just coasting along. . The pioneering leader reminds us that innovation doesn’t happen without active exploration. In other words, the next big thing isn’t hiding under your desk.

“Leaders are pioneers—people who are willing to step out into the unknown. They search for opportunities to innovate, grow, and improve.” say James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, The Leadership Challenge

• 5 Behaviors of Leaders Who Embrace Change, Harvard Business Review
• 5 Ways Leaders Act Like Rebels (That’ll Make You Successful, Too), Forbes
• How Transformation-Ready Leaders Learn, strategy + business

Leaders lead change and stretch the boundaries

Pioneering leaders aren’t afraid to do what’s never been done before. They encourage growth for the organization and for the people around them. They stay current with best practices and opportunities to stretch beyond the status quo. You might be working hard to create a stable environment for your employees, but you need to be sure you aren’t also quashing the creativity of the entrepreneurial spirit around you.

“Let people know that innovative thinking is a part of everyone‘s job, regardless of their function or level of responsibility” says  Susan Gebelein et al, Successful Executive’s Handbook

• Why the Best Leaders Act Like Playful Puppies, Entrepreneur
• Why Challenging The Status Quo Will Make You A Better Leader And How To Do It, CoSchedule blog
• Challenge the Process by Creating Original Ideas, Flashpoint Leadership

Learn to take leaps of faith

Careful planning has its place and its rewards, but sometimes bold action is necessary. The first to market often has the advantage. The faith you show in your ideas inspires others. Not taking a chance can present its own dangers. If you’re risk adverse, allow yourself time for a reasonable amount of analysis and then act. Don’t let the research, risk assessments and worry stop you from taking the leap.

“The truth is that challenge is the crucible for greatness. … And the truth is also that you either lead by example or you don’t lead at all. You have to go first as a leaders” say  James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, The Truth About Leadership

• 5 reasons why bold leaders are remarkably successful, Ladders
• You Win Or You Learn: Risk-Taking For Leaders, Forbes

 

Thomas Edison said “I have not failed 10,000 times, I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”

In writing my latest book, Business Recoded, I’ve explored many fascinating stories of our changing business world, discovered some incredible organisations, and interviewed some truly inspiring leaders.

I’ve also come across quite a few quirks of the system – effects and paradoxes – which, whether they are true or not, make you think. Here are a few.

Consider these little examples from social behaviour:

• Abilene Paradox: A group decides to do something that no one in the group wants to do because everyone mistakenly assumes they’re the only ones who object to the idea and they don’t want to rock the boat by speaking up.
• Luxury Paradox: The more expensive something is the less likely you are to use it, so the relationship between price and utility is an inverted U. Ferraris sit in garages; Toyotas get driven.
• Friendship Paradox: On average, people have fewer friends than their friends have, because people with an abnormally high number of friends are more likely to be one of your friends.

I love a good paradox.

Particularly for finding new ideas for innovation. I remember former P&G CEO AG Lafley searching for paradoxes in his markets – apparent contradictions in consumer behaviour, two aspirations much seemed impossible together, and then seizing on it as the opportunity to innovate.

But paradoxes equally occur in the process of innovation. However hard you try to design the perfect innovation machine, it will always be the outlier ideas, people or solutions which have the greatest impact. They add abnormality to routine normality. They inject creative divergence. They break the rules.

A recent Forbes article described 12 paradoxes of the innovation process:

1. Innovative organisations have strong innovation machines but recognize that some of the best ideas come from outside the machine … think of 3M’s Post-it Notes that emerged from an insight watching page markers fall out of church hymn books.

2. Big, disruptive ideas are alluring, but small, incremental ideas often pay the bills … think of Apple’s profitable evolution rather than revolution under Tim Cook, after the blockbuster years of Steve Jobs. Air Pods were probably the biggest innovation.

3. Small, incremental ideas often pay the bills, but big, disruptive ideas may be necessary to secure an organisation’s place in the long-term … think of Google’s moonshot program, seeking to find the big ideas to change paradigms and leap forwards.

4. Siloes can be anathema to innovative thinking, but are often necessary for depth and execution … at BDS, the Singapore-based bank, the customer service teams were able to go much deeper in understanding service issues, and innovating new solutions.

5. Process creates discipline, but also can suffocate good ideas … so many good ideas are killed during a process that has checks and metrics designed to deliver convention not innovation, the best ideas rarely survive a core business treatment.

6. Psychological safety breeds better cultivation of ideas, but innovation is measured by results … but which results? If you seek short term sales glory, you are rarely going to have the time to create the future, or engage the outlier audiences.

7. Communication around innovation is key internally, but confidentiality is necessary to keep ideas from external competitors … the secret becomes so secretive that it never spreads, staff are some of your best ambassadors.

8. Failing fast and learning fast reduce wasted time, energy, and money, but artifacts allow for future reconstitution and re-use … every failure is partly a success, a small step forwards even if it doesn’t feel like it.

9. Timing of ideas is essential, but an idea that fails one year can succeed in another under different circumstances or with the right tweaks … hence the importance of having a portfolio of innovations, a cupboard full to unlock at the right time.

10. Cannibalizing existing business represents a threat to orthodoxy, but also prevents competitors from doing so … Coca Cola thought long and hard about entering water and juice categories, but then realised opportunities beats threat.

11. Successful innovation teams include deep content expertise and experience, but also generalists and process experts who look through a different lens and ask new questions.

12. Innovators often feel like imposters, but don’t realise that feeling is part of a growth mindset … look at the way in which Satya Nadella has taken Carol Dweck’s mindset model to reinvent Microsoft … growth mindset is about continues discovery.

 

 

 

The noseride is one of surfing’s peak moments: part fluid dynamics, part magic.

But how does noseriding actually work? What makes this suspension between sea and sky even possible?

Patagonia’s short movie “The Physics of Noseriding” explores the question through the eyes of Namaala, a young surfer whose people were flying on the water before the world even knew what surfing was.

Her curiosity invites us to examine the sensation of levitation that unfolds as wave, surfboard and surfer come together for surfing’s fluid dance.

Noseriding is when the surfboard interacts with the wave.

The most common thing you’ll hear is that water on the tail creates downward pressure which creates lift in the nose allowing it to hold your weight. Essentially your board is acting like a lever and as long as there’s enough pressure on the tail, you’ll be able to stand on the nose. One thing to keep in mind is that this will only work when you’re in the *pocket* of the wave.

I love this. Because it’s all about passion.

The passion of the surfer in search of perfection. And the passion of Patagonia, the brand, for what people seek to do.

We all know Patagonia as the protest brand – fighting against climate change, fighting for social rights. And in particular how founder Yvon Chouinard recently chose to “give away” his multi-billion dollar business to a charitable foundation, which will ensure that every dollar of profit (typically $100 million every year) goes to fighting climate change.

We also know the story of how Patagonia started – about Chouinard, his passion for the outdoors, from climbing to fishing.

So it’s refreshing to see the passion, as well as the protest – seeking to create a better world – so that we can enjoy the beauty of the natural environment, the thrill of outdoor sport, and the obsession for perfection.

ChatGPT has dominated the tech headlines of recent months. The OpenAI interface has become a symbol of progress for the ways in which knowledge is evolving, and challenging human minds.

Of course AI is all around us. Wake up to check your health on your Apple Watch. Click on the weather forecast. Or just ask Siri. Jump in your car, and Google Maps becomes your intelligent navigator, using realtime traffic data to find the best route.

At very least, ChatGPT, which was only ever meant to be a prototype to test human engagement, has alerted to the way in which AI is challenging the human brain. Yes of course, it can source and synthesise huge amounts of information, and quantum computing will accelerate that millions of times faster.

But it still struggles to think, to imagine, to create. That, so far, is still a human quality, isn’t it?

Humans and technology

Digital anthropology focuses on the relationship between humans and today’s broad range of technologies – from computing and robotics, mobile phones and gaming, data and AI, crypto and NFTs.

How do people engage with these technologies? What are the ethics? Who is in control?

One of my expert faculty at IE Business School is Verónica Reyero, a social anthropologist and founder Anthropologia 2.0. She has spent many years exploring the field, and helping business leaders to make sense of this changing world.

In a recent discussion, we started by reflecting on society’s obsession today with social media. “Why do people post?”. What drives people to share every moment of their lives with the world. The millions of photos posted, popularity measured in likes. The influence of people on each other, the shift in trust from institution to community, the rise of tribes across traditional boundaries.

A great insight into this topic comes from UCL Why we post research project

Three factors dominated our discussion

• Identity – how we build our identity in a digital world – how we present ourselves, and how others perceive us.
• Relationships – how we connect with each other – our chosen communities, and equally as societies, nations and tribes.
• Value – how we decide the worth of products and services – of time, of connections, of possessions.

As examples, why pay $6000 for a pair of Nike RTFKT CrytoKick virtual sneakers, to wear on your Fortnite avatar, but which you will never wear in the real world?

Digital anthropologists

Most anthropologists who use the phrase “digital anthropology” are specifically referring to online technology. The study of humans’ relationship to a broader range of technology may fall under other subfields of anthropological study, such as cyborg anthropology.

The Digital Anthropology Group (DANG) is classified as an interest group in the American Anthropological Association. DANG’s mission includes promoting the use of digital technology as a tool of anthropological research, encouraging anthropologists to share research using digital platforms, and outlining ways for anthropologists to study digital communities.

Cyberspace itself can serve as a “field” site for anthropologists, allowing the observation, analysis, and interpretation of the sociocultural phenomena springing up and taking place in any interactive space.

National and transnational communities, enabled by digital technology, establish a set of social norms, practices, traditions, storied history and associated collective memory, migration periods, internal and external conflicts, potentially subconscious language features and memetic dialects comparable to those of traditional, geographically confined communities. This includes the various communities built around free and open-source software, online platforms such as 4chan and Reddit and their respective sub-sites, and politically motivated groups like Anonymous, WikiLeaks, or the Occupy movement.

A number of academic anthropologists have conducted traditional ethnographies of virtual worlds, such as Bonnie Nardi’s study of World of Warcraft or Tom Boellstorff’s study of Second Life.

Anthropological research can help designers adapt and improve technology. Australian anthropologist Genevieve Bell did extensive user experience research at Intel that informed the company’s approach to its technology, users, and market.

Human algorithms

“A Human Algorithm: How Artificial Intelligence Is Redefining Who We Are” is a 2019 non-fiction book by American international human rights attorney Flynn Coleman. It argues that, in order to manage the power shift from humans to increasingly advanced artificial intelligence, it will be necessary to instil human values into AI, and to proactively develop oversight mechanisms.

Coleman argues that the algorithms underlying AI could greatly improve the human condition, if the algorithms are carefully based on ethical human values. An ideal AI would be “not a replicated model of our own brains, but an expansion of our lens and our vantage point as to what intelligence, life, meaning, and humanity are and can be.” Failure in this regard might leave us “a species without a purpose”, lacking “any sense of happiness, meaning, or satisfaction”. She states that despite stirrings of an “algorithmic accountability movement”, humanity is “alarmingly unready” for the arrival of more powerful forms of AI.

To realize AI’s transcendent potential, Coleman advocates for inviting a diverse group of voices to participate in designing our intelligent machines and using our moral imagination to ensure that human rights, empathy, and equity are core principles of emerging technologies.

Accelerating change

One thing is certain. Tech will only increase in its pace of disruption, adoption and impact.

We will see the evolution of space exploration, from NASA’s Artemis mission, humans landing on Mars, and the interplanetary internet system going online. To the launch of the Starshot Alpha Centauri program, and quantum computers designing plants that can survive on Mars. On Earth, tech evolves with quantum computers and Neaulink chips.

People will begin living with bio-printed organs. Humans record every part of lives from birth. And inner speech recording becomes possible. And what about predictions further out into the future, when humans become level 2 and level 3 civilizations.

When NASA’s warp drive goes live, and Mars declares independence from Earth. Will there be Dyson structures built around stars to capture their energy. Will they help power computers that can take human consciousness and download it into a quantum computer core. Allowing humanity to travel further out into space.

Imagine that you are an Olympic athlete in the midst of competition. As you prepare for the greatest race of your life, you imagine the moments ahead, anticipate what might happen, consider alternative strategies. And maybe just dare to dream.

In reality, you need to be ready for anything. It’s no use overthinking. You are in the best condition of your life, and you have run many races before. In reality you are simply consumed by the moment, at one with your body, focused on the race.

When you are at your “peak”, your body and mind flow in unison, you know what to do.

Finding your future flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi believes that peak performance comes from inside, and that people have the unique ability to create environments that facilitate the development of a state of mind which he calls “flow”, or what some might call “in the zone”.

Flow is the experience I get when I’m working intensely on a project, the challenge is significant, the team around me are great people, the timeframes are tight, and the ambition is very high. Once I am into the project, I find I can work at great pace, there is a stream of consciousness, ideas emerge rapidly.

Under the stress and stretch of high octane situations, we can often do our best work.  Csikszentmihalyi  says “the best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something we make happen”

It is a feeling of immersion, focus and concentration, removed from the repetition and distractions of everyday, you feel like you have more purpose, with heightened awareness of the situation and possibilities. Complexity seems less intimidating, and uncertainty less daunting. You are energised, you are empowered, you can achieve so much more.

Flow is achieved through an intensity of concentration and effort as you apply yourself to the task. You are energised by possibility, and released from the fear of failure. You rise above yourself, above the distractions of today. The experience of this flow is as good as the outcomes.

5 ways for business leaders to find their “flow” state every day are:

• Select tasks that are stimulating and engaging, they challenge you to the point of excitement. They are problems you would love to solve.
• Assemble a great team, people you love and trust, who you know that together you can do great things (or you, on occasions, you can also do this alone).
• Define audacious goals, that go beyond the accepted norms, 10x not 10% targets, and also a sense of what the rewards could be, personal or organisational.
• Focus your mind, a stream of consciousness towards the goal, eliminating the daily trivia, the distractions of the normal workspace
• Immerse yourself in the moment, active not passive, thinking ideas, doing tasks, making progress, building momentum, going for the goal.

The “flow” state of mind becomes the everyday state of business leaders. It becomes normal. Every day, working towards the future, whilst also delivering today. Your mind working overtime, connecting ideas, searching for progress, focused on the actions which will create a better tomorrow. Indeed, you can only ever do things today, even it is focused on a better future.

Playing to your strengths

 We have grown used to exploring the “strengths and weaknesses” of human character, or in this case of leadership behaviour. The problem is that this kind of diagnostic encourages us to focus on our weaknesses, to make them better, to be “good enough” at everything.

An alternative is focus on your strengths and how to make them better.

Yet few business leaders say they get to use their strengths in most of their work. The challenge in any team is to bring a diverse group of people together, where their combined strengths are irresistible. This means that as long as all the important attributes are covered, then the team will be strong in all areas, and amplify its impact far beyond that of  any individual.

Psychologist Martin Seligman studied cultures around the world to understand what they regarded as “strengths” in leaders. The research explored major religions and philosophical traditions and found that the same six virtues were shared in almost all cultures. Gallup’s StrengthFinder assessment model is one of the most useful tool for exploring the practical component of these virtues as 24 character strengths:

• Virtue of Wisdom: the more curious and creative we become, the more we gain perspective, knowledge and wisdom. Component strengths are creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning, and perspective.
• Virtue of Courage: the braver and more persistent we become, the more confident we feel, and more courageous we act. Component strengths are bravery, perseverance, honesty and vitality.
• Virtue of Humanity: the more we approach people with respect, appreciation, and interest, the more engaged they become. Component strengths are love, kindness and social intelligence.
• Virtue of Justice: the more responsible we are, embracing fairness and justice, the more stable community we can build for mutual benefit. Component strengths are teamwork, fairness and leadership.
• Virtue of Temperance: being forgiving, humble, prudent, and in control of our behaviours, helps us to avoid being arrogant, selfish, and unbalanced. Component strengths are forgiveness, humility, prudence and self-control.
• Virtue of Transcendence: never losing hope in humanity’s potential, appreciating nature and people, enables us to connect with a higher purpose. Component strengths are appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope, humour and spirituality.

Additional studies have shown that women typically score higher in interpersonal strengths, such as love and kindness, honesty and gratitude. Men tend to score higher on cognitive strengths, creativity and curiosity, hope and humour, but also highly on honesty. Whilst these differences are interesting, and largely conform to stereotypes suggesting that they might be shaped by culture, there are also many shared strengths.

Playing to your strengths not only enables you to perform better, and contribute more to a team, it can also result in feeling more engaged and confident, and enable you to progress faster.

The leader’s plastic brain

We used to assume that we each have our established ways of thinking and behaving, and as we get older the capability of our brain to learn and adapt declines.  Yet our brain can grow new neurons at any age. Each neuron can transmit up to 1,000 nerve signals a second and make as many as 10,000 connections with other neurons. Our thoughts come from the chemical signals that pass across the synaptic gaps between neurons: the more connections we make, the more powerful and adaptive our brain can be.

Tara Swart is a neuroscientist, practising medical doctor, and executive coach, with a background in psychiatry. I first met her on stage in Bratislava, where we both were delivering our “Big Idea” for Europe. Her first book, “Neuroscience for Leadership” was more of an academic text, while her new book is “The Source” is more populist, and claims most of the things we want from life – health, happiness, wealth, love – are governed by our ability to think, feel and act. In other words, by our brain.

Keeping the brain fit through exercise, continual learning and rich experiences, enhances your mental agility. In the past leaders relied more upon experience and procedure, in today’s world we need leaders who can make sense of new patterns, imagine new possibilities, thrive on diversity of thought and complexity of action. Leaders need to have a mind that is always ahead, seeing and anticipating what next.

“Think of the brain as the hardware of a computer” says Swart. “Your mind is the software. You’re the coder who upgrades the software to transform the data (your thoughts). You also control the power supply that fuels the computer — the food and drink you consume, when and how to exercise and meditate, who to interact with… You have the power to maintain or destroy your neural connections.”

Mindful activities such as yoga or meditation reduce levels of cortisol and increase the fold of the outer cortex of the brain, allowing the pre-frontal cortex to better regulate our emotional responses. Swart says just 12 minutes a day, most days of the week, will make a noticeable difference. New experiences such as travel, learning a skill, such as a foreign language, and meeting new people can stimulate the growth of new neurons.

There are some obvious ways to improve your brain function, such as drink more water, get more exercise, and don’t read from electronic screens in the last hour before bed. Sleeping less than seven to eight hours a night isn’t sustainable for most people, because that’s how long it takes to clear out toxins. Sleeping on your left side helps the brain to flush out toxins more efficiently, and downing a spoonful of coconut oil before a big meeting boosts brain power for about 20 minutes.

The journey ahead will have high and lows. Endurance demands physical fitness and emotional agility, but also taking moments to pause, and celebrate progress.

James Dyson took 15 years and 5127 attempts to perfect his bagless vacuum. When he succeeded, he created a revolution, but it required incredible persistence to get there. Not only is the future difficult to create, but everything keeps changing on the journey towards it.

The mental toughness, the grit to persist, is not just about keeping going, but the resilience to overcome challenges and obstacles. Sometimes, just the sheer volume of information – emails, analysis, reports, ideas, articles, books, meetings – will become overbearing. As a leader it’s easy to feel overloaded.

It’s also easy to feel you need to know everything, which you don’t, although you do need to prioritise what matters most. The biggest challenge for any visionary leader is not how to make ideas happen, but how to overcome all the people who say that they won’t. Critics and pessimists can be frustrating, and a motivational drain.

There will also be moments of great success, people might even call you a hero. It will feel good, even to the humblest, and you will inevitably remind everyone that it was a team effort. Yet the euphoria can quickly disappear, with the next challenge.

Leaders need endurance, resilience, and gratitude, to cope with relentless change; to be able to change your own mind, to stay on the rollercoaster of progress, to keep teams engaged, and to thrive at both work and in your life.

The endurance of leaders

Endurance is as much about mind as muscle power.

Like an athlete – runner, cyclist, rower – there are many physiological elements at play, from core body temperature to oxygen intake, plus psychological factors, such as perceived effort and pain tolerance. Each of these factors is significant in the level of athletic performance humans which any person is capable of, especially when testing the perceived limits of performance, such as setting new world records.

Almost every athlete will attest to faster recovery if they jump into an ice bath after a competition. Yet studies show that this practice doesn’t actually decrease inflammation levels, the thing the baths are intended to reduce. However most physiologists will still say that if there’s a method that helps you recover, even if it’s purely psychological, then it is useful because sometimes belief is just as influential as science.

In “Endure” Alex Hutchinson starts by retelling the race to break 4 minutes for one mile. For years, men across the globe had raced to within a second or two of the barrier, but never quite breaking the iconic time. When Britain’s Roger Bannister finally ran 3.59.4 in 1954, Australian John Landy who had been trying to run the time for years, went on to improve  Banister’s time by another second, only weeks later.

A number of important factors can help people, including business leaders, to endure more:

• We always have a little more to give. Watch how athletes pace themselves so that they always have one final effort at the end of a long distance event. And somehow an Olympic champion, despite a punishing race, can always rise to celebrate victory
• We can endure more than we think. Athletes have a higher than normal pain tolerance enabling them to push harder. They learn to cope with this by training at a “threshold” pace, learning to sustain oxygen debt, despite its searing pain.
• Fitness enables us to perform better. Athletic performance greatly relies on oxygen intake, which is enhanced through heightened fitness. Business leaders also need oxygen, and the physical fitness to sustain leadership performance.
• Fatigue reduces our performance.Having a tired brain can affect how much we can endure physically. A tired brain is one that doesn’t have a break, isn’t refuelled, doesn’t have variety, doesn’t keep learning, doesn’t get enough sleep.
• Stress stops us performing. Of the many factors, stress can be the killer. However stress comes in two forms – stress from outside, eg timescales, and stress we put on ourselves. External stress can stimulate us, internal stress we can control.

Hutchinson’s research led him to South Africa to work with Tim Noakes, the controversial sports scientist who first proposed the “central governor theory,” which argues that the brain limits performance well before the body has reached its maximum output. He also explores the research of another pioneering scientist, Samuele Marcora, who has developed a series of brain-training exercises to push that governor.

He also recalls talking to Eliud Kipchoge just before he ran the world’s first sub-2 hour marathon, when the Kenyan said he hadn’t really changed anything in his training. What then, he asked, would make the difference? “My mind will be different” replied the runner.  People he says, have a curiously elastic limit to what they can achieve, driven mainly be their mental toughness.

The resilience of leaders

Resilience is our ability to bounce back from adversity. It’s what allows us to recover quickly from change or setbacks, trauma or failure, whether at work or in life. It is the ability to maintain a sense if purpose, a positive attitude,  a belief in better, throughout times of challenge. Resilience sustains progress, whilst others might give up.

Angela Duckworth calls it grit. “Grit is passion and perseverance for long-term goals” she says. She compares it not to a marathon, but to a series of sprints combined with a boxing match. In business you are not just running but also getting hit along the way. As you seek to deliver on your strategy, to make new ideas happen, to transform the business, it’s not just about coping with the time and effort. It’s also about overcoming many challenges.

Grit keeps you moving forward through the sting of rejection, pain of failure, and struggle with adversity. “When things knock you down, you may want to stay down and give up, but grit won’t let you quit” says Duckworth.

Most entrepreneurs have tremendous resilience, because they’ve had to fight for the business through some of the most difficult times. The search for seed funding when every VC dismissed them with a laugh or smile, the long days in a bedroom or garage trying to make the first prototype or win the first contract, the growing pains of scale-up as they have to adapt to survive and thrive. Letting go of control as investors take over, making you wealthy but taking away your baby. Most entrepreneurs know about grit.

But then so do corporate leaders. If not from starting up, then from surviving the challenges of internal politics, of learning how to engage and influence people in a positive way, of progressing as a star individual whilst keeping colleagues and teams on side. Of balancing personal ambition with collective progress. Resilience demands that we:

• Have ambition:Knowing what you truly want, and are prepared to work hard and persevere in order to achieve it. Vision isn’t just a milestone, it becomes a pursuit. Whilst not everybody will know  your ambition, you will, and it will keep you striving.
• Have purpose: This is why you want to achieve more, it’s about what will be better when you achieve your ambition, not just for you, but your business, your family, your world. Purpose is how you contribute, what you fight for, why you get up in the morning.
• Have passion: You need to love it, to be great at it. Otherwise it’s not worth the sacrifices, the long hours, and the pain. Aligning your purpose and ambition allows you to find love, for your work, your team, your business, and the world you seek to impact.
• Have persistence: You will sometimes fail. Few things change without challenges. Failure doesn’t define you, it refines you. If you didn’t fail, you wouldn’t learn. There is always another way. Stay confident and stay strong.

Nelson Mandela was a great example of resilience. He was sent to prison as a young firebrand who believed in taking up violent resistance when the justice system failed him in apartheid South Africa. 27 years later, he walked out of Robben Island prison advocating peace and reconciliation. During his long confinement, Mandela mastered what he later called self-leadership. He took great inspiration in the poem “Invictus,” written by William Ernest Henley, which ends with the lines “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.”

Takashi Murakami is often called the next Andy Warhol, fusing high and low art, combining ideas from both Japan’s rich artistic heritage, and its vibrant consumer culture. But whilst the American icon created multi-million dollar works of art, Murakami is much more interested in creating everyday objects for everyone, from bubble gum and t-shirts to phone covers and limited-edition Louis Vuitton handbags.

He started in the traditions of Japan, then studied “Nihonga” art which is a combination of 19th century eastern and western styles but became distracted by the rise of anime and manga in Japanese eighties culture. He loved the modern styles which connected with people, and the issues and aspirations of today’s society. He was fascinated by what made iconic characters such as Hello Kitty and Mickey Mouse so popular and enduring.

Japan has a centuries long tradition of “flat” art, achieved with bold outlines, flat colouring, and a disregard for perspective, depth, and three-dimensionality. “Superflat” was a term Murakami started to use in 2001 and has evolved into one of modern art’s most active movements, combining the traditions flat art with anime and manga, taking components of high and low culture to defy categorisation. He says that he uses the style to also reflect what he sees as the flat, shallowness of consumer culture.

Today Murakami is a rock-star artist, highly aware of his image and brand, and an avid user of social media. He loves fame and commercialism. His business has been helped by collaborations with celebrities, creating animated music videos for Kanye West and designing sculptures with Pharrell Williams.

If “ingenuity” is about thinking and performing in a way that is original and inventive, it is a good descriptor of Murakami. He is inspired by both the past and the future create his own distinctive presence, to connect with and challenges his environment, embrace personal insight and opinion to defy conventions, and them his audience with him.

Imagination, creativity and innovation.

Imagination is often called the primary gift of human consciousness.

In a world of ubiquitous technology which challenges our humanity, a world of infinite yet largely derivative choices, and a world of noise and uncertainty, there is nothing quite like being human.

Imagination move us forwards. It allows us to leap beyond the conventions, the limits of our current world. It takes us beyond the algorithms of AI-enabled robots who can create perfection out of the world which they know, but struggle beyond it. It inspires us to think in new ways, to shape hypotheses to test, and aesthetic designs to enjoy.

Sir Ken Robinson is probably best known for his self-deprecating sense of humour with which he delivers a very important message: “Imagination is the source of all human achievement.” The Times said of his UK government report on creativity, education and the economy that “it raises some of the most important issues facing business in the 21st century. It should have every CEO thumping the table and demanding action.”

His book “Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative” argues that our world is the product of the ideas, beliefs and values of human imagination that have shaped it over centuries. He says, “the human mind is profoundly and uniquely creative, but too many people have no sense of their true talents.”

• Imagination explores new possibilities and captures them as new ideas
• Creativity shapes and stretches the potential of existing ideas
• Innovation takes existing ideas and makes them practical

Creativity is applied imagination, innovation is applied creativity, you could say.

I remember back to when my two daughters were young, the pictures they drew and models they built, the questions they asked and answers they imagined. There’s was a world unlimited by experience, by prejudice or conformity. Their brush strokes were simple, their colours bold, their questions were simple but disturbingly difficult.

As adults we shift to a productivity mindset, preferring to get things done, rather than explore possibilities. We seek to reduce complexity to its simplest form and describe ideas in the context of what we already know, squeezing out any nuggets of newness.

We are all born creative, but somehow lose that spark, or at the confidence to allow it out. Some people, we say, are creative, and others not. Yet we all have the same neurons and synapses which drive the process. The reality is that no individual is as creative as even the dullest people once they start working together. If we could reclaim our creativity, we could discover our passion, allowing us to feel more alive, and do so much more.

Harvard professor Howard Gardner identified 8 “intelligences” or ways to solve problems. They range from linguistics (limited only by the words you use), logical (mainly through mathematics), spatial (as used by designers), musical, physical (like athletes), natural (like farmers), intrapersonal (within yourself), and interpersonal (with others).

The point is that we have many ways to be creative, or even combinations of our mental and physical capabilities. As Leonardo da Vinci loved to say, inspired by his own polymath life as artist and musician, anatomist and sculptor, architect and engineer, creativity is ultimately about making new connections.

Innovation makes life better

The purpose of any business, and therefore any innovation, is to make life better. It drives human and social progress, as well as seizing new opportunities for business growth. Whilst it is a practical, technical and process-based challenge, it is also human and philosophical, strategic and futuristic.

The Royal Society of Arts recently published a document “How to be Ingenious” starting with a definition of ingenuity as having three components:

• an inclination to work with the resources easily to hand
• a knack for combining these resources in a surprising way
• and in doing so, an ability to solve some practical problem

Another way to describe it is the ability to do unexpectedly more for less in the face of constrained resources. Given the social and environmental challenges facing every business today, that might be a useful addition.

The Huit Denim Company is a great innovator for social good. Cardigan, a small town on the west coast of Wales, used to have Britain’s biggest jeans factory. It employed 400 people in a town of 4,000 people, making 35,000 pairs a week, but it closed suddenly in 2001. It had a huge effect on employment, but also on confidence in the town.

David and Claire Hieatt responded by deciding that they would to try to get 400 people their jobs back. Huit Denim Co was born, and now with a cult global following. Their semi-automated, hand-stitched process still takes 5 times as long as most jeans factories, but they can then sell them online direct to consumer for $300 a pair, securing a profit margin that keeps the town in work again.

A more inspired approach to innovation

Innovation demands human ingenuity.

It is exciting, it is about people, about the future, with limitless possibilities.

It is an essential role of every business leader, every business function. Whilst innovation has long centred around the tangible, technical icon of the product, organisations have finally opened their minds to many more forms of innovation.

Innovation used to be associated with long, disciplined, stage-gated processes by which ideas were productised and taken to market. Today’s innovators, in small and large businesses, get excited by design thinking and lean development. These are useful tools to create more insightful and faster solutions, but there is much more to innovation.

A more inspired approach to innovation has 9 dimensions

• Human-centred rather than driven by products
• Problem-solving rather than limited by capability
• Future shaping rather than aligning with today
• Whole business rather than functionally isolated
• Fast and experimental rather than slow and perfect
• Sustainable impact rather than profit obsessed
• Active adaptation rather than launch and forgotten
• Growth driving rather than unaligned commercially
• Portfolio building rather than isolated innovations

Innovation is not like most other business functions and activities. There is no department or VP of innovation in most companies. There is rarely even an innovation strategy or budget. There are few standard templates, rules, processes, or consistent measures of success. In a sense, each act of innovation is a unique feat, a leap of imagination that can be neither predicted nor replicated. It is certainly not business as usual.

That’s also the beauty. Innovation is pervasive, a challenge for every function and person across the business. It can have process, but it can also break all the rules, and sometimes needs to. By being rooted in every part of the business, and drawing on budgets from each, it can be a more collaborative, integrated and formidable approach.

Leaders are the ultimate innovators in companies, not necessarily entrepreneurs as in the founders of start-ups, but setting the agenda, ensuring that it has the resources and space to thrive, and that the business delivers today, but also creates a better tomorrow.

The lucky iron fish

When Canadian science graduate Christopher Charles visited Cambodia, he discovered that anaemia was a huge public health problem.

In the villages of Kandai province, instead of bright young children, Charles found many were small and weak with slow mental development. Women were suffering from tiredness and headaches, and were unable to work. Pregnant women faced serious complications before and after childbirth. He realised that anaemia was a huge problem, with almost 50% of women and children suffering due to a deficiency of iron in their diets. Regular solutions, like iron supplements, were neither affordable or available, and were distrusted by many people.

Charles had a novel idea. Inspired by previous research which showed that cooking in cast iron pots increased the iron content of food, he decided to put a lump of iron into the cooking pot, made from melted-down metal. However people rejected that too, not keen on a coarse lump of metal mixed into their food.

He searched deeper into local anthropology, and then hit upon the symbol of luck in Cambodian culture, the fish. He recast his iron in the shape of a fish, and called it the “Lucky Iron Fish”, and designed it to release iron at the right concentration to provide the nutrients that so many women and children in the country were lacking.

Scientific analysis showed that, by using the iron fish each day, it provided 75% of an adult’s daily recommended intake of iron. In practice he found that within 12 months, around half of those using it were no longer anaemic, and after 3 years, then condition was largely eliminated.

Where do good ideas come from?

The romance of the “eureka” moment, when amazingly smart individuals have sudden creative epiphanies, and jump out of their overflowing baths like Archimedes, is unrealistic.

In “Where Good Ideas Come From” Stephen Johnson says that most new ideas emerge out of the fragments of others, a product of new environments which allow new possibilities. Indeed most good ideas can actually be broken down into the useful remains of the failures of others.

Bill Gates tells how the origins of Microsoft, lay not in a flash of genius, but evolved from many hours with his friend Paul Allen tinkering with their high school’s mainframe computers, a culture of change blowing through society, and a hunch that computers could be made much smaller and more connected.

Crisis, recessions, wars are often the birthplace of new ideas, as markets are shaken-up, consumers think differently, and there is an urgency to create something different, cheaper, faster, better. Microsoft’s founding environment in 1975 was shaped by an economic downturn that put an end to years of post-war growth. Similarly, Disney in 1929, McDonalds in 1955, CNN in 1980, Airbnb in 2008, all emerged out of tough times

Taking inspiration from Johnson, here are nine sources of better ideas:

• Adjacent ideas: most innovations are derived from the fragments of what exists today, bringing together other ideas, new capabilities, or aspirations.
• Evolving ideas: most new concepts tend to emerge slowly, gaining acceptance as they mature, and their founders gain confidence in their evolving work.
• Building ideas: ideas tend to build on each other like platforms, Apple’s insight into computing led to the iPod, to iTunes, to iPhones, to AppStore.
• Network ideas: exposing ideas to more people, enables them to spread faster, and for ideas to multiply in richness and rise in crowds.
• Collaborative ideas: openness of ideas allow them to grow further and faster, rather than competition that restricts them and patents that hide them.
• Random ideas: sometimes new possibilities emerge by chance, out of chaos or unintended actions driving lucky combinations or new insights.
• Serendipitous ideas: ideas converge in a shared physical or intellectual space, bringing a diversity of people together and enabling creative collisions.
• Unconventional ideas: Errors can be surprisingly creative moments, because they challenge what we think is right, and show possibility beyond convention.
• Recycled ideas: Expatiation is when something developed for a specific purpose is eventually used in a completely different way.

Ideas are the currency of today’s world. Where machines can outperform us at anything which we already know, we need ideas to move us forwards. In the business world, we codify ideas into intellectual properties – patents, designs, trademarks, and brands.

Ideas are packages of consciousness, of creativity, and of inspiration. As a result, they are not only the building blocks of the future, of innovations and progress, they also captivate us, they give us hope, they fuel our dreams and desires, we want them.

Troublemakers and rulebreakers

“Rebels have a bad reputation”, says Francesca Gino, a behavioural scientist. “Rebels are people who break rules that should be broken. They break rules that hold them and others back, and their way of rule breaking is constructive rather than destructive. It creates positive change.”

Gino tells the story of the time when she was browsing the shelves at a bookstore when she came across an unusual-looking book in the cooking section: Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef by Massimo Bottura. The recipes in it were playful, quirky and improbable. Snails were paired with coffee sauce, veal tongue with charcoal powder. Francesca, who is Italian, says remixing classic recipes like this is a kind of heresy in Italian cooking. “We really cherish the old way,” she says. But this chef, one of the most influential in the world, couldn’t resist circling back to one, big question: Why do we have to follow these rules?

“We think of them as troublemakers, outcasts, contrarians: those colleagues, friends, and family members who complicate seemingly straightforward decisions, create chaos, and disagree when everyone else is in agreement. But in truth, rebels are also those among us who change the world for the better with their unconventional outlooks. Instead of clinging to what is safe and familiar, and falling back on routines and tradition, rebels defy the status quo. They are masters of innovation and reinvention, and they have a lot to teach us.”

Gino argues that the future belongs to the rebel. Curiosity and insistence on questioning the status quo are among the qualities she believes separate good leaders from great ones, and the people who can’t wait to get to work from the ones who count the minutes until they can leave. These qualities are part of an instinct to rebel against what feels comfortable. Adopting them she says is the key to “creativity, productivity, and making work suck less”.

Start by asking better questions

Start by asking why … then why, why, why, why, why, why.

The “seven whys” is an incredibly simple technique when talking to somebody and seeking to understand their real problem. As you learn more, keep asking why again, each time delving deeper into the real drivers of a problem. If you can get to the bottom of a problem, then of course, you have a better opportunity to solve it.

“The important and difficult job is never to find the right answers, it is to find the right question. For there are few things as useless, if not dangerous, as the right answer to the wrong question” said Peter Drucker.

Drucker’s insight has long been an inspiration for Hal Gregersen who is based at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He believes that the best starting point for innovation is to ask powerful provocative questions. The most innovative leaders question the world constantly, provoking others to think openly and differently.

Key to this is asking the right questions, or “catalytic questions” as he calls them – what if, why not –  questions that breakdown the limits of people’s current thinking, allow them to challenge more of the conventions, to see things from different perspectives, and accelerate their better thinking.

Gregerson uses his distinctive “Question Burst” methodology as an alternative to more conventional brainstorming-type approaches. These seek to explore the question through rapid collaboration, rather than jumping to the answer.  This allows people to concentrate on the problem, rather than jump to quickly and superficially to solutions.

He uses three steps in the process:

• Explore the challenge: Select a challenge you care deeply about. Invite a few people to help you consider that challenge from fresh angles. Ideally, choose people who have no direct experience with the problem and whose worldview is starkly different from yours. In two minutes, describe the challenge.
• Expand the question: Spend the next four minutes collectively generating as many questions as possible about the challenge. Don’t answer any of the questions and don’t explain why you’re asking the questions. Go for at least 15-20 questions in four fast minutes. Write them down word for word.

• Commit to the quest: Consider the questions and select a few “catalytic” questions from the list, ones that hold the most potential for disrupting the status quo. Commit to pursuing at least one new pathway you’ve glimpsed, and use that as the foundation of the problem to solve

As we progress through organisations to become business leaders, we shift from functional experts where we are expected to have all the answers, to a broader perspective where our most useful contributions, to ask better questions. At the same time, with years of experience we feel we know much more than many others, and can become closed and defensive, rather than good listeners. Former Uber CEO, Travis Kalanik was caught on video whilst taking a ride being challenged about the business by his driver who was unaware of his passenger’s identity. Kalanik’s defensive verbal attack on the driver went viral and resulted in him being fired.

© Peter Fisk. Excerpts from his book “Business Recoded: Have the courage to create a better future” published by Wiley.

More for business leaders from Peter Fisk:

• Next Agenda of best ideas and priorities for business
• Megatrends 2030 in a world accelerated by pandemic
• 49 Codes to help you develop a better business future
• 250 companies innovators shaking up the world
• 100 leaders with the courage to shape a better future
• Education that is innovative, issue-driven, action-driving
• Consulting that is collaborative, strategic and innovative
• Speaking that is inspiring, topical, engaging and actionable

Keanu Reeves described his 1999 movie “The Matrix” as a wake-up call to the speed of our changing world. Two decades later we can see many of the movie’s themes in our everyday lives – the primacy of the individual, disregard for the old system, anti-corporate backlash, the blur of fake and reality.

Today’s markets are a matrix of possibilities, where we could say that almost nothing has changed in those last 20 years, or everything has. The lens by which you see your market shapes everything else about what you do, your strategy and innovation, and how you work, your organisation and people. Time for leaders to wake up.

Blurred boundaries

We used to think of markets as defined spaces – industry sectors – with clear boundaries and categorisation, industry standards and predictable competition. And then markets started to blur and fragment.

Amazon disrupts fashion, Alphabet disrupts travel, Apple disrupts healthcare, Tesla disrupts energy, Alibaba disrupts finance, Snap disrupts movies.

Sectors like telecoms and technology, communication and media, data and information, entertainment and gaming, converge into each other. Or pharmaceuticals and healthcare, wellness and food, fashion and sport, become a boundaryless continuum.

You can define your business any way you want. What kind of company are you? What market are you in? Anyone can frame their market “space” in this new market matrix.

The blur of boundaries has evolved in multi-dimensions

• The blur of digital and physical: Fortnite’s online games become a physical stadium event, Nike’s flagship stores are navigated and enhanced by smartphones, L’Oréal’s magic mirror customises your cosmetics and delivers to your home.
• The blur of products and services: Harley Davidson’s holidays embrace bike hire plus flights and hotels, Adobe’s software is delivered “as a service”, Disneyland experiences can be planned and continued online at home.
• The blur of categories and sectors: Grab is a delivery company with a data and finance core, CVS is a pharmacy that reframed as a health and wellness store, athleisure wear is sporting apparel made stylish for everyday fashion.
• The blur of industry and functional roles: IBM was the computer manufacturer who became trusted advisor, Amazon is a retailer but also a leading brand of own-label products and services, Casper the mattress sold direct to consumers.
• The blur of business and consumer: Glossier is a cosmetics brand but equally a community of people who share and co-create, Avon is a brand of consumer sellers, Rapha calls its stores Cycle Clubs, meeting places as well as retail stores.

Taking advantage of non-linear value chains, and brands that have evolved beyond descriptors of products, manufacturers can think like retailers, creating direct to consumer (DTC) channels, with more trust and style than a commoditising intermediary. Think of Apple or Allbirds, Dollar Shave Club or Warby Parker.

Equally retailers like Carrefour and Target realised that private label products don’t have to be inferior to the products of consumer brands like Heinz and P&G. Indeed, many are made by the same manufacturers. Retailers have many advantages, with more opportunities to engage consumers more intimately, to add adjacent services such as advice, and understand consumers personally. Target could be a stronger brand than P&G.

Multi-dimensional markets

 What are the major challenges for the markets of today, new business models, sustainable impacts, and rapidly changing aspirations of stakeholders?

• Automotive: Facing its most profound change in 100 years, with autonomous vehicles, electrification and other fuels, new models of ownership and connected ecosystems. Add to this, AI and smart road infrastructure, connectivity and entertainment. Issues like safety will still matter, Volvo for example, is installing new sensors to detect poor driving, intoxication or excess speed, and take action.
• Beauty: Personalisation and environmentally friendly products are key to the future of skin and colour products, with new science creating sophisticated functionality. Influencers like Michelle Phan rather than advertising shapes attitudes, whilst the subscription models of Birchbox and direct to consumer models of Beauty Pie have transformed the traditional purchase experience from instore to bathroom.
• Energy: Decarbonisation, decentralisation and digitalisation are the key challenges for every power generator or distributor. As oil and gas, mining and fracking, give way to solar and wind, there is also a shift to city and home management, from local generation to automated control. Lanzatech turning waste into clean energy, Fluence a huge battery business from Siemens, and Watty are typical disruptors.
• Fashion: New materials, new business models and new technologies are transforming fashion. From Agua Bendita’s beautiful bikinis made out of scraps to Bolt Thread’s synthetic spider silk, Unspun’s custom-made jeans using a 20 second Fit3D bodyscan to ThredUP’s resale platform, environmental impact has become the biggest issues in an industry which is one of the biggest polluters.
• Finance: Digital entrants and emerging technologies are transforming banking, from DBS transforming to become “invisible” inside other services, to Atom and Number26 seeking speed and simplicity. Lemonade has embraced AI to transform the business model of insurance, while AXA explores new applications of blockchain, and cryptocurrencies evolve.
• Food and drink: Wellness and sustainability have topped the agendas of major businesses like Danone, Nestle and Unilever, whilst animal and dairy-based categories have been challenged by plant-based alternatives such as Impossible and Beyond Meat. New channels and business models have been driven by a huge rise in snacking and on-the-go markets, plus home delivery and meal kits.
• Healthcare: From positive health to personalised pharma, people are seeking to engage with healthcare in new ways. Combine 23andMe genetic profiling with PatientsLikeMe’s peer to peer advice, Babylon’s AI-enabled diagnostics and wearable health trackers, Minute Clinic’s simple consultations and Zipline’s drone deliveries, Organova’s 3D printed organs, gene editing and personalised medicines.
• Media: Playing games to streaming television, virtual reality and instant messaging, have transformed how we immerse ourselves in content. New business models, in particular subscription, enable access across platforms, as we now shift to content that is even more user-generated and interactive. Platforms like Twitch and Spotify will become more important in curating content and building community.
• Retail: In a sector dominated by Amazon, innovators like Shopify have helped direct brands to sell and deliver faster. Glossier has shown the power of community and pop-up stores, whilst Etsy has allowed artisans to reach the world, Alibaba embraces gamification to engage consumers more deeply, whilst intelligent delivery businesses like Meituan Dianping know consumers most personally.
• Technology: AI and cloud will embed tech ever further into our lives, enabling more intelligent and individual choices and behaviours. In telecoms the shift to 5G will enable realtime engagement like never before, video-based content will accelerate with particular application to education and work, whilst our primary user interfaces will continue to shift to voice, eye tracking, and ultimately the brain.
• Travel: AI will drive transportation to become automated, intelligent and efficient, health and environmental issues will continue to challenge airlines, hospitality and vacations. The shift to cleaner fuels and responsible tourism will be accelerated through innovations like those of Selina’s nomadic places to live, Lilium’s electric flying cars, and Ctrip in the huge Asian travel market.

What business are you really in?

Within the next decade, automotive companies will no longer sell cars, instead facilitating mobility on-demand, ride sharing and logistics services. They could also converge with other service providers such as scooters and trains, planes and hotels, energy and telecoms. Within the next decade we will subscribe to smart homes, which will manage our utilities, organise our shopping, stream our entertainment.

Who will provide these services? Tesla has long defined itself as an energy company, rather than an auto manufacturer. With “accelerate to renewable energy” as its defined purpose, it has a diversified business in batteries, energy systems and transportation. Indeed, it combines sales of cars with Powerwall charging systems, and even its solar roof tiles, creating an all-in-one subscription model that transforms value perceptions.

And there will be completely new markets too. Here are just a few examples of areas that are expected to be worth at least $100 billion by 2025: autonomous vehicles, IOT software and sensors, tissue engineering, smart grid technology and renewable energy.

The best way to “frame” your market space is around customers, and what you enable them to do. Like we defined purpose, define your market around why you exist, rather than just what you do, or how you do it. The “why” framing gives you a much richer space to play in, a broad range of market opportunities which by definition are desired, and more valuable to your customers.

Framing your market space is also a source of competitive advantage. By framing it differently from your competitors, you define your business and the value you offer in a more inspiring way. A new frame sets you alongside different alternatives, with different value perceptions and market models.

Consider other stakeholders too. Ask your employees, would they prefer to work in a telecom or tech company, a drug or wellness company? Similarly form alternatively framed markets will be seen with different risks and rewards, directly affecting your market value.

© Peter Fisk. Excerpt from his book “Business Recoded: Have the courage to create a better future” published by Wiley.

More for business leaders from Peter Fisk:

• Next Agenda of best ideas and priorities for business
• Megatrends 2030 in a world accelerated by pandemic
• 49 Codes to help you develop a better business future
• 250 companies innovators shaking up the world
• 100 leaders with the courage to shape a better future
• Education that is innovative, issue-driven, action-driving
• Consulting that is collaborative, strategic and innovative
• Speaking that is inspiring, topical, engaging and actionable

Shigetaka Komori, CEO of Fujifilm has a mantra, “never stop transforming.”

As a result, the Japanese business has created innovative solutions in a wide variety of fields, leveraged its imaging and information technology to become a global presence known for innovation in healthcare, graphic systems, optical devices, specialist materials and other high-tech areas.

In the 1960s, Fujifilm was a distant second place to Kodak in the photographic film market. But today, digitalisation has transformed how we take photos, Kodak is gone (bankrupt in 2012), and Fujifilm has shifted focus and resources into new areas.

In 2000 the film-related business accounted for 60% of Fujifilm’s sales and 70% of its operating profit but fell to less than 1% within a decade. The traditional photographic imaging business, the core of the business, was largely replaced by other types of imaging, such as for healthcare.

“Whilst Kodak tried to survive in a declining market, Fujifilm looked to new futures” says Komori, when contrasting how the two companies responded to market change.

Imaging rapidly evolved into digital information, and a vast range of new businesses emerged in areas from medical system to pharmaceuticals, regenerative medicine to cosmetics, flat panel displays to graphic systems.

As an example, Fujifilm’s cosmetics business started in 2006 with the launch of its Astalift skin-care products, which then extended into make-up, and from them into other types of medical and wellbeing solutions. Whilst camera film and cosmetics might seem unrelated, camera film happened to be the same thickness (around 0.2 mm) as human hair. Collagen was used in its film to retain the material qualities, such as moisture and elasticity, over time. This expertise in manufacturing collagen is also fundamental to making skincare products.

Fujifilm introduced medical diagnostic imaging systems using its digital camera technology, which then gave it a platform for doing fundamental research into new medicines. Drug development is increasingly built on informatics, such as genetic analysis, fields in which Fujifilm could combine its expertise, giving it an advantage over traditional pharma companies.

You can see the transformations of Fujifilm here:

Infinite and invincible

In his book “The Infinite Game”, Simon Sinek explore how businesses can achieve long-lasting success, a relentless approach to transformation and growth, and sustained long-term value.
 
“In finite games, like football or chess, the players are known, the rules are fixed, and the endpoint is clear. The winners and losers are easily identified” he says. “In infinite games, like business or politics or life itself, the players come and go, the rules are changeable, and there is no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers in an infinite game; there is only ahead and behind.”

Many businesses struggle because their business has a finite, or fixed, mindset. They set themselves an internal goal to be the best at something, or to launch a specific product, and they end up being a slave to it. Such narrowly-defined, sales-targeted, product-centric businesses find it difficult to break out of their current approach. They only know how to do more of the same with diminishing returns. Sales stagnate, momentum is lost, innovation slows, energy dips, and they lag behind.

Leaders with an infinite, or growth, mindset – not just in terms of experimenting to find new ways forwards, but in terms of their whole approach to strategy and innovation – do much better. They are purpose-driven, growth targeted, customer-centric. This builds direction and alignment, momentum and energy. These factors drive them naturally to keep evolving, to adapt and innovate, to move with a changing world. They even create a rhythm of change ahead of the market, and so can shape the world to their advantage.

Creating a growth portfolio

Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur famously created the business model canvas, a one-page diagram in which to capture the essential components of any business model, and crucially to explore the connections and trade-offs which exist between different choices. However, they increasingly found that the best companies develop a series, or portfolio of business models, which can serve them over time.

Their new book is “The Invincible Company” because companies who build a growth portfolio are sustained over time, not just in mindset, but also by a whole series of great ideas, innovations and business models that ensure its success today, and into the future.

Invincible companies manage a dynamic portfolio of established and emerging businesses – to protect established business models from disruption as long as possible, while simultaneously cultivating the business models of tomorrow. They need to “exploit” the present, and “explore” the future

• Exploit the present requires leaders to manage and improve the existing businesses, focusing on their profitability, and their risk of disruption by new competitors, new technology, new markets, or regulatory changes.
• Explore the future requires leaders to also search for new areas of growth, evaluating the potential profitability of new ideas which is drive by size and scalability, and also the risk associated with innovation, and how to make new ideas more certain.

To remain relevant and prosperous companies need to develop truly “ambidextrous” organisational structures which can create the future, whilst also delivering today. Innovation becomes just as important as delivery, but requires a distinctive culture, distinctive skills and metrics in order to be explorers of the future.

Leading for relentless growth

Leaders, themselves, need to be ambidextrous – to be the delivers of today, and also the creators of tomorrow.

Komori’s success has not come through creating one business, but a sequence of business concepts which keep building off each other. This sequence might take the form of leveraging distinctive capabilities with various applications into different sectors like Alphabet has done, or it might be about taking more businesses to the same audience as Apple, or it might be a series of ways of working within the same sector as Microsoft.

Amazon is a good example of a company that intentionally manages a diverse portfolio of existing and promising new business models. The company continues to produce growth with its existing businesses (online retail, AWS, logistics), whilst also developing a portfolio of potential future growth engines that may become big profit generators one day (Alexa, Echo, Dash Button, Prime Air, Amazon Fresh, etc).

Long-term sustained growth is built on a portfolio of short and long-term innovative business models. Such “invincible” companies can better allocate capital and resources at each stage of development. A culture and process that drives a continuous flow of new ideas and innovation is much more likely to sustain your business in turbulent times and uncertain futures.

© Peter Fisk. Excerpt from his book “Business Recoded: Have the courage to create a better future” published by Wiley.

More for business leaders from Peter Fisk:

• Next Agenda of best ideas and priorities for business
• Megatrends 2030 in a world accelerated by pandemic
• 49 Codes to help you develop a better business future
• 250 companies innovators shaking up the world
• 100 leaders with the courage to shape a better future
• Education that is innovative, issue-driven, action-driving
• Consulting that is collaborative, strategic and innovative
• Speaking that is inspiring, topical, engaging and actionable

As 1999 ended, optimism was sky high as a new millennium of possibilities approached. For me it was particularly exciting as my first child, Anna, was born just weeks before the start of 2000. As clocks chimed to ring in the new year, my wife Alison and I stood outside our home at midnight, our new baby asleep in my arms, as the most dazzling fireworks display I have ever seen lit up the skies around us.

However economies come in cycles, and within three months of celebrating a new century, I vividly remember the day of the dotcom crash. The starry eyed dreams of many online entrepreneurs came crashing down. Bezos survived, but many others didn’t, including my own venture.  I realised that, now with a young family, I needed to be smarter at building a  business, and at anticipating the future.

Most people took their inspiration from a Seattle-based start-up called Amazon. A few years earlier in 1993, Jeff Bezos was working on Wall Street, a 30 year rising star of the hedge fund world. On his desk a report landed describing how the emerging Internet could become a huge virtual marketplace, that could reach across the old boundaries of nations and markets. Tim Berners-Lee at CERN had just launched the World Wide Web earlier that same year, enabling anyone to start to build a business online, simply and cheaply.

Within a few weeks Bezos left his high-flying job, packed a campervan and drove west with his young wife still asking huge questions. In Seattle, where most tech people clustered around Microsoft, he set out his business plan with a dream to create the world’s largest bookstore. Initially he called it Cadabra, then considered Relentless, but eventually settled upon Amazon. Within three years, he took the business public with an IPO. Anybody who invested $5000 in Bezos’s company back then would be worth around $5 million today.

At that same time, Anne Wojcicki, a 25 year old junior investment analyst, was sitting at her desk on Wall Street, not far from Bezos’ old office.

She read that the future of healthcare was all about data, genetic profiling of each individual enabling personalised medicines and care. No longer would people need to rely upon standardised drugs with limited effectiveness, seeking to address already developed illnesses often too late. Instead healthcare could be transformed to become personal, positive and proactive.

Like Bezos, a passion to create a better future was stirred inside her, and within weeks she quit her job and headed to San Francisco to start up a DNA profiling business, 23andMe.

At the time it cost around $300,000 to sequence an entire human genome. Wojcicki sought to dramatically reduce the cost by using a technology called genotyping, which spot checks specific parts of a gene for mutations know to be linked with certain diseases, instead of a creating a full sequence. They launched the brand to consumers in 2007, with testing packs available by mail order for $999, and later directly from the pharmacy’s shelf.

The revolutionary genetics business combined ideas of new genome technology and crowdsourced funding, into a model that has since reduced the cost of DNA profiling to $99 and is likely to fall much further in the coming years. She now leads a healthcare revolution.

Look forwards not back

Too many people in business spend too much time looking backwards.

As a CEO I spent the vast majority of every day, reviewing and reflecting on our past performance, or otherwise fire-fighting through the issues of the present moment. Almost all the data I tracked was about previous quarters, compared to previous years. Most time in meetings was spent discussing the relative success of past activities, and what we needed to do now to fix problems or improve their efficiency.

Most business reports focus on what companies have done, most analyst reports evaluate business based on financial histories. Even most future projections, and ultimately investment advice, is based on an extrapolation of the past. Strategy is usually based on building on what we currently do, rather than what we could do. It assumes that the future will largely be a continuum of what has gone before.

Looking forwards is a rare luxury.

A few weeks in the year are typically allocated to future planning. And of that, only a few days maybe even hours, with a serious discussion of future possibilities, vision development, and plotting out new directions. Ideas for the future are captured on flipcharts, slides and slogans, before their magic is quickly lost in a furious round of budget negotiations focusing on limiting expenditures rather than unlocking new revenues. Inspiring ideas for tomorrow are quickly diminished by the machinery of managing today.

It shouldn’t be like this. And in a turbulent world of relentless change, it can’t be.

Business leaders need to have their heads up, not heads down.

Of course, we need success today in order to create tomorrow, but creating the future matters more. Most business leaders will claim they are powerless to jump out of this cycle, to spend more time looking forwards. They are slaves to quarterly reporting demanded by investors, and short term attitudes of many analysts. But that is largely an excuse.

Paul Poleman, when CEO of the British/Dutch consumer goods giant Unilever, famously decided to end quarterly reporting, arguing that he could never get anything else done, and that his projects to invest and develop future ideas were always compromised by an inevitable desire to make today’s result look as good as possible. In a showdown with investors, he made the case that they too should be much more interested in long-term growth, rather than short-term glory. He won his battle, and Unilever began to thrive.

The challenge is to focus on the future, to engage everyone in exploring and creating your future potential. A business’ economic value is measured as the sum of future cashflows, not past profits. These can only grow through more future-focused initiatives. The alternative is to squeeze ever more revenues and less costs out of the existing business with diminishing returns. That’s not much fun, and certainly not the way to a better future.

Investors who understand, through better information and dialogue, the future potential of longer-term future initiatives, will reward the business with their confidence. This flows through to stock markets and market capitalisation.

Intangible assets, in the forms of everything from brands and patents, to contracts and customer bases, are the building blocks of innovation and future performance. Around 52% of the cumulative enterprise value of all publicly traded companies is intangible, worth $57.3 trillion according to Brand Finance’s “Global Intangible Finance Tracker”. The majority of business value is therefore about its future potential.

If business leaders can more clearly articulate future strategies for changing markets, new business models for engaging customers better, and innovation portfolios to drive new ideas into action, then even more of this future potential can be captured in the value of their businesses.

What is your future potential?

The world has progressed rapidly since the industrial revolution – steam engine to telephones, automobiles and aeroplanes, space travel and digital revolution. Today’s tech-fuelled revolution will be just as dramatic, but much faster.

The next decade’s accelerating change, proliferation of technologies, rapid speed of adoption, and the exponential impacts that result, will dwarf the scale of previous progress. How will we rethink and reinvent our worlds?

 Markets are malleable things – they rise and fall, collide and evolve. Power shifts economically and politically, culturally and collectively. Entrepreneurial start-ups grab the attention, whilst the larger, older incumbent companies struggle to respond and adapt. Technology disrupts the rules of play, and the possibilities by which we can win. Huge opportunities, but where to focus?

We have more choices than ever before – in terms of who, where, what and how. Global or local? China or India? Online or physical? Human or machines? Make or partner? These are not binary choices, but a huge spectrum of options. How will you make the smarter choices, the right choices for your future?

“Future potential” is the ability of an organisation, and an individual, to utilise the future for its advantage. It is latent or unrealised ability, the capacity to do better. How you will unlock this ability is not always clear. However it is not simply by doing what you’ve always done, a little better, faster or cheaper, by working harder.

Potential lies in your ability to unlock the talents of yourself, and your organisation, in new unimagined ways. It lies in your ability to embrace new contexts as the world around us changes – economies and markets, customers and capabilities. Of all these, technology probably changes the context more than anything today.

How will you unlock your “future potential”?

• Future potential of your business: what you could achieve together, embracing the best opportunities, unlocking the most valuable assets, extending capability through partners, driving faster innovation and new types of growth?
• Future potential of your yourself: what you could achieve personally, embracing your dreams and ambitions, building more capacity to do more, amplifying the potential of those you work with, looking further ahead.

Future potential isn’t just about improving your existing business, but also about where you can go beyond it. Finding this future space, be it an entirely new space like Jeff Bezos found, in areas adjacent to what you do now, creates more opportunity.

Some businesses are always in “survive” mode, typically resisting the need to change, seeing it as a threat. Others are in “thrive” model, looking ahead for change, seeing it as an opportunity. Some people have the ability to change, others don’t. As leaders, we need to encourage the visionaries, the future seekers, those prepared to embrace change. We need to be those people.

The future is yours to shape, in the way you want, to your advantage. Far better to embrace a future of your own design, than to live in the shadow of one shaped by others.

Leaders need to be farsighted

 When I asked Jim Snabe, former co-CEO of SAP, and now chairman of Siemens, how he makes sense of his business world, he paused. His first reaction was the obvious, to understand his specific industries, his customer and competitors, today. But then he reflected on the inadequacy of that current view. If what comes next will be different, then he needs to look differently for it, he said.

Seeing the bigger picture, is one way to change our viewpoint, but it’s probably still not enough. We still put ourselves at the centre, and then explore the obvious adjacencies. Instead we need new perspectives, seeing the emerging patterns of change, the parallels and possibilities, how to react to them, to seize the best new opportunities first. Put simply it’s about being farsighted.

Beth Comstock, former chief marketing and commercial officer of GE wrote about her leadership experiences as the business faced the challenges of rapidly changing markets. Her book Imagine it Forward: Courage, Creativity and the Power of Change is a call to action for all those executives who felt that they could continue doing what they had always done, and they and their company would be ok.

Comstock starts with a passion “The pace of change is never going to be slower than today.” She points out that 50 years ago the life expectancy of a Fortune 500 firm would have been around 75 years, whereas now it’s 15 years.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil goes further in an article entitled The Law of Accelerating Returns, saying “We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21^st century, it will be more like 20,000 years of progress.”

The ability to be forward-looking and focused on the future, the capacity to imagine and articular future possibilities, sets the great leader apart from others. Whilst the rest of the organisation is focused on the shorter-term deliverables, they look to the leader to put what they do into the context of where they are going, and how it contributes to the journey.

Leaders as strategists are intensely curious about the future, looking beyond their own organisations and industries, to make sense of a changing world. They look to the changing dynamics of markets, of how organisations compete, but also of the shifts in macro-economics, politics and society. Indeed, the real catalysts for change are outside, not inside, an organisation.

The ability to look forwards, say Barry Posner and Jim Kouzes in The Leadership Challenge, is second only to honesty as the most admired trait in leaders. They found that 70% of employees say forward looking is the attribute they most look to in their leaders. This is not just about communicating a compelling vision, but being able to make sense of complexity, connecting the dots into a bigger picture, and to anticipate events before they happen.

My new research at IE Business School explored the reality of farsighted leaders.

We found that forwards thinking escalates with levels of leadership. Front-line supervisors need to look months ahead, mid-level managers who lead complex projects need to look 1-3 years ahead. C-suite executives should be thinking 5-10 years forwards, even if they plan and focus their actions on a shorter timeframe.

Yet the research also showed that most senior executives currently spend around 5% of their time thinking about the future – which could be a few hours every week, or more likely one or two weeks every year.

Contrast this to some of the great business leaders. Talking at his annual Berkshire Hathaway AGM in Omaha Nebraska, Warren Buffett claimed to have spent around 80% of his career reading and thinking. That seems extreme, but so is his performance as one of the world’s great investors.

Richard Branson told me how he always tries to take a swim for around an hour each morning, often a lap around the shore of his Caribbean island, giving himself time to think before anything else in the day. He also famously drinks 20 cups of tea each day, saying it gives him time to pause amidst the daily chaos, and just think a little. Jeff Bezos schedules “thinking” meetings about future ideas at 10am every morning, when he is fresh and alert, and never in the afternoon.

The future is an infinite array of possibilities – for you to decode as options and choices. Firstly, we need to make sense of what those options are, then explore what they could mean for us, and then decide how to make the right choices.

Forward-looking leaders embrace four important tenants

• The future is fast: while the speed of change accelerates relentlessly, we shouldn’t be intimated by it, or jump to knee-jerk actions in panic, but take our time to think longer-term, and how to achieve progress.
• The future is complex: while the search for simplicity is admirable, it is not always possible or the best solution, instead we need to recognise that today’s world is not about reducing things to 2×2 matrices, or binary choices.
• The future is unpredictable: while we have a desire to be complete, and right, the future does not offer such precision, instead we need to embrace uncertainty as a positive force, to define our north star then embrace the journey as it evolves.
• The future is there to be created: while we like to limit ourselves to what we know, what markets and sectors we are in, there are no boundaries or rules that limit where we can go. Imagination is our guide to write the future we want.

In his book “Farsighted: How to Make Decisions that Matter” Steven Johnson asks, if the most difficult choices are the ones with most consequences, why do we spend so little time thinking about them. It is fashionable, he says, to argue that we live in an age of short attention spans, requiring quick thinking and rapid action. Yet he argues that we have become much better at holistic thinking – connecting multiple ideas together, connecting the dots, systems-based approaches. Speed of change requires bigger thinking, he says.

Adam Grant reflected on Johnson’s challenge. He argued that a good way to think bigger is by reading novels, enabling us to transport our brains into new spaces and gain new perspectives – including exploring ideas for the future, through science fiction. Star Trek, for example, is a lifetime obsession of Jeff Bezos.

The IE research suggests that many leaders are averse to future thinking because there are no absolutes, no detailed analytics on which to base decisions. Indeed, over the last decade we have embraced scientific method into our business to such an extent that we now feel exposed without it. Instead making future choices requires intuition and imagination, and courage.

Psychologist Ellen Langer’s advice for making difficult choices about unpredictable futures, is “Don’t make the right decision, make the decision right”. Her point is to think about how we might explore the opportunities ahead of us, and their implications. Given you are never likely to have as much information as you’d like, don’t search for the perfect answer, consider how we can make the best choices from what you know.

However these choices will be infinitely better, if you open your eyes to broader horizons – to new perspectives and new directions – and thereby increase your future potential.

© Peter Fisk. Excerpt from his book “Business Recoded: Have the courage to create a better future” published by Wiley.

More for business leaders from Peter Fisk:

• Next Agenda of best ideas and priorities for business
• Megatrends 2030 in a world accelerated by pandemic
• 49 Codes to help you develop a better business future
• 250 companies innovators shaking up the world
• 100 leaders with the courage to shape a better future
• Education that is innovative, issue-driven, action-driving
• Consulting that is collaborative, strategic and innovative
• Speaking that is inspiring, topical, engaging and actionable

The Middle East is a fascinating yet bewildering place for many foreign visitors.

Whilst it is mostly welcoming and safe, it has grown over recent years with a jumble of traditional culture and western influence. Working in Kuwait City recently, I ventured out from my hotel to explore skyscrapers mixed with traditional souq markets, cafes full of smoking locals, and small shops packed high with local delicacies.

Then I came across a minimalist single-floored glass building, % Arabica.  It was full of young professionals, lined up for the best coffee and snacks in town, a meeting place that was an alternative to the crowded environs.

Japanese designer Ken Shoji told me that he had brought his Asian coffee concept to the Gulf state simply because it was so different. It was an inspiring fusion of multiculturalism – Asian architecture, African coffee roastery, and Arabic meeting place. Since launching a year ago, “%” had become a cult brand.

Creating new markets

Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne are both professors at the beautiful INSEAD business school based in Fontainebleau, 60km south of Paris. It was founded in 1957 by Georges Doriot, often called the father of venture capitalism, which makes it a fitting place to explore new markets.

“Blue Ocean Strategy” published in 2004 has become a business text of our times. I first met Mauborgne in Istanbul, in the same year. She explained the concept incredibly simply, saying “red oceans are the crowded markets where everyone crowds in to compete, blue oceans are the unexplored markets which are quite and uncontested”.

For the last 15 years they have told the story of Cirque du Soleil, how it blended the ideas of opera and ballet with traditional circus, whilst eliminating animals and raising prices. Or Southwest Airlines, offering shuttle buses to secondary airports with limited service, the first low cost airline. Or Nintendo Wii, taking the established concept of video games but adding multi-players and augmented reality to enable family participation.

Kim offers four ways to innovate the “strategy canvas” which maps out the attributes of a market, exploring what to reduce, what to enhance, what to eliminate, what to create.  The results for Cirque’s Guy Laliberté, Southwest’s Herb Kelleher, and Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, were innovative businesses that dominated new market spaces.

Creating a new market space, in my experience happens in one of three ways:

• Forming markets: this is the most radical, in that it creates a completely new business opportunity, responding to a new need and aspiration of the customer. Red Bull’s Dietmar Mateschitz returned from Asia, tired after a long flight, with the inspiration to create an “energy drink”, and the likes of Gatorade later followed.
• Fusing markets: combining the best ideas of two different markets, potentially to reach new audiences with new applications. Apple did this with the iPhone. When Steve Jobs launched it he described it as “a combination of a mobile phone, entertainment player and internet browser”.
• Framing markets: redefining the boundaries, domain and descriptors of a market as trends shift, categories evolve, and new possibilities can be included. Shell, the oil giant, redefined itself as an energy company. Danone, the French food manufacturer, as a health company.

In three decades of working with hundreds of companies, these two latter concepts have proved the most enduring for me. More than any clever technique, name-checked model, or guru inspiration, the simple acts of “fusing” and “framing” have been most productive.

Power to the people

The most significant shift in business over the last 30 years has been from product-centred to customer-centred thinking. Many companies are still not there, but I suspect more has been invested in trying to make that transformation, that anything else, even the digital transformations of recent years.

30 years ago, when I started my business career, all 30,000 staff in the company were asked to go on a two-day program called “Winning for Customers”.

At the time, led by an inspired people-thinking CEO, Colin Marshall, it seemed radical and fresh. At the same time, for an airline, it seemed obvious. The primacy of the customer experience, rather than the functionality of any component – parking, check-in, boarding, seats, entertainment, food, transfers – seemed obvious. It was easy to think “horizontal” and follow the customer’s journey, crossing over the “vertical” silos of internal functions and product and service components.

Customer-centric companies succeed in three ways:

• Customer control: the customer is the starting point of any transaction, determining when and how they want to do business. Technology empowers their choices and preferences, whilst imperfect responses are quickly challenged.
• Customer creativity: increasingly customers want to be more active in the design and shaping of what they buy, be it through co-creation of personalised solutions, or more strategic involvement through partnerships.
• Customer collaboration: customers trust and influence each other, advertising is largely background noise in today’s marketing world, as customers seek to do more together, sharing their passions and projects in communities enabled by brands.

Technology has finally made customer-centric thinking obvious for every type of business. Power is now unquestionably in the hands of customers. They have infinite choice, they can access your business or any other, with a simple click, and there is a surplus of supply rather than demand.

Businesses now even struggle to engage customers in a relationship, let alone gain their loyalty, as customers trust each other more than any brand, and are loyal to their community rather than any supplier.

Every business is a “consumer” business

This power shift from product to customer fundamentally changes the mindset and structure of businesses.

Businesses (B) are organised by customer (C) or segment rather than product or category, with internal alignment of capabilities giving way to an alignment of insight. In reality, a business needs to achieve both.

As supply chains become ecosystems, networks rather than linear flows, the relationships between businesses and customers change. Businesses can reach end-customers directly by developing direct channels, giving them much more ability to self-assemble components, be it organising vacations or building their own homes.

As a result, the end customer, or the “consumer”, becomes the lead actor in a reconfigured play. We can see the shifts here, evolving over time:

• From B2C to C2B: empowered by technology, transparency and choice, consumers demand businesses and brands to act on their terms – when, where, how, what they need – they demand more, and influencers drive preference. Examples: L’Oréal personalisation direct. Netflix video on demand.
• From B2B to B2B2C to C2B2B to C2B: enabled by technology, businesses no longer need to work through aggregators of solutions, or distribution intermediaries, instead the most “industrial” of businesses connect directly with consumers, again on their terms. Examples: Goldman Sachs’ consumer bank, Cemex direct to consumer.
• From C2B to C2C: enabled by technology, consumers find each other, seeking to share their passions, and possibly enabled by brands. Even if brands provide products and services, they are secondary to what the consumer seeks to achieve. Examples: Glossier’s beauty community. Rapha’s Cycle Clubs.

Every business is a “consumer” business.

Alibaba’s “C2B” model shows how to use the power of AI and machine learning to respond to customers’ rapidly changing needs and aspirations. Ming Zeng, chief strategy officer, says that in a digital world, all successful companies use the latest tech, but Alibaba has taken the underlying principles of e-commerce the furthest, with a model based on machine learning and the comprehensive “datafication” of the consumer’s experience.

The technology allows the company to put consumers at the centre of business, constantly collecting data on them and their purchase choices in real time and using feedback loops to drive machine learning. When consumers log on they see a customised webpage with a selection of products curated from the billions offered by millions of sellers.

The model requires several connected elements: a network that can dynamically adjust the supply and quality of service offerings, an interface where customers can easily articulate their needs and responses, a modular structure that can grow from an initial beachhead, and purchasing platforms than can provide agility and innovation.

Every consumer exchange supplies more data, which goes into the feedback loops required for machine learning. This system requires that a large number of actions and decisions are taken out of human hands. Algorithms automatically make incremental adjustments that increase system-wide efficiency.

For the brands of P&G, it means a new way of engaging, as demonstrated by L’Oréal. For industrial businesses like commodity miners, cement producers, agricultural farmers, it is a huge opportunity to connect directly with consumers, to add value in new ways and transform profitability.

It also means that there is no such thing as a “commodity”.

© Peter Fisk 2023.

Excerpt from “Business Recoded” by Peter Fisk