Peter Fisk

In an exclusive extract from my forthcoming book Business Recoded, meet one of the most inspiring business leaders, shaking up today’s world. She embraces the opportunities of relentless change, the power of disruptive technologies, and the courage to create a better future in her own vision. In the book, I explore the stories of many of the world’s most fascinating leaders right now, and develop 49 codes that help you redefine the future of your business, and yourself.

The Leadership Code of Anne Wojcicki

Anne Wojcicki grew up on the campus of Stanford University, destined she thought to become an academic like her father. Instead she found herself on Wall Street, fascinated by businesses and in particular healthcare. The combination of an academic father, a love of data and analytics, and a passion to reinvent healthcare in a more democratic, accessible and personalised way led to 23andMe.

The human genome was first sequenced in 2003, exciting scientists by the potential of understanding and applying its code. Wojcicki met up with a biology undergraduate Linda Avey who was working on a research program, and together they formed the business in 2005. At the time it cost around $300,000 to sequence an entire human genome (which had fallen from $50 million two years earlier).

23andMe sought to dramatically reduce this 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 want to go much further in the future. For customers, it might be about discovering your ancestors, or exploring your future health prognosis, and in some case, like her ex-husband Sergei Brin, taking radical action.

Regulation was an obvious challenge. Initially there were no rules for such activities, enabling rapid innovation, but also making regulators more cautious. They were concerned about accuracy of tests, and how people might misinterpret information. She saw the regulators as partners rather than adversaries, working together to create a better, safer solution for everyone.

Business model innovation enabled her to continue to reduce costs and make it available to everyday people. She simplified the analytics to make them comprehensible to consumers, and cross-funded individual testing by selling the aggregated data to corporates.

The biggest challenge of all, was that consumers did not understand genetics, or the consequences of knowing their DNA. Explaining 23andMe’s approach in a relevant and human way was key. Ancestory was a quick win, tapping into an established curiosity of people, and then flipping the analysis forwards to predict what health issues the consumer might encounter in their life.

Wojcicki’s vision goes far beyond analytics, with her eyes particularly focused on personalised advice – helping people to interpret results, understand the consequences, and make shifts to a healthier lifestyle. 23andMe is already working with partners to offer diabetes counselling, whilst exploring AI-enabled apps to encourage people to drink more water, and eat certain foods, based on their genetic profiles.

New drugs are another future development. In 2015, 23andMe’s therapeutics group agreed a $300m investment by GSK to explore new drug concepts, in a 4-year exclusive partnership, sharing costs and profits. The deal enabled GSK to access the aggregated data from 23andMe’s databases, where consumers had given their consent. Most do. However, pharma development is notoriously difficult, 86% of drugs fail clinical trials, and are expensive. Personalisation of drugs is even more difficult, but the dream.

In 2020, the therapeutics team had developed a portfolio of research programs across multiple disease areas. They recognised that whilst maintaining ownership of the IP, they needed partners to develop and test the potential drugs. Wojcicki turned to a smaller Spanish pharma company, Almirall, which specialises in skin therapies as her first development partner.  She called it a seminal moment. 23andMe now had a database of over 10 million consumer tests, “a treasure trove” to create the future of healthcare.

© Peter Fisk 2020. Business Recoded is available now.

In an exclusive extract from my forthcoming book Business Recoded, meet one of the most inspiring business leaders, shaking up today’s world. He embraces the opportunities of relentless change, the challenge to realign business with society, and the courage to create a better future in his own vision. In the book, I explore the stories of many of the world’s most fascinating leaders right now, and develop 49 codes that help you redefine the future of your business, and yourself.

The Leadership Code of Pat Brown

10 years ago, Patrick Brown, a 56 year old biochemistry professor at Stanford University walked out of his job, frustrated at the world’s increasing inability to save itself.

He concluded that the best platform to create a better world, was not government or academia, but business. He recognised the uniquely powerful, inspiring potential of brands, to engage consumers through their everyday actions, to do good.

Brown decided that the environmental threat was the most profound challenge which he could personally add value to, and in particular, the use of animals to make food.

Beef farming has caused huge destruction to rainforests, and the animals themselves significantly add to the world’s carbon emissions – more than the entire world’s transportation systems. He organised a conference on “the role of animals in a sustainable global food system” and was frustrated by nice words but little action.

He established Impossible Foods with a mission “to completely replace animals in the food system by 2035.” He calls it “the most important and urgent problem in the world.” To visualise the challenge, he created an ad campaign (below) where an astronaut returns to Earth in the next decade, to find a planet starved of much of its natural habitat.

He resolved that the best strategy would be to create a product that competed against animal foods commercially. “Why does meat smell, feel, cook and taste like meat?” he challenged his small team of scientists.

They found their answer in heme, the iron-containing molecule in blood, a component of haemoglobin.

Brown started exploring how he could source the molecule in alternative ways from nature. He found heme in abundance in the roots of clover, and later also in soybean.

5 years later, and with $300 million funding, he launched the Impossible Burger, a burger that looked, smelt, sizzled and tasted just as good as a traditional beef version. Even better when you consider its wider impact on the world. 0% cows, 95% less land, 74% less water, 87% less emissions.

His decided not to target vegetarians, but to win over meat-eaters, by understanding what drives them to choose meat – taste, smell, texture – and then offer those benefits in a better way. Indeed, he defines his non-animal burger as “meat” saying “animals are a food production technology, and plants are another” he says, and so seeks to frame his product not as alternative, but as better.

Impossible Foods is now focused on developing a much broader portfolio of foods, including plant-based pork, chicken and fish. While beef farming is the most damaging to the environment, fishing is a close second. The total population of fish in oceans and rivers is less than half of what it was 40 years ago because of overfishing, and some species have declined in numbers by 90%.

In an interview with Time magazine, Brown reflected “Right now, the dominant relationship between humans and animals is exploitative. Replacing animals as a food production technology will absolutely change that. Hopefully, rather than looking at animals essentially as a technology for producing food, we’ll appreciate them more for the role that they play in making this a beautiful planet to live on.”

© Peter Fisk 2020. Business Recoded will be published in December 2020. Order your copy now.

The biggest challenges face by business, or indeed society, cannot be solved by a few people working in traditional organisations. They can be better addressed by breaking out of traditional approaches and collaborating with others.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and recipient of a recent lifetime achievement award by Thinkers50, calls these traditional approaches “thinking within castles”.

In her new book Think Outside the Building, she writes, “Castles are any set of institutional structures that loom large and feel permanent. Castles are monuments to the past and to past thinking, museums of preservation.” Moving outside of these castles is the beginning of innovation.

For example, “health is equated with hospitals, education with schoolhouses, news with newspapers, spirituality with the church, a city with city hall.” And we look to these institutions for solutions. But the solutions lie outside the “castle.”

“Health isn’t the hospital or even the doctor’s office. Health might be a function of nutritious food, clean air, or stress-free work. But behemoth establishments dominate health care, including rival fiefdoms such as providers and insurance companies, full of fortification and defenses, sometimes shutting out alternatives for treatment or blocking routes to wellness.”

The same can be said of educational systems, city governments, and other institutions that we look to for answers. Kanter says the best way to deal with these entrenched systems is not to attack them head-on, but to go around or under, or even start something new that is so attractive that others flock to it.

Advanced Leadership

To encourage this kind of action, professors Kanter, Rakesh Khurana, and Nitin Nohria co-founded the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative as a third level of education to bring together experienced leaders who could then go and address some of the world’s most challenging problems. But the Advanced Leadership is not specifically about older, more experienced people, but a level of thinking that takes leaders of any age, out of the building, “beyond boundaries, across silos, and outside established structures.”

Advanced Leadership is a different mindset than single-minded leadership furthering its own goals within a single organization. “Complex, messy, ambiguous, contentious institutional problems require more of leaders than exercising the authority inherent in their roles; they take entrepreneurial hustle. That also requires a larger pool of leaders willing and able to tackle them.” We need more Advanced Leaders.

Kaleidoscope Thinking

A different kind of thinking, kaleidoscope thinking, is required. “Creativity is a lot like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope.

“Innovators shake up their thinking as though their brains are a kaleidoscope, permitting an array of different patterns out of the same bits of reality. Leaders who take on big, intractable systems problems must be able to break out of prevailing wisdom in order to move beyond it.

Prematurely settle on an idea because of work overload or deadline pressure, and it is likely to resemble what already exists.”

The fragments of your kaleidoscope as built over time. Experiences, frustrations, and observations waiting to be connected when the time is right. Digital innovator John Taysom said, “Dream your worst nightmare, then invest in it,” or “see the thing that upsets you and use it as an opportunity for change.”

Get out and experience the new and truly different to shake the kaleidoscope into new possibilities. “What differentiates advanced leaders from noninnovators is that they can see further because of their quality of preparation and attention. They zoom out to see the big picture; they tune in to the context and read the zeitgeist.”

Advanced leaders are always looking. Look for what’s not there. Look for the gaps.

Advanced leaders must learn to tell a different story in order to gain support. “If you don’t like how things are going and want to lead change, tell a different story.” Reframe the problem to illuminate possibilities.

“Stories can’t be fairy tales. Narratives should be evidence-based, meeting a plausibility test. Marshalling the evidence sometimes requires creating new evidence through pilot programs—something that people can see and touch, something that has “street cred” (visible on the street. Prototypes are fundamental.?

Kanter explains the need, the process, and the trials of advanced leadership in the face of “castles” through example after example of those who are outside the building trying to make a difference. It is an instructive and inspiring book. It is a call to action into the unknown with a distinguished guide.

“The nature of change challenges, whether inside corporate offices or beyond the walls, increasingly requires more than traditional hierarchical leadership skills guiding teams inside the building; the new challenges require advanced leadership. For institutions that are threatened with disruption and displacement, this kind of leadership is essential because they simply can’t keep singing variations of the same old refrains with a digital note added here or there. And as the routinized parts of jobs are replaced (or augmented) by technology, increasing numbers of people will find themselves working on tasks outside the building. ”

 

In an exclusive extract from my forthcoming book Business Recoded, meet one of the most inspiring business leaders, shaking up today’s world. She embraces the opportunities of relentless change, the power of disruptive technologies, and the courage to create a better future in her own vision. In the book, I explore the stories of many of the world’s most fascinating leaders right now, and develop 49 codes that help you redefine the future of your business, and yourself.

The Leadership Code of Katrina Lake

Katrina Lake, founder of Stitch Fix, is reinventing how we shop.

She has always loved fashion. “Classic with a twist” is how she describes her style, a twist that was stimulated by the regular one-off clothing samples she would receive from her sister who worked as a fashion buyer. She loved the eclectic pieces and couldn’t understand why so many fashion retailers still focused on average seasonal ranges,  particularly in a world of big data and AI, where more personalisation was surely possible.

Having initially worked for Polyvore, a now-defunct social media start-up that was more like a virtual mood board of ideas and fashion, in 2011 she set about creating an online retail platform that “pairs an army of stylists with an arsenal of data to deliver clothing”.

Stitch Fix actually started in a small Boston apartment, whilst Lake was still studying for a Harvard MBA at the time, along with her co-founder Erin Flynn who was a former buyer for J Crew. “We cobbled together things you could do online for free,” says Katrina. She started by doing lots of free online surveys to find out what potential consumers might want.

“I felt so strongly that the way people were shopping was not going to be the future. I was like, there’s no way that the future of buying jeans is going to be spending a day at the mall or even searching online. Searching online for jeans is a ridiculously bad experience.” She recently told New York magazine.

Stitch Fix quickly took off. “It was 30 people, then 50 and then 120, and kept growing. As a female entrepreneur, a big challenge was raising funds from the male-dominated investment community. “I didn’t have the trust of a lot of investors, and for me the biggest reason was around the lack of diversity in the venture capital world,” she says. “Male investors would say things like ‘I can’t see myself wanting something like this’, and I’d be, ‘Ok, well you’re a Caucasian male who is very wealthy, and maybe this isn’t the service that you would use.'”

Consumers order “fixes” of five items, selected for them by professional stylists, as a one off or by subscribing to regular deliveries of their chosen intervals. On receipt of their fix, have three days to choose which items they want to keep, and others to return. The genius of the approach is that algorithms quickly learn about the likes and dislikes of individuals, and send more personalised selections each time. And of course, once in receipts of items, the customer is more likely to hold on to them, rather than just browsing through an online site.

Stitch Fix essentially combines data science, personalised marketing and a platform-based business model to drive growth.  Chris Moody became Stitch Fix’s lead data scientist. He also has a PhD in astrophysics focused on using supercomputers to simulate how galaxies crash into each other.  He uses the same analytical rigour to fine tune the perfect selections for each Stitch Fix subscriber. He describes the business more like an online personal styling service combining Netflix-style algorithms with human intuition and curation supported by a team of around 100 data scientists and 3,000 in-house stylists who fine-tune each fix.

In 2017, at the age of 34, Lake became the youngest woman to take a company public. The IPO raised $120 million and valued Stitch Fix at $1.46 billion. As she appeared at the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York for the company’s first day of trading, she held her 14-month-old son in her arms. The images went viral. She was quickly seen as a role model for women, and mothers, in business. “It felt like a really meaningful moment for me, and hopefully for others as well,” she told CNN.

Lake become not only a pioneer for better shopping, but for a better workplace too. With a mother who was a Japanese immigrant, she is focused on promoting diversity within her company, both women and people from ethnic minorities. But ultimately, Stitch Fix is a fusion of passion and science “When you think of entrepreneurs, you think of somebody who is super risky and stays up for all hours tinkering with something in their garage.” Instead she prefers a smart business plan, clever technology, good people, and sleep.

There is so much about leadership that we can learn from sport.

It’s popular to talk of leaders as coaches today. Most business leaders here that and think it all takes is an occasional sit down for a performance review. But think about sports coaches. They prepare their athletes over many months for the special moments of competition, but when the game starts or the gun fires, the athlete is on their own.

A coach therefore needs to be so much more, not just in developing physical talent, but developing emotional mindsets that have the personal motivation to perform at the highest levels, the mental agility to respond to any situation, and the confidence to make their own decisions, once the coach steps back.

Leaders as coaches are not the performers, their athletes are.

Patrick Sang was one of the world’s top runners, but not the best. When he retired, he took all the wisdom of his own career, and put it into coaching others. He found that he could be an even better coach than an athlete. Indeed leaders do not have to be “better” than their teams, they add value in different ways.

In this video, we meet Patrick Sang at his athletes training camp, in Kaptagat, Kenya. Here he brings together, many of the world’s top athletes – including Olympic champions and world record breakers like Eliud Kipchoge and Geoffrey Kamworer. At the end you see a special moment, when Kipchoge had just run the first sub-2 hour marathon in history. His coach watching.

Here, in an extract from SPIKES magazine, is a profile of Patrick Sang’s approach to coaching:

“It’s like opium,” says Patrick Sang, his eyes wide like an addict, though the affliction he’s talking about is far less harmful than narcotics. “Being active in athletics as a coach and previously as an athlete – it’s something I cannot do without. It gives me a big high when I see an athlete perform, especially one who went from nothing to something.”

At a hotel in central London, three days before his star protégé cruises to another facile win, the man who built the greatest marathoner in history is sharing the secrets of his trade, choosing his words with the considered wisdom of a preacher.

“The biggest organ that drives success in athletics is the mind, not the talent,” he says. “Many people don’t know that, but an athlete who is not disturbed mentally and is talented can go very far.”

His most famous athlete is proof of that. After all it’s almost five years since Eliud Kipchoge has lost a marathon, and ever since taking a shiny gold piece of excess baggage home from the 2016 Olympics, the world has become well-versed in his story. But what is less well known about the 33-year-old is how lucky he was to grow up where he did, as a farm boy in rural Kenya with Sang as a nearby neighbour.

His first coach, his only coach.

“He has taught me the morals of life, how to really concentrate and be happy and not go off course,” says Kipchoge. “He’s a mentor, a sports coach and my life coach.”

But Sang’s success extends far beyond Kipchoge. From two-time world cross country and three-time world half marathon champion Geoffrey Kamworor to 2012 Olympic marathon champion Stephen Kiprotich, he has produced champion distance runners with unrivalled frequency over the last decade.

His first ever athlete, though, was the man in the mirror.

Learning the Ropes

Back in the early 90s, Sang was a self-coached 3000m steeplechaser, winning silver at the world champs in 1991 and 1993 – beaten on both occasions by Kenyan great Moses Kiptanui – and in 1992 he took Olympic silver in the same event in Barcelona.

While still a competitive athlete in 1995, he agreed to coach some of his Kenyan compatriots, his first major success arriving in 1997 when Bernard Barmasai broke the 3000m steeplechase world record. Up until 2000 Sang relied on the knowledge gleaned from his own career, but then he got a call to say he’d been selected for a coaching programme being run at the IAAF Regional Development Centre in Nairobi.

Over the next five years, he progressed through the levels and in 2005 qualified with the highest coaching certification available.

“After that I realised coaching was not the way I knew, it’s event-specific,” he said. “Knowledge has to be applied, and the application of knowledge gives you a response from the athletes, whether it’s working or not.”

If there has been one key to his success, it is this.

“The biggest teacher to me is the feedback mechanism from the athlete. It can take a few months, maybe even just one month, to learn that.”

Sang is adamant his athletes arrange their lives in a way that allows him to apply a long-term approach. “We try to build a system with the athlete that their careers can be straight for 10 years,” he says.

Group training is a key ingredient, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.

“The training fundamentals are the same across the board, but what is different is the abilities,” he says. “We try to train people to respond to their abilities – it’s an individualised training programme in a group.”

The bulk of Sang’s athletes are aligned with one of two agencies, One4One Sports or Global Sports Communication, and at his training base in Kaptagat the 54-year-old doesn’t just train athletes; he mentors them.

“The challenge is making them understand what coaching is all about,” he says. “Because you can have the best ideas as a coach but if the athlete is not evaluating the knowledge you’re trying to impart, then it’s not applied. Coaching is all-round; they have to be a parent, a physician – all the aspects that make an all-round person.”

Mind Games

All of Sang’s athletes come from humble backgrounds, many from poverty, so there’s an inherent risk that some could drift from the sport after a big win.

“Money is a big distractor,” he admits. “An athlete who is talented but not protected from social issues and all these challenges, even financial management, cannot perform. An athlete who is not strong mentally can easily be distracted by money.”

In his experience, the champions who endure are those with a steely mindset, but Sang admits there’s little he can do in that department.

“Most of the time, the athletes come with it,” he says. “The ones who don’t have it, you try to do what you can, but sometimes they are very slippery because you don’t get to the end with them. An athlete with a strong mind, wherever they go they will always perform.”

For Sang, the most fulfilling successes are not always the high-profile ones, but when he moulds a new life for athletes who came to him with nothing. He cites the example of Philemon Rono, who grew up on a farm in Markawet District and whose athletic talent was, shall we say, not always apparent.

“If you see this guy, you’d never believe he could do it,” said Sang, demonstrating Rono’s diminutive stature. “But he did 2:06 last year to win in Toronto! Then what Geoffrey [Kamworor] did the last few years, knowing I picked him from nothing to all this, gives you a special satisfaction.

“I’ve never gotten a PhD but to me, this is like getting a PhD. You cannot quantify the feelings inside when that happens, and it’s got nothing to do with money.”

The Midas Touch

Perhaps the greatest demonstration of Sang’s ability came during the Breaking2 project, during which Nike spent millions to help three runners tackle a two-hour marathon in highly controlled circumstances in Monza, Italy. When their team of exercise physiologists visited Ethiopia’s Lelisa Desisa and Eritrea’s Zersenay Tadese, they made several adjustments to both athletes’ training, but Sang, they realised, was way ahead of them.

Without a treadmill, heart rate monitor or sweat sensor in sight, Kipchoge’s training was already perfect – the product of Sang’s intimate knowledge of both endurance training and his athlete’s tendencies.

“The feedback mechanism is like a current running between you and the athlete,” explains Sang. “When it’s established, the knowledge I have cannot make someone perform poorly.”

Sang was initially hesitant to allow Kipchoge take part, but was eventually talked around to the value of the idea and in the end, Kipchoge came up just 25 seconds shy of the two-hour barrier. “When a project like this comes and it’s new territory, it’s always a tough nut to crack,” he says. “You worry if you do this, will I endanger someone’s career? That crossed my mind with Eliud.”

In truth, things stayed much the same for Kipchoge during – and indeed after – the project, and despite all it took out of Kipchoge, Sang has since guided him to two dominant marathon wins, in Berlin last September and in London last weekend.

But what advice would he give to other coaches, those who hope – on whatever level – to build their own Kipchoge?

“To be successful is to have the knowledge of coaching, and to learn the abilities of the athlete very well so you do the proper training for that level,” he says. “With those two together – knowledge and understanding the athlete – you can never go wrong as a coach.”

Perhaps it’s best to leave the final word to the athlete who knows Sang best, who first met him almost two decades ago and credits him for what his career, his life, has become since.

“He is,” says Kipchoge, “the best coach in the whole world.”

Working in the UAE recently, I was invited to meet some of the nation’s leaders to discuss the impact of technology on future trends. I arrived at UAE’s new Ministry of Possibilities in Dubai to be greeted by a robot, and was soon immersed inside a merged reality space, combining governance, a diversity of collaborative innovation projects, and tech education.

Omar Sultan Al Olama, the UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence (how many nations have one of those?) had just launched BRAIN, the National AI Program, with an ambition for the UAE “to become world leaders in AI by 2031” and boost the local economy by $182 billion. A leap to the future, maybe, but a practical growth strategy too.

From Siri to self-driving cars, AI has the potential to transform our human capacity to embrace the power of technology, and solve the most complex problems, from climate change to eradicating disease, cybersecurity to neuro-controls. Whilst we image AI taking the humanoid form of Sophia, the human-like robot created by Hong-Kong based Hansen Robotics, AI comes in many forms, from Alphabet’s Deepmind to Tesla’s autonomous cars.

“The Age of AI” is a documentary series hosted by Robert Downey Jr. covering the ways artificial intelligence, machine learning and neural networks will change the world. Here are three of the episodes from the 8 part series:

AI and humanity

Can AI make music? Can it feel excitement and fear? Is it alive? Will.i.am and Mark Sagar push the limits of what a machine can do. How far is too far, and how much further can we go?

AI and wellbeing

The human body is not infallible, but through the wonders of AI research scientists are finding ways to address those imperfections. AI has the potential to heal, enhance and make up for the things our bodies lack.

AI and becoming superhuman

Through life changing accidents, and data minded through NASCAR, human beings are finding ways to rebuild one another so that we are better, faster, and stronger than ever before and all with the help of AI. Once nothing more than the stuff of comic books and TV shows, we truly have the technology to become modern superheroes

Today’s AI is more formally known as narrow (or weak) AI, meaning that it is designed to perform a narrow task, like playing chess or searching online. We see this embedded in our everyday lives, from anti-lock brakes in cars to fraud protection of payments, email spam filters and autocomplete forms. Future AI, however, seeks to take a more integrated form, known as general (or strong) AI, with the ability to do any task, and far more autonomy.

In healthcare, for example, AI can already interpret scans, sequence genomes, and synthesise new drugs within minutes, whilst also powering virtual nurses and robotics surgeons.

However, AI brings many ethical questions, risks associated with inbuilt biases, and has inconsistent regulation. Gender, race and ethnic biases can wrongly negatively influence the criminal justice system; fake news and misinformation can spread rapidly through bots and social media it threatens privacy and security; and it could displace many humans from jobs.

AI is the new rocket fuel for business innovation and growth. Here are some more examples:

• American Express processes $1 trillion in transactions and has 110 million cards in operation, relying on AI-based algorithms to help detect fraud in near real time, therefore saving millions in losses. Its data analytics also enables apps to engage cardholders with personalised offers, and merchants to manage performance.
• Burberry uses AI to combat counterfeit products and improve sales and customer relationships. Its loyalty programs go beyond rewards using that data to personalise the shopping experience online, and to augment the physical store experience using intelligent devices, from smartphones and biometric sensors.
• Darktrace Enterprise Immune System slows attacks on computing systems by emulating the way humans fend off viruses. An AI-enabled platform embeds in a network, learns what be­­haviours are normal, and flags anomalies, automatically slowing or stopping compromised networks and devices.
• Lemonade is reinventing insurance to be instant, easy, and transparent. It offers home insurance powered by AI and behavioural economics. By replacing brokers with bots and machine learning, Lemonade promises zero paperwork and instant policies and claims. As a B-Corp, it also has a Give Back scheme to non-profits.
• Microsoft has put AI at the core of its service. Cortana is a virtual assistant, chatbots run Skype and answer queries, Office includes intelligent features such as weather, traffic and personal schedule intelligence, and business customers can use the Microsoft AI Platform to create their own intelligent tools.
• Netflix’s incredible growth is largely due to its AI-driven personalisation, bringing together the viewing histories, searches and ratings of viewers to offer recommendations to you and others like you. It then uses this intelligence to develop new preference-matched content, such as House of Cards.
• Rare Carat is disrupting the diamond market. Its platform uses blockchain technology to track provenance and verify certification, massively improving authenticity and ethics of diamond sourcing, and then AI-based analytics to compare the price of diamonds, connecting buyers with appropriate retailers.

“Everything invented in the past 150 years will be reinvented using AI within the next 15 years,” says Randy Dean of Launchpad AI, and maybe not surprisingly PwC estimates that it could add $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030.

© Peter Fisk 2020

Extract from Business Recoded by Peter Fisk

Image: Unsplash

In an exclusive extract from my forthcoming book Business Recoded, meet one of the most inspiring business leaders, shaking up today’s world. She embraces the opportunities of relentless change, the power of disruptive technologies, and the courage to create a better future in her own vision. In the book, I explore the stories of many of the world’s most fascinating leaders right now, and develop 49 codes that help you redefine the future of your business, and yourself.

The Leadership Code of Cristina Junqueira

Cristina Junqueira was working at Itaú Unibanco, one of Brazil’s more traditional banks in 2013, managing their credit card portfolio when she gained the largest bonus of her career. She quit immediately,  realising that she wanted to change people’s lives, not just make money.

Within months, she got together with two friends, David Velez and Edward Wible, to launch Nubank, a Brazilian fintech company that seeks to make banking more accessible to everyone in a company with a huge underclass. Nubank is looking to tools like low-interest, no-fee credit cards, high-interest savings accounts, and an app-based credit system to seeking to serve 45 million unbanked Brazilians, neglected by competitors.

In the early days of start-up, Junqueira found herself doing everything from leasing a small office in Sao Paulo to designing the company’s new website. “If somebody called our customer service line, it would ring on my cellphone,” she says. For Junqueira, it was an even more challenging time, because she was pregnant with her first child.

Junqueira is most proud of how Nubank has developed for women. She says that HR policies were very much informed by her early struggles. “Many of the structural choices we’ve made in terms of gender equality and inclusion are reflective of the fact that I have been here from the beginning,” she told Quartz magazine.

“Looking back at my corporate career, I remember how tough it was to work in those predominantly male environments and do things like wear suits just to fit in,” she recalls. “At Nubank I was determined to create a working environment without all the stupid barriers that are very detrimental to women’s career development.”

Nubank’s policies that address gender equality include bringing more women into its technology teams with events like “Yes, She Codes!” a recruitment process specifically targeted at female software developers.  The company also uses blind recruitment to minimise gender biases, and has a mentoring scheme specifically for female leaders, which involves discussion groups aimed at tackling unconscious bias, and a program that allows new mothers to stay connected while they take maternity leave.

All this translates into a more inclusive work culture. Women make up 43% of the digital bank’s 2,000 employees, including 30% of all senior roles, compared to 8% in the sector.

By 2020, Junqueira has a second child, and Nubank is ready to spread its wings further, into new markets such as Mexico and Argentina, and exploring new products like personal loans, investment products, and accounts for small and medium-­size businesses. The credit card was the first to allow Brazilians to apply for and check their balance entirely via mobile, and Nubank is now the world’s largest digital bank outside Asia, and is valued at over $10 billion.

 

Crisis and downturns are the moments of shake-up … when companies drive innovation, and entrepreneurs disrupt markets. Now is the time to look forwards not back.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it” said Abraham Lincoln.

The best opportunities for business – to find new growth, to engage customers more deeply, to stand out from the crowd, to improve their profitability – is by seizing the opportunities of changing markets. The best way to seize these changes is by innovating – not just innovating the product, or even the business itself – but by innovating the market.

In the old world we accepted markets as a given – the status quo – and competed within it, with slightly different products and services, or most usually by competing on price. Most new products were quickly imitated, leading to declining margins and commoditisation. Most companies now receognise that this is not a route to long-term success in a rapidly changing world.

Fast-changing markets demand fast-changing businesses.

Winning in this new world requires a bigger ambition – to change the game, not just play the game. Winners recognise that markets are malleable, geography is irrelevant and categories are outdated, that boundaries blur and new spaces emerge, and that practices and perceptions can be shaped to your advantage.

“Gamechangers” innovate their market, and then innovate their business with exponential impact. They start from the future back, making sense of change, seeing the new patterns and possibilities, harnessing the power of ideas and digital networks to win in new ways. This requires new leadership thinking, and for the whole business to innovate.

Who are the “gamechangers” of Chile right now?

Next month I will be working with Chile’s Banco BCI, to explore the challenges and opportunities of a changing world, with many of Chile’s business leaders.

Chile is often called “Chilecon Valley”, ranking among the top startup hubs in Latin America, and in 2019, it was considered the region’s most innovative country.

E-commerce to m-commerce, clean energy and agritech, are increasingly important sources of innovation in the country. In fact, with 44.2% mobile penetration and 82.3% of its population using the internet, Chile has one of the fastest-growing e-commerce markets in the region.

Here are some of the most interesting companies:

Algramo … smart plastic refills by tricycle

In a pilot that the Chile-based startup Algramo has been running since May with Unilever, customers can bring a reusable plastic bottle back to a vending machine mounted on an electric tricycle that travels around the city offering refills. An RFID code on the bottle gives discounts on future purchases, creating an incentive for customers to bring the same package back over and over again.

Cornershop … the Uber of home delivery

Cornershop is a Chilean-Mexican last-mile grocery delivery startup that operates in five Latin American countries, as well as in Canada. The company’s recent $450M acquisition by Uber is pending as the Chilean government continues to investigate the transaction and how it will affect the market. However, Cornershop’s expansion throughout Latin America remains unscathed as it starts 2020 with full operations in Brazil and enters the Colombian market.

NotCo … AI-driven plant-based foods

NotCo is a foodtech startup that uses AI algorithms to recreate animal-based foods like mayonnaise and milk, using only plant components. The startup recently caught the attention of Jeff Bezos, who decided to make NotCo his first investment in Latin America. NotCo was also recently featured in YouTube’s ‘The Age of AI’. With plans to go public by 2021, NotCo is expected to be Chile’s first unicorn. NotCo’s products can also be found in Brazil, Argentina, and the US.

Jooycar … smart car insurance

Jooycar is a connected-car and user-based insurance platform seeking to disrupt the auto insurance market in Latin America. The platform informs users about maintenance checks, efficient fuel usage, and how they can improve their driving, among other features. The auto tech platform currently offers its services in Chile, Mexico, and Peru, and plans to launch in the US in 2020.

Join me for Business Recoded: What Happens Next? online with Banco Bci, 10 November 2020.

Image: Unsplash

The engineers and scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have a strange tradition. At crucial moments in every space mission, they chomp on peanuts. This phenomenon began when a Ranger spacecraft successfully launched after a long run of failures. An engineer had brought a bag of peanuts into mission control that day. Since then, peanuts are eaten at every launch to ward off bad luck.

This shows that even the most scientific among us fear uncertainty. That’s why we engage in strange rituals – like eating peanuts or wearing our lucky jeans – to regain a sense of control. We can’t help feeling this way. Fear of the unknown helped keep our ancestors safe from saber-toothed tigers. But when we avoid uncertainty altogether, we close ourselves off to new possibilities.

Changing your attitude towards uncertainty opens you up to discovery.

Scientists don’t see uncertainty as something to fear. When faced with a dark, shadow-filled room, they don’t turn away like most of us. They poke around in it until they find a light switch. Once that light’s on, they can evaluate what they’ve found. There might be something curious in the room, or there may be another door leading to yet another mystery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Te-enCEE4

Here’s what the book also explores:

• The single principle Elon Musk used to revolutionize the aerospace industry (and how you can use the same principle to transform your life)
• An unstoppable astronaut training strategy that you can use to nail your next presentation or product launch
• How invisible rules constrain your thinking (and what to do about it)
• The one word you can use to boost your creativity (The use of this word is backed by several research studies, and I personally use it on a weekly basis both for myself and my team)​
• What George Costanza and rocket scientists have in common, and what you can learn from both in starting your next project
• What you should do first in tackling an audacious goal (and what you should NEVER do when tackling an audacious goal)
• My 2-step process for squashing fear of uncertainty and failure before it stops me from taking action
• What Einstein’s biggest blunder can teach you about how to launch your next project
• The fascinating story of the billion-dollar author and her eight-year-old secret weapon
• Why doing “nothing” is more valuable than you think

Here are some of the practical worksheets to get started.

In an exclusive extract from my forthcoming book Business Recoded, meet one of the most inspiring business leaders, shaking up today’s world. He embraces the opportunities of relentless change, the challenge to realign business with the environment, and the courage to create a better future in his own vision. In the book, I explore the stories of many of the world’s most fascinating leaders right now, and develop 49 codes that help you redefine the future of your business, and yourself.

The Leadership Code of René Redzepi

Redzepi is the world’s most celebrated chef. He could not have had a better education. His apprenticeship was served in two of the world’s greatest restaurants – Catalonia’s el Bulli and California’s The French Laundry.

Under the guidance of the great Ferran Adria he developed a passion for experimentation, and a love of seasonal ingredients. In Napa Valley he was instilled with a commitment to working with local suppliers.

In 2003, aged 25, he opened Noma in his native Copenhagen (an abbreviation of the words “Nordic” and “mad”, which means food in Danish). He wanted to create a cuisine that represented the environment in which he found himself, giving rise to the term “new Nordic cuisine.”

Redzepi sought to develop a cuisine that reflected the soil, topography and climate of the place. He says “All of the people who work in the kitchen with me go out into the forests and on to the beach. It’s a part of their job. If you work with me, you will often be starting your day in the forest or on the shore because I believe foraging will shape you as a chef.”

From this a 10-point New Nordic Cuisine Manifesto was drawn up in collaboration with other Nordic chefs, with an emphasis on seasonality and simplicity.

The aims of the New Nordic Cuisine are:

• To express the purity, freshness, simplicity and ethics associated with the region.
• To reflect the changing of the seasons in every meal.
• To base cooking on ingredients and produce whose characteristics are particularly excellent in Nordic climates, landscapes and waters.
• To combine the demand for good taste with modern knowledge of health and well-being.
• To promote Nordic products and the variety of Nordic producers – and to spread the word about their underlying cultures.
• To promote animal welfare and a sound production process in the seas, on farmland and in the wild.
• To develop potentially new applications of traditional Nordic food products.
• To combine the best in Nordic cookery and culinary traditions with impulses from abroad.
• To combine local self-sufficiency with regional sharing of high-quality products.
• To join forces with consumer representatives, other cooking craftsmen, agriculture, the fishing, food, retail and wholesale industries, researchers, teachers, politicians and authorities on this project for the benefit and advantage of everyone in the Nordic countries.

More than the ingredients, people became his passion. He sees eating as a deeply human experience, emotional and personal, achieved as much through the service and style of his staff as what people eat, and where they are.

His staff have become a family, as he describes them, without the typical hustle and stress of a busy kitchen. Best known to customers is his long-serving maitre’d, Ali Sonko, a tall Gambian in his sixties, with an infectious smile, who started as a dishwasher in the kitchens when it first opened, and now owns a 10% stake in the business.

Equally, his partnership with local suppliers secures him the freshest produce, and their collaboration in creating dishes that continue to inspire both him and his clientele.

The original Noma in Copenhagen closed in 2017, with Redzepi and his team seeking to reinvent the restaurant. Initially they open an incredibly popular pop-up in Mexico, a kind of vacation to gain new inspiration, whilst they established a new restaurant, less than a mile from the old one.

Situated on a beautiful lake, the new Noma is a former ammunition storage facility for the Danish military, with numerous greenhouses where the produce is grown. Designed by famed local architect Bjarke Ingels, the buildings have been converted to resemble an old Danish village.

Originally, menus were based on what ingredients were most readily available, although using meet and fish throughout the year. It has now moved to a three season model – focusing on seafood for 4 months, then vegetables for 4 months, and then game.

Of course getting into the restaurant is probably the hardest part. Noma release reservations three times during a year, with thousands of cultured diners waiting to click on the website the moment it opens. You also need to pay at the time of booking, typically around $350 per person, although a meal typically consists of around 20 courses.

As a quick taster, the first course might be a plant pot with a thyme plant. Take a straw, and you’ll find an exquisite soup inside. A tart of crisp potato and nasturtium flowers might follow, and then a salted seaweed roll, fresh from the local beach. Quail’s eggs topped with fresh berries are next, then cucumber skin cannelloni filled with nuts and mushrooms. We’re still on the starters, at this point. You’ll need to visit to discover the main course.

“I think that in our part of the world, Scandinavia, we are one of the pioneers of showing that gastronomy can be something – high gastronomy can be something very, very present and doesn’t have to involve, you know, what is perceived as the normal luxury items that belong in a high gastronomy restaurant” he reflects.

With two Michelin stars, Rene Redzepi’s Noma has been voted the best restaurant in the world on four occasions.

© Peter Fisk 2020. Business Recoded will be published in December 2020. Order your copy now.