Peter Fisk

Gaige kaifang was the period of China’s economic reforms and opening-up to the world that began in the 1970s. During this time, the country largely adhered in its foreign relations to the taoguang yanghui (“hide our capacity and bide our time”) mantra devised by the party leader, Deng Xiaoping.

Today’s general secretary and state president, Xi Jinping, who cemented his dominance at the 19th party congress recently, has jettisoned this approach, with a new confidence in China’s development path, and a belief that the country can consolidate a leading position on the world stage.

His promise to deliver “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” implies that he seeks China’s return to a powerful player in world affairs – politically, economically and militarily.

Stepping into a power vacuum

China’s opportunity to re-assert itself is highlighted by United States’ backstepping in taking a leadership role in global affairs. Indeed, Xi has stated his view that “trends of global multipolarity” are gaining ground, leading to a situation where “relative international forces are becoming more balanced”. A period when the US has played the role of global hegemon has given way to a period where no state is yet powerful enough to challenge the US for global hegemony, and yet the US has begun a process of relative decline.

China is aided by indications that the US is stepping back from its erstwhile support for globalisation, both in terms of less full-throated backing of free trade and reduced willingness to co-operate internationally on issues such as climate change. US president Trump, told the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum in Vietnam in November that “chronic trade abuses” had to be dealt with. By contrast, Xi told the gathering that globalisation was “irreversible”, and that all countries could benefit by “boarding the express train of China’s development”. This continued a theme he first developed in a speech to the World Economic Forum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43SXG8twfX8

Higher priority for foreign policy

Accordingly, China has begun to give higher importance to foreign policy, an area traditionally overshadowed by domestic development priorities. The 19th party congress enshrined Mr Xi’s flagship international policy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – a project to raise Chinese trade and investment in countries along its key land and sea trade routes – in the CCP constitution. The congress also saw the promotion into the party’s 25-member top-level CCP politburo of Yang Jiechi, marking the first time a career diplomat has sat on the body for decades.

Alongside the BRI, China is developing a stronger voice on global governance issues. Its influence over international financial institutions has grown to the extent that the managing director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, has speculated about relocating the institution’s headquarters to the Chinese capital, Beijing. The China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has made a solid start since its inception in 2014. China is a major backer of UN peacekeeping operations and wants to protect a global climate change deal. China is thus marketing itself as a responsible power whose rise could be good for the globe as a whole. This message is readily received by a global audience concerned about US policy unpredictability under Mr Trump.

Implications of Chinese leadership

Enhanced Chinese global leadership could influence international politics and economic developments in several ways, in part stemming from its attachment to a more traditional statist form of sovereignty. For instance, China’s understanding of “globalisation” differs markedly from that in most Western countries, despite the apparent contradictions between Mr Xi’s support for the idea and the bars on foreign investment in many parts of China’s economy. Although an advocate for multilateralism, China adopts a primarily bilateral approach in its engagement with blocs such as the EU and Association for South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Meanwhile, China does not countenance any perceived interference in its domestic politics.

The government’s state-led approach is unlikely to create solutions to pressing international challenges. Chinese-style globalisation will not drive the global economy forward in the manner that waves of trade and investment liberalisation did in the past. State-centrism could hamper international policy debates on climate change and economic development by squeezing space for civil society actors to contribute.

The Belt and Road Strategy

Strategy+Business Magazine gives its perspective: “As of early 2018, a new elevated railway in Hanoi is giving commuters a smoother journey into the city. The 13.5 kilometer (8.4 mile) line, which snakes across the Vietnamese capital’s shimmering West Lake, is one element of a much larger rail project that will connect the landlocked Yunnan Province in China directly to the northern Vietnamese port city of Hai Phong, providing access to markets in Southeast Asia and beyond.”

Many time zones to the west, the London suburb of Barking has the distinction of being the first English town with direct rail access to China. In January 2017, it welcomed the arrival of a freight train that had traveled 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) from eastern China’s Zhejiang Province, with a cargo of garments and handbags. The so-called “East Wind” train made history by retracing part of the ancient Silk Road that more than 2,000 years earlier had linked northern China to the Mediterranean. The railroad traversed Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium, and France on its journey to Britain. But it should not be regarded as a pure U.K.-to-China transport link. Once fully operational, it will pick up and drop off goods at many countries in between, thereby opening up parts of Russia and Central Asia that have never before had this type of entrée to the global economy.

These rail projects, which share the same visionary origin, are just two of dozens of road, rail, port, and power generation plans within China’s much-vaunted Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Formerly known as One Belt, One Road, this vast, interconnected infrastructure project spans at least 65 countries with a combined population of 4.4 billion and about a third of the world’s economic output.

The plan is notable not just for its scale, but for its time frame. Its first phase focuses on infrastructure development, specifically in transportation, communications, and power. The second phase will involve softer sectors such as e-commerce, healthcare, education, and financial services. The first projects are just starting now, and the whole initiative is not expected to conclude until at least 2050.

Already, the rail elements of the plan alone rank as one of the biggest infrastructure pushes ever undertaken. The total estimated value of its 18 planned Chinese high-speed rail projects — of which five are under way — comes to US$143 billion, according to calculations by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S. think tank, and the Financial Times. That is larger than the U.S.-led Marshall Plan, which spearheaded the revival of Europe after World War II and cost about $130 billion in today’s money. Indeed, compared with the BRI, the Marshall Plan was modest in its ambition: It sought to rebuild the old, war-torn economies of Europe. The BRI is focused on developing new economies around the world, and fostering global trade among them, not just with China.

Moreover, the BRI represents a multistage conception that goes beyond basic capital investment. It will eventually embody leading-edge digital technologies such as embedded sensors and data analytics, thereby giving participating countries the ability to leap past current Western supply chain practices. In doing all this, the BRI could spark a 21st-century expansion of global economic growth, technology exchange, and, inevitably, Chinese influence.

The BRI is not the only comprehensive initiative of this sort emerging in the 21st century, however. Industry 4.0 initiatives from Germany and cloud-based platforms from the United States may eventually interface with it, compete with it, or both. But the ambition and scope of the BRI are even greater than those of its international counterparts. That’s why it is such an important — and complex — strategic opportunity for global enterprises. China has invited companies from other countries to do business with the BRI by investing their financing, technology, or other forms of capital. These investments may give them access to barely tapped markets destined for future growth, while cementing a better foothold in China itself. The relationships companies build with their Chinese partners, including host companies from countries along the BRI pathways, could lead to many opportunities in China and around the world.

Pursuing the Chinese Dream

With all these uncertainties at play, an assessment of the best strategy for your company must start with an understanding of China’s motivations, capabilities, and limits. The concept for the initiative was first unveiled in 2013 by Chinese president Xi Jinping (see “Historic Roots, Grand Ambitions”). Its goals were reaffirmed in late 2017 at the 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress (the congress is held every five years). There, a reference to the initiative was formally added to the party’s constitution. Along with the elevation of Xi to the status of “core leader” (a title held previously only by Mao Tse-Tung and Deng Xiaoping), there could be no clearer sign of the BRI’s importance to China’s national development.

The BRI plan aims to build out the overland and maritime infrastructure needed to create a broad web of new trade connections from the Eastern hemisphere to the West. It will do so by developing six broad economic corridors. Four are predominantly land routes connecting China to Europe through Central Asia. For example, a New Eurasian Land Bridge economic corridor is intended to be a major logistics passageway between China and Europe with transcontinental rail connections, including that China-to-London freight train that ended its journey in Barking. The two remaining corridors are maritime routes, establishing land–sea connectivity across Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Africa.

The BRI’s goals are multipronged. The initiative will provide markets to absorb China’s industrial over-capacity and facilitate trade with and between participating countries, while also potentially strengthening China’s diplomatic relations across its six economic corridors. It could also help internationalize the renminbi. Finally, it will enable China to gain global recognition in developing complex transnational infrastructure projects, such as high-speed rail networks.

The initiative will establish a greater capability among Chinese companies for building, innovating, and maintaining infrastructure around the world, ensuring that more of them will be profitable outside China’s borders. A specific recommendation on this issue has been made by the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based think tank that works on the BRI. The center said in a May 2017 paper that China should prioritize the construction of overseas industrial parks, as they could help Chinese companies abroad increase exports.

But the most remarkable aspect of the initiative is not its impressive scale, scope, technology, or level of investment. Rather, it is the challenge that China’s leaders have set themselves in building what Xi has called “a big family of harmonious coexistence.” In its previous large-scale multinational endeavors, China provided overseas funding and construction on a project-by-project basis. The BRI represents a holistic approach, designed to kick off a giant self-reinforcing circle of rising prosperity, investment, market development, and technological advance — all helping to burnish China’s credentials as a global power.

Indeed, many BRI projects are designed for geopolitical as well as commercial impact. In 2010, the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar, in Pakistan, was in complete disrepair. The China Overseas Ports Holding Company, a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE), took over operations of the port in 2013 and rebuilt the terminal, in return for a 43-year lease, signed in 2015. The port is now expected to handle more than 400 million tons of cargo a year, much of it carried from China along new highways.

Commercial infrastructure of this sort will also expand markets for Chinese goods and services, providing outlets for the country’s massive industrial overcapacity and its workforce. Construction of railways, pipelines, and other projects could boost steel demand by 150 million tons and keep Chinese mills — many of them currently operating at a loss — running for years, according to Australia-based mining company BHP Billiton.

The initiative may also invigorate Chinese stock markets. According to a PwC research project presented at the annual meeting of the International Business Leaders Advisory Council in 2017, about 235 of the 2,000 largest private companies in the world are located in 11 emerging economy countries along the Belt and Road routes.

Finally, for China, there is a strong potential payoff in political stability. Improved infrastructure and a steadily growing regional economy increase the odds that China’s neighbors — and other countries in its potential sphere of influence — will be primarily oriented toward peace and prosperity. China does not want political and economic instability on its western and southern borders. By enhancing the standard of living of other countries, China is creating new markets for all to trade with, not just China.

Many countries along the path are already counting on the BRI to be a catalyst for their own economic growth. Some of the higher-potential developing economies, such as Indonesia, Thailand, and Pakistan, expect to gain new market access for their enterprises through increased trade with other Belt and Road countries. And just about all the countries on the route expect to benefit from the infrastructure investment; the BRI will finance and build desperately needed transportation, water, communication, and power systems. The Asian Development Bank estimates the total infrastructure investment needs in Asia to be $1.7 trillion per year at least through 2030; the power and transport sectors will require the greatest investments. Spending of this sort will have a multiplier effect that should accelerate development in many BRI countries.

A Tall Tree Attracts the Wind

Largely because of its scale, a major strategy such as the BRI inevitably finds itself having to navigate numerous obstacles. As the Chinese saying goes, “A tall tree attracts the wind.” Many commentators see the project as an effort to gain advantage and global leverage at the expense of geopolitical rivals, such as the U.S., India, and Germany. The same concerns that have been expressed in the past about investment in China — limits on access to lucrative markets, forced partnerships with Chinese companies, pressure to yield technological knowledge and intellectual property, and restrictions on information flow — have also been raised about the Belt and Road Initiative.

However, we believe some commentary has been too quick to narrowly label the BRI as a purely geopolitical play by China intended to strengthen its influence across East Asia and Central Asia. There are also signs that China’s state-owned enterprises are changing their behavior. The association of the BRI with “Xi Jinping thought” suggests that Chinese companies are being encouraged to focus on quality growth and profitability, not just growth at any cost. Furthermore, the BRI’s association with global funding entities such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank demonstrates its commercial focus.

The crucial question of funding is answered only in part. The Chinese government has allocated huge sums to BRI projects. Major funding sources such as the Silk Road Fund and policy and commercial banks have committed to financing $186 billion, as of 2016. At a BRI summit in China in May 2017, Xi announced the expansion of the Silk Road Fund by $14.8 billion, in addition to its starting capital of $40 billion. Policy banks are also setting up BRI multicurrency special lending schemes totaling about $56 billion.

Yet even this will not be enough to cover everything. China is actively seeking partnerships with foreign companies because, owing to domestic financial constraints, it cannot afford to fund all these BRI projects on its own. More than 600 million Chinese people still live below “middle income” status, and the indebtedness of Chinese corporations and provinces looms as a significant issue.

How do you win in a world of relentless change?

Download summary of my keynote: Future Hackers

You know you need to innovate more than ever. You need to think bigger, and different. Not just as an occasional project, but as a continual stream of revolution. You need to think more significantly, how to solve the significant problems of a restless world, to seize the new opportunities to make life better in useful and meaningful ways, and to accelerate profitable growth. Not just the technology, but the smart application of it to the real world, socially and commercially.

Smaller, incremental innovations are quickly swallowed up, or made irrelevant by the next thing. Consumers see through the hype and fragility. Or don’t have time for the frivolity of irrelevance.

Of course, small changes can add to bigger ones, but if they collectively don’t achieve more, and move you forwards in a bigger way, then they are distracting and wasted.

We need bigger ideas. But they are hard to deliver, particularly when the landscape keeps moving. When the future is imperfect or even unpredictable. When the business case is difficult to make. When everything seems to have been already, and most competitors are into marginal gains – discounts and tweaks to almost perfect products and services.

Stop! Think again.

Time to “hack” the future

Switch on your Musk mindset … Unlock your Einstein dreams and Picasso passion … Embrace your Mandela courage and Ghandi spirit.

Is this what will take SpaceX to Mars by 2025? Is this why Zespri reinvented the chinese gooseberry? Is this how Netflix came to be, or NuTonomy, or Nespresso, or Nyx?

Is this what motivates Jeff Bezos to say “every day is day one”? Is this how Anne Wojicki seeks to cure cancer? Is this why Jack Ma ignored everyone to create $500bn in 15 years?

We need to think bigger, but we also need to think actively. The future is malleable, so we need to grab hold of it, to shape it in our own vision. To our advantage. This is what “game changers” do. They take a market, and reinvent it, or even create a new one, on their terms. Don’t just innovate a product, service, or even business model – innovate the market.

Of course, they can’t plan exactly how to get there. That would be ridiculous, like trying to climb Mount Everest without the agility to sense and respond to the changing weather conditions. But they know where they are going. They have a bigger dream. And they are willing to fight and flex to get there.

And then they hack.

You think of it as a nerdy kid sitting in front of a bank of computers, trying to infiltrate the most cybersecure fortresses. But its much more than that. It’s about using your  brain, curiosity, intuition, hypothesis, resourcefulness, and experimentation. It’s about sensing your way, being bold yet also adaptive, being flexible but also driven.

Leaders need a “future mindset” 

There is no space into today’s business world for a fixed mindset. One which seeks to sit an optimise the current world, in search of ever greater efficiency and ultimate perfection. That is a route of diminishing returns. It’s also what you’ve been doing for decades. Trying to hang on to the old model of success. Instead we need a future mindset. To face the future every day, find new ways forward, to a better world.

A future mindset needs an organisational context in order to be shared and thrive – an agile innovation culture. Business is shifting from a passive to active dynamic – where 80% of activities are active (project-type working focused on innovation, experimentation and customisation) and only 20% passive (ongoing-type working focused on administration, production and standardised delivery), rather than the opposite.

In this active culture, work becomes fast and flexible, innovation becomes the core rather than a occasional luxury, where there are no limiting strategies and fixed ways of working, unhindered by internally-focused structures and process, and where ideas and experiments can thrive. And where the focus is no longer about living off the past, or surviving for today. But inspired by a better future.

How do you see your future?

We live in an incredible time.  More change in the next 10 years than in the last 250 years. New technologies transforming the ways in which we live and work. Digital platforms and blockchains, AI and robotics, 3D printing and nanotech .

These are just some of the fantastic new capabilities that enable us to innovate beyond what we can even imagine today. The future isn’t like the future used to be. We cannot just evolve or extrapolate the past. Today’s future is discontinuous, disruptive, different.

It is imagination that will move us forwards … unlocking the technological possibilities, applying them to real problems and opportunities, to drive innovation and growth in every industry, in every part of our lives.

Imagine a world where you press “print” to get the dress of your dreams, the food of your fantasies, or the spare parts for your car. Instantly, personalised and on demand. Think then what does that mean if we don’t need the huge scale of manufacturing plants, warehousing and transportation. Maybe we will even subscribe to the IP catalogues of brands, in the ways we currently subscribe to Netflix.

Growth starts from the “future back”

The best place to start is the future. The best entrepreneurs think “future back” rather than just trying to move forwards with the limitations and distractions of today. Elon Musk grabs headlines with his bold “Humans on Mars by 2025” vision, but then that makes everything else more purposeful, and more possible. Tesla to Hyperloop to SpaceX, all seem more possible, and even stepping stones to a greater destination.

“Future back” thinking also means you are not limited by your own capabilities. Richard Branson had a fantastic vision for a better airline, a consumer bank, a space travel business. But no idea how to make them happen. But then he found partners who could help make them happen. Partners with the expertise on tap, to connect with his ideas, and together innovate further and faster.

Partnerships are key to the future, connecting ideas and capabilities, risks and rewards, to achieve more together.

What might your world look like in 2025?

By jumping to the future, and then working backwards, you develop a bolder, braver ambition. Shaping the future on your terms, exploring the new possibilities for innovation and growth, unlimited by the priorities and prejudices of today. New technologies will be key, but they are more the enablers than answers. How will they make life better? How will they make your business better?

Inspired by the Adidas Speedfactory, what does the future of your manufacturing look like? If Amazon’s Alexa can manage your home, then what could the future workplace look like? What would happen if phones were free like Jio Phone has just disruptively done in India? How could you apply big data like 23&Me in healthcare to predict what people want? Or the new business models like Airbnb and Nespresso to redefine markets? Beyond the hype of Bitcoin, how could blockchain redefine how you engage customers? And what actually will people want most in the future?

Futurists look for emerging patterns – signals of future possibilities, already out there. Emergent behaviours, adaptive usage, new aspirations. You just need to find these signals, and apply them. Maybe on the fringes of your market, or by transferring ideas from other sectors, or other geograhies, or others aspects of life.

Leonardo da Vinci definined innovation as making unusual connections. So how could you connect the most relevant and disruptive ideas together in new ways?

Are you ready to create your better future?

It’s time to jump to the future. And then look back. Then you will see today differently.

Too many of us get locked in to a mindset of today – of incremental, extrapolating, and perfecting the old world. Working backwards from 2025 you will define different milestones, different priorities to be achieved within 3 years, and even next year.

Innovation demands a future mindset, that will deliver bigger ideas to drive innovation and growth, and new perspectives on what matters most today.

Are you ready?

This is future hacking.

We all need to be future hackers today.

Just a few years ago, China’s car-clogged streets were instead full of bicycles. The speed of China’s transformation is remarkable, sparked by its industrial revolution. In the last 25 years, China has gone from producing 2% of global manufacturing output to 25%.

Over that time China’s GDP has grown thirtyfold, and 750 million people were lifted out of poverty. That’s the most ever achieved in a single period in the history of the world. China went from being poorer than Kenya, Lesotho, and Nigeria to rivaling the USA for the title of largest economy in the world.

But as impressive as these statistics are, the real signs of development are all the small, everyday occurrences that can only delight people who have known life without them.

Take some examples: Sprite is no longer considered a rare treat, just a mundane soft drink. People now stand in lines at the airport instead of jostling one another relentlessly. Stores now provide toilet paper in their bathrooms. And no one thinks it’s anything special to ride in a car anymore.

China had become the factory of the world.

Irene Yuan Sun’s new book is called  “The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa”.

She tells her story – a Chinese immigrant, growing up in USA, and then moving to Africa. Her book was a finalist in the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, and she recently joined McKinsey as a consultant. This is where she sees the next industrial revolution, as she described to Quartz magazine:

“After college, I taught eighth- and ninth-graders in a village in Namibia, in southwestern Africa. During a staff meeting, the principal of my school strong-armed me into running the school shop.

Having no clue as to what I should be selling there, I asked at the end of one of my classes if any students would like to go with me—in my car— to the wholesaler an hour away to buy things for the shop. A burst of shouts was accompanied by an eruption of arms into the air. Every single kid wanted to go. More than a few trailed me home, begging me to pick them. I thought it was funny—and familiar. I knew this longing to sit in a car, and the novelty of actually doing so.

Cars— and Sprite— and toilet paper— may sound like very materialistic ways of defining development, but people who have these things tend to forget how much they are markers of modernity to those who don’t. Americans and Europeans can be casual about sitting in a car, but to my child self in China, and to my students in Namibia, it was a thrill. The appearance of such material goods in a society heralds the possibility that people can adopt new selves, new ways of being in the world: as consumers and producers in the modern global economy.

As a volunteer teacher, I was responsible for five classes of math and English in a public school in rural Africa. Nothing is less controversial than the inherent goodness of teaching children and the notion that an educated citizenry is essential for a country’s development. But several months into my job, when I was brutally honest with myself, I could see no connection between my daily work and the chance that these bigger transformations would occur.

Most of my pupils were the children of subsistence farmers, and the vast majority of them would become subsistence farmers themselves. Some days, the absurdity of what I was doing would hit me: I was teaching irregular English verb conjugations to future subsistence farmers living in an arid plain where no one spoke English in everyday life. I spent a year bearing witness to the things that are wrong and unfair in our world today—children dealing with the brunt of HIV/AIDS, environmental degradation, poverty—and I had nothing to offer.

 Africa today is not defined by poverty: it is characterized by promise and optimism. The idea that education was the key to my kids’ future seemed empty. That felt sacrilegious at the time, but I sensed that my teaching reinforced rather than expanded the ways in which Africa relates to the world. Receiving wisdom from foreigners who supposedly know better: it’s an old trope, dating back at least to European colonial ideology in Africa, and it has never worked. What else would it take for African countries to pull off the transformation I had seen China make in my short lifetime?

Strangely, it was on a blind date that I began to encounter a new reality. A Chinese man from whom I regularly bought vegetables insisted that I come over for dinner one weekend to meet his “good friend.” I agreed, mostly to stay on good terms with my vegetable dealer. His friend turned out to be a self-made Chinese man who had come to Namibia at age seventeen and founded a string of successful businesses.

He was nearing thirty, rich, and wanted to find a wife, yet very few Chinese women would agree to live in Africa. He did his best to impress me with fresh sea-food that he’d arranged to be trucked in sixteen hours from the ocean, but it soon became clear that he was illiterate. It didn’t help when he and all his friends pulled out their guns at dinner.

The conversation—boisterous, over cases of beer—revealed that he was like many other Chinese businessmen in Africa: a pure capitalist, with seemingly little regard for the welfare or rights of locals. And yet I was struck that this man might end up doing more to help the people in my village than my own well-intentioned efforts.

I taught children skills that were theoretically useful for a way of life that no one here actually lived. He created real jobs with real paychecks. In so doing, and probably without meaning to, he opened up new ways of relating to the world for thousands of Africans: as workers, as clients, as partners, even as worthy adversaries. Which one of us was making a difference for Africa?

This is not a romance story—I never saw the man again—but that seed of a question stayed with me. It eventually led me to spend years studying Chinese investment in Africa, knocking on countless factory doors, sweet-talking reticent Chinese owners into letting me onto the premises, and cajoling them into trusting me with their stories.

I’ve visited more than fifty Chinese factories in Africa and talked to numerous Chinese businesspeople involved in other African sectors, along with a hundred-odd African workers, entrepreneurs, government officials, journalists, and union organizers who are partnering with and responding to Chinese interest in their countries in a variety of ways.

It was on one of these research trips in eastern Nigeria that I had my aha! moment. At the end of a long, hot day of visiting factories, I showed up at the address of my last appointment and found myself in a courtyard ringed by buildings painted blue and white. The blue of the walls matched the blue of the heavy industrial trucks parked in the courtyard, and something about that blue tugged at a half-buried memory. All in a rush, I realized that this blue felt familiar because it wasn’t just any blue—it was FAW blue. I was standing in a brand-new FAW truck factory in Africa.

FAW had come a long way since I first sat in one of its cars, twenty five years earlier. It had sold 18 million cars and counting in seventy countries, and employed 120,000 people in the process. That awkward child of Sino-Soviet planning, saved by German investment, was now all grown up and building factories in Africa.

Chinese factories in Africa: This is the future that will create broad-based prosperity for Africans and usher in the next phase of global growth for a large swath of the Chinese economy. This is what will make Africa rich and achieve a dramatic and lasting change in living standards.

To be clear, Africa today is not defined by poverty: it is characterized by promise and optimism with eight of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world over the next decade projected to be on the continent.

But just as it is wrong to cast Africa in the tired stereotype of pitiful, hopeless destitution, it is problematic to ignore the fact that more than half a billion of the poorest people in the world still live in Africa. Over the past half century, Africa has been the premier testing ground for multiple waves of Western ideas about poverty alleviation.

To be sure, Western development programs that help with things like educating children are important for other reasons, but they will not create 100 million jobs and lift half a billion people out of poverty. If we are serious about raising living standards across this vast region of the world, it is time to try something new.

That something new has already started moving to Africa: factories. Factories are the bridge that connects China, the current Factory of the World, to Africa, the next Factory of the World. Over the past fifteen years, Chinese factories have been driven out of China by rising costs, and many have landed in Africa.

Chinese companies made a mere two investments in Africa in 2000; they now make hundreds each year. I recently co-led a large-scale research project on Chinese investment in Africa at the global management consulting firm McKinsey; our fieldwork in eight African countries uncovered more than fifteen hundred Chinese firms engaged in manufacturing.

Some of these companies are attracted by the rapidly growing domestic markets in countries like Nigeria, which will have a population larger than that of the United States by 2050. Carmakers, construction materials producers, and light manufacturers of consumer goods are all entering the market, hoping for their share of the opportunity.

Other Chinese firms have a different business model: they take advantage of Africa’s comparatively low labor costs to produce goods for export to developed markets. In Lesotho, Chinese garment factories make yoga pants for Kohl’s, jeans for Levi’s, and athletic wear for Reebok. Almost all of Lesotho’s production is trucked out and packed onto container ships bound for American consumers.

This movement of factories matters, because when factories arrive en masse, prosperity soon follows. From Great Britain at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century, to America in the nineteenth century, to Japan and other Asian countries in the twentieth, factories have restructured entire economies toward a new, lasting level of wealth.

That’s because manufacturing, unlike agriculture and services, engages mass labor in highly productive ways to participate in the global economy. It’s also because on an individual level, industrialization allows subsistence farmers enmeshed in highly local systems of exchange to transform themselves into consumers and producers in the global economy.

Industrialization is how China reshaped itself from a poor, backward country into one of the largest economies in the world in less than three decades. By becoming the next Factory of the World, Africa can do the same. To be clear, the rise of manufacturing is not an altogether happy story. Up close, it’s often ugly. Some of the Chinese factory bosses I’ve met in Africa are truly unsavory. Many are racist, and many wouldn’t hesitate to pay a bribe. More than a few spit in public, drink to excess, and frequent prostitutes.

And their actions have consequences: as the stories in this book show, their bribes affect the proper functioning of local governments, their factories’ environmental practices affect the quality of Africa’s air and water, and their treatment of employees determines not only the wages of workers but in some cases whether they live or die on the job.

China itself—with its corruption scandals and thick, smog-ridden air—provides ominous examples of the social and environmental consequences of unbridled economic expansion. Industrialization unleashes powerful new forces for harm as well as for good, and these are already evident in Africa today.

Although industrialization in Africa will certainly have a dark side, another certainty is that the continent will experience industrialization differently than China did. African countries and societies do not resemble China, economically, politically, or socially.

Although factories in any new place lead to a set of predictable changes—from rising incomes to labor scandals—the form, sequence, and flavor of these changes vary considerably. In Nigeria, the course of industrialization is shaped by reports from a free press; in Lesotho, by a strong union movement; in Kenya, by tribal and ethnic loyalties—all of which are largely absent in China.

Indeed, in the encounter between Chinese investors and a whole host of local African actors—workers, suppliers, distributors, governments, media—new types of organizations, partnerships, and power structures will be invented.

Through this process, Africa has the chance not only to repeat the sort of industrialization that has come before, but to improve on it—if this can’t obliterate the seemingly unavoidable trade-offs between development and democracy, economic growth and environmental health, then perhaps it can at least make them less stark. The theme may be old, but the story will be new.”

My recent work, and articles, on the changing nature of “luxury” have attracted much attention … in particular the shift from tangible to intangible, product to experience, iconic to personal. Working with Cartier, one of the key insights was that luxury brands have become some of the most social, because they are built on reputation, build a perception of inclusion, and bought through relationship.

Take a brand like Channel. Is it the product that is luxurious (the finest materials, quality craftsmanship, iconic design) or the brand identity (which reflects an idea, and through it an aspirational concept, or lifestyle)? It is probably both, but which comes first, and matters most? If it is the brand, then how does that apply to other products and sectors (where the new attributes of luxury, such as time and authenticity) have most relevance?

As luxury brands are besieged by new consumers with different values and aspirations, new channels and business models, new competitors and luxurious alternatives, brand owners and their marketers need to rethink “what is luxury?” in today’s world.

A new white paper published by The Economist Intelligence Unit examines the problems facing luxury brands, and how they can adapt. Here is an edited excerpt of the report …

Managing luxury is more difficult than ever. The luxury market has become truly global. The majority of sales for traditional European luxury brands is coming from Asian consumers now. New brands are entering the market, building on local ways of living and celebrity trends. What people wear on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, California, the Bund in Shanghai, Tverskaya Street in Moscow, Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo or on the London Underground has more influence on the expression of luxury than ever.

About a decade ago, most luxury managers I spoke with were not only ignoring digital channels, they fundamentally believed that luxury and e-commerce would never (!) go together. They pointed out that the experience of going into a luxury-brand store was critical and couldn’t be replaced. How different reality is today. Many newer luxury brands don’t even have store fronts any more but focus instead on selling through the internet. Augmented reality will boost this trend even more.Consumers have become more sophisticated and knowledgeable and now expect more.

Ethical shopping is no longer a buzzword that is high only on the agenda of Millennials—many others are looking for authenticity when they spend enormous amounts of money on luxury brands. Lifestyles change. Wellness has become the new luxury for many, with more and more people becoming concerned about their health and wellbeing. And this is not only a new segment. Wellness influences almost anything: changed behaviours, with more rigorous exercise schedules for many; changed expectations regarding the comfort and design of car interiors; different views on what a hotel or spa experience should be; and increased demand for healthier options on restaurant menus, to name just a few.

In this already dramatically changing context for luxury brands there is further disruption from several trends that will play a major role for luxury managers over the next few years. If left unaddressed, these trends will not only challenge the success of incumbent brands but endanger their very survival. Many previously iconic luxury brands are already suffering and are in steep decline because they did not change early enough and not radically enough.The time for complacency is over. Luxury managers need to leave their comfort zone and make their brands future-ready. This includes strict brand-equity thinking by defining and sharpening brand positioning. It entails optimising the customer journey, and it requires something that has been lost for many luxury brands: offering a truly authentic experience. An experience that is so memorable and unique that consumers pay the enormous premiums that luxury brands can charge.

Luxury is difficult
Managing luxury is not only more difficult than ever, it is actually one of the most difficult managerial tasks. This is deeply embedded in the nature of luxury. Langer (2008) and Langer & Heil (2013) define luxury as “something rare and hedonic, difficult to acquire or use, that provides a perceived unique experience in combination with a perceived enhancement or reinforcement of the social position. It is an emotional social marker and differentiator”.This definition underlines the difficulty connected with luxury in four dimensions (see above): being rare and hedonic by nature, luxuries are difficult to create. They are difficult to consume because of the difficulty in acquiring (price, availability, scarcity, waiting times etc) and using them properly (a sports car is difficult to drive, really appreciating a rare wine needs expertise, not everyone can wear an haute couture dress, a bag made of sophisticated leather may be very receptive to scratches and stains and may not be practical in day-to-day usage, etc). Providing a unique experience is difficult to repeat by nature. Finally, being in an enhanced social position and a social marker and differentiator is difficult to maintain: perceptions change over time and new brands, tastes and expectations evolve.While managing luxury is difficult, very few tools exist to guide managers in a proper way. I developed some of those tools (luxury index and non-linear pricing, category potential and segmentation, brand equity and positioning tool for luxury brands, luxury customer journey tool, brand acceleration tool for luxury brands) when I discovered that luxury managers are basically left alone with mass-marketing methods. Tools and strategies that are common for mass brands are not only inappropriate for luxury brands, they can ultimately lead to the destruction of luxury brands. Luxury managers tell me all the time how much they regretted growing their brands too fast with too cheap line extensions. Once the perception of a luxury brand is weakened, it is difficult to come back.

Luxury managers need to change their thinking and tap into the true potential of luxury: strict brand-equity thinking, customer journey optimisation, brand storytelling and limited editions. This is where good is not good enough anymore. This is where past strategies to master the future won’t work—especially since disruption will change the face of luxury further.

Leading the change

To lead the change starts with the understanding that a change process is difficult and needs the full commitment and dedication of the management team. When we conduct brand audit workshops, we typically interview the leadership teams beforehand. And most of the time we discover that different leaders of the same organisation see different challenges, different solutions and different approaches. And we often find a disconnect between how C-level managers talk about their brand and how sales people, store managers or brand ambassadors talk about the same brand. This is the worst that can happen, and we find that this is the rule rather than the exception. Helping to channel those different viewpoints towards one thinking and one approach is crucial in leading the change.

Most organisations pay too little attention to their most important asset: their brand. Especially in the luxury space, too many brands rely solely on the creative input of the designer, but they don’t do the most fundamental exercise: to ask themselves who they are, what they sell. This is not about the physical products they produce but what they sell as a brand. What is their purpose, and how do they inspire their consumers? Thinking short-term only, about the next collection or the next hype, can work for a limited period of time. But when there is no strategy, success will be limited and short-lived.

A sharp brand positioning is a must, and brand-equity thinking needs to be at the centre of what everyone does in the organisation. Creating a common understanding of what the brand is and where the brand should go, clarifying the role of each individual in the company, and specifying how each employee should and can contribute to the brand-equity vision. It is surprising how few brands do this exercise regularly (we recommend every three years at a minimum). Clear and differentiating brand strategies are missing. There is little perceivable differentiation between many luxury brands that operate in the same segment.

This creates missed opportunity in terms of pricing, which is the true driver of revenue and profit growth of luxury brands. In our research, we find that many luxury brands are too cheap. They could price higher, but they lack the experience and tools to understand the full potential of pricing. Lack of differentiation limits pricing moves further. Hence, brand-equity thinking, a clear brand strategy and pricing opportunities are closely linked.

Luxury brands need a story to create a myth, a unique emotion. Here is where creativity and strategy unite, because the story is so important that it has to be part of the brand strategy—expressed in everything the brand does, with clarity and high precision in visual and verbal storytelling.

When we ask luxury managers about the last time they made a rigorous audit of the customer journey, we often get a surprised look. In our experience, a customer journey audit and optimisation are crucial to create experiences that consumers value and come back for. The brand strategy needs to be reflected in each and every touchpoint a customer has with the brand. Every touchpoint matters. Every touchpoint should enhance the brand. Failing at only one point can destroy the entire experience.

Managing luxury is difficult. Luxury itself is elusive by nature. Managers face a context that changes faster than ever before and requires precise strategies and a comprehensive game plan. It is important to move organisations out of their comfort zone and challenge the status quo. Because the status quo no longer exists. Those who pursue past strategies will not survive. And those who think differently and implement strategy and change throughout the organisation have the opportunity not only to lead the change but also to be the driver of the future of luxury.

Autodesk makes software for people who make things.

If you’ve ever driven a high-performance car, admired a towering skyscraper, used a smartphone, or watched a great film, chances are you’ve experienced what millions of Autodesk customers are doing with our software.

So how does Autodesk innovate?

The Autodesk Innovation Genome is a research project and innovation methodology being developed at Autodesk/San Francisco. The goal of this research project is to develop a comprehensive innovation methodology comprised of new innovation techniques that are both powerful and practical. The purpose is to help people and organizations create real innovations that positively impact their organizations and the world.

Istanbul has become a second home to me. For the last 12 years I have hosted the largest marketing conference in the city each year, and worked with the business leaders of many Turkish companies – from Akbank to Aster Textile, Eczacibasi and Garanti, Koc and Pinar, Ulker and Sabanci. I have many friends trying to make sense of a city,  a country, which until recently was thriving.

Two weeks after a deadly terror attack at Atatürk International Airport in June 2016, armed forces within Turkey’s military unsuccessfully attempted to overthrow the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

In the tumultuous aftermath, an Erdoğan-led political crackdown hit all sectors of Turkish society, with sweeping arrests in government, education and the media. Months later on New Year’s Eve, there was an attack in one of Istanbul’s most prominent nightclubs, claimed by Isis. Amid these events, Turkey’s politics have been transformed by a conservative and religious shift.

Youthful image

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. Over the last decade, Istanbul has projected a modern and youthful image, with its own energetic startup scene. A highly-educated, ambitious and tech-savvy entrepreneurial class was making its mark. Fashion designers, media businesses and a buzzy art scene popped up. Members’ club Soho House even took notice and opened a site in Istanbul in 2015.

That energy has faded. Tourism slowed (2016 saw a 30% decline in visitors, the lowest number for nine years). The LGBT community has left in droves. Nightlife isn’t the free-spirited riot of fun it once was. Foreign investment in the first half of 2016 dropped to £3.6bn – half what it was the previous year.

Business takes a hit

For more than half a millennium, the Grand Bazaar flourished as Istanbul’s beating heart of trade. In 2016, 600 of its 3,600 shops shuttered. The Confederation of Turkish Tradesmen and Craftsmen estimates that roughly 8,000 companies closed that year across the city.

However, for others the show goes on. Kolektif House, a local co-working space, is a testament to that. Since launching in 2014, membership has grown from 740 to 1400 and it has increased its footprint by expanding onto two more floors above. It also plans to open another location in June.

Thinking imaginatively

Enis Hulli, an Istanbul-based venture partner at 500 Startups, the Silicon Valley seed fund organisation, believes the political instability has given birth to a new type of business founder; one that’s forced to think more imaginatively.

‘Creating a product in Istanbul is much cheaper than in San Francisco, Berlin or London,’ he says. ‘Entrepreneurs in Istanbul can sustain [themselves] much longer with lower amounts of capital, giving them a competitive advantage to be best positioned when the right time comes.’

In this city, where the politics have become conservative and the business landscape problematic, resilience and adaptation have become crucial traits.

Courier magazine recently profiled three businesses which have followed this playbook for success.

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Part 1: Protests, tear gas and cheap rent

Istanbul’s music scene has felt the strain of the political crackdowns. Gevrec Music Production has survived and thrived by carving out a niche.

Long before reuniting to form a company, friends Barış Baykan and Sabi Saltiel played together in a high-school band – Baykan on drums, Saltiel on guitar. Throughout the years, music has remained their passion. Baykan went on to work for Babajim Records in Istanbul as a sound engineer, while Saltiel attended Berklee College of Music in Boston and gigged with local bands in California.

The music makers

When contemplating where to set up a business, however, the cost and competitiveness of the US made Saltiel reconsider his homeland.

In Istanbul, he says, ‘there are more windows of opportunity for people like me’. So, in the summer of 2013, the year mass demonstrations engulfed Istanbul following government plans to turn a popular park into a shopping mall, the duo came together to launch their music production house, Gevrec (named after a sesame-covered ring-shaped pastry, a homage to their roots in Izmir). It records and produces albums for Turkish music artists.

Drift to the Asian side

The first order of business was finding a location for their recording studio. The two wanted to avoid the protest chaos in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu neighbourhood, then caught up in the Gezi Park demonstrations. They settled instead on Moda, on the cheaper Asian side of the city’s continental divide.

This didn’t stop them from getting tear gassed. During their first months, they were forced to leave the office early because of toxic smoke drifting in from nearby protests. Yet, while political violence continued on the European side of the city, a demographic shift in Gevrec’s area reaffirmed their choice of home. With artists moving in, Moda has transformed into what Beyoğlu once was: a hub for urban creatives.

Bans and cancellations

Baykan and Saltiel have had a tough time breaking into the music scene. Like many industries in Turkey, music is a tight-knit and local affair. Who you know is often more important than sheer talent, and word-of-mouth reigns supreme.

The political and security situation hasn’t helped Turkey’s music business. In 2013, the increasingly religious government banned alcohol advertising, cutting off a major revenue stream for the industry. Large, sponsor-heavy festivals such as Rock’n Coke have been cancelled ever since.

Risky bets

In a city that’s seen frequent terror attacks, the inability to ensure safety and security at concerts has been blamed for low turnouts and venue closures. The stream of international musicians visiting has dwindled. As a result, an already small industry has shrunk as producers avoid risk and spend money on safe bets like established pop stars.

Though it’s been difficult for Baykan and Saltiel to carve out a space for themselves, the economic situation has forced them to diversify, moving beyond music production into education and consulting. And whereas others in the industry are betting big on acts which command mammoth social media followings, Gevrec has focused on unknown, raw talent. Staying small and giving the business a personal touch has become its competitive advantage.

Artist diversity

Last year, perhaps as proof the approach works, the team landed a contract to record an album for Sertab Erener, one of Turkey’s most successful female singers. It propelled Gevrec into the mainstream. It’s since recorded an album for alternative singer-songwriter Mabel Matiz, who is openly gay.

This doesn’t exactly mesh with Turkey’s turn towards a more conservative society. For Baykan, the picture is more nuanced. ‘Throughout the history of this country there have been many instances of oppression. Following these periods it’s always the opposite… a forgiving time. We plan to be equipped for it as best as we can.’

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Part 2: Immodest growth

Turkish startup Modanisa has been called the ‘Net-a-Porter of the modest fashion industry’. It’s found success by understanding that Muslim fashion goes beyond black burkas.

By the end of 2015, £33bn was spent on ‘modest fashion’ around the globe, making it one of the fastest-growing sectors in retail. Yet, when e-commerce startup Modanisa launched in 2011, co-founders Kerim Türe and Lale Tüzün were told that selling women’s fashion on the internet was foolish and didn’t match the purchasing habits of Turkey’s conservative consumers.

Swimwear and abayas

Thankfully for Modanisa, the early naysayers were wrong. In less than seven years, the company has grown into one of the world’s largest e-commerce sites for Muslim women.

In 2016, it sold more than three million items, from swimwear to abayas (the traditional robe worn by some Muslim women), and shipped to 120 countries. Ten million people now visit the website each month to browse its catalogue of modest clothing.

Conservative expansion 

For Modanisa, success came quickly. Its first order was received just a few days after the website was set up. Three months later Ramadan orders poured in. By month five, Modanisa’s office became too small and it expanded from 50sq meters to 1250sq meters.

Though initially self-funded by the founders, the company’s growth has been fuelled by a series of multimillion-dollar investment rounds, which has led it to open a new depot and two bricks-and-mortar stores.

Global Muslim market

‘The expansive market gap in the retail industry for fashionable clothing tailored for Muslim women remains the driving force,’ explains Türe. ‘Before us there wasn’t even a segment called modest fashion,’ he claims. ‘Producers believed there was no need for it.’

That might have something to do with Turkey’s recent history of secularism.Following the military coup in 1980, the wearing of headscarves, burkas and hijab was banned from all educational and governmental institutes.

That has changed under Erdoğan. In 2007, his conservative Justice and Development Party allowed headscarf-wearing students to attend university for the first time. In 2013, this was extended to Parliament, courtrooms and other public service departments, excluding the military.

Fashion for headscarves

It’s difficult to determine how much of Modanisa’s growth is due to this change in society; critics claim that statistics on the number of women wearing headscarves have been inflated for political gain.

What’s undeniable is that under Erdoğan, attendance at religious schools has risen. The number of students in such schools was five times higher in 2016 than it was in 2012.

‘Our criteria is the market demand,’ Türe says. ‘Modest fashion is growing at this rate because it has been a neglected sector for years. It is beyond politics. So is Modanisa.’

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Part 3: An unlikely startup move

In a land famed for its barbers, an American living in the city is running his own venture trimming beards and cutting hair.

 

 

The barber is an iconic figure in Turkish culture and identity. It’s a skill that’s spread around the world as Turkish barbers have set up shop in far-flung cities, everywhere from Helsinki to Hull.

Istanbul is certainly not short of barbershops. Officially, there are more than 5,600 operating in the greater metropolitan area. Unofficially, countless others exist ‘off the books’.

Turkish men typically pledge themselves to a single barber. ‘Barber loyalty is a global thing. But I’ll say here in Turkey, [it] can be a bit more dramatic,’ says Brandon Patton, owner of Frontier Barber in Istanbul’s Bebek neighbourhood. ‘Some guys cite that the guilt they would feel by changing barbers would be too much for them to consider it.’

Patton, an American, arrived in Istanbul in 2010, staying for a year and a half before returning to New York to train as a barber. When he came back to Turkey to open his own place in 2016, he understood the risks of throwing his hat in the ring. Shipping in vintage 1930s New York-style barber chairs, Patton’s approach was to offer more than just a quick shave and cut; he lured in locals intrigued by his Brooklyn-esque ‘barber as lifestyle brand’, where conversations go beyond ‘give me a trim’.

Patton says starting a business as a foreigner and establishing an A.Ş., the Turkish version of a limited liability company, is surprisingly easier than one expects. ‘A little bit of paperwork, capital, and some help from a lawyer was all it took,’ he explains.

Frontier Barber was established just two months after the attempted coup. So far, it hasn’t affected the business. Life in Istanbul goes on as usual. ‘These last two years have obviously been tough politically and naturally that affects the way people go about their daily lives,’ he says. ‘When times get tough, people tend to revert to their comforts and old habits; staying within neighbourhoods they are comfortable with.’

For a barber in Turkey, that’s nothing but good news.

Extracts from Courier Magazine, with thanks..

Elon Musk could not stop smiling. As I sat wide awake in my Dubai hotel bedroom, 0245 local time, watching every moment of SpaceX’s launch spectacle live on YouTube, it initially seemed just another rocket taking off.  In 6 hours I would be on a big stage here, delivering a keynote about the world’s most inspiring, disruptive, remarkable innovators, and the leaders who shape them.

But then, the SpaceX launch became much more. I couldn’t switch off, I was wide awake, and soon I was recreating my keynote to be delivered in a few hours with a realtime case study, broadcast direct from space. It was the launch, the ambition, the technology, the leader, the storytelling.

The realisation that we were in the midst of a great story – a real event, but part of a bigger narrative, to reignite Musk’s mission to colonise Mars by 2025, and to get people excited again with everything about SpaceX, Tesla and more. This was storytelling, Musk-style, at its best.

The telling moment came as the rocket boosters disengaged, using their intelligent extraterrestrial navigation to return to earth in unison. That was remarkable. The launch of a Tesla Roadster into the orbit of Mars, however seemed more like fantasy, especially since it seemed to be driven by that guy who sang Get Lucky from Daft Punk. But it was real, and also part of the evolving Mars story.

Musk has always been a great storyteller. Yet his narrative is real, challenging and inspiring us to believe in future possibilities that seem fanciful and farfetched. But then he starts to deliver – Tesla now with a larger market cap than Ford, the Gigafactory, the Hyperloop, and SpaceX. Whilst you could call today’s mission a test launch. It was much more. It inspired investors, consumers, employees. And us normal folk too.

You might, of course, think of Musk as a showman. The multi billionaire, playing with space toys, spending his time talking to the media, and indulging his dreams. Think again. This is a leader who mostly shuns the limelight. He is happiest working amidst his engineering team (he labels himself Chief Designer, rather than CEO), urging them to constantly think bigger, and think different.

The launch of Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful ever space rocket, has certainly garnered plenty of reaction, from awe to some gentle ribbing. The space craft, designed by SpaceX, looking remarkably like 3 of their previous FalconNine crafts strapped together. It is more than double that of the world’s next most powerful rocket, the Delta IV Heavy, and able to a maximum of 64 tonnes in low-Earth orbit.

The launch generated a huge amount of interest online, and Musk shared regular updates with his 18.9m followers. Social media users waited with anticipation as the scheduled launch time approached. Some counted down as the rocket readied its 27 engines and three boosters and prepared to blast off from Cape Canaveral.

Musk tweeted and chatted, saying the challenges of developing the new rocket meant the chances of a successful first outing might be only 50-50. But the 70m vehicle lifted clear of its pad without incident to soar high over the Atlantic Ocean.

Many people were surprised at what the Falcon Heavy was taking into space. There were no astronauts or satellites on this flight. Instead, Musk decided to send his old cherry-red Tesla sports car with a space-suited mannequin strapped in the driver’s seat. The radio was also set to play a David Bowie soundtrack Life on Mars on a loop.

This was all a fabulous example of “future back” innovation, brand and leadership. Most of us create a vision, mission or ambition. And then start to work towards it. But you quickly get swamped by other priorities, limitations of capacity or resources, and inflexible mindsets.

“Future back” thinking jumps to the future, and then recalibrate priorities backwards. So if you start with a clear view of what it will be like 2025, you can then say what do you need to have done by 2022, 2020, 2018 in order to get there. Priorities change, and ambitions start to seem more possible. The brand becomes a future narrative, the story of where you are going, not where you have been. And similarly leadership is built on a belief in the chosen future and becoming the guide towards it.

As for Musk, the mission is still live …

His red Tesla Roadster is now locked into a perpetual orbit of Mars. It is currently driving/flying along at 11 km/s (7mi/s), 400 million km (250 million mi) from Earth … space junk that could be up there for a billion years … or an inspirational icon for what is possible, and for Elon Musk, what is probable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3niFzo5VLI

We love to converge to sameness.

We copy our peers, we average our data, we stereotype our culture.

Too few people dare to be different.

In today’s world you’re either average or extreme, boring or remarkable. And, all your life, everyone has been pushing you to fit in. All your life you’re told to keep your head down, work hard, don’t make waves and get it done. What rubbish. Here, in 10 easy steps, is Seth Godin, the guy who gave us the purple cow, suggest you can stand out, get noticed, make a difference:

1. Understand the urgency of the situation. Half-measures simply won’t do. The only way to grow is to abandon your strategy of doing what you did yesterday, but better. Commit.

2. Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it? If not, then you’re average, and average is for losers.