In today’s connected world, every business has changed how it works – how it communicates, its processes and projects, its speed and decision-making. Selling is not alien to this, both in its need to engage in new ways, but also in the opportunities to collaborate more closely, and add more value to clients.

Decision makers are more connected, more informed, and more susceptible to peer influence. Recent IDC research shows that 84% of B2B decisions start from a referral. Social media, in its many formats, therefore becomes a powerful tool in reach, connecting and influencing new and existing clients. IDC also found “social selling” could extend piplines by 18%, accelerate them by 28% and improve conversions by 15%). And in total, enhance sales by 40%.

The ability to know business contacts more intimately, by reviewing their profile on Linked-In, or reading their blogs and posts, or collaborating within online forums, means that relationships can be far more personal, meaningful and accessible. Similarly the development of online business platforms, from synchronisable schedules to operational processes, enable businesses to be far more integrated, connected and collaborative.

Companies as diverse as GE and AT&T, Accenture and IBM, Deloitte and UBS each offer great case studies of ways in which they have empowered their sales people to harness the power of new tools, to drive a more active and collaborative approach to selling, which then flows through to more profitable and enduring business relationships.

Financial sercices, in particular, have a significant opportunity to align more closely with clients, to learn from these related sectors, and even change the game by which it sells. The impact will range from building a thought-leading reputation in the market, targeting and engaging clients better and faster, working more actively with them to achieve their business goals, and driving business performance.

You could call it an “unfair advantage” …

In Lisbon this week I worked BNP Paribas’s senior relationship managers to explore:

  • The changing world of work … exploring how clients have changed the way they work – organiations are flat and fast, teams more dispersed, projects more dominant, and decisions more empowered. What else? What is most different?
  • Technologies disrupt how we sell … from tools like Crystal Knows and Salesforce Tracking, to GE’s thought leadership, IBM building personality in blogs, Deloitte in social and sharing, and Fedex’s ecosystem of solution partners.
  • Implications for the way we work … from push to pull, physical to integrated, planned to responsive, delivered to collaborative, transactional to relationship, anonymous to personal … more valuable and more profitable. What else?
  • How can we use technology to change our game? … from simple steps like Linked-in profiles and discussion forums, through to practical new platforms for sales, collaboration, innovation and growth.

Examples of companies using “social” to sell smarter:

GE: The success of GE’s social selling strategy is simple: don’t make it all about “you.” No one wants to read post after post about how amazing your company is and why corporations would be lucky to use your services. Content is key to fruitful social connections. GE’s Facebook and Twitter pages are dedicated to sharing the latest news in the world of technology and science. They also take the time to diversify their social networks. They have dedicated pages for aviation, mining, healthcare, transportation and more. On Twitter, they use hashtags to attract like-minded individuals to their social networks. At the Business Marketing Association’s 2014 conference, Linda Boff, Executive Director Global Brand Marketing at GE, cited that General Electric has found Instagram, Vine and Tumblr as platforms where the GE brand has found its voice by sharing innovative research and simple science experiments. Examples of GE’s effective social campaigns include #6SecondScience, #SpringBreakIt and #GravityDay on Tumblr and Vine, and their 197,000 follower Instagram account.

b2b-social-selling-ge

AT&T: When you think of social selling, you probably think about traditional networking on the main three – Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I’m here to tell you that blogging is also a huge part of a company’s overall social selling strategy. In 2011, a blogging sales strategy implemented by AT&T served the market with fresh business tech content. The most successful outlet for attracting prospects was AT&T’s B2B blog titled Networking Exchange. The content featured on the blog were about topics of high interest to tech-minded companies – topics like security resources, cloud computing and mobile business technologies. The blog is well-constructed and absolutely rich with links leading readers to their sales pages. Check out this case study about how AT&T used social (and specifically their blog) to renew a fading client to the tune of $47 million.

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CBRE: Commercial real estate firm CBRE is a leader in their industry, and they have the baked-in advantage of being a business that shows up spectacularly in photos. With the utilization of breathtaking photographs of inspiring buildings and stunning skylines across the world, CBRE grabs your attention immediately. Naturally this lends itself to an incredible Instagram page with world-class urban photography. Through social media, CBRE also expresses their worldly growth story and the growth of their industry by promoting posts on the shifting nature of the modern office.

b2b-social-selling-cbre

Further info

Report: Social Buying Meets Social Selling: How Trusted Networks Improve the Purchase Experience

Report: 2017 Trends and Tech Guide for B2B sales and marketing

Article: How Sander Biehn made $47 million from his B2B blog

Article: 10 Tools that will change how you manage sales and marketing

Article: The Case for Social Selling & How to be Successful

Ikigai (生き甲斐, pronounced “ick-ee-guy”) is a Japanese concept that means “a reason for being.”

Everyone, according to Japanese culture, has an ikigai. Finding it requires a deep and often lengthy search of self.

Okinawa

What if answering one question could improve people’s lives? Okinawa, a remote island to the south west of Japan, has an unusually large population of centenarians.

Okinawa is located in the famously called Blue Zone. Here people live way longer than the average Western life cycle, Okinawan have drive, purpose and a close-knit society. We endevaour to look in to what makes their lifestyle so admirable.

If it would be a simple solution, we would all live well over 100 years. Instead, the world is ridden with various diseases related to food, chemicals, pollution, and lifestyle. We are too busy to eat properly, and too caught up with work to do daily exercise. There isn’t enough time to cultivate friendships and relationships with family. Most modern cultures circle around achievements that are measurable in money, and recognition by society.

There is a place on Earth where people live longer than almost anywhere else on the Earth, a place called Okinawa.

The inhabitants of this island carry the secret to longevity and vitality. They live a long, happy and purposeful life. It is necessary to accentuate the word “purposeful”. Even at old age, people get out of bed in the morning with a purpose, a drive, and meaning. They all have clear and divided responsibilities that motivate them through their lives into old age.

Despite the tough and rural environment of the island,  and limited access to modern medicine and healthcare, Okinawans are healthier than our Western society. They don’t have cancer, heart disease, diabetes, they don’t struggle with mental issues such as dementia or depression. Also, Okinawan women live the longest on Earth.

Ikigai

One of their secrets is often said to be “ikigai”.

As this beautiful Nescafe ad puts it, ikigai means the reason for which you wake up in the morning:

So what’s your reason for getting up in the morning? What’s your motivation when you get to work each day? And your inspiration to do better, do more, and move forwards?

Ikigai comes from a country with one of the world’s oldest populations, the idea is becoming popular outside of Japan as a way to live longer and better.

While there is no direct English translation, ikigai is thought to combine the Japanese words ikiru, meaning “to live”, and kai, meaning “the realisation of what one hopes for”. Together these definitions create the concept of “a reason to live” or the idea of having a purpose in life.

Ikigai also has historic links: gai originates from the word kai, which means shell. These were considered very valuable during the Heian period (794 to 1185), according to Akihiro Hasegawa, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at Toyo Eiwa University, adding a sense of “value in living”.

To find this reason or purpose, experts recommend starting with four questions:

  • What do you love?
  • What are you good at?
  • What does the world need from you?
  • What can you get paid for?

Finding the answers and a balance between these four areas could be a route to ikigai for Westerners looking for a quick interpretation of this philosophy. But in Japan, ikigai is a slower process and often has nothing to do with work or income.

In a 2010 survey of 2,000 Japanese men and women, just 31% of participants cited work as their ikigai.

Gordon Matthews, professor of anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and author of What Makes Life Worth Living?: How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds, told the Telegraph that how people understand ikigai can, in fact, often be mapped to two other Japanese ideas – ittaikan and jiko jitsugen. Itaikkan refers to “a sense of oneness with, or commitment to, a group or role”, while jiko jitsugen relates more to self-realization.

Matthews says that ikigai will likely lead to a better life “because you will have something to live for”, but warns against viewing ikigai as a lifestyle choice: “Ikigai is not something grand or extraordinary. It’s something pretty matter-of-fact.”

According to Dan Buettner, an expert on Blue Zones, the areas of the world where people live longest, the concept of ikigai pervades the life of these islanders. Combined with a particular diet and support network of friends or “moai”, ikigai is helping people live longer on Okinawa as it gives them purpose, he says, who provides a karate master, fisherman and great-great-great-grandmother, all of whom are more than 100 years old, as examples.

But knowing what your ikigai is not enough – all of these people put their purpose into action, says Buettner. Researchers stress that ikigai can change with age. For anyone whose work is their reason for living, this will come as a relief as they approach retirement and begin the search for a new ikigai.

Okinawa

In Okinawa, people foster close and meaningful relationships with each other. Friends and family support each other through life and people are not left alone and unattended. The old support the young, and the young support the old, all living in a friendly and positive symbiosis. These social networks help to reduce stress while also provide a secure support in daily life, where people know they have others to count on when they are in any kind of need.

Most Okinawans consume a vegetable and tofu-based, lean, clean, and light diet. They eat nutritious, and low-calorie meals combined with various soy dishes. This diet helps them to stay healthy, and fit. Avoiding heavy meats, as well as fats, sugar and altogether processed food supports a fight against cancer, heart diseases, and also obesity. Metabolism boosting green tea is heavily included in the daily diet. They also consume lots of ginger, mugwort, various herbs, and chilies.

Besides eating light and healthy, Okinawan believe in the power of exercise. They build their daily rituals through walking, dancing, and gardening. They spend a substantial amount of time in the outside breathing in fresh air and enjoying the positive benefits of sunshine. With regular access to sunshine and exercise, they are healthier, with stronger bones, higher vitamin levels and in a brighter mood.

Life in Okinawa isn’t necessarily a walk in the park. Although I managed to paint a very bright and easy looking picture of it. It has a strangled, and dark past, that Okinawan manage to leave in the past where it belongs. They focus instead on the simple pleasures of the now.

What we take away from this culture, from one of the very few places located in the Blue Zone, is that life quality should not be measured but fortune and fame. Rather fostering quality of relationships, finding peace of mind in simple everyday acts, and living an activemeaningful life.

More articles:

30 years ago I started my first job, as a marketing executive, sitting in a ramped office block called Speedbird House, 5 minutes from Heathrow Airport. British Airways has just invested in a new generation of desktop computers that could measure and analyse its sales performance from 135 countries around the world. It was incredible data, and it fundamentally changed the way the company could work – fast and global, precision focused and realtime actions, although still ultimately about people.

Today, the world of work keeps changing. The “fourth industrial revolution” heralds an intimidating new generation of robots and AI-enabled machines, that challenge our human capabilities and comfort levels, in a similar way to which the steam engines and automated production lines did for previous generations.  I’ve been lucky to work and experience so many very different and contrasting industries, but I’ve generally found that whatever the nature of a business or organisation, they are rarely immune to change.

Change continues to accelerate: environmental pressures, population growth, massive advancements in technology, and significant shifts in the demographic of the workforce to name just a few. In step with these, people’s aspirations and desires for their work are also changing. Of course this presents challenges, but many organisations also see it as a wonderful opportunity to create positive change and to start to build purpose-driven organisations that prioritise people and planet alongside profit.

New Ways of Working

The B Team, the non-profit network of businesses who care about the future, have brought together over 30 businesses and 50 business leaders to expore what this future might look like – the challenges, but more importantly the opportunities to survive and thrive in this new world. The New Ways of Working report is a collective exploration into these changes.

Here are five things to take from the new report:

  • People will want to work with an organisation that has purpose. As Tim Brown (CEO and President of IDEO) observes, only organisations with a “reason for being” will be sustainable and successful in the future and attract the next generation of talent. A recent collaboration with BBH confirmed this – the new generation of people coming into the workforce want to work for businesses that are innovative, creative, fun and that are inspiring change.
  • People will expect lifelong growth. People are constantly curious, and keen to learn and develop their skills and knowledge. Technology has made learning available at the click of a button and that means we need to continue to develop new approaches to developing our people so that they can stay relevant and feel that they are growing.
  • We will have to help manage the ‘always on’ culture caused by technology – it’s good for them and it’s good for business. At Virgin Unite, for example, they’ve introduced unlimited leave, ‘better you’ days (which support personal development goals) and the Virgin Pulse programme to support employees to sustain their own health and wellness.
  • ‘Hybrid leaders’ will be in demand.These are leaders who can work collaboratively across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors and use business solutions to tackle the world’s social and environmental problems. At Unite, our team includes former consultants, lawyers, accountants, public servants and entrepreneurs, all of whom add diverse and innovative ideas and approaches to the mix.
  • The concept of a job for life won’t exist. Changing workforce expectations, the ability to use technology to perform more project / portfolio work and skills shortages in many industries have all transformed the jobs market and the way people approach their careers. This has all brought greater expectations of the ability to move between projects, organisations and roles and a radical shift in the traditional models of attracting and retaining talent.

Read New Ways of Working

We are live in an age of disruption, of relentless change and uncertainty. The scale of the challenges we face and the accelerating speed of innovation demands a new approach to innovation leadership, a new way of fostering counter-intuitive ideas, forcing improbable insights and opening minds to uncomfortable solutions.

At first glance, leadership’s goals don’t seem to line up with dictionary definitions of disruption:

disrupt: (verb dis·rupt \dis-ˈrəpt\) to cause (something) to be unable to continue in the normal way; to interrupt the normal progress or activity of (something)

Surely leaders should do the reverse, providing a steady hand on the tiller and guiding their teams to consistent and predictable victories–right? That’s been the formula for organizational success for decades, at any rate. Not any more. For all the buzzworthiness of the term “disruption,” the fact is that the competitive pressure to innovate and shake up established markets is too powerful for companies (and the people who lead them) to disregard. And that’s having ramifications in the day-to-day experiences of most workplaces. If their leaders don’t shake organizations from their slumber from within, they’ll struggle to compete in the wider world.

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Corporate graveyards are littered with examples of companies that woke up to smell the coffee a little too late–Blockbuster, Blackberry, and Kodak, to name but a few. That’s rarely ever the fault of employees; the impetus to think disruptively must come from the top.

As an ad for Babson College’s MBA program noted back in 2011–before going on to be widely recited throughout the business world–some 40% of Fortune 500 companies in 2000 no longer existed by 2010. That rate of extinction hasn’t let up. Leaders have to be continuously ready to challenge everything that they’ve held dear.

John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, famously said “disrupt or be disrupted“.

Still, disruptive leadership isn’t about change for the sake of change. It’s about integrating change into the modus operandi of the company – which, of course, is easier said than done. The truly disruptive leader doesn’t need to talk about disruption because it’s simply how they get things done.

In my book “Gamechangers” I categorise leaders as having either a disruptive or sustaining mindset, as the mental frame through which they approach business:

  • Distruptive mindset … they like change … they seek opportunities, they are visionary and proactive, strategic and intuitive, market and consumer-focused, assertive and empowering, they see failure as an adventure, and innovation as a route to future growth.
  • Sustaining mindset … they don’t like change … they seek perfection, they are focused and reactive, tactical and analytical, process and efficiency-focused, detailed and deliberate, they fear mistakes, and seek to optimise performance within the status quo.

Most managers have a sustaining mindset. They see change as an occasional discrete activity, before getting back to normal. In fact the difference is often symbolised by the use of the word “manager” who is head-down delivering today, and “leader” who is heads-up creating the future.

Faisal Hoque says in his new “Survive to Thrive – 27 Practices of Resilient Entrepreneurs, Innovators, And Leaders” that there are five ways the most dynamic leaders embrace disruption and radiate it through their entire organisations:

#1. THEY RELENTLESSLY PURSUE THE TRUTH

Not telling others what you can see with your own eyes is the first step towards an early grave. When the business environment shifts and the accustomed approaches stop working, the last thing any business needs is a leader who suggests everyone keep calm and carry on.

Disruptive leaders are always testing to make sure their companies’ strategies are still effective–and say so when they aren’t. The more rapidly changes take place, the more crucial it becomes for leaders to take all their employees with them on the journey. The truth sometimes hurts, but it’s often the shock of that truth that prods people into taking actions and making decisions they might not have contemplated otherwise.

#2. THEY GUIDE OTHERS THROUGH CHAOS

Leaders need to be comfortable with the reality that in the face of change, the future is often hazy. Then they need others to be equally comfortable with that. As a company enters uncharted waters, it can be daunting for everyone involved. This is where the old “steady hand on the tiller” idea of leadership still has some force–not to guide an organization along a familiar course during difficult times, but to keep the ship steady as it steers in a new direction.

A big piece of that is communication. Leaders need to cut through the press-release palaver about “exciting new opportunities” and explain in concrete, practical terms how the changes under way tie into the business’s objectives: What new moves is the company making, and how come? Disruptive leaders empathize with their teams and involve them in their thinking. Chaos with a final destination is somehow a little less chaotic, even if you can’t map out in advance every move that will take you there.

#3. THEY’RE DECISIVE

The guiding principle of a disruptive leader is decisiveness. Leading by consensus has its place in the business world, but you can’t focus-group your way to an effective new playbook when the landscape changes abruptly.

Even if some decisions involves the most basic of “gut feels,” disruptive leaders need to tell their teams precisely what they want, when, and why–then help them to make it happen. Waiting too long to weigh countervailing opinions can spell doom.

#4. THEY BREAK THE RULES AND WRITE NEW ONES — BUT ALWAYS EXPLAIN WHY

The word “normal” doesn’t exist in a disruptive leader’s vocabulary–once something has become normal, it’s probably obsolete. The market is constantly changing, and the aim is always to be at its forefront rather than floundering in its wake. Sometimes that means breaking the rules; indeed, disruptive leaders nurture a healthy skeptics of “best” practices.

Still, a willingness to break the rules isn’t the same as cheering lawlessness. Embracing disruption means there’s always a new normal, and for as long as it lasts, it’s up to leaders to communicate what it is. If employees don’t know the current rules of the game, the organization can’t play by them as a team.

#5. THEY THRIVE ON UNCERTAINTY

Leading disruptive innovation means getting used to incredible levels of uncertainty. You never know how something will work until you try it. Modifying your assumptions and adapting your plans depending on your results is the standard practice of the most effective disruptive leaders.

But while such leaders might be called visionaries, they don’t have a crystal ball. There’s a certain method to the mayhem of navigating continuous changes, and disruptive leaders know that the key to success lies in using the insights from experimenting in order to chart a new direction.

Innovate and iterate. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand what’s happened the first time your organization tries something new. If you keep your eyes and ears open, you’ll be better informed the second time. And who knows? By then things might have changed all over again.

Interviews

Dr David Ebsworth is Chairman of Verona Pharma 

What are some of the unique challenges that leaders today face, and how should they address them?

Resources are much more limited in my industry today than before. Regulations cover nearly everything and are changing constantly. Currency fluctuations have a massive impact on international businesses. These issues can be addressed by developing and following a long-term vision for the business and building the capability in the organization to understand the strategy, know each unit’s role in delivering this strategy, and setting up processes which enable action, with a clear understanding of each unit’s freedom to act.

What are the three or four factors that are most critical to managing as a disruptive leader? How do you address each one?

Having a clear vision of the future — Requires long term focus on the key factors to deliver. Challenging employees to be better than they think possible — Supporting rebels and people with the commitment to deliver. Forgiving mistakes and learning from them — Requires clear examples to be credible.

In a recent insigniam executive sentiment study, 87% of executives said that innovation was critical to their continued competitive advantage, yet only 15% felt their organizations were well prepared to deliver the requisite innovation. In your opinion, why is there such a disparity?

The speed of business is accelerating. Most organizations thrive on what they have done well in the past. This difference creates the issue. Few organizations support and reward innovation in a clear way.

Can you quickly share some of your leadership challenges and how you addressed them?

When I started in my new job, most people believed our most advanced development project was too late and too expensive to develop. I identified the key success factors with a cross-functional team approach and challenged them to deal with the issues. A year was cut from the time, and cost reduced significantly. As a result, a partnership deal was possible, which delivered significant short-term revenue.

What have you done to create the conditions for sustained innovation in your enterprise?

Not enough! More process is needed and the support of the true innovators should be clearer to the whole team.

Murial Penicaud is GM of Human Resources, Danone

Why should leadership disrupt business-as-usual?

For me, being disruptive is precisely the difference between leadership and management. A manager motivates and brings together the teams. A leader embodies a vision and transforms business. Both are important, but if you really want to transform — and it is essential for a company to be able to transform — you need leadership.

What does a disruptive leader look like?

A disruptive leader catalyzes collective energy. He/she knows how to listen and is able to detect, to interpret weak signals. He/she is open minded and curious of everything. But most importantly, a disruptive leader has his/her own style. Being a leader has to do with your personality, not with a defined role. There is no recipe to be a good leader, you have to be yourself. You have to accept who you are and draw from your inner resources to really impact. Being who you are also means you

have to know the difference between being popular and able to draw others with you because you embody a vision. If you want to be a leader, you have to distance yourself from being popular, because when you see and anticipate things, when you move fast, when you face big transformations, you can be quite alone sometimes. But it doesn’t mean you have to stay alone! Someone that stays alone is a pioneer, not a leader.

What are some of the unique challenges that leaders today face, and how should they address them?

The speed at which businesses transform makes information more and more complex, situations more and more interdependent. It makes information all the more difficult to capture and integrate. We can’t think and act anymore as we used to do, using forecasts and perspectives to anticipate the future. In fact, we don’t know what the world will be in 10 years. Therefore, a leader cannot be just a visionary, he has to be the one who makes the future possible. Another challenge is the change in our collective culture and ways of working. In a world where the networks have an increasing role and the new generations at work are constantly interconnected, the traditional “vertical” management style will not work anymore.

What aspect of leadership surprised you? Is there anything that’s harder than you thought it would be? Is anything easier?

One of the things I discovered is that not everyone wants to be a leader. It really has to do with who you want to be. On the other hand, the easy aspect of leadership is that you only have to be yourself. Being a leader has much more to do with who you are than with what you do. I remember a speech I did once, and I had a standing ovation at the end. All I had done was talk about my experience as a woman and a leader! In my generation, women still tried to imitate men’s leadership. I feel that nowadays the context has evolved. It is much more conducive for women to express who they are. By being yourself, you accept who the others are. One of the things I love is discussing with leaders from other cultures, you have a genuine respect on both sides for who the other is, what his or her background is.

What is a leadership lesson you had to learn the hard way?

That nothing can ever be taken for granted. This is something I learned some years ago when I was working in a French minister’s cabinet. I had set up a disruptive program aimed at combating illiteracy. It was innovative, and the results were extremely positive. I thought that this program, being both innovative and successful, would be extended even though the political majority had changed. But the program’s expense caused the new minister to suppress it. What I learned from that is that you always have to keep in mind that things can change, and that no improvement is guaranteed to last forever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tZ1_eaArgI

Research

Google’s Big Think project did a large-scale survey of business executives in both small and large companies to understand what they think drives disruptive innovation and who is doing it most effectively.

Respondents most frequently cited an ability to experiment and fail fast as one of the most important tools or practices to achieving such change, making it the only choice to be cited by a majority of participants. Staff autonomy and product feedback using “the crowd” were the second and third most cited requirements, painting a picture of short development cycles, ground-up innovation, and rapid readjustment.

Which three of the following tools or practices do you think are most important in creating disruptive innovation?

When looking at disruptive innovation practices in their own organizations, respondents said that they were executing well on criteria that they deemed important, such as frequent reviews of key metrics (50%), staff autonomy (47%), and experimentation (36%). Fewer respondents said that their organizations were effectively using practices such as renting assets on demand (21%) and prizes and gamification (10%).

Which four of the following CEOs of young companies do you think are most effective in achieving disruptive innovation?

Eight of the 10 most cited CEOs creating disruptive innovation had some involvement in media businesses even if their core business model lay elsewhere. Examples included Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Starbucks’ Howard Schultz. Elon Musk, though, was respondents’ most popular choice, being named by half of respondents as one of the most innovative leaders in younger companies.

Which four of the following chief executives of more established companies do you think are most effective in achieving disruptive innovation?

Disruptive innovation requires an understanding of emerging trends and technologies. The highest percentage (23%) of respondents identified advances in prototyping, additive manufacturing, and nanomaterials as having the most disruptive impact on business in the next three years. Sensors and the Internet of Things came in second, with 21% of respondents citing those technologies as having the potential to be the most disruptive. While crowd feedback was ranked highly by respondents as key to disruptive innovation in other questions, only 9% of respondents cited crowdfunding and crowdsourcing as key to driving future disruption.

Which of the following technologies do you think will have the most disruptive impact on business in the next three years?

Which of the following practices do you think is most important in creating effective leadership?

More respondents (30%) cited “acting with integrity” as the most important factor for effective leadership. However, respondents often cited other factors. One in four cited “embracing challenges and overcoming obstacles” — a trait consistent with the focus on experimenting and failing fast seen as key for disruptive innovation. In addition, 22% saw creating a positive work environment as the most effective trait.

Finally, everyday life

of Elon Musk … he spends most of his time with the engineering teams of Tesla and SpaceX, also working on next generation AI projects … and says to be entrepreneurial, leaders need to be rigorous, adds high value to consumers, and typically spend 80-100 hours a week working!

of Richard Branson …  on having fun … where Virgin staff have the tools to do what they need, they enjoy what they do, and then deliver a great service experience with a smile. So a leaders job is ultimately to make sure all the details are right … and “the company sings”.

of Brian Chesky ... the Airbnb founder on the reality of being responsible for millions of people staying in millions of other people’s homes – and the trust and safety issues  – and then the regulation challenges, technological maintenance – it’s about everyday real, practical things in the real world.

of Jack Ma … the Chinese billionaire founder of Alibaba, and former English teacher, puts empowerment as the number one priority of a leader … “its like a ship riding the oceans – making sure its strong enough, and you know where you are going” … and wanting “my people to be better than I am”.

of Jeff Bezos … he says “every day is day 1 at Amazon” in order to have the mindset of a start up, looking forwards not back, with a limitless opportunities not trivial repetition, ready to create the future … (otherwise it becomes day 2 “which is stagnation, irrelevance and decline, and death”)

Words can be incredibly powerful … they can be curious and distinctive, evocative and inspiring. They can tell a story, make people stop and think, and be incredibly memorable.

As a keynote speaker, I have learnt to value the power of individual words. Sometimes you can put one word up, and talk for 30 minutes about it, probably with more impact than a load of diagrams and weaker messages.

Business leaders have the same challenge – everybody hangs on to their words. Use less, and use them better. Think carefully about the choices you make. Don’t just talk. Consider the emotions, the behaviours, the impact you want to have.

Similarly as an author, words really matter. In particular for a book title. Why should anybody spend their time reading your 300 page narrative? The determining factor is usually the title, sitting on the shelf, but standing out in a glance.

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different” said T.S. Eliot.

So here are 10 great words to think about:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mavi means blue in Turkish, and has become one of Turkey’s most celebrated brands.

The brand has developed a cult following across the world,  selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of high end, slim fitting denim. Building a global luxury brand is tough, especially for an emerging market firm that doesn’t have the cache of European brand heritage, and are now worn by the likes of Kate Winslet and Chelsea Clinton.

Harvard Business School have just produced a fabulous in-depth case study of Mavi’s story, which starts like this:

“Sitting around the boardroom table in late December 2015, Mavi’s chief executive officer, Cuneyt Yavuz and global brand director Elif Akarlilar were finalizing their strategy for the next three years. Mavi, a Turkish apparel retailer, had sold more than seven million pairs of jeans in 2015, achieving sales of $419 million, up 20% from the previous year. Growth rates like these were becoming routine at Mavi; in fact, in the six years since becoming CEO, Yavuz had delivered a 30% compound annual growth rate as the company pursued aggressive store expansion which left it with 387 retail stores in Turkey and wholesale distribution in over 5,000 additional points of sale in 2015.

But the path to growth was getting more challenging, and the board needed to make some important decisions as Turkven, Mavi’s private equity partner, planned its options after seven years of investment. There were four growth levers Mavi could pull, but each involved selecting one growth path while neglecting another in the rapidly changing Turkish fashion market. Yavuz and Akarlilar realized that the choices in front of them would not only determine the company’s short-term growth trajectory, but also shape the longer term value of the Mavi brand.”

Take a flash back to this ad, which introduced the brand internationally:

The Mavi brand currently sells, directly or indirectly, in 34 countries and is distributed through over 5,500 points of sale, 392 branded stores, as well as luxury department stores and online partners such as Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, Simons, The Bay, David Jones, P&C, Amazon, Zappos.com and Zalando.com. Mavi has flagship stores in New York, Vancouver, Berlin, Frankfurt, Istanbul and Moscow, and sold over 7.5 million pieces of denim in 2016 alone.

Designing and producing products that are known for their superior quality, the brand has a strong reputation as a leader in the luxury denim market. Reinforcing the importance of product innovation, Mavi regularly partners with industry leaders and top fabric houses, such as the Indigo Move collaboration with designer Adriano Goldschmied in 2016. The brand has also had many of the most successful and sought after models as the face of their global seasonal campaigns, including Adriana Lima, Elsa Hosk, Barbara Palvin and Lucky Blue Smith.

Usain Bolt is one of the great icons of sport … Mohammed Ali is the only other worthy of calling himself “the greatest”, and similarly Bolt’s presence stretches far beyond the sporting arenas in which he has collected 9 Olympic Golds, and incredible world records at 100 and 200 metres.

When Bolt hangs up his golden spikes this week (made, as always, by Puma – and with the slogan Forever Fastest emblazoned on the sides), his fame and fortune is unlikely to decline. Indeed, with more time for media appearances and business projects, it could well grow.

Bolt, known as the fastest man in the world, has trademarked his name and his signature “Lightning Bolt” pose. He even has an emoji.

Ricky Simms manages Bolt (the man, and the brand) from his small office (Pace Sports above Simms Opticians, in my hometown of Teddington, England – although he also has an office in Monaco for tax benefits!).

Simms coordinates Team Bolt, a network of the sprinter’s best friends and experts who together ensure Bolt makes the most of his talent and fame, on the track and commercially. Gina Ford takes responsibility for the brand partnerships, school friend Nugget Walker looks after Bolt’s daily needs, and Norman Peart manages his finances. Coach Glen Mills is in charge on the track, whilst local PE teacher Everald Edwards is his masseur.

The $60m 9.58 second sprinter

Overall Bolt is worth over $60m. This year, it has been estimated that he will be the 32nd highest-earning athlete on the planet. Forbes’ latest celebrity rich list placed the sprinter at number 91.

To put that in context, he is the only track and field athlete to make the top 100 sports stars, and makes roughly 20 times more than the average sprinter. The available statistics tell a mixed story, and some sources suggest that it might even be much more than this: a full-time athlete in the United States earns around $15k a year, whilst those in Canada face an annual deficit of $12k; in which case Bolt is to the average athlete what Bill Gates is to my seventeen-year-old self with a summer job.

The winner of the annual Samsung Diamond League receives around $40k, which is a career-altering amount for most athletes, but just 1.24 per cent of Bolt’s average yearly takings; his earning power within his sport is unprecedented.

Despite the sport’s rapidly-increasing popularity and terrific excitement value, prize money in athletics is pretty insubstantial – unless you’re Usain Bolt.

The winner of an individual Diamond League race receives just under $10k – the culmination of months of work. Cristiano Ronaldo takes about four-and-a half hours to earn that much in wages alone. Bolt has managed this 23 times, and has won an overall Diamond League Race once: that’s about $250k so far.

A gold medal at the IAAF World Championships is worth around $55k, a silver $30k and a world record $90k (Usain Bolt doesn’t do bronze medals, and has only once deigned to pick up a silver). He has 11 golds, one silver, plus 2 world records, and two more as a relay team. That’s $900k at major championships (Jamaican athletes don’t receive prize money for Olympic or Commonwealth medals, unlike other nations).

On top of that, the sprinter can command huge appearance fees, given his headlining potential, reaching the dizzying heights of $320k. If he runs a typical non-championship 100 metres in 10 seconds, that’s $32k a second.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MHBxiOQLoo&sns=em

So what is the “business model” of the world’s greatest sprinter?

Est. annual income = $35m

Whilst most athletes’ earnings are based on race winnings, Bolt’s is much more diverse. For starters, an event organiser can transform their ticket sales my mention of Bolt’s name. Therefore an appearance fee is likely to be far in excess of the winner’s cheque.

His importance to the former cannot be overstated: Puma’s CEO, Jochen Zeitz, estimated Bolt’s marketing value at just over $300m a year. The German sportswear brand provides his largest pay cheque by some margin, and the athlete receives the astronomical sum of just under $10m a year for his troubles: more than the annual fees commanded by Maria Sharapova, Kobe Bryant or Cristiano Ronaldo from kit giant Nike.

Brands that Usain Bolt endorses include

  • Puma … his long-term kit sponsor is his main brand partner, worth $10m a year. Rather than just wearing the brand, collaborations include development of his own range of shoes and apparel. Indeed the brand has repositioned itself around his fun-loving informal and colourful Jamaican style, rather than the more technical emphasis of most sportswear brands.
  • Nissan … he loves his cars, and after his “triple triple” gold in Rio, Nissan presented him with the keys to a gold-painted top of the range GT-R.  He has often appeared at the start of global track meets standing in a Nissan car (even when the meet is sponsored by rival brands), driven round the 400m track to huge adulation.
  • Hublot … the luxury Swiss watch brand seeks to differentiate itself through “fusion” concepts – fusing classic and modern, tech and human. Whilst you won’t see him racing with the chunky Jamaican-yellow gold King Power UB model, you will see it in the glossiest lifestyle magazines, and selling for $18,000 each.
  • Visa … the payments brand wanting to articulate its new brand proposition, of helping money to flow. How to tell the story? Call Usain, who got the idea instantly, flow being a keyword of his coach, Glen Mills, when perfecting his sprinting technique. The choice of brand is also important, finding truly global brands, where there is real shared meaning. $750k.
  • Virgin Media … Richard Branson also had only one person in mind when he wanted to communicate that his cable brand was the fastest around. Rather than talk about fibre optics and gigabytes per second, it was far simpler to coin the phrase “superfast” accompanied by Bolt, with a little humour too. $2.5m.
  • Gatorade … $3m a year (plus a bonus every time he’s pictured drinking it), with a drink named after him, and saying “We have an incredible roster of great athletes who are each unique in their own way, but Usain’s joyful personality paired with his overall dominance in a sport most people can relate to, results in an athlete who provides brands like Gatorade with true global reach.”
  • ANA … Japan absolutely loves its sporting stars, and this sponsor
  • Gibson … music matters to Bolt, and the Trainer TH100 wireless headphones were developed with him to ensure you get the best sound quality even when doing the most physical activity.
  • Enertor … shoe insoles, particularly relevant because he has one leg longer than the other
  • Regupol … Bolt’s blue running track at his Racers Track Club in Jamaica is made by this German sports facilities company
  • Digicel … $100k from Jamaica’s mobile phone company, one of his longest term sponsors.
  • Kinder … bite into a Kinder Joy chocolate egg and you could be surprised by a mini Bolt inside. Whilst Bolt is famous for his love of chicken (he trusts a KFC bucket wherever he travels), this is his only sponsored food brand.
  • Mumm champagne … to celebrate!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b03jWW70kc

Est. annual outgoings = $22m 

Bolt is famous for his partying lifestyle, when not in full training. Sean Paul lives down the road from him, and he is frequently found in the DJ booth a local club into the early hours. And whilst music and fast cars are his big loves, he spends most on charitable donations, plus some big investments for the future:

  • Nitro Athletics … he is a major investor in the new athletics team concept that was first unveiled in Australia over the winter, and in which Bolt competed. As athletics struggles to engage with younger audiences, Nitro has been hailed as a welcome innovation for the sport’s format.
  • Champion Shave … Bolt recently invested over $10m in this new start up business, the first example of real venture capitalism from the fastest man. With the likes of Dollar Shave Club valued at $1bn, then it could be a smart move, if he continues to support its growth
  • William Knibb High School … In 2015, Bolt gave $1.3m to his former high school along with soccer and cricket gear. He’s provided the school with track and field equipment since he signed with Puma in 2002.
  • Sherwood community … Bolt opened a multi-sport playing field in his local community on Jamaica, raised funds for pediatric cardiac surgeries and partnered with Samsung to provide photography workshops to students.
  • Local health centre … He paid for a $4 million renovation to a local health center using the proceeds from a party he threw to celebrate breaking the 100m world record.

Whilst Bolt dreams of a call from Jose Morinho, asking him to join the Manchester United squad, far more likely is entertainment (music and gaming, as well as the inevitable TV shows, books and interviews) and fashion partnerships (most likely a more significant partnership with Puma, similarly to Nike’s link with Michael Jordan).

Finally it’s worth reflecting on the brand itself. Whilst we like to associate logos with brands, most people are probably not even aware of the Usain Bolt brand’s official logo (there is one, but rarely used).

Instead, we have an enduring icon (“Forever Fastest” even in retirement), an incredible personality, a distinctive attitude, with out-of-this-world performances. These are the attributes which sponsors, and millions of fans across the world want to associate themselves with.

Brands as we have talked about many times, are the intangible qualities that people connect with, that emotionally engage and inspire them to greatest too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU4JqfAnOmA

 

Last week, Indian billionaire and founder of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani launched the Jio Phone. An (almost) free smartphone for the hundreds of millions of aspirational Indians who he serves, and a radical rethinking of the telecoms business model.

The FirstPost newspaper described it like this: “With Reliance Jio Phone, Mukesh Ambani is doing for India’s poor what Steve Jobs did for America’s rich”

It continued, saying that the pricing of a close-to-free device, free-voice and highly affordable data plan in the world’s fastest growing major economy and the second most populous nation puts Reliance Industries in a historic league going beyond profit and shareholder value.

Somewhere up there, the late founder of Reliance, Dhirubhai Ambani, must be smiling. The story goes that one key advice that he gave to Mukesh before his passing in 2002 was to keep at least 20 percent of India’s population engaged for RIL to sustain the high growth it was delivering to its shareholders. And the bottom of the telecom pyramid is making it happen for Mukesh.

Writing in “A Million Mutinies Now,” Nobel laureate V S Naipaul discussed how the late Dhirubhai brought clothing to India’s millions by betting on polyester that “lasts and lasts and lasts.”

Dewang Mehta, the late president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) spoke of how India’s basic needs (food, clothing and shelter) had expanded to become “Roti, Kapda, Makan, Bijli aur Bandwidth.”

In the generational transition of RIL, the company is now shifting from kapda (clothing) to bandwidth (data), having plumbed in the middle of the Bay of Bengal seas to dig for oil that approximates for Bijli (electricity) as an energy source. If you are still measuring RIL’s petroleum refining margins to see if it is a winner, you are missing the point on the future.

If you want RIL’s dramatised unveiling of the Jio Phone to shareholders and the country in one sentence it is this: What Steve Jobs did for America’s rich, Mukesh Ambani is doing for India’s poor.

Nokia ushered in the smartphone. BlackBerry made it corporate. Jobs-led Apple changed the ecosystem with a platform that made third-party developers drive the device through numerous services. South Korea’s Samsung and China’s Xiaomi and Huwaei made it all affordable to Asians. Mukesh Ambani is now bundling, in his words, “connectivity, data affordability and device affordability” together with price plans that woo the bottom of the pyramid in terms they can relate to easily.

Commentators will no doubt calculate interest rates and hidden pricing in the 3-year, Rs 1,500 refundable deposit that the Jio Phone entails. But the real deal is the back-end where RIL is quietly becoming a media company to buttress its hold on e-commerce through Reliance Retail and how it will make bankers, investors and overseas bond markets respond to the plan.

Now, with 100 million paying customers who will pay anything between Rs 153 and Rs 309 a month in most cases, if you take a back-of-the-envelope figure of Rs 250 for 100 million customers, RIL will get revenues of Rs 2,500 crore a month, not counting revenues from synergistic aligned businesses such as content and retail. That kind of cash flow would make it easy for RIL to raise loans in international markets at cheap rates. Watch this space.

The problem? Think regulation. Think quality of service.

The sweet spot for Mukesh Ambani is that unlike those who rushed in to build 2G networks, he has not splurged on spectrum and is betting on a complex bundling of services to build profits. He has also gained from a whole range of apps and services that have hit the markets over the past decades for him to simply leapfrog into the bundling game.

Here is an extract from India Today, 28 October 2017:

The JioPhone, a 4G LTE (VoLTE) feature phone that effectively costs Rs 0, is real after all. If that wasn’t enough, the JioPhone is also a good 4G LTE (VoLTE) feature phone, for what it’s worth. Next to nothing. I have been using the JioPhone for a couple of days now and although a full review will take some time, my first impressions about RIL’s ‘smart’ feature phone have been mostly positive. For the uninitiated, the JioPhone is a first-of-its-kind feature phone that supports 4G LTE (VoLTE), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC and GPS, as also a host of entertainment apps and services, that when bundled together with a Jio SIM card should effectively cost the end user, Rs 0. Terms and conditions apply.

No wonder, the JioPhone is off to a blazing start in the country. The JioPhone that went on pre-order on August 24 was able to amass as many as 60 lakh pre-orders in one day before the whole process was halted because well, too many people apparently wanted to join the bandwagon, at the same time. RIL also managed to register an additional 10 million expressions of interest for the JioPhone after the bookings closed.

Sources have confirmed to India Today Tech that Reliance Retail Limited (RRL) — the entity responsible for selling RIL’s Lyf-branded phones like the JioPhone — booked more than 60 lakh JioPhones within a day of opening of booking on August 24.The bookings were stopped on August 26 both online and offline as they were much more than what the company expected. This may also be the reason the delivery date of the JioPhone has been pushed further.

There were reports that RIL may start shipping the JioPhones sometime in early September, but, the same was then pushed to start from September 21 only to be pushed furthermore. As of now, RIL has reportedly started shipping the phones, which means some have got it, others will get it soon enough. The demand for the JioPhone — in the initial run — has been so large that the company has decided to meet them first before starting the second round of pre-orders.

Decoding the JioPhone

The JioPhone is a feature phone, but, it is smarter than other feature phones in the market right now. For one, it is 4G LTE and VoLTE-ready which means that it has the capability to become a user’s full-fledged internet device, much like a smartphone. Jio, being a 4G-only network, requires such a phone, after all.

Qualcomm and Spreadtrum have independently confirmed that RIL’s 4G capable feature phone will have two versions. While one batch will be powered by a Snapdragon 205 SoC, a processor Qualcomm has made specifically for ultra-affordable 4G VoLTE phones, the other batch will come with an unspecified Spreadtrum-based processor on the inside. The one that I have been using is based on a Qualcomm 205 SoC clubbed with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage which is further expandable by up to 128GB via a micro-SD card slot. The software inside is a custom fork of Firefox OS — called KaiOS — with features like voice search/virtual assistant built-in.

The JioPhone has an all-plastic body with a T9 keypad on-board and support for as many as 22 Indian languages.The home button in the center besides helping in navigation, also serves as a dedicated shortcut for firing up the voice assistant. The JioPhone comes with a 2.4-inch QVGA TFT colour screen and NFC support for secure mobile payments (something that will be pushed out later via a firmware update).

The JioPhone, moreover, comes with a 2-megapixel rear facing camera and a VGA front camera. It is further backed by a 2,000mAh battery and uses a micro-USB port for charging and data-syncing purposes.

What’s most important for the majority of potential buyers out there is the fact that they will be able to browse the Internet and make video calls using the JioPhone.

Points to remember:

— First and foremost, the JioPhone is exclusively a contract-based feature phone which means that it will be locked to a Jio SIM for all its primary requirements. Simply put, you’ll have to have an activated Jio 4G SIM running at all times in order to use the JioPhone. Such contract-based phones aren’t new in India, but, they came, they saw and they failed long time ago. It’s been a long time that India has seen a full-fledged contract-based phone. But of course, the JioPhone changes all that. For better or for worse is yet to be seen. To that effect, the JioPhone is a single-SIM phone that supports a micro Jio 4G SIM card.

— The biggest drawback, in the case of the JioPhone in this increasingly connected world, is that the feature phone doesn’t support apps like WhatsApp and Facebook, for now. This could be a deal breaker for many. Those looking to use Facebook can however use the phone’s in-built browser to access their social media account. The in-built browser supports a number of search engines: Yahoo, Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo that can be manually enabled from settings. The in-built browser is also capable of giving search suggestions. Moreover, the JioPhone also supports do not track feature so websites and apps won’t track users’ behaviour while using them.

— The JioPhone comes with an in-built virtual assistant that can be used for voice search and fire up relevant apps, including calling and texting people. It’s a bit slow, but, the fact that a feature phone has this functionality is in itself quite a big deal, to say the least.

— The JioPhone’s call-book not only supports saving contacts from SIM, but also from Gmail and Outlook, which is particularly handy for tech-savy individuals who like to save them on the cloud.

— The JioPhone doesn’t have a dedicated app store for now. But it comes pre-bundled with Jio’s apps: JioCinema, JioMessaging, JioTV, JioMusic, JioMoney, JioExpress and JioVideocall. There’s also an app called JioGames that lets you play a couple of odd games or two on the go.

— Not all, but most of the Jio apps that the JioPhone ships with will be able to run on Wi-Fi which means if you have a steady connection at home or elsewhere, you can use that to view its host of services rather than exhausting your data. The JioPhone although it supports Wi-Fi can’t function as a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Is it free or is it not?

Reliance Jio plans to cover 99 per cent of India’s population in the coming years, and it plans on doing that by opening as many as 10,000 offices and 10 lakh outlets for physical distribution of its services, including devices like the JioPhone. “It took 25 years for competitors to build their 2G network, but, Jio will achieve its targeted 4G reach in just 3 years,” Mukesh Ambani had said while announcing the JioPhone.

The company initially set out to grab customer base by offering cheap Lyf-branded smartphones, offering data and voice calling for free. Since then, it has gone on to (also) charge its customers, and a “majority of free subscribers have migrated to paid subscription with 100 million paying customers now,” according to the company.

But while the Lyf smartphones can be used in isolation with other SIM cards, the JioPhone will not be sold in isolation. The JioPhone is a contract-based phone that will be bundled with a Jio plan. This is why the JioPhone is a single-SIM phone that will be locked to Jio for all intents and purposes.

The company has, for the time being, launched a special Rs 153 plan to go along with the JioPhone that will offer free voice and SMS, unlimited data — with an FUP of 512MB per day — and subscription for Jio apps like Jio Music, Jio Cinema, Jio TV and others. The biggest deal about the JioPhone is the fact that it supports most Jio apps just like a smartphone, and it is able to run these apps at 4G speeds.

Also, the company has launched a new accessory — JioPhone TV cable — to mirror a user’s Jio phone content on a TV at Rs 309 per month.

The JioPhone may technically or effectively be available for free, but there’s a catch, although whether that is good or bad will be completely subjective. Buyers will have to shell out a one time refundable security deposit of Rs 1,500 which will be refundable only after a period of 36 months. RIL specifically notes that, in order to be eligible for a cash-back of Rs 1,500, users will have to return the phone to the telecom operator after three years. The initial batch of JioPhones are being imported from China with RIL planning to make them in India towards the end of the year should there be great demand.

In order to get the JioPhone at an effective price of Rs 0 or free, here’s the total amount that you’ll have to shell out:

Refundable security deposit: Rs 1,500

Jio 4G recharge (for three years): Rs 153 per month or more:

Cashback: Rs 1,500

Total charge incurred: Rs 5,508

Which means, essentially you’ll be paying for just the Jio 4G tariff plan should you be looking for the cashback. But then you’ll also have to return the JioPhone to RIL after three years. If not, the total charge incurred for the same period will be Rs 7,008.

Markets of relentless change, exponential technologies, social and political uncertainty, challenge every business. Ideas can change the world, but making sense of this change, and making new strategies happen is not easy. In fact, everything you learn’t at business school has probably changed.

That’s why, even the busiest CEO, the most qualified and experienced leader, still needs to take time out to think, to make new connections, and to explore “where next” and “how better.”

Thinkers50 ranks all of the world’s top business thinkers – academics, leaders, authors, consultants – based on the power of their ideas (how distinctive, relevant, useful and contagious it is). I’ve decoded all of these ideas, brought them together into themes, and made them practical for you to apply in your business.

So imagine listening to the top business gurus, reading all the best books, going to all the elite business schools, and getting the best of the best … all in one day … what could be a better use of you time?

Sign up now for The 50 Best Ideas for Business Leaders in One Inspiring Day

I will be your host, curator and facilitator, your “Ideas DJ”!

Here are a few teasers to get you started … some of the best known ideas in business right now (and we’ll be exploring many others which are less well known, but just as useful!):

“Design Thinking” … one of the buzzwords of today’s business, coined by David Kelley at IDEO to capture his deep dives process of gaining deeper insight into customer’s challenges and opportunities, and rapidly turning these insights into practical ideas and prototypes which can then be much more tangibly shaped further. Read more about Design Thinking.

“Disruptive Innovation” … perhaps one of the most overused words thrown around. Harvard’s Clayton Christensen interprets it in a very specific way, about how a new good-enough technology can displace an existing over-engineered one. However it can have many other definitions too, Jean Marie Dru focuses on how a radical new idea to create a mindset step-change in markets. Read more on Disruptive Innovation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbPiAzzGap0&t=35s

“Blue Ocean Strategy” … one of the most commercialised terms, coined by Insead’s Renee Mauborge and Chan Kim. In simple terms “blue oceans” are the uncontested market spaces – for example, an unserved customer segment, a new application and need, or a redefined space – as opposed to the existing “red oceans” which are fought over by most competitors.

“Reverse Innovation” … sometimes known as “trickle-up innovation” is an innovation seen or used first in the developing world, before spreading to the industrialized world. Vijay Govindarajan wrote a book on it, and worked with GE to apply the principle. One frequent example is Godrej’s battery-operated fridge, which is cold enough to allow people to store fresh food and drink for a short time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=menxnX1E4XE

“Business Model” … explains how the business creates, delivers and captures value. Examples of business model innovations include Xerox’s copier’s which were leased rather than sold, Southwest Airline’s low cost model, and Netflix’s subscription to unlimited movies. Most commonly used is the one-page canvas which articulates all of this in one diagram, popularised by Alex Osterwalder and others. Read more on Business Models.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJZpMb8QE6g

“Viral Communication” … social media has popularised the notion of things going viral, be it an inspiring article or crazy gif, it can spread quickly. Of course, there have always been fashion trends to catchy pop songs that spread contagiously, whether through word of mouth or tribal behaviour. Jonah Berger added science to the concept explained who spreads and the structure of ideas that spread fastest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twh5Dukvrw8&t=6s

“Level 5 Leadership” … Jim Collin’s wrote the bestseller Good to Great which includes this concept,  about leaders who are humble, but driven to do what’s best for the company. It champions humility and engagement rather than command and control. Leadership in a digital age requires new approaches, to engage diverse people in new ways, to champion ideas-driven growth rather than operational efficiency.

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

“Emotional Intelligence” … we all know this one, and the common phrase “EQ beats IQ”, meaning its how you get one with people that matters more than how clever you are. Daniel Goldman described it as the capability of individuals to recognise their own and other people’s emotions, to discern between different feelings, and manage emotions to adapt to environments or achieve your goal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dk-sSW4QXI&t=8s

We’ll also be learning directly from some of the world’s top business gurus (including a run-down of the Thinkers50 global ranking), and about their new ideas – making them clear and practical for you:

Erin Meyer … the American-born, Paris-loving, Insead professor has become a global guru on how cultures work together. Her recent book The Culture Map gives us a fascinating insight into how different cultures get along – both inside business, and in markets. Americans with Germans? British and Japanese? The implications are huge – how to build global teams, how to do business around the world, and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vU_KumJMCw

Dan Pink … says we’re all in sales now. But sales is not what it used to be. When sellers are in command, and information is accessible by all, then we sell by being more human and more yourself. In his book DRIVE he illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace, and how to build our personal brand for more effective relationships, leadership and happiness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aKgPZd3I_4

Erica Dhawan … on the power of connected intelligence. In her book Getting Things Done she focuses on harnessing knowledge and networks to engage with people in better ways – the shift from quantity to quality, how we use knowledge and human capital, to embrace diversity and the power of togetherness – and the there types of people  – the thinkers, the idea enablers, and the connection executors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8dtteQo8eo&t=6s

Don Tapscott … the Canadian guru, author of Wikinomics, explores the potential of networks. Networks have the ability to connect people in exponential ways, to share ideas, to mobilise communities and deliver value in new ways. From blockchain that is set to revolutionise transactional processes, to challenging nation states, Tapscott demonstrates the value of networks is proportional to the square of their nodes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBKY3FQEp7o&t=17s

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez … the Spanish guru, who grew up in the America, now lives in Belgium and leads the project office of GSK’s vaccines business has a passion for projects. He says that, as business focuses on relentless change and innovation, organisations are more about projects than functions, continually developing and delivering newness, and leaders will become the ultimate project managers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3peGiQvnxw&t=8s

Martin Lindstrom … the Danish brand guru, who cut his teeth in Lego, and now hosts American TV shows explaining brands to consumers is fascinated by what and how we buy. In the future, he says, you’ll subscribe to brands the same way you currently subscribe to Netflix. Martin is also famous for his concept of Small Data, by which he means the small insights that when addressed can have big impact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAsJ-VRJy9Q

These are just a few of the thinkers and ideas that we will explore. How can you apply them to your business? Which ones matter most to your future?

Sign up now for The 50 Best Ideas for Business Leaders in One Inspiring Day when I will reveal all 50 of the best ideas, and the people behind them. There’s also a practical workbook to capture these ideas, apply them to your business, and develop your personal plan for implementation.

 

In most markets, most products and services have evolved, through stretch and challenge, to be pretty good, even great. Most consumers are satisfied with most of what they buy (if they don’t, they quickly complain). A high-quality product, an everything-good service experience, can end up getting 3 out of 5 on the net promoter (feedback) score. Because it’s normal. Expected. Indeed the majority of products of services have many similarities. Whether its a mid-size family car, a new laptop computer, an airline’s business class seat, or a meal in a thai restaurant … they are all basically the same. Points of differentiation are small, and usual cosmetic. Most are good, even very good. But similar.

At the same time, most companies still treat huge markets in a very similar way. They still no quantitative research that seeks to find the average solution for the average person. Through their averaging-out, they eliminate any insight into what individuals want in more extreme or unusual ways, and they find the mid-point. The only problem is, nobody is actually at the midpoint. Nobody is average, and few people have average needs wanting average solutions.

Technology has eliminated averageness.

Online platforms have enabled consumers to access the “long tail” within any market … a huge selection of options, each of them relatively small – but at the same time, much more different –  unique, customised or even exotic.  Take music for example. In the past, everybody was essentially forced to like a similar kind of music – what was in the record store, or played on the radio, and the hit-parade rankings were based on overall average sales. Now the “long tail” of music that can be easily accessed by Spotify or iTunes, is a vast collection of eclectic, weird, diverse music which different types of people like. It’s all there. Everybody can be different.

Personalisation of every kind of product or service, increasingly responds to the diversity of real needs which we each have. From personalised jeans from Levi’s to personalised fragrances from ScentTrunk, personalised greetings cards from Moonpig to personalised flights by Surfair. The ability to harness modular delivery processes, to predict or respond to individual needs, and then to offer something unique for each person, is transforming markets, adding value to once average products and services, and delighting the customers who are served.

Take this a step further, and I actually love something that is surprisingly different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGtz_e6nE9U

Hunting around a craft market recently, I came across some incredible cushions recently. Incredible vibrant designs, big and usually shaped, and made by a local craftsman too. Going out for dinner, I went to a restaurant that had the most unusual way of describing and presenting its food. When I’m on vacation, I love browsing around the supermarkets of foreign lands because everything is different. What happens is that we become immune to the ordinary, and we want something more. We don’t want average. Even if its good, even great. An we don’t want to be treated as averages. We are individual, unique.

Extraordinary is what matters.

A recent Euromonitor report focused on this “new normal”. It proposes that extraordinary consumers fall into “atypical” consumer categories regarding height, security, weight, physical ability, dominant hand, music taste and sound experience or food tolerance. These subsets are now finding a voice and calling for more buying choices and solutions-based design. Extraordinary consumers are now more outspoken when their needs are underserved, in areas like travel, hotel accommodation, furniture design and medical care as well as fashion. It transpires that these needs are also less niche and more mainstream. Everybody wants to be individual, different, special. And its easy, because we are.

What brands and businesses need to do, is have the confidence to be less similar. More extraordinary.

Download the Euromonitor report Global Economies and Consumers in 2017