Hungerstation: Leading the Future

October 26, 2023 at IE Business School (2 Days)

Incredible technologies and geopolitical shifts, complex markets and stagnating growth, demanding customers and disruptive entrepreneurs, environmental crisis and social distrust, unexpected shocks and uncertain futures.

How do you make sense of today’s rapidly changing world? How will you succeed in tomorrow’s world?

We explore how businesses can survive and thrive, and move forwards to create a better future. How to reimagine strategy, to reinvent markets, to reenergise people. We consider what it means to combine meaningful purpose with superior profits, intelligent technologies with creative people, radical innovation with sustainable impact.

The old codes of business don’t work anymore.

The most innovative companies – from Amazon and Bytedance, to Coupang and Deepmind – succeed with new codes. So what are the new ideas to win in a fast and dynamic world of Asian renaissance, entrepreneurial supremacy, social conscience and smarter machines?

We learn from the innovative strategies of incredible companies – Alibaba and Amazon, Biontech and BlackRock, Narayana and Netflix, Patagonia and PingAn, Spotify and Supercell, and many more.

What can you learn from Jio’s revolution from petrochemicals to phones, and DBS’s transformation of banking? How can you be inspired by courageous leaders like 23andMe’s Anne Wojcicki, Haier’s Zhang Ruimin and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser?

Hungerstation: Leading the future

In KSA, the $60 billon food market is growing, but also changing, rapidly. A young marketplace drives demand for new types of foods, delivered in more convenient ways. Looking around the world, Meituan Dianping has reimagined itself from food to flowers, from delivery business to data company. The Indian super-app Jio has grown to become the dominant brand of a billion people in just 5 years, while in Latin America, Rappi’s delivery system continues to diversify and grow across sectors and geographies.

How do we make sense of today’s rapidly changing markets? What can you learn from the most innovative companies, in every sector? How can you harness the imagination and resources of Hungerstation to reach new audiences, with new services, better and faster? What does it take to innovate and transform a business? How will you be a “performer-transformer” leader?

Session 1: Pioneering Futures.

  • Shaping the future you seek – more change in the next 10 years, tan the last 250 years.
  • Every market is shaken up – exploring the S curves, when and how to change.
  • Value creation in a changing world, from energy to finance, healthcare to retail.
  • Jio and Grab, reinventing life in India and Singapore.
  • Notpla, addressing the plastic crisis.

Session 2: Embracing Megatrends.

  • Exploring the 6 megatrends – applied to our local markets – the issues and opportunities
  • Growth and risks, Asia to AI, GenZ to gene-editing, sustainability and superapps
  • Letting go of the past – exploring your future potential.
  • Ping An, transformation without limits.
  • Impossible, an alternative future of food.

Session 3: Future Choices

  • Exploring uncertain futures – using scenarios to make better choices
  • Making better choices – being bolder, managing uncertainties
  • Developing agile roadmaps to the future
  • Rappi, the South American superapp
  • Danone, shift from food to health.

Session 4. Creating Moonshots.

  • Think 10 times better, not just 10% better – reimagining your business future.
  • Guided by a higher purpose – thinking why, before how, before what.
  • Defining your visión – reframing your space – what ́s your future story.
  • Google, solving bigger problems better.
  • Lilium, the future of mobility?

Session 5. Future Back.

  • Strategies start from the future back –unlimited by today.
  • Linking your future story to your business strategy and value potential.
  • Maintaining Agility and unlocking your growth engines.
  • Haier, reinventing the smart home.
  • Bolt, now is the time to change, to innovate, to grow.

Session 6. Innovating Everything.

  • Innovating every aspect of your business – from business models to new services.
  • Changing the game – sustainability as your catalyst – digital as your enabler.
  • Developing new business models, for today and tomorrow.
  • DBS, the world’s most innovative bank.
  • Amazon, simplicity and magic drive innovation.

Session 7. Transforming Business.

  • What is transformation? – a roadmap for connecting, relentless change.
  • Exploit the present, explore the future – building an “invincible” future portfolio
  • Transforming organisations – future work, empowered culture, extreme teams
  • Fujifilm, developing transformational strategies for relentless change.
  • Crocs, how an old brand was reinvented around consumer communities.

Session 8. Time to Dare.

  • As the world changes, we all need to change. Leading with a growth mindset.
  • Being curious, creative and courageous – shaping the future in your own vision.
  • The courage to step up, to be a “performer transformer” leader.
  • Microsoft, how the growth mindset changed everything.
  • What are you waiting for?

Further Reading.

  • “Business Recoded” by Peter Fisk
  • “Think Again” by Adam Grant
  • “The Invincible Company” by Alex Osterwalder
  • “Reinventing Organisations” by Frederic Laloux
  • “The Future Leader” by Jacob Morgan
  • Business Futures Project: https://www.peterfisk.com/business-futures-project/

So what’s the future?

Food delivery is now big business. It’s a crowded market. And as the big players, originally funded with millions of dollars of VC funding, now need to turn a profit, we are likely to see some shake out of the market. But delivering itself, is never going to be the valuable part of the business concept. Much more is the ability to curate the best options, deliver the best food, for some at the best price, and to add more value in ways which goes beyond the now expectation of home delivery.

The rise of a new generation of integrated, mobile-centric service businesses known as “super-apps” is more important than joy being a delivery business. In recent months, Elon Musks plans for X, previously Twitter, has brought the concept of the “everything app” to many.

In recent years, there’s been a huge development in functionality and popularity of these super-apps. WeChat evolved from a social media platform into much more. GoJekand Grab both evolved from taxis to deliveries and payments. China’s Meituan started in food deliveries, and then mushroomed. As did Colombia’s Rappi. There is Line in Japan, Sea in Singapore, Bolt from Estonia, and Jio’s phenomenal free phone-driven growth in India.

Super-apps are sometimes likened to the Lord of the Rings’ mythical “one ring to rule them all”. They create more value for business by offering more ways to engage with existing customers, more often, more profitably. Customers can easily move from food orders to fashion, utility bills to movie tickets, taxis to games, in one click. No need to enter new passwords or payment details. As a result, there are huge efficiencies in customer acquisitions, technology infrastructures, and management. Investors love them too.

WeChat … from Chinese social media to mobile payments, launched by Tencent in 2011, and with 1 billion monthly users by 2018. It includes a diversity of messaging and video conferencing services, video games and photo sharing. User activity is tracked by the government, who also use it for government services, public information and social “credits” (or fines).

 

Gojek … launched in Indonesia as a motorbike taxi and delivery service in 2009 (“Ojek” means motorbike taxi), then rapidly spread into over 20 services and across nearby countries. GoRide, GoShop. GoPay. But also GoMed (healthcare), GoTix (tickets), GoClean (cleaning), GoGlam (hairstylist), GoAuto (car repairs), Go Bills (utilities), and even GoMassage.

Rappi … the Colombian super-app, has spread to over 200 Latin American cities over the last 5 years. It has a similar diverse range of services, some of the most popular being cash deliveries (from ATM to home) and dog walking. Also in demand during the pandemic have been RappiMall and RappiEntertainment, including live music and sports.

The term “super-app” was coined by Mike Lazaridis, the founder of RIM (Research in Motion, the Canadian company behind the Blackberry). In 2010, Blackberry was the market leader in smartphones, with a 42% global share. At the Mobile World Congress 2010 he introduced Super Apps, describing them as integrated, contextual, and seamless “apps that once you start using, you wonder how you ever lived without them”.

Key to this integration is the payments engine, which most have developed themselves, and in many cases that has meant essentially becoming banks too. Alipay, now evolved into Ant, is a powerful example. Indeed, Piyush Gupta, CEO of Singapore’s DBS bank recently said that payment platforms like GrabPay are their biggest challenges.

This also starts to explain why many tech platforms in more developed markets, like Europe and North America, have not evolved into super-apps. There is more established competition, delivery networks and payment services. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft offer diverse content, but not the same range of transactional services like deliveries, transport, and utilities, as many of these rising stars of the developing world.