Peter Fisk

Business Recoded is a new, practical accelerated program for business leaders and managers.

Change is dramatic, pervasive and relentless. The challenges are numerous. The opportunities are greater.  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.

The old codes that got us here don’t work anymore. Moving forwards needs a new mindset.

“Decode the Future + Recode your Business”

The program helps leaders and managers to develop the new mindset, courage and capabilities, to make sense of a world of complex and dramatic change, the new challenges and opportunities, to explore the new concepts and techniques to lead business, and to reimagine your personal and business future.

The program is based around 5 modules – future, growth, innovation, work and leadership – and delivered through 5 online modules, each including a half-day interactive seminar, plus self guided learning through additional resources.

Peter Fisk is your expert guide to this new world, helping you to prepare and to succeed in it. He is both academic and practitioner, bringing together the very latest thought-leading concepts from around the world, with the practical insights and case studies from companies leading in applying them right now, and the tools for you to do it too.

The program explores how to lead a better future, to reimagine your business, to reinvent markets, to energise your people. It describes how to combine profit with more purpose, intelligent technologies with creative people, radical innovation with sustainable impact.

It dives deep into the minds of some of today’s most inspiring business leaders – people like Anne Wojcicki and Jeff Bezos, Emily Weiss and Devi Shetty, Daniel Ek and Tan Le, Mary Barra and Masayoshi Son, Satya Nadella and Zhang Ruimin.

And learns from the innovative strategies of incredible companies – Alibaba and Amazon, Babylon and BlackRock, Meituan Dianping and Microsoft, Narayana Health and Netflix, Patagonia and PingAn, Spotify and Supercell, and many more.

In each module you will also explore a wide range of practical tools and approaches, including toolkits and templates to take away and apply the ideas directly to your business.

Recode 1: Future Recoded

Leaders used to look to the future, based on their success in the past. Most business strategies are built on what the organisation is currently good at. Most business plans are built on doing what you did last year, but a little better. Indeed we spend far more time looking backwards, evaluating what we have done, rather than looking forwards. Anticipating, interpreting a future that is dynamic, complex and uncertain is not easy. But that is where the opportunities lie. Leadership today is about shaping the future in your own vision, and that starts by having perspective, being farsighted, and more expeditionary.

Key questions that we will explore include:

• How to make strategic choices when the future is complex and uncertain?
• What creates a good purpose statement, and how is it different from vision and strategy?
• How to balance longer-term initiatives with the obsession with short-term results?
• Where are the future opportunities, the blue oceans, the emerging uncontested markets?
• How do I engage my people in being excited about our future potential?

Recode 2: Growth Recoded

Growth used to be limited. Limited by the mental boundaries in which we saw are credibility – we were bounded by our finite description of the sector in which we operated, maybe geography too; we were bounded by doing what we were good at, and what our existing customers wanted. Today, we live in a blur, a market matrix that sees the world as our oyster. The smallest business can embrace cloud technologies to have the widest reach, and indeed many of the world’s largest platform businesses are actually very small. While “average” growth might have stagnated, there are pockets of opportunity everywhere.

Key questions that we will explore include:

• Where are my best opportunities for future growth, in new sectors or new geographies?
• How can I shape my market to my advantage, and brands to dominate my chosen spaces?
• Why do networks deliver exponential growth, and how can they apply to me business?
• How can I embrace customers more actively in developing the future together?
• Where do I start in developing a better strategic roadmap?

Recode 3: Innovation Recoded

Most innovation is still focused on developing better products, maybe services. Most innovation takes a cool new technology and tries to apply it to an old activity. Innovation applies to every aspect of business, and like the entrepreneurs who seek to disrupt established business, we need to entrepreneurial in mindset and action. That starts with hypothesis and experimentation. Ideas come from insight, not through old research, instead through deep immersion and stretch imagination. Experimentation is about rapid test and learn loops, being able to conceptualise ideas than test them quickly, to learn and then scale them.

Key questions that we will explore include:

• Where do new ideas come from, how can we more curious and creative as an organisation?
• How can I use human-centred design thinking as a catalyst for faster, smarter innovation?
• What are the alternative business models that could work in my business, and how can I adopt them?
• How do I ensure that innovations don’t lose their impact once they enter the market?
• What sustains  a culture of innovation through my business?

Recode 4: Work Recoded

Most organisations were designed for stability and efficiency, not agility and change. Hierarchical layers of command and control may have worked in the days of Henry Ford, but not Elon Musk. Today’s most effective organisations are much more adaptive,  like living organisms. They work in highly decentralised self-organising teams, more like start-ups under one roof. Teams need to be diverse and collaborative, learning to work at speed with high levels of trust and impact. Transformation is much more than digitalisation, it requires the whole organisation to reinvent itself, and probably to do so continuously.

Key questions that we will explore include:

• How do I design my organisation to balance freedom and control?
• What makes a great team work?
• How can we work with more partners, to achieve more together, as an ecosystem?
• What builds energy, pace and momentum inside the organisation?
• How do I drive effective change, and sustain transformation over time?

Recode 5: Leadership Recoded

Leadership is about amplifying the potential of your people, and your business. Leadership is having a clear view of the future, and engaging your people in going there with you. Leadership is heads up, not heads down. Yet leadership is often a lonely job. How do you develop the resilience to keep working at pace, overcoming challenges, being the radical optimist? Today’s leaders face more challenges, more complexity, more uncertainty and more scrutiny than ever. It takes real courage to step-up. But now is the time when we need leaders more than ever.

Key questions that we will explore include:

• What’s your leadership style, that is right for you and your organisation?
• How should you spend your time, balancing internal and external, short and long-term priorities?
• In many ways, everyone is a leader, but how does leadership change across the organisation?
• What makes a great storyteller, and how can I more effectively inspire and influence people?
• How do I have more courage to create the future, for myself and my business?

The program is supported by a range of self-learning resources, including articles and case studies, toolkits and templates. The program is highly interactive, but also stretching and challenging. It includes the development of a project in which participants develop a “gamechanger” blueprint for the future of their business or industry, supported by colleagues and coaching.

The program builds on the new book “Business Recoded”, by Peter Fisk, which will be published 1 December 2020.

© Peter Fisk 2020

“Hello! I am your customer!”

“Yes, a real person, a human being.

I have my needs and wants, to get through the day, and to achieve what I must. But I also have my hopes, dreams and ambitions. For too long you have treated me as a name or number. You group me into segments, or sometimes just a mass of average people. But I’m not prepared to tolerate that anymore …”

The new customer agenda

In seeking to understand the longer-term agenda for customers, we need combine our insight into customer priorities and aspirations of today with the broader “megatrend” drivers of the external world.

In my new book Business Recoded, I define 8 meta priorities for customers emerge, likely to drive customer attitudes and behaviours through the decade to 2030:

• My Access:Smartphones and their derivatives, will be my access points to both physical and digital worlds, enhanced by collaboration, intelligence and augmentation. Gamification is really a shorthand for more intuitive, immersive and inspiring forms of access, as physical and digital experiences combine. I will seek easy, relevant and trusted brands as gateways to my preferred worlds.
• My Identity: I define myself how I choose, often rejecting conventional labels. Social media has democratised my ability to express myself. As a blogger or an influencer, amateur rock band or self-publishing author, anyone can build their own brand, often with more authenticity and empathy than glossy stars. Brands are platforms to help people share passions as new tribes, and do more together.
• My Wellbeing: I embrace physical and mental wellness with a more personal and holistic approach that combines what is good for my health, my fitness and my future. More authentic, more natural, and more local solutions will become increasingly important. Brands, particularly in the areas of healthcare, nutrition and sport will become my new wellbeing partners.
• My Community: Instead of defining ourselves by locality or nationality, occupations or socio-demographics, people will choose which the communities they seek to belong to and defined by, which they contribute to and care about. Digital lifestyles, geographic migration, and urbanisation will drive this. Social status will less about wealth more about quality of life. Brands will align with these communities.
• My Responsibility: I care, and seek to do more, for “myself, my community and my world”. As social and environmental issues become more tangible, reducing materialism, waste and resource use will be key environmentally. Socially, I will seek to support the most vulnerable people in local communities, and others globally. I seek brands and other platforms that can amplify my desire to contribute more.
• My Portfolio: I will build a portfolio lifestyle, around both my personal interests and professional activities. As lifelong careers give way to more fluid and freelance work, I will develop a portfolio of experiences and skills, alongside more personal hobbies and activities. My networks, socially and professionally, will be key to unlocking my portfolio through collaborative work and community life.
• My Rights: I have the power to express my views, to actively stand up for what is fair, responsible and legal. I seek respect, to be protected, but also I have a poweful voice. Personal data and privacy are at the core of this, although I also recognise that this requires balance – to achieve more, I need to share more. I will respect and support brands and organisations who stand up for me and my principles.
• My Value: My personal success is still measured in economic terms, with some symbols of materialism and self-gratification. While sufficient incomes matter to achieve a sustainable lifestyle, my value in society is more quantified by contribution, through creativity and collaboration. I respect others who do more for our world, from small acts of kindness to ways to accelerate our progress.

Customer attitudes and influences

The tectonic shifts in markets, globally connected and digitally enabled, are creating a rapid change in attitudes, and the strategies of brands. Economic downturn was the crying pain of a changing world, the rise of new metropolises of affluence, and the fall of geographical boundaries and socio-economic stereotypes.

Customers have become more different – less about rich and poor, more about young and age, experiences and attitudes. Whilst wealth is consolidated amongst the longer-living boomers, Generation Y and Generation Z (aka millennials) have very different aspirations and priorities. Time matters more, materialism matters less. Add happiness, authenticity, friendship, even mindfulness too. We are more emotional, more human, more collaborative.

Yet there is no longer a mass market of average people, instead many niches, connected and influenced and more similar within their niches across the world than to others within the old geographical boundaries.

We should also be careful not to assume that millennials are the only digital consumers. Like any categorisation, there will be those engaged digitally and others less so.

Building a customer-centric business

Building a business around customers seems obvious, yet the shift from product-centric to customer-centric is rarely easy.

Most companies still think, organize and operate around products – they define themselves by their products and categories, organized around product-centric profit centres, focused on selling products, and (what they make, to be the best in the category), focused on selling and delivering products, measuring success by the volume of products sold.

Peter Fisk helps you build a customer-centric business with more inspired purpose, about how it makes people’s lives better. It focuses on the customer’s world (be it a business client seeking to grow, or a consumer seeking to enjoy life). It organizes around the customer experience, one that brings together products and services to solve real problems, and enables people to achieve more. The perceived value of this is much greater, which leads to far great profit potential, as well as ongoing revenues and advocacy.

Examples of recent clients include

• Apotex: Building a customer-centric culture based around the concept of turning clients into “raving fans” by doing more for them, helping them to win in their businesses.

• RBS: How to create a new bank, Wlliams & Glynn, around customers. Specifying the blueprint for the retail banking concept, that seeks to stand out for its different approach.

• Santander: Building the world’s most customer-centric bank, working with top 350 managers worldwide, to explore and embed the essentials of customer centricity.

• SDL: How to innovate a win-win customer experience – about the customer, and then about the business – and harnessing the power of marketing analytics, digital media and automation.

• Teliasonera: “Customer insights, propositions and experience” design for each key audience in each market of Central and Eastern Europe.

Explore more from Peter Fisk

• Book: “Customer Genius: Building a customer-centric business”
• Book: “Gamechangers: Are you ready to change the world?”
• Article: Roadmap to Customer Centricity
• Article: Customer Experiences that Enable More
• Article: The New Luxury
• Keynote: “The New Customer Agenda”
• Keynote: “The Win-Win Customer Experience”
• Workshop: “Customer Centricity: insights to propositions to experiences”
• Workshop: “Customer Centricity: Developing better customer propositions”
• Workshop: “Customer Centricity: Delivering the best customer experiences
• Workshop: “Customer Centricity: Creating raving fans in B2B relationships”

• Article: “Hello, I am your customer!”
• Article: “The Customer Agenda”
• Research: “What if millennials ruled the world?”
• Further reading: “What it takes to understand today’s customers“
• Further reading: “The CEO Guide to Customer Experiences”
• Further reading: “Getting Brand Communities Right“

The logistics business might not seem a natural place for disruption – its physical, process-driven and regulated (ships, rail, trucks, air). Yet there is a huge reluctance amongst big companies to change  – most live in the past, both in terms of technology and mindset, protecting the margins made through the frictions and inadequences of the existing ways of working.

Think about the potential of new technology platforms (like Uber), new smart systems (like Amazon), new technology capabilities (mobile, cloud, big data, AI, drones, robotics, and more), and new business models (like crowd-based funding).

In short, it’s a perfect industry for disruption.

Here are 10 of the most innovative companies in logistics including Attabotics who are able to save 85% in warehouse space using vertical 3D robotic systems, launched by Canadian Scott Gravelle in 2016, inspired by how leaf-cutter ants build colonies vertically underground:

The program is delivered in partnership with Headspring over 4 modules including:

Week 1: The Customer Agenda

Explore more about business models here.

The most innovative businesses see the world differently.

They don’t just seek to imitate the success of others, to compete in the markets of today, to frame themselves by their relative differences to competitors. Instead they play their own game.

I call them “gamechangers”, and here in Dubai, I will be taking inspiration from the World Expo 2020, and also from companies all around the world who are shaking up markets, embracing radical new ideas, and changing the game.

So what’s the “game”? Well, in simple terms, it’s the market.

These companies go beyond innovating their products and services, their customer experienes and business models. They seek to innovate how their markets work.

Think of it like a sports game. How could you change the game? It could be anything from the pitch dimensions to rules of play, the team composition to the measures of success, the role of the referee to the participation of fans. Even the name of the game.

Now look at today’s most disruptive innovators – 23andMe to Alibaba, Zespri to Zidisha – they reframe, reimagine and redefine the market on their terms – who is it for, why people buy, what they pay and get, and how they work.

I’ve met and profiled over 250 “gamechanger” companies on my travels, in almost every sector, and in every part of the world. Corporate giants and start-ups, from Dubai to Berlin, Colombo to Qingdao.

There is no one way to change the game, but there are definitely some common traits:

• Audacious – Gamechangers are visionary and innovative, but also daring and original; they seek to shape the future to their advantage.
• Purposeful – They seek to make life better, in some relevant and inspiring way; they have a higher motive than just making money.
• Networked – Gamechangers harness the power of networks, digital and physical, both business and customer networks, to exponentially reach further faster.
• Intelligent – They use big data analytics and algorithms, machine learning and AI, to be smart and efficient, personal and predictive.
• Collaborative – Gamechangers work with others, from ecosystems to platforms, social networks and co-creation, to achieve more together.
• Enabling – They focus not on what they do, but what they enable people to do; and thereby redefine their marketspace, find new opportunities and redefine value.
• Commercial – Gamechangers take a longer-term perspective, adopting new business models, and recalibrating the measures of progress and success.

Do you have a future mindset?

Today’s business leaders need a future mindset. That sounds obvious, but isn’t.

Most leaders have a “fixed mindset”. They keep stretching the old models of success. They stay loyal to the model that made them great, seeking to squeeze and tweak it for as long as possible. They seek perfection – to optimise what they currently do – which leads to efficiency and incremental gains.

Instead a “future mindset” is prepared to let go of the past. To explore the future, to experiment with new ways of working and winning. Failure is a way to learn, and innovation becomes the norm. Change is relentless inside, as it is outside. Innovation is their lifeblood. Like Jeff Bezos loves to say “it is always day one”.

With a future mindset, the CEO needs new attributes:

• Sense maker – to interpret a fast and confusing world, to see new patterns and opportunities, what is relevant and not, to shape your own vision.
• Radical optimist – to inspire people with a stretching ambition, positive and distinctive, to be audacious, to see the possibilities when others only see risk.
• Future hacker – they start from the “future back”, with clarity of purpose and intent, encouraging ideas and experiments, leveraging resource and scale.
• Ideas connector – da Vinci said innovation is about making unusual connections;  connecting new people, new partners, new capabilities and new ideas.
• Emotionally agile – whilst organisational agility is essential, emotional agility matters even more; to cope with change, to be intuitive in making sense, and making choices.
• Entrepreneur at large – keeping the founders mentality alive, hands-on working with project teams to infuse the mindset, to be the catalyst and coach.
• Having grit – “gamechanger” leaders need to go against the grain, to persist but know when to move on, to have self belief and confidence, guts and resilience.

The future is a better place to start

Start from the “future back”.

Trying to evolve in today’s complex and confused world is unlikely to lead you towards a bright and distinctive future. It will extend your life a little longer, but it will be tough and uninspiring, with diminishing returns.

Instead jump to the future. I tend to start with five years ahead, although it may differ by company. 5 years is long enough to change the world, but close enough to be real. Start by creating a positive, collective and inspiring vision of the future market. What will it be like? What will people want? Why? How? Where? Then consider how to win in this new world.

This is where “moonshot thinking” can be really useful. “Why be 10% better, when you could be 10 times better?” 10 times more profits, more customers, more quality, reduced cost, reduced time. Whatever. By giving yourself a “How could we do it 10x better” challenge you take a new perspective, solve problems in different ways.

Be inspired by ideas from other places.

Explore how ARM or GE, Inditex or Netflix, Glossier or Novo Nordisk have changed their markets. Choose any of my 100+ “gamechanger” companies! How did they do it? How did customers respond? (Remember, they often serve the same customers as you!). You can’t learn much from competitors, but you can learn a lot from relevant parallels.

Copy. Adapt. Paste.

Customer insight also matters. Deep dives and design thinking, exploring the emerging trends and deviant behaviours. This can enhance and validate your ideas, but the problem with most customer insight is that it is filtered by our current world. You need something to disrupt your thinking.

I have a great box of disruptive techniques. Some are really simple – like break then remake the rules, like imagine its free then find a way to make money, like reverse polarities and many more. The point is to disrupt your conventional thinking.

From this, ideas rapidly emerge. You need lots of ideas about the future. But these are fragments of the real answer. The real creativity comes in fusing together into bigger “concepts”. These could be customer solutions, or new ways of working, new revenue streams, or new business models, and new market scenarios.

Once you have a clear and collective ambition for the future, it’s time to work backwards.  “If this is how we want to be in 5 years, where do we need to get to in 3 years, and then in 1 year?  Therefore what do we need to start doing now?” You develop a “horizon plan” for your business; a strategy roadmap if you like, but developed backwards.

The important thing is that by working backwards, you have jumped out of the morass of today. You’ve avoided the assumptions, limitations, problems and priorities of today’s thinking. You have a more inspiring “gamechanging” future, and have started to map out the steps to get there. Most likely with different priorities in the short-term too.

Of course the steps on this journey might change, but it’s going to be an exciting adventure.

Change the way we think, resolve the conflicts

In today’s busineses, we have created artificial divides in how we think and operate. Digital and physical seem like two different worlds, global and local seem like alternative strategies that cannot combine, many still struggle to align value to customers and shareholders in a mutually reinforcing way, and short and long-termism continues to confuse our priorities.

Our thinking within business, has created separate and apparently conflicting approaches. The opportunity is to make the combination of both approaches world – “fusions” if you like – to be innovative in the way you combine apparent opposites.

Digital and physical are two sides of the same coin.

There is only one world, unless you believe Ray Kurzweil, and it is the real one. It’s human and physical. Digital technologies are incredibly powerful, enabling people to connect, to work, to learn, to play in new ways. From mobile phones to blockchains, 3D printing and augmented reality, digital allows us to do more, do it faster, do things we could never do before. But it’s still about humanity.

Start with people. How can you enable them to achieve more? To live better, to have more fun, to do better for the world. Whatever matters. I work closely with Richard Branson and his Virgin teams. Their mindset is to “start from the outside, and then work in”. Design a better customer experience. Built on your ambition and insight, and then explore how you could deliver it with new and existing capabilities.

Global and local are opportunities for every business.

I love Amazon’s “Treasure Truck” … Most of us have never connected with Amazon beyond the website and the delivery guy. Amazon is huge, global and anonymous. But the Treasure Truck is real. It travels around the country, bringing its pop-up store to local neighbourhoods, fun and games, bargains and demos. For Amazon, it’s a chance to make real connections, listen to people, and to be local.

We can all see a backlash in society against relentless globalisation, huge corporations, and social inequality. We see a lack of trust in brands, and know that authenticity matters. Etsy shows us that even the smallest and most local artisan businesses can also be global. For every business, local and global markets are within reach, however it’s also about combining scale and standardisation, with relevance and individuality.

Ideas and networks should be the core of your business.

Gamechanger businesses need a compelling idea, a core purpose, an inspiring proposition, that can spread fast and contagiously. In a digitally-fuelled world, the most innovative businesses embrace “ideas and networks” to drive exponential impact – like WhatsApp creating $19bn in three years, Airbnb $40bn in 9 years, Alibaba $476bn in 18 years, Amazon $740bn in 23 years.

Think about that concept of “exponential” … The power of networks – be it franchisees, or distributors, or customers and users – lies not in the number of members, but in the connections between them. Networks have a multiplying effect. Exponential. Consider, for example, Rapha, the sportwear brand that brings together people with a passion for cycling, who conveniently meet at their “Cycle Club” stores, and buy their premium gear. A fantastic “ideas and networks” business.

Finally this idea of short-term and long-term being in conflict with each other.

Jeff Bezos never has this problem, nor Elon Musk, nor Richard Branson. They focus on the long-term, recognising it will require some years of investment to get there. They all of course lead privately-owned companies. But every public company has the same ambition to innovate and grow. And so do most of their investors, actually.

The reality is that any company’s stock market performance is based on its future earnings potential, not its past. The better you can engage with equity analysts, journalists and investors themselves to explain why you will deliver a better future worth waiting for, then you get their support. If you don’t engage them in your future vision, plans and innovations, then they will default to looking for short-term evidence. It’s really in our hands, to work together to create a future we want to invest in. And to share the greater risk and rewards.

Time to embrace your future mindset

We live in an incredible time … More change in the next 10 years than in the last 250 years … remember? I know that sounds a little crazy, but think about Hyperloop in 3 years, a tipping point to electric cars in 5 years, Mars missions in 8 years. They are all real, and possible.

Digital platforms connecting buyers and sellers in new ways, blockchain having the potential to transform relationships and trust, 3d printing having the potential to transform value chains to deliver anything personalised and on-demand, AI and robotics giving us the capabilities to be superhuman in our minds and bodies.

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, rather than buy standard products, in the ways we currently subscribe to Netflix.

Time to embrace your growth mindset … Unlock your Einstein dreams and Picasso passion … Embrace your Mandela courage and Ghandi spirit. Be more curious, be more intuitive, be more human. Ask more questions. Don’t be afraid to have audacious ideas, to challenge the old models of success, and turn future ambitions into practical profitable reality.

How else did Zespri reinvent the Chinese gooseberry as the kiwi fruit? How else will SpaceX reach Mars by 2025? How else did Netflix came to be, or NuTonomy, or Nespresso, or Nyx?

This is why 23andMe’s Anne Wojicki wont give up in her quest to make DNA analysis available to everyone, and to ultimately find a cure for cancer. And it’s why Jack Ma didn’t give up as he rose from $1000-per year English teacher to technological royalty.

The secret is the future mindset.

To realise that the future is malleable. So we need to grab hold of it, and shape it in our own vision. To our advantage.

This is what “gamechangers” do.

 

The Business Recoded Program is for business leaders and managers … helping you to make sense of a world of complex and dramatic change, the new challenges and opportunities, to explore the new concepts and techniques to lead business … to “decode” the future, and “recode” your business.

Peter Fisk is your expert guide to this new world, helping you to prepare and to succeed in it. The online program consists of 5 half-day interactive seminars, plus additional self-paced study in between each seminar, and a mini-project applying the best ideas for you to your future business.

Business needs a new code for success.

Change is dramatic, pervasive and relentless. The challenges are numerous. The opportunities are greater.

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.

The old codes that got us here don’t work anymore. Moving forwards needs a new mindset.

“Business Recoded” is for business leaders who seek to progress in today’s rapidly changing world, and to create the organisations that will thrive in tomorrow’s world.

It explores how to lead a better future, to reimagine your business, to reinvent markets, to energise your people. It describes how to combine profit with more purpose, intelligent technologies with creative people, radical innovation with sustainable impact.

It dives deep into the minds of some of today’s most inspiring business leaders – people like Anne Wojcicki and Jeff Bezos, Emily Weiss and Devi Shetty, Daniel Ek and Tan Le, Mary Barra and Masayoshi Son, Satya Nadella and Zhang Ruimin.

And learns from the innovative strategies of incredible companies – Alibaba and Amazon, Babylon and BlackRock, Meituan Dianping and Microsoft, Narayana Health and Netflix, Patagonia and PingAn, Spotify and Supercell, and many more.

The program is built on 5 key “recodes” driving a more enlightened future of business.

It’s about you – realising your future potential – by developing your own codes for more enlightened progress, personal and business success.

Do you have the courage to create a better future, for you and your business?

Dates for the program are built around 5 half days, all on Wednesdays, with self study work in between.

• Recode 1: Future Recoded on 17 March 2021
• Recode 2: Growth Recoded on 24 March 2021
• Recode 3: Innovation Recoded on 21 April 2021
• Recode 4: Organisations Recoded on 28 April 2021
• Recode 5: Leadership Recoded on 5 May 2021

Download a summary Peter Fisk’s Keynote 

Consumers have changed significantly in their attitudes towards brands and business – their motivations, influences, and aspirations.

They have also changed in their behaviours, both towards media and more generally –  how they discover, who they trust, how they engage.

The challenge for marketers is not simply about media shift – from television to digital media, broadcast to interactive and social – we all know that kids don’t watch TV anymore.

The real challenge is a power shift – consumers in control, pull not push – communicating on their terms, in their context, in their community.

Communication platforms are less ours but theirs – peer to peer, engaging in their world, contributing to their broader lives.

Engagement is achieved through deeper immersion – data driving personalisation, interaction with gamification, loyalty through community.

Brand narratives are no longer planned and controlled – more a curation of what people say, stimulating and shaping their dialogues.

Great examples range from Glossier to Mikkeller, Nestle and Unilever, Rapha to Sephora, Duolingo to Pinduoduo, Headspace and Xbox.

This demands a mindset shift far beyond a media shift – for marketers to reimagine communication, brand building and growth strategies.

Creating a new code for business success  

The world is on fire. Global contagions and unstoppable wildfires, social inequality and melting ice caps. Demanding consumers and disruptive technologies, unexpected shocks and stagnating growth.

It’s time for business to step up and be more. To reimagine brands as platforms for radical change, driving innovation that solves bigger problems, inspiring consumers together to create more positive impact.

BlackRock to Bolt Threads, Cemex and Chobani, EcoAlf to LanzaTech, Icon and Impossible, Too Good to Go to Tesla … How can purpose drive more profits, technologies solve the biggest problems, and nature create more luxurious lives?

We need to shift our minds from paradox to possibility – aligning short and long-terms, purpose and profit, humanity and technology, creating more from less, resource and replenishment, accessibility and exclusivity, equality and wealth.

Now is the time for a new kind of capitalism, seizing the opportunities of disruption and change, harnessing the power of business to create enlightened progress. Now is the time for business leaders to find a new code for business success.

• Read more about why … Business is the best platform for change
• Explore more in my forthcoming book … Business Recoded: Have the courage to create a better world
• Get a free copy of my previous book … People Planet Profit: How to embrace sustainability for innovation 

Spider Silk

There are only 31 types of fibre in the world, the last developed in the Second World War. Indeed 60% of the world’s textiles are made from polyester, a carbon-based material that is not biodegradable.

Spider silk has long been the Holy Grail of material innovation. It’s strong, biodegradable, and it can be used in everything from cosmetics to clothes. Many have attempted to grow the material in labs, but only a few companies have succeeded.

Dan Widmeier of Bolt Threads uses genetically modified yeast, sugar, water and salt, to develop a closed-loop process to bio-engineer a new protein fibre mimicking the structure of spider silk. It requires neither the polluting chemicals of petroleum-derived materials nor the land, water and pesticides of conventionally farmed fibres.

• Case study: Bolt Threads. Synthetic spider silk for a better luxury world

Sizzling Burgers

Geneticist Pat Brown wanted to create the world’s best burger. But he also wants to eliminate animal-sourced meat from our food chain, given its huge damage to our environment, from the destruction of rainforests to the emission of carbon.

Brown realised that the challenge was not to persuade vegetarians, but meat eaters. And they loved the sizzle, smell and taste of real meat. He created Impossible Foods, and identified methods and ingredients to naturally recreate everything – the sights, sounds, aromas, textures and flavours. The result? This impossibly delicious game changer of a burger.

“Because we use 0% cows, the Impossible Burger uses a fraction of the Earth’s natural resources. Compared to cows, the Impossible Burger uses 95% less land, 74% less water, and creates 87% less greenhouse gas emissions. And it’s 100% free of hormones, antibiotics, and artificial ingredients.”

• Book extract:The Leadership Code of Patrick Brown, founder of Impossible Foods
• Case study: Impossible Foods: Can a burger save the planet?

• Article: Adidas to Allbirds – sustainable fashion brands embracing the circular economy
• Article: Upcycling. Reinventing fashion to be more sustainable, interesting and unique
• Article: P&G’s Ambition 2030, sustainable innovation as “a force for a good and a force for growth”
• Case study: Agua Bendita. Handmade swimwear from the colourful scraps of Colombia
• Case study: All Birds. The world’s most comfortable shoes
• Case study: Positive Luxury. The butterfly mark you can trust
• Report: New Green Radicals: Alstom to Toast Ale, Loop to Lush, TerraCycle to Triodos
• Survey: The World’s Most Sustainable Companies 2020: Denmark’s Orsted tops the list

TEDx Countdown

TEDx Countdown involves over 500 local events all over the world, launching on 10th October, seeking to amplify real, actionable solutions as we race to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Join the London “watch party” organised by the fabulous team at Circklo, on the 16th October, when Peter Fisk will be joined by the chief sustainability officers of Amazon and IKEA, and many others for an inspiring online program.

“Business Recoded” is a fast and practical learning program for business leaders and managers.

Change is dramatic, pervasive and relentless. The challenges are numerous. The opportunities are greater.  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.

The old codes that got us here don’t work anymore. Moving forwards needs a new mindset.

The Future Accelerator: the courage to create a better future

The program helps leaders and managers to develop the new mindset, courage and capabilities, to make sense of a world of complex and dramatic change, the new challenges and opportunities, to explore the new concepts and techniques to lead business, and to reimagine your personal and business future.

The program is based around 5 modules – future, growth, innovation, work and leadership – and delivered through 5 online modules, each including a half-day interactive seminar, plus self guided learning through additional resources.

Peter Fisk is your expert guide to this new world, helping you to prepare and to succeed in it. He is both academic and practitioner, bringing together the very latest thought-leading concepts from around the world, with the practical insights and case studies from companies leading in applying them right now, and the tools for you to do it too.

The program explores how to lead a better future, to reimagine your business, to reinvent markets, to energise your people. It describes how to combine profit with more purpose, intelligent technologies with creative people, radical innovation with sustainable impact.

It dives deep into the minds of some of today’s most inspiring business leaders – people like Anne Wojcicki and Jeff Bezos, Emily Weiss and Devi Shetty, Daniel Ek and Tan Le, Mary Barra and Masayoshi Son, Satya Nadella and Zhang Ruimin.

And learns from the innovative strategies of incredible companies – Alibaba and Amazon, Babylon and BlackRock, Meituan Dianping and Microsoft, Narayana Health and Netflix, Patagonia and PingAn, Spotify and Supercell, and many more.

In each module you will also explore a wide range of practical tools and approaches, including toolkits and templates to take away and apply the ideas directly to your business.

Recode 1: Future Recoded

Leaders used to look to the future, based on their success in the past. Most business strategies are built on what the organisation is currently good at. Most business plans are built on doing what you did last year, but a little better. Indeed we spend far more time looking backwards, evaluating what we have done, rather than looking forwards. Anticipating, interpreting a future that is dynamic, complex and uncertain is not easy. But that is where the opportunities lie. Leadership today is about shaping the future in your own vision, and that starts by having perspective, being farsighted, and more expeditionary.

Key questions that we will explore include:

• How to make strategic choices when the future is complex and uncertain?
• What creates a good purpose statement, and how is it different from vision and strategy?
• How to balance longer-term initiatives with the obsession with short-term results?
• Where are the future opportunities, the blue oceans, the emerging uncontested markets?
• How do I engage my people in being excited about our future potential?

Recode 2: Growth Recoded

Growth used to be limited. Limited by the mental boundaries in which we saw are credibility – we were bounded by our finite description of the sector in which we operated, maybe geography too; we were bounded by doing what we were good at, and what our existing customers wanted. Today, we live in a blur, a market matrix that sees the world as our oyster. The smallest business can embrace cloud technologies to have the widest reach, and indeed many of the world’s largest platform businesses are actually very small. While “average” growth might have stagnated, there are pockets of opportunity everywhere.

Key questions that we will explore include:

• Where are my best opportunities for future growth, in new sectors or new geographies?
• How can I shape my market to my advantage, and brands to dominate my chosen spaces?
• Why do networks deliver exponential growth, and how can they apply to me business?
• How can I embrace customers more actively in developing the future together?
• Where do I start in developing a better strategic roadmap?

Recode 3: Innovation Recoded

Most innovation is still focused on developing better products, maybe services. Most innovation takes a cool new technology and tries to apply it to an old activity. Innovation applies to every aspect of business, and like the entrepreneurs who seek to disrupt established business, we need to entrepreneurial in mindset and action. That starts with hypothesis and experimentation. Ideas come from insight, not through old research, instead through deep immersion and stretch imagination. Experimentation is about rapid test and learn loops, being able to conceptualise ideas than test them quickly, to learn and then scale them.

Key questions that we will explore include:

• Where do new ideas come from, how can we more curious and creative as an organisation?
• How can I use human-centred design thinking as a catalyst for faster, smarter innovation?
• What are the alternative business models that could work in my business, and how can I adopt them?
• How do I ensure that innovations don’t lose their impact once they enter the market?
• What sustains  a culture of innovation through my business?

Recode 4: Work Recoded

Most organisations were designed for stability and efficiency, not agility and change. Hierarchical layers of command and control may have worked in the days of Henry Ford, but not Elon Musk. Today’s most effective organisations are much more adaptive,  like living organisms. They work in highly decentralised self-organising teams, more like start-ups under one roof. Teams need to be diverse and collaborative, learning to work at speed with high levels of trust and impact. Transformation is much more than digitalisation, it requires the whole organisation to reinvent itself, and probably to do so continuously.

Key questions that we will explore include:

• How do I design my organisation to balance freedom and control?
• What makes a great team work?
• How can we work with more partners, to achieve more together, as an ecosystem?
• What builds energy, pace and momentum inside the organisation?
• How do I drive effective change, and sustain transformation over time?

Recode 5: Leadership Recoded

Leadership is about amplifying the potential of your people, and your business. Leadership is having a clear view of the future, and engaging your people in going there with you. Leadership is heads up, not heads down. Yet leadership is often a lonely job. How do you develop the resilience to keep working at pace, overcoming challenges, being the radical optimist? Today’s leaders face more challenges, more complexity, more uncertainty and more scrutiny than ever. It takes real courage to step-up. But now is the time when we need leaders more than ever.

Key questions that we will explore include:

• What’s your leadership style, that is right for you and your organisation?
• How should you spend your time, balancing internal and external, short and long-term priorities?
• In many ways, everyone is a leader, but how does leadership change across the organisation?
• What makes a great storyteller, and how can I more effectively inspire and influence people?
• How do I have more courage to create the future, for myself and my business?

The program is supported by a range of self-learning resources, including articles and case studies, toolkits and templates. The program is highly interactive, but also stretching and challenging. It includes the development of a project in which participants develop a “gamechanger” blueprint for the future of their business or industry, supported by colleagues and coaching.

The program builds on the new book “Business Recoded”, by Peter Fisk, which will be published globally on 1 December 2020, the first day of the program!

© Peter Fisk 2020

Change is dramatic, pervasive and relentless. The challenges are numerous. The opportunities are greater.

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.

The old codes that got us here don’t work anymore. Moving forwards needs a new mindset.

“Business Recoded” is for business leaders who seek to progress in today’s rapidly changing world, and to create the organisations that will thrive in tomorrow’s world.

Peter Fisk helps you to explore how the future will emerge from pandemic and downturn, jumping forwards to understand the megatrends and what your future could look like, then working back to today, to start making it happen.

He explores how to lead a better future, to reimagine your business, to reinvent markets, to energise your people. He describes how to combine profit with more purpose, intelligent technologies with creative people, radical innovation with sustainable impact.

Agenda

• The business opportunity of a crisis.
• Accelerating the future megatrends, Icon and Impossible.
• Who are the winners and losers in the pandemic?
• Emerging markets leap forwards, PingAn and Pinduoduo.
• Time to survive or thrive. The action framework.
• What do the best leaders do in a crisis. Disney and Danone.
• Have the courage to create a better future.

Inspired by innovators

We dive deep into the minds of some of today’s most inspiring business leaders – people like Anne Wojcicki and Jeff Bezos, Emily Weiss and Devi Shetty, Daniel Ek and Tan Le, Mary Barra and Masayoshi Son, Satya Nadella and Zhang Ruimin.

And learn from the innovative strategies of incredible companies – Alibaba and Amazon, Babylon and BlackRock, Meituan Dianping and Microsoft, Narayana Health and Netflix, Patagonia and PingAn, Spotify and Supercell, and many more.

Recoding your future

We live in a time of great promise but also great uncertainty.

Markets are more crowded, competition is intense, customer aspirations are constantly fuelled by new innovations and dreams. Technology disrupts every industry, from banking to construction, entertainment to healthcare. It drives new possibilities and solutions, but also speed and complexity, uncertainty and fear.

As digital and physical worlds fuse to augment how we live and work, AI and robotics enhance but also challenge our capabilities, whilst ubiquitous supercomputing, genetic editing and self-driving cars take us further.

Technologies with the power to help us leap forwards in unimaginable ways. To transform business, to solve our big problems, to drive radical innovation, to accelerate growth and achieve progress socially and environmentally too.

We are likely to see more change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years.

• Markets accelerate, 4 times faster than 20 years ago, based on the accelerating speed of innovation and diminishing lifecycles of products.
• People are more capable, 825 times more connected than 20 years ago, with access to education, unlimited knowledge, tools to create anything.
• Consumer attitudes change, 78% of young people choose brands that do good, they reject corporate jobs, and see the world with the lens of gamers.

However, change goes far beyond the technology.

Markets will transform, converge and evolve faster. From old town Ann Arbor to the rejuvenated Bilbao, today’s megacities like Chennai and the future Saudi tech city of Neom, economic power will continue to shift. China has risen to the top of the new global business order, whilst India and eventually Africa will follow.

Industrialisation challenges the natural equilibrium of our planet’s resources. Today’s climate crisis is the result of our progress, and our problem to solve. Globalisation challenges our old notions of nationhood and locality. Migration changes where we call home. Religious values compete with social values, economic priorities conflict with social priorities. Living standards improve but inequality grows.

Our current economic system is stretched to its limit. Global shocks, such as the global pandemic of 2020, exposes its fragility. We open our eyes to realise that we weren’t prepared for different futures, and that our drive for efficiency has left us unable to cope. Such crises will become more frequent, as change and disruption accelerate.

However, these shocks are more likely to accelerate change in business, rather than stifle it, to wake us up to the real impacts of our changing world – to the urgency of action, to the need to think and act more dramatically.

The old codes don’t work

Business is not fit for the future. Most organisations were designed for stable and predictable worlds, where the future evolves as planned, markets are definitive, and choices are clear.

The future isn’t like it used to be.

Dynamic markets are, by definition, turbulent. Whilst economic cycles have typically followed a pattern of peaks and troughs every 10-15 years, these will likely become more frequent.  Change is fast and exponential, uncertain and unpredictable, complex and ambiguous demanding new interpretation and imagination.

Yet too many business leaders hope that the strategies that made them successful in the past will continue to work in the future. They seek to keep stretching the old models in the hope that they will continue to see them through. Old business plans are tweaked each year, infrastructures are tested to breaking point, and people are asked to work harder.

In a way of dramatic, unpredictable change, this is not enough to survive, let alone thrive.

• Growth is harder. Global GDP growth has declined by more than a third in the past decade. As the west stagnates, Asia grows, albeit more slowly.
• Companies struggle, their average lifespan falling from 75 years in 1950 to 15 years today, 52% of the Fortune 500 in 2000 no longer exist in 2020.
• Leaders are under pressure. 44% of today’s business leaders have held their position for at least 5 years, compared to 77% half a century ago.

Profit is no longer enough; people expect business to achieve more. Business cannot exist in isolation from the world around them, pursuing customers without care for the consequence. The old single-minded obsession with profits is too limiting. Business depends more than ever on its resources – people, communities, nature, partners – and will need to find a better way to embrace them.

Technology is no longer enough; innovation needs to be more human. Technology will automate and interpret reality, but it won’t empathise and imagine new futures. Ubiquitous technology-driven innovation quickly becomes commoditised, available from anywhere in the world, so we need to add value in new ways. The future is human, creative, and intuitive. People will matter more to business, not less.

Sustaining the environment is not enough. 200 years of industrialisation has stripped the planet of its ability to renew itself, and ultimately to sustain life. Business therefore needs to give back more than it takes. As inequality and distrust have grown in every society, traditional jobs are threatened by automation and stagnation, meaning that social issues will matter even more, both globally and locally.

The new DNA of business

As business leaders, our opportunity is to create a better business, one that is fit for the future, that can act in more innovative and responsible ways.

How can we harness the potential of this relentless and disruptive change, harness the talents of people and the possibilities of technology? How can business, with all its power and resources, be a platform for change, and a force for good?

We need to find new codes to succeed. We need to find new ways to work, to recognise business as a system that be virtuous, where less can be more, and growth can go beyond the old limits. This demands that we make new connections:

• Profit + Purpose … to achieve more enlightened progress
• Technology + Humanity … to achieve more human ingenuity
• Innovation + Sustainability … to achieve more positive impact

We need to create a new framework for business, a better business – to reimagine why and redesign how we work, as well as reinvent what and refocus where we do business.

Imagine a future business that looks forwards not back, that rises up to shape the future on its own terms, making sense of change to find new possibilities, inspiring people with vision and optimism. Imagine a future that inspires progress, seeks new sources of growth, embraces networks and partners to go further, and enables people to achieve more.

Imagine too, a future business that creates new opportunity spaces, by connecting novel ideas and untapped needs, creatively responding to new customer agendas. Imagine a future business that disrupts the disruptors, where large companies have the vision and courage to reimagine themselves and compete as equals to fast and entrepreneurial start-ups.

Imagine a future business that embraces humanity, searches for better ideas, that fuse technology and people in more enlightened ways, to solve the big problems of society, and improve everyone’s lives. Imagine a future business that works collectively, self-organises to thrive without hierarchy, connects with partners in rich ecosystems, designs jobs around people, to do inspiring work.

Imagine also, a future business which is continually transforming, that thrives by learning better and faster, develops a rich portfolio of business ideas and innovations to sustain growth and progress. Imagine a future business that creates positive impact on the world, benefits all stakeholders with a circular model of value creation, that addresses negatives, and creates a net positive impact for society.

Creating a better business is an opportunity for every person who works inside or alongside it. It is not just a noble calling, to do something better for the world, but also a practical calling, a way to overcome the many limits of today, and attain future success for you and your business.You could call it the dawn of a new capitalism.

7 Shifts and 49 Codes

How do we create a better business, and a better future?

Creating this better future requires change in how we think and behave, the way in which you design, manage and lead your business. The mindset shifts are profound, requiring leaders to let go of old behaviours and beliefs, and to embrace new paradigms and possibilities.

The book is organised around these 7 shifts:

• From profit machine to enlightened progress
• From uncertain survival to futuristic growth
• From marginal competition to market creating
• From technology obsession to human ingenuity
• From passive hierarchies to dynamic ecosystems
• From incremental change to sustained transformation
• From good managers to extraordinary leaders

Underpinning these shifts are specific actions required for leaders. These are the 49 codes for you to embrace, adapt and apply in the right way for your organisation.

Coding is most often associated with technology.

A computer code is set of instructions built of words and symbols that together form a program that is then executed by the computer. Codes become standardised as a language, mechanised as a system, and enable huge amounts of processing in fractions of a second. The revolutionary consequences are all around us.

Similarly, a genetic code is a set of rules used by living materials to translate information encoded within DNA into proteins, and into life. The development by Sir Francis Crick and others transformed the world of medicine, leading to breakthroughs such as personalised medicines, and phenomenal businesses like 23andMe.

More generally we have codes, like codes of conduct, as guidelines for the way we work and live. They are principles for doing better, non-prescriptive or definitive they are broad and flexible, suggest approaches which we can adopt in our own personal ways.

The 49 codes create a new framework on which to move forwards.

Business Recoded, the new book from Peter Fisk, is published on 1 December 2020.

© Peter Fisk 2020

Are you ready to lead the future?

The Global Advanced Management Program (Global AMP) is IE Business School’s flagship program for executives stepping up to lead the future of business.

It’s for leaders who are stepping up to become the next CEO, or maybe to join the C-suite, to run a business unit, or getting ready to do so. It’s for leaders who seek to be re-inspired, re-energised ready for an incredible future – to drive business-wide transformation, to reimagine their industry, to change the way their entire business and market works.

It’s for ambitious leaders, game changers, future makers.

If you can see yourself leading your business into the future … if you can start to imagine a business of the future, beyond that currently imagined by your leaders and peers. … then this is for you.

If you are intensely curious, positively dissatisfied, and highly ambitious … and have the courage to take on the next step, not just for you, but for your business too … then this is for you.

Our goal is to create the world’s best program for leaders like you … making sense of today’s incredible, complex and fast-changing world … and how you can have the brains and boldness to create, shape and deliver the future in your own vision.

Each year we take on a small group of 20-30 leaders and work together to help you transform your future. In the last two years, we have brought together some fantastic participants from all over the world, and many different sectors, ready to step up and shape their business, to lead their futures. They have gone on to thrive in their own worlds, and are still part of the Global AMP  community. You can join them.

Step up to lead the post-pandemic future

The Global AMP  is more relevant than ever, as the global Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted every market and business, demanding that leaders step up to think and act in new ways. As people around the world have shifted to digital technologies at home and work, we are likely to see an acceleration in new ways of working, new types of business, and new leaders.

The pandemic has acting as a catalyst for innovation, not just to survive through crisis and uncertainty, but to adapt to a rapidly changing world. Indeed it is no surprise that 57% of companies are founded in a downturn, and most innovations are born out of crisis too. Now, more than ever is the time when business needs leaders with new mindsets, new skills, and who can combine advanced learning with simultaneous business transformation.

Liquid format

To make the Global AMP  even more accessible, practical, and applied to the changing needs of you and your business, we have enhanced the format. It will now take on a much more “liquid” learning structure, so that you can continue to work, and accelerate your leadership development, during these uncertain yet important times. The program will combine online and physical formats over a longer period, enabling you to learn more, apply more, and get more practical value from the experience.

Topical, practical content

The content is entirely updated, anticipating the changing needs of business and its people as we emerge from the recent Covid-19 crisis, and through the next decade – from the megatrends that drive global markets and intelligent technologies, to the convergence of markets and emergence of new business models, new ways of working and the challenges of leading for today, and tomorrow.

We look to the companies who are shaping the world right now – from Alibaba and Aerofarms, to Babylon and Bytedance. We will learn from many different sectors – from the rapidly changing world of healthcare and finance, fashion and retail, manufacturing and technology. How are they being shaped by AI and digital platforms, by 3D printing and ecosystems, emerging markets and new consumer agendas?

Transforming your business, transforming yourself

The program takes on a more dynamic learning style, helping your to explore how to transform yourself and your business, for a world of rapid and continuous change.

We’ve structured the four weeks into a practical yet exciting journey through the world of business –  starting from the future megatrends to today’s growth drivers, exploring a world of disruptive innovations and energising organisations. In the mornings we zig, we explore all the best new ideas business, what matters for business. In the afternoon we zag. We shift venue – to a more relaxed venue – to reflect on the personal leadership challenges. What does it mean for me, my business and our future?

Deep dives, visiting some of the world’s leading businesses

Markets change so fast, that the ideas and insights of the text books rarely keep pace with reality. For that reason, we get real – taking you on a deep dive into four of the world’s most interesting businesses, one day each week.

We take you to the future of fashion, at Inditex’s innovative fast factory, to the future of banking, at BBVA’s innovation lab, to the future of manufacturing, with Airbus Industries, and the future of consumer goods, to an amazingly good vineyard!

Gamechanger project

In addition to exploring the very latest business ideas and theories, the program is highly personalised in two ways – coaching and project work. The “gamechanger” project is your opportunity to develop your own blueprint for transforming the future of your business, or a new business of your own.

You work one to one with the Academic Director in exploring and defining a new vision which you can take back, share with your business colleagues, and implement over time. It is supported by a Gamechanger Toolkit, and works alongside all modules, applying the learning to your own business, and future potential.

Personal coaching

The one to one leadership coaching program helps you to make sense of your own strengths and style, and coaches work with you to develop this, to respond to the new needs, and to prepare to step up to business leadership. It starts with an in-depth diagnostic of your leadership attitudes and behaviours, and then your coach works with you over time, independent from the rest of the program, as this is specifically about you.

Detailed structure

Modules 1 and 3 will be online, built around a 4 hour session each Friday for 10 weeks. During these sessions we will bring together the best ideas from around the business world, with expert faculty, and also take you on “deep dives” into what is happening right now in some of the world’s leading businesses.

Modules 2 and 4 will be residential, one week in Segovia, a world heritage site in Spain, and one week in the capital, Madrid. These weeks will also feature leading faculty brought together from around the world, and also enable more time for group networking and collaboration with colleagues who typically come from many different industries and every part of the world. Week 4 concludes with your graduation at IE Business School.

Start dates

There are two alternative start dates – September 2020 or January 2021 (for the online module 1), and both groups will then merge together in March 2021 (for the residential module 2, and all subsequent modules). This gives you the option of starting at a more gradual pace this year, or waiting until the new year, when we all hope to return to less unusual times).

We are really excited by this new format, and also by all the enhanced content for the program. There never has been a more urgent or important time for leaders to step up, to make sense of a changing world, and prepare to create a better future.

Delivered by some of the world’s top business leaders and thinkers

We bring together the world’s most inspiring and thoughtful faculty. This year it additionally includes

• Jim Hagemann Snabe, chairman of Siemens and Maersk, one of the world’s top leaders, leader of World Economic Forum council
• Tendayi Viki, a psychologist-based innovator, columnist at Forbes, author of Pirates in the Navy, and partner of Strategyzer
• Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez , the world’s top project manager, CEO of GSK’s project office, and author of The Project Revolution
• Joost Minaar, half of the Dutch organisation, Corporate Rebels, all about making work more empowered and fun
• Mark Thomas, social economist, author of the Complete CEO, founder of 99% Organisation, fighting for social equalty.
• Verónica Reyero, human anthropologist exploring a more human future, and founder of Anthropologia 2.0
• Rob-Jan de Jong, author of Anticipate, professor at Wharton Business School, and expert on leading the future
• Mikael Trolle, former national coach of Denmark’s Volleyball team, and coach to many business leaders

They add to the existing IE Business School team that includes

• Peter Fisk, academic director of the Global AMP, bestselling author of Gamechangers, Thinkers50 Global Director
• Mark Esposito, technology futurist and AI pioneer, founder of Nexus FrontierTech, and faculty at Harvard Business School
• Terence Tse, co-author of the AI Republic, expert on the future of finance and healthcare, and co-chair of the Start-Up Lab
• Mia de Kuijper, Senior VP Strategic Advisor at Saleforce, and Executive in Residence at Harvard Innovation Labs
• Juan Carlos Pastor, professor of leadership at IE Business School, leading on authentic leadership
• Lola Martinez, TV anchor at CNN International, media expert on storytelling and presenting, applied to business leadership
• Marcos Cajina, founder of Renewal, a specialist leadership company that focuses on the neuroscience of emotional engagement
• Steven MacGregor, author of Chief Wellbeing Officer, founder of the Leadership Academy of Barcelona, expert on executive performance.

Global participants

Importantly, the Global AMP brings together a great mix of participants from across sectors and around the world, enhancing your personal network, and learning experience for everyone.

Examples of recent participants include:

• Finance, Head of Investment Banking, Portugal
• Technology, Regional Marketing Leader, Egypt
• Healthcare, Head of Clinical Development, Japan
• Drinks, Supply Chain Director, Mexico
• Airlines, Head of Network Development, UAE
• Technology, Customer Service Director, Mexico
• Energy, Corporate Strategy Director, Spain
• Mining, Innovation Director, South Africa
• Real Estate, Founder and CEO, Portugal
• Sustainable Investment Fund, CEO, France
• Healthcare, Senior Medical Advisor, USA
• Technology, Entrepreneur, Saudi Arabia
• Manufacturing, CEO and Chairman, Turkey
• NGO, Founder and Director, Kenya

All participants then join the exclusive Global AMP alumni network, including regular networking and ongoing resources.

Idea Starters

Here are a few tasters of the expert faculty and their big ideas …

Jim Hagemann Snabe … one of the world’s top business leaders, on Dreams and Details:

Module 1: Future Lab

Making sense of change, exploring megatrends and their implications for business, today and tomorrow, and making better choices for your future direction, are all essential to successful leadership. The rise of emerging markets, new technologies and next-generation audiences is accompanied by the increasing scarcity of resources, social fragmentation and climate change. The Fourth Industrial Revolution heralds a new era for business and society, from digitalization and automation to 3D printing, machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics.

• Rocket ships: How will you lead the future, shape it in your own vision, and take your business on an uncertain journey towards a better tomorrow?
• Exponential technologies: Harnessing the potential of new capabilities, from digital and big data to biotech and nanotech as well as AI and robotics.
• Resource scarcity: Changing sources of energy, the peak of rare metals, high-tech components, patented technologies, talent and creativity.
• Human impacts: Rethinking work, education and employment, aging and healthcare, urbanization and belonging, wealth and happiness.
• Future shaping: Making sense of change and making better choices. Harnessing the value drivers and using scenario planning to shape the future you want.

Mark Esposito … the Canadian futurist explores the future as it unfolds:

 

Module 2: Growth Lab

Markets are complex, competitive and dynamic. New markets emerge, and old markets decline, as new audiences, new aspirations and new possibilities drive new growth. Focusing on the best opportunities for growth becomes key to your future, and reimagining how your business can embrace them profitably. Digital markets have no limits, and allow even the smallest businesses to have a huge impact, while accelerating the convergence of sectors and businesses.– so what is your purpose, that will guide you through the future horizons of growth?

• Growth markets: Exploring the changing the nature of markets. Creating new spaces based on new customers and solutions, driving your growth horizons.
• Inspiring purpose: Finding your north star, why your business exists, and how putting purpose beyond profit, can transform your activities and success.
• Customer futures: Understanding the changing aspirations and behaviours of customers, with deeper insight to understand and engage them better.
• Platform markets: Harnessing the power of digital networks to create new market models that bring buyers and sellers together in new ways, creating new value.
• Growth accelerators: Consumer data, digital network, and new business models enable you to accelerate every aspect of business, and your future growth.

Tendayi Viki … the psychologist innovator creates the invincible company:

Module 3: Creative Lab

Disruption is everywhere, whether it’s a start-up challenging established giants, new technologies replacing inefficient processes, simplicity outperforming complexity or customers challenging businesses to do better. The impact can be dramatic. Reputations can be made and destroyed in a matter of days, while veteran companies are wiped off the map. How can you turn the tables and become the disrupter by developing insights, ideas, innovative strategies and business models that can be delivered quickly and efficiently?

• Faster innovation: Transforming ideas into new solutions, strategies into action, embracing disruptive change, to reimagine your future business.
• Creative designs: Harnessing the power of creativity, fused with deep insight, to design better solutions – products and services, experiences and business.
• Sustainable innovation: Innovating to solve the biggest social and environmental challenges, in a way that is good for the world, and more profitable too.
• Business Models: Rethinking how organisations work to deliver innovative propositions, leveraging assets and partners to create new ways of working.
• Invincible companies: Bringing together your innovation portfolio as a source of relentless progress and profitable growth for your business.

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez  … the world’s top project manager on leading transformation:

Module 4: Action Lab

Organisations thrive on an inspiring purpose, aligned business model, innovation inside and outside, driving change and high performance. They constantly drive change and transformation, working through projects to create seize new opportunities. People are energised by a positive culture, harnessing the best talents of man and machine, with the agility to continually adapt and respond to changing markets, develop new capabilities and partnerships, and reach new heights. How can you transform, mobilise and energise your organization with a strategy to deliver the best performance today, and create an even better future?

• Winning strategies: Defining the right direction and priorities, guided by an inspiring purpose, and harnessing the drivers of value.
• Driving change: Making better, more strategic decisions every day, turning strategy into implementation, while using the right metrics and rewards, to drive transformation and performance.
• Fast and agile: Shaping organisations and processes to be agile and efficient, leveraging strengths and addressing weaknesses both internally and externally.
• Energising people: Mobilising employees to think and deliver strategy innovatively and profitably, unlocking the power of teams and humanity in a positive culture.
• Sustaining impact: Ensuring that the organisation has the capacity to renew and adapt to deliver shared value in the short and long term.

Verónica Reyero … the modern anthropologist, exploring better human futures:

Module 5: Amplified Leadership

The best leaders amplify the potential of their teams and their business. By developing an effective leadership style, they can inspire, engage, connect and support to drive long-term direction and meet short-term goals. Leaders of the future will drive change in a way that unlocks talent and performance, constantly reinventing organisations. How will you lead yourself, your team and your business towards a better future, one that combines purpose with passion, profit and progress? This module is interspersed across the whole program, in order to connect with the many different business topics.

• Great leaders: Business are obsessed with leadership, but how do leaders really add value, engage people effectively and deliver better results?
• Authentic organizations: From corporate to personal reputations, how do you build trust and authenticity inside and outside the business?
• Talent beacons: How to attract, engage and retain the best people in an ideas-driven world – to nurture, motivate, and inspire them to create the future.
• High performance: Improving your personal and business wellbeing to drive high performance, physically and mentally, agile and resilient, with a winning mindset.
• Leadership style: Why should you be the leader? What do you have that will take your company further? And why will anyone want to be led by you?

Terence Tse … AI driving the future of business:

Mia de Kuijper … Leading the Change … Explore the power nodes:

Steven MacGregor … why you need a Chief Wellbeing Officer:

Download the new Global AMP Brochure

or Contact Marta Gibert on +34 915 689 783

Downloads and links from today’s keynote:

• Peter Fisk’s keynote “Brands need to step up be more“
• Case study of Brewdog
• Case study of Pinduoduo
• Case study of White Claw

Thanks to a small bit of contagious RNA we are all now unwilling participants in a seismic experiment that is shaking the foundations of society, technology, economics, healthcare and more. Marketing guru Seth Godin wonders if it’s a message from the future. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella describes it as a shift “from hierarchies to wirearchies”. Nestle’s Emmanuel Faber says “now is the moment to be bold for our consumers and our future.” In many ways, the global pandemic has simply accelerated many shifts that were already emerging – shifting economic power, changing consumer priorities, new distribution models, rising social and environmental issues, and much more.  

For marketers, this is a time to refocus on priorities, and reimagine the future. While the essential principles of marketing have not changed, some of the ways in which we achieve most impact, and deliver business success, will. What’s the new consumer agenda – what’s changed, and what’s not? How can brands do more for people, be more of their lives? What drives trust and influence? How can we connect with consumers, and help them connect together? What are the new opportunities to innovate, beyond products and point of sale? How can new business models change the way markets work?  And fundamentally, how can marketers continue to drive, even accelerate, innovative growth in the business?

Inspiration to do better, and different, comes from everywhere – consider the rapidly changing world of beauty and fashion, from personalisation to upcycling – learn from the disruptive impact of technologies in media and entertainment –  and changing priorities in retail and entertainment. What can we learn from Emily Weiss’ community-based approach to brand building at Glossier, from Patrick Brown’s positioning of Impossible Foods as “alternative meat”, from Katrina Lake’s use of AI and personalisation in fashion with Stitch Fix, from Ilkka Paananen’s gaming revolution with Supercell, and in beer from “ gypsy brewer” Mikkel Bjergso? Our challenge is to take these inspiration and apply the best ones in fresh, creative and commercial ways to our business and markets, to reimagine the future, and start delivering it today.

10 Principles of 2020 Marketing

To be successful in the digital era, marketers should adopt the best new modern practices as well as rethink and refine classic approaches.

The marketing field has changed dramatically in recent years in direct response to the way technology has affected the wider practice of management. Technology now affects virtually every facet of how organizations design, plan, execute, and measure their marketing efforts. While every industry has changed — consumer products, financial services, durable goods, and others — the technology industry, by virtue of its fast-paced, innovative nature, tends to lead the charge when it comes to marketing transformation and has become the model for modern digital marketing efforts. Changes in the marketing of technology products are important not only for those marketers looking to hone their craft in that industry but also for marketers in other industries seeking to acquire new skills and practices.

With more than 30 years of experience each in the practice or study of technology product marketing, we set forth a set of principles that reflects both classic and new approaches. We illustrate these examples with several firsthand examples from Adobe, a technology marketing pioneer and enduring market leader, as well as other top technology companies such as Fitbit, Intel, Intuit, Red Hat, and Spotify.

Technology Is Just the First Step

Technology has changed everything. Fundamentally, it allows for new ways to create customer experiences, new mediums to connect with customers and other constituents, and trillions of data points to understand customer behavior and the impact of marketing programs and activities. Yet, with all that progress, we are still only at the tip of the iceberg in terms of the profound impact technology will have on the future of marketing.

Even though technology is becoming only more advanced and disruptive, marketers of technology products must realize that technology is only the first step. To fully realize the potential of technology, it takes transformation across people, processes, and technology. Only by recognizing all three forces will modern marketers reap the full benefits that technology can have on marketing transformation.

There is no question that technology is critical to business success for virtually all organizations today, especially for those in the business of marketing technology itself. To thrive in this new era, it is imperative that marketers embrace developments in technology and test and adopt new advancements that fit their business — whether AI, or voice, or augmented reality — before they lose a competitive edge. At the same time, mastering technology is not the only criterion for success in the modern marketing era — the right people and processes must also be put in place to properly develop, manage, and nurture the benefits of that technology.In terms of people, today’s marketers must possess many traits. They must be curious, flexible, agile, and nimble. They must be willing to be change agents, always looking around the corner and helping to scale transformation as champions for change. The status quo for any marketing job is no longer enough — continuous development of new skills for all marketers is critical. Adobe, for example, encourages skill development in a wide variety of ways, including job rotations with new roles every few years, internal training and learning programs, in-house Q and A sessions with external customers for outside-in perspectives, and a quarterly learning and development newsletter.

The marketing organization as a whole, however, also needs people with diverse skill sets and expertise in key areas. Managers should ensure their marketing teams include members who bring creative and analytical capabilities, as well as individuals who can play newly evolved roles on a team — whether that’s someone skilled in web development, data analytics, e-commerce, or new media. Many of these jobs didn’t exist four or five years ago, and even if they did, they have changed dramatically in recent years.

Further, while these new, specialized jobs have emerged, marketers must also be able to take a broad view of marketing strategy. The dynamic cross-channel nature of marketing today requires that campaigns be integrated and connected across every channel. In short, it’s incumbent upon marketing management in all companies to train and re-skill their people, as well as bring in new talent and leadership in specialized areas.

Processes must also change for technology organizations. Today, the customer-decision process is becoming more complex and varied. As the customer journey becomes increasingly nonlinear, the organization must change to reflect that. In a more complex marketplace, internal organizational lines need to be redrawn. Silos must be broken down and cross-functional relationships established so that marketing works seamlessly across other groups in the organization such as IT, finance, sales, and product management.

Marketing can benefit from the output of these other groups and also contribute to the groups’ effectiveness and success at the same time. For example, to improve the reliability of financial forecasting, marketing can share early-warning lead indicators that have been shown to affect bottom-of-the-funnel behaviors and ultimately revenue (for example, the number of customer visits to company-controlled websites). And unlike ever before, marketing can now demonstrate its impact on the business, validating the ROI of every dollar to peer groups in the organization and becoming a strategic driver of the business.

All these changes, however, require that technology organizations operate differently. As will be developed in greater detail below, they must learn to be agile, take risks, fail fast, and apply lessons. They must also learn how to get the most out of a data-rich world by testing, optimizing, and activating.

Experience Is the New Brand

With traditional marketing, the customer-decision and company-selling process was comparatively simple with customers entering into a company’s sales and marketing funnel and making various choices along the way to becoming loyal, repeat customers. Today, although having great technology products is and always will be of paramount importance, every surrounding customer touch point online and offline — as wide-ranging as a tweet, product download, in-store purchase, the company’s social purpose, its executives’ behavior, and the corporate culture — can shape experiences that define a brand for customers.

Marketers operate at the intersection of many of these customer experiences and are uniquely positioned to help steer the future directions for brands. In doing so, marketers of technology products cannot just worship the product alone and be transactional in their customer interactions. They must create full-on, immersive experiences for customers that build strong ties to the company and the brand as a whole. Experiences are the new competitive battlefield and a means to create powerful differentiation from competitors.

With technology products, seamless product installation and operation, in particular, is absolutely critical. If customers cannot successfully use a company’s products, there will be no value realization, and they will eventually switch to products from other companies that they can more easily access and use. Beyond designing products that are as easy to use as possible, technology companies must have a wide range of support and services for customers to help them with product installation and use, employing ample training resources as well as informative forums, social channels, and websites.

Adobe, for example, takes enormous efforts to educate its customers so that customers know how they should use a product, fix any problem that arises, and deal with any special situations that occur, all as quickly and easily as possible. The company does as much of this as it can through digital, using lots of video across YouTube, Adobe.com, and every other digital channel where customers are present to help them learn and master its products.

Other companies such as Buffer, Wistia, and Mailchimp similarly put tremendous emphasis on customer education and ensuring customers have the best product experience possible. For example, Fitbit has combined sensors, wireless technology, software, and services to pioneer the connected health and fitness market. To help customers take full advantage of Fitbit and lead healthier, more active lives, the company uses social media and the support of a strong community, in addition to telephone, email, and chat customer support, to both impart and collect information about product usage.

A New Type of Customer Relationship Prevails

The reality of customer-brand relationships today is that they have evolved from single, interspersed interactions to always-on, symbiotic, and immersive relationships. Customers own the brand in many ways as much as marketers do, and it is every marketer’s responsibility to make customers an integral part of the company’s brand equation by asking for continuous feedback, listening to it, and cocreating with them. What exactly do customers want from a brand? What do they not want? Marketers don’t have to always do what customers say they should do, but if marketers don’t, they need to tell customers why.

Consider this Adobe example for managing customer expectations. When the company moved from Creative Suite software to the Creative Cloud subscription service, some customers were not happy with the switch. They were attached to their packaged software and the up-front purchasing model they had known for years, so there was, understandably, apprehension about what this change meant for them. The response in some markets where digital subscriptions were not yet the norm was particularly pronounced.

The only way to deal with this reticence to change behavior was to offer maximum transparency and provide a lot of information. This required Adobe to get really close to customers — on online forums, on social channels, and through live events — to understand their reservations and concerns. After the company internalized their feedback and understood the insights driving the apprehension, it was able to clearly articulate its response.

Specifically, Adobe ensured that the ongoing value and innovation that a subscription model offered was thoroughly communicated at every touch point. Instead of investing in one big marketing push every two years to align with a major launch, Adobe focused its marketing strategy to support a subscription model with ongoing educational and inspirational campaigns that built an ongoing customer relationship. Over time, the product value alone, supported with stronger customer relationships, helped customers become satisfied with the subscription model. While no company can please every customer every time, seeing issues through the lens of a customer and acting upon those insights is critical to establishing mutually beneficial long-term relationships.

A strong customer relationship requires that marketers deeply understand how customers think and feel, not just about their products or services but about what they are using the products or services for and how they are actually using them. It requires keen insight into customer motivations and behaviors — the problems customers are trying to solve and the goals they are trying to achieve.

A pioneer in customer-centric technology marketing, Intuit has applied its strong belief in customer empathy and its Design for Delight (D4D) design principle to create a more enjoyable user experience across its entire product portfolio. Notably, Intuit’s TurboTax tax-preparation software has become a market leader by tapping into the emotional relief from taking a dreary but unavoidable task — tax preparation — and making it as painless and pleasurable as possible. Based on keen customer insights, TurboTax is designed to be friendly, personal, and easy to use across multiple platforms to create a positive customer experience in filing taxes and maximizing tax refunds.

Connect With Customers Online and Offline

In technology, when selling fairly complex products, the company is responsible for owning customer success. The amount of data available today mandates that every brand knows its customers and caters to them at every possible touch point, but at the same time, it is still important to actually meet with customers! No dashboard alone can provide the same rich insights as an in-depth conversation with an engaged customer. Along with traditional qualitative methods like focus groups and research, Adobe has found that even though we all live in a digital-dominant world, live events are far from dead. The company sees unprecedented levels of engagement at its events around the globe and continues to outgrow every venue it selects, because it will probably always be the case that nothing beats the power of companies and their customers coming together in person to learn, get inspired, and have a little fun.

Value Creation, Communication, and Delivery Still Rule

Perceived value — especially with complex technological products — can be difficult for customers to assess. Formally, perceived value is all the different benefits gained by customers from purchasing and using a product as well as all the different costs saved. These are not just financial benefits and costs but also psychological, social, emotional, and other types of benefits and costs. Note that value creation is only necessary, but not sufficient, for marketing success. Value must also be effectively and efficiently communicated and delivered.

When marketing technology products, it’s important to find ways to simplify the explanation of product functionality and performance and the resulting benefits gained — or even costs saved — to aid customer understanding and appreciation. For example, one of the keys to the success of the Intel Inside launch was that it employed the powerful metaphor of microprocessors as the brains of a computer. Even if prospective customers didn’t know what a microprocessor actually was or did, they could still appreciate the fundamental importance of having the smartest brains.

Data and Testing Are the New Lifeblood

To be a great technology marketer in today’s digital world, it is important to build a culture of testing. It is a gift to be able to test all the time and to learn and activate quickly as a result. Adobe does this in many ways:

• From a product perspective, Adobe does active beta testing with its customers, releasing versions of its software into the market and actively engaging with customers during the beta period to solicit feedback, add new functionality, and shape product road maps.
• From a marketing mix perspective, Adobe applies state-of-the-art econometric modeling, as well as real-time attribution modeling, to test, predict, and ultimately validate the right levels and mix of media investments.
• From a marketing perspective, Adobe uses data to build more precise segmentation models based on factors such as the type of content customers create and engage most with and their stage in the customer journey to offer more personalized, relevant experiences — a valuable asset in today’s digital world.

Adobe is not alone in using data analytics to drive marketing experimentation. Amazon, Capital One, Netflix, and Pandora famously run thousands of tests to optimize their marketing efforts. To successfully activate these different insights to improve the customer experience, it is imperative to also work across the organization to integrate data and build real-time data models and decision-driving dashboards. That requires blending marketing inputs like behavioral data (for example, social, PR, web data, and media performance) with inputs from other areas (for example, sales, CRM, in-product, and finance). In today’s world, marketing simply can’t operate in a silo.

Despite all this data science, however, there is still an art to mastering marketing and managing customer relationships. Not everything can be automated, which is why robots will never be programmed to do marketing on their own. Instinct and judgment still — and always will — matter.

Creativity Remains King

Despite all the transformational technological change that has created such a data-rich world for marketers, there still also needs to be great creative in marketing. The emotional hook that marketing has always been able to create with customers absolutely remains necessary.

There’s a myth that all creatives hate data. That may have been true in the past, but many modern creatives actually like to see the impact they’re having, whether it’s looking at social-sharing metrics or larger data sets capturing online behavior. They understand that creativity can be sparked by data and that their creative output can become stronger by adapting it to market input. McKinsey & Co. has reported research showing that companies that successfully manage to integrate creativity and data report a “two-times difference in revenue growth.”1

Creativity does not have to come just from within a company either. The most successful brands today are shaped by the brand’s community of customers and partners as much as they are by the company itself. Cocreation in all forms can fuel the creative process — whether directly with customers or in collaboration with like-minded partners, bringing a benefit to both entities. Consider this Adobe example:

Adobe teamed up with the band Imagine Dragons to commemorate the 25th anniversary of its industry-leading video-editing software, Adobe Premiere Pro. It granted its community exclusive raw footage from the band’s megahit “Believer” and challenged them to recut it for the chance to win $25,000. This sort of campaign had never been done before, and although editing a video can be a difficult undertaking, the company received thousands of submissions from around the world, a testament to the power of a novel concept, a well-liked partner, and the vibrancy of a strong community.

Don’t Try to Do It Alone

In a complex and challenging marketplace, it can be difficult for technology products to go to market on their own. It helps if they can benefit, directly or indirectly, from being part of something bigger via their inclusion in a platform or as a result of collaboration with others. Platforms consist of combinations of different interrelated products and services provided by the company. The benefits created by the platform as a whole can enhance the value of any one of its individual components or products.

Collaborations — external alliances or joint ventures with third parties — can also provide value for a technology brand. Adobe’s enterprise business could not scale without its large partner ecosystem that helps customers implement and realize the most value out of complex enterprise solutions through product integration, training, consulting, and so forth. One of Adobe’s largest enterprise partnerships is with Microsoft, which brings together complementary technology, customer segments, and go-to-market strategies to achieve greater market scale. Through these synergies, customers have access to custom integrated technology solutions, teams, and expertise that enable them to deliver seamless, secure, relevant experiences to theircustomers, and the two companies benefit from complementary areas of market leadership.

In a complex technological world, acquisitions are also often critical to bring needed technical capabilities and expertise. Spotify’s phenomenal growth has been driven, in part, by shrewd acquisitions that allowed it to create a richer, more complete, and more integrated customer experience. The acquisitions of long-term partner Tunigo, and its technology to allow users to manage playlists moment by moment, as well as The Echo Nest, and its machine learning technology to make musical recommendations and predictions, both helped improve the Spotify customer’s listening experience and musical discovery.

Have a Bigger Purpose: Do Good

Increasingly, customers expect the companies they do business with to be doing good in the world, too. Since Adobe’s beginnings, its founders have made significant donations to causes that were critical to its mission. This emphasis on social impact is deeply embedded in the company’s culture to this day. Beyond concerted programmatic efforts to promote causes such as sustainability and diversity and inclusion within the organization, Adobe recognizes the positive impact its products can make in the world as a whole. Consider these examples of how Adobe finds ways to use its products to have greater social impact.

• After the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Harvey, Adobe teamed up with a group of students to restore victims’ family photos using Adobe products. The victims had lost every physical possession, but through the power of technology, they were able to receive restored — and treasured — family photos.
• Adobe works closely with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to use Adobe software to do age progressions of missing children, enabling authorities and the general public to better recognize and help find them.
• Through its Project 1324 program, Adobe is beta testing a web platform that is available to young people who want to create and share their work on social issues they care about, using Adobe’s products. Participants engage in creative challenges with entities like the Sundance Institute to engage the next generation of filmmakers through activities like short-film competitions, meet-ups at the Sundance Film Festival, and live events.

Programs and activities like these serve a vital function for Adobe as well as other similarly like-minded companies. Successful technology companies, such as Apple, Microsoft, and Intel, have also invested heavily in cause marketing to support their brand through various programs.

For example, consistent with its open-source roots and belief in freedom and choice, Linux software leader Red Hat’s matching gift program allows employees to designate any eligible 501(c)(3) nonprofit, school, or house of worship for their donations, allowing maximum flexibility. Red Hat also ties in volunteer community activities for customers, partners, and employees at its annual Red Hat Summit conference; the We Are Red Hat Week annual celebration of the company’s brand, culture, and people; and other events. Red Hat also donates its holiday party budget to a different designated national nonprofit chosen by employees each year.

Brand purpose can provide the fuel for employee engagement internally as well as the glue for marketing programs externally to help emotionally connect with customers. Purpose can also be a key factor in recruiting talent. The best organizations have a brand soul and purpose that they fiercely protect, nurture, and live every day. This touchstone can be more challenging with successive leadership as founders move on from the company.

Marketing Leadership Has Changed

Finally, as would be expected from all the changes noted above, marketing leadership itself has had to change. The future chief marketing officer must also be the chief customer officer, chief experience officer, and chief growth officer. The modern CMO for a technology product organization should not cede those roles; rather, he or she should own, shape, and lead them.

• Be the chief customer officer: Be the customer’s biggest champion. No other group has the purview that the CMO does.
• Be the chief experience officer: Create meaningful experiences that foster long-lasting customer relationships.
• Be the chief growth officer: Drive business by bringing together design and intelligence in a way that only marketers can.

The CMO has to stress accountability throughout the entire marketing organization. Marketers must be willing to dig deep into the numbers to provide appropriate rationale and support for marketing decisions. At the same time, they have to take calculated risks. The reality is, in today’s challenging marketing environment, not taking risks is, in fact, taking a risk.

Marketing as a field has changed dramatically in recent years as a result of the shift toward technology and data-driven approaches across the marketing of not only technology products but also products across all types of industries. Technology marketing continues to be a driver of change for the wider practice, however, and marketers should look to the efforts of companies such as Adobe, as well as Fitbit, Intel, Intuit, Red Hat, Spotify, and others that have become proven innovators. At the same time, although it’s important to keep up with new advancements, many basic marketing principles still apply, albeit often in an updated or modified form. Marketing success for organizations in the 21st century will require adopting the best new modern practices as well as rethinking and refining classic approaches.

Peter Fisk is a global thought leader, with a background in brands and marketing, and was CEO of the world’s largest marketing network, the Chartered Institute of Marketing. His first book, Marketing Genius, has been translated into 35 languages. It explores the left and right-brain of marketing, combining the deep analytics of Einstein, with the intuitive ideas of Picasso, applied to 21st century markets. Peter works in every sector and geography, and specifically in food and drink has worked with the likes of Coca Cola, P&G, Nestle, Carlsberg, Heineken and others. 

Image: Unsplash