Peter Fisk

The best companies of tomorrow are being created right now. Now is the time for business leaders to step up, to have the courage to look ahead, with more purpose and passion, to create a better business for the future.

57% of today’s largest companies were created in a downturn. A crisis accelerates change, it disrupts the old codes of business, it forges new ideas and loyalties. Consumer priorities change and new behaviours emerge. Now is not just the time to survive, but to thrive. As Intel’s Andy Grove said “Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, good companies survive them, great companies are improved by them.”

Now is the time to recode your business – to refocus your people on a more inspiring purpose, to reimagine how value is created and shared, to reinvent your market as well as your business. The top quartile performers in a downturn typically outperform their markets 3 times more than in normal times. Now is not the time to be average, now is the time to be extraordinary.

Downloads:

• Future Recoded: reimagine everything
• Tomorrow’s companies, being created right now
• Economic and consumer impact of Covid-19

Peter Fisk is an inspiring business thinker, author and speaker, whose career was forged in a superconductivity lab, accelerated by supersonic travel, evolved in a digital start-up, and formalised as CEO of the world’s largest marketing network. His 8 books in 35 languages fuse the brains of Einstein and Picasso, explore the world’s most innovative companies, and include the new “Business Recoded”.

He now leads GeniusWorks, an innovation accelerator based in London, working with business leaders from Adidas to Aeroflot, Cartier and Coca Cola, McKinsey to Microsoft, P&G and Pfizer. He is Thinkers50 Global Director, and founder of the European Business Forum, and a professor of leadership, strategy and innovation at IE Business School in Madrid, where he leads their flagship executive programs.

In challenging times, be challenged by great ideas and new thinking 

Join us for an incredible 3 hour virtual business summit, bringing together some of the world’s top business thinkers exploring the challenges and opportunities for business in a world of crisis and change. Organised by Speaker Associates, the world’s premier speaker network, and moderated by Edie Lush of Global GoalsCast, the line-up includes:

• Alex Osterwalder 
• Howard Yu
• Rahaf Harfoush
• Thimon de Jong
• Rita McGrath
• René Carayol
• Mark Ritson
• Peter Fisk

How to survive and thrive in crazy times

The best companies of tomorrow are being created right now. Now is the time for business leaders to step up, to have the courage to look ahead, with more purpose and passion, to create a better business for the future.

57% of today’s largest companies were created in a downturn. A crisis accelerates change, it disrupts the old codes of business, it forges new ideas and loyalties. Consumer priorities change and new behaviours emerge. Now is not just the time to survive, but to thrive. As Intel’s Andy Grove said “Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, good companies survive them, great companies are improved by them.”

Now is the time to recode your business – to refocus your people on a more inspiring purpose, to reimagine how value is created and shared, to reinvent your market as well as your business. The top quartile performers in a downturn typically outperform their markets 3 times more than in normal times. Now is not the time to be average, now is the time to be extraordinary.

Downloads:

• How will you create the future, ride the megatrends? Future Recoded: reimagine everything
• What should business leaders do now? Tomorrow’s companies, being created right now
• Where are the opportunities? Economic and consumer impact of Covid-19

Peter Fisk is an inspiring business thinker, author and speaker, whose career was forged in a superconductivity lab, accelerated by supersonic travel, evolved in a digital start-up, and formalised as CEO of the world’s largest marketing network. His 8 books in 35 languages fuse the brains of Einstein and Picasso, explore the world’s most innovative companies, and include the new “Business Recoded”.

He now leads GeniusWorks, an innovation accelerator based in London, working with business leaders from Adidas to Aeroflot, Cartier and Coca Cola, McKinsey to Microsoft, P&G and Pfizer. He is Thinkers50 Global Director, and founder of the European Business Forum, and a professor of leadership, strategy and innovation at IE Business School in Madrid, where he leads their flagship executive programs.

Email me at peterfisk@peterfisk.com

This is a free online seminar in partnership with IE Business School’s Executive Education team.

Find out more and sign up: Finding your higher purpose to survive and thrive in these crazy times.

• 57% of the world’s largest companies – including Apple and Disney, GE and MTV – were founded in a downturn, seizing the opportunity of rapidly changing markets, new consumer attitudes and behaviours, to establish new approaches to business
• An inspiring purpose becomes your guide through the chaos and uncertainty of turbulent times, your North Star to guide you in markets where you could do anything, to give your people inspiration and focus, and a cause worth fighting for.
• Why does your business exist? IKEA wants to create a better everyday life. Tesla seeks to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Dove helps women to realise their potential. Swarovski adds sparkle to everyday lives.
• Purposeful companies outperform others by 42%. They are more ambitious, faster and more agile, more trusted, attract talent, increase loyalty, and attract investment. 79% of business leaders say purpose matters, 68% don’t have one or don’t use it.
• Creating an inspiring purpose is just the start. Find out how to turn it into meaningful concepts and profitable strategies, how to use it to inspire and energise your investors, employees and customers, and how to make smarter decisions for future growth.

Finding more purpose

So why does your business exist?

Purpose defines what the business contributes to the world, or equally, why the world would be a lesser place if the business did not exist.

Purpose creates an enduring cause which the business is willing to fight for. For some this might be an urgent call to action, for others it might be a more personal inspiration. Saving then planet, or achieving your potential, with Nike, or seeking happiness, with Coca Cola.

Tesla exists to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”, Starbucks to “inspire the human spirit”, Dove to “help the next generation of women realise their potential”, Microsoft to “empower people to achieve more”, and Swarovski to “add sparkle to people’s everyday lives.”

Purpose creates a richer sense of meaning in your business, inspiring employees to raise their game, to transform and grow themselves and the organisation. It encourages a strategic focus, to rise above the distractions of today, to align on bigger goals and to innovate more radically. Productivity and performance typically follow.

It is a cause shared internally and externally, that investors want to be part of, partners want to align with, and customers want to promote through their consumption and loyalty.

Purpose goes far beyond the old mission and vision statements, which were largely internal mantras, about how good the company wanted to be – “the best”, “the industry leader”, “to maximise performance”. Purpose is much more altruistic and inclusive. It is about what the inside does for the outside world. It sits above other ambitions, and should probably replace them, as an inspiring, single-minded intent.

If purpose is “why we exist?”, then mission is more about “what do we do?” and vision is  “where are we going?”. Or as Ashley Grice the CEO of Brighthouse says “When you go to bed at night and you are worried about something, that is generally your mission. But when you wake up in the morning and you are excited about something, that’s your purpose?”

Mark Zuckerberg, the Harvard drop-put who spent his student years in pursuit of a Face Mash tool to explore the opposite sex, returned to the Boston campus recently with a new sense of purpose. “Today I want to talk about purpose, but not some kind of grand speech on how to find it. We’re millennials. We’ll try to do that instinctively. Instead, I’m here to tell you finding your purpose isn’t enough.”

“The challenge for our generation is creating a world where everyone has a sense of purpose. One of my favorite stories is when John F. Kennedy visited the NASA space center, he saw a janitor carrying a broom and he walked over and asked what he was doing. The janitor responded: ‘Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon.’Purpose is that sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are needed, that we have something better ahead to work for. Purpose is what creates true happiness.”

Slingshot is a new leadership accelerator … inspiring and equipping a new generation to step up to leadership, to accelerate personal and business growth. You are the new generation of leaders … you know you have lots of potential, maybe you joined business on a fast track program, you’ve now got 5 to 10 years of practical work experience … Now is the time to step up, to be a leader. Leadership starts with you … having the right mindset and meta skills to grow as an inspiring and effective leader … with the ability to inspire and influence others, to design and deliver great performance.

Download more details about the Springboard Leadership Accelerator.

I spend my working life travelling … as a keynote speaker I travel the world, to the most interesting – sometimes incredibly glamorous and occasionally quite dangerous – places. Usually it’s for a one hour keynote, so my time to see the location is quite limited, although I always pack my running shoes for a quick 10km before breakfast each morning.

But mostly I see airports, aeroplanes, taxis, hotel rooms, backstages, and a brief glimpse of a thousand smiling faces as I deliver my keynote. Having started my business life in travel, in marketing and brand development for British Airways, I understand this world pretty well.

I also think it needs to change.

You can watch a recent keynote here, from the GBTA Summit:

Download my keynote here: Travel Gamechangers with GBTA 

For the traveller. I’m sure that there could be fabulous innovations to the health and well-being, the effectiveness and productivity.  In a world where global organisations are the norm, where technology can connect us in realtime, and the speed of everything is exponentially accelerating. But travel, and its systems and experiences, doesn’t seem to have changed much. So just to capture some of the anxieties, the frustrations, but also the opportunities and innovations of the travel world … here are a few of my favourite videos, some a little off-beat and fun, but others thought-provoking and innovative:

Be the Gamechanger

We live in an incredible time. More change in the next 10 years than in the last 250 years.

New technologies are transforming the ways in which we live and work. Technologies enable incredible change. It is how we unlock their potential that matters.

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 have spent the last 24 months running competitions around the world, to find and rank the world’s most innovative companies by sector and geography.

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 Airbnb, Brewdog to Buzzfeed, Casper to Coursera – 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 Abu Dhabi 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 Musk 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.

• Article: The 10x Leader
• Article: Amplifying Potential
• Book: “Gamechangers: Are you ready to change the world?“
• Workshop: “Gamechangers Program: Leading for smarter innovation and profitable growth”
• Workshop: “Inspiring Leadership … future, people and change”
• Download a summary of Peter Fisk’s keynote “Gamechangers”

Food Recoded … from sushi to match your DNA, to beer made from waste cereals, wellbeing experiences and profitable business models

The future of food is about authenticity, wellness and relevance – traceability of supply chains, natural and organic ingredients, convenient and well designed packaging, and fantastic, inspiring taste

The UN estimates that by 2050 global food production will have to increase by close to 70% if we want to feed the world. This poses a real conundrum: How do we feed all those people healthy diets, in ways that don’t harm the planet?

In some cases, innovators in this space are doing what was once science fiction. The outcome of these new technologies has profound implications for the human diet, the changing climate, and the global economy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHg1hBt4Tlk

Here are some most recent examples:

Splash out on dinner at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant, and you might find an iPod accompanies your seafood risotto. Sounds of the sea enhance the perceived freshness and flavours, and can also affect our sense of sweetness and saltiness.

Caterpillars, already popular in Africa, contain 28mg of protein per 100g, more than minced beef, and add 35mg of iron too. If you’re in search of a calcium boost, try grasshoppers.

Rising food prices, the growing population and environmental concerns make food one of the big debates for governments, and interest areas for investors. Meat production takes up huge amounts of land, consume water, diverts crops from humans, and adds to carbon emissions.

Insects, perhaps rebranding as micro-protein, could become a staple of our diets – low cost, requiring little space or water. With 1500 edible species, we could soon be tucking into nutrititous crickets and grasshoppers, ground into burgers. Wasps are a delicacy in Japan.

If you still want meat, your next steak could be sourced from a test-tube. Strips of muscle tissue using stem cells taken from cows, a little like calamari to look at, are grown in a lab, and then shaped to expectation, similar to existing meat substitutes such as Quorn. Of course you could just become vegetarian, and still get a balanced diet.

Another source of improved eating, is sensory-engineering. Scientists have shown that look and smell affect how we taste. Condiment Junkie, a sonic-branding company is exploring how certain frequencies can compensate for sugar in foods, thereby improving health, as well as enhancing the whole cooking and eating experience.

However the most significant source of future food is likely to come from algae. 145 species of green, red, and brown seaweed is already eaten in huge quantities across Asia, often as a delicacy. Ground into other foods, its strong flavour can dramatically reduce the amount of salt used, for example in bread or prepared meals. Algae farming, for food as well as energy, could become the world’s largest crop industry by 2030.

However it is not just the food content that could radically change. It is also about embracing technology to deliver more personalised service and added value experiences. A great example comes from Singularity Sushi, which uses DNA analysis to ultra-personalise food, and 3D printing to produce objects of incredible beauty.

Here are 20 case studies of companies who are shaking up the world of food and drink in profound and enlightened ways, riding the consumer trends, embracing digital technologies, with incredible new experiences and profitable new business models:

Download: Future of Food: 2025 to 2050 to 2169

We live in an incredible time.  More change in the next 10 years than in the last 250 years. New technologies transforming the ways in which we live and work.

Yet many products are still seem as commodities – or generics as we call them in healthcare. When products are equal, then it is easy to think the only way to differentiate is by reducing the price. But we all know that this is a game of diminishing returns.

We need a different mindset.

There are so many more ways to “change the game” than to simply play on price. Look at most of today’s disruptive innovators across every different sector – food and drink to fashion, cosmetics to entertainment, finance to travel – they don’t actually create new products, but they do innovate in so many other ways.

Consider some example, basic products that become so much more:

• Renova – Portugal’s toilet paper is the most colourful in the world. Why does everybody else make white paper, when it could be so much more?
• Evian – water is the ultimate commodity, but brands add value through packaging, convenience, services, gamification, and much more.
• Arla – Europe’s largest milk dairy recognised that its milk products could be so much more, segmenting audiences and adding value around specific needs.
• Juan Valdez – Colombia’s coffee growers earnt around 2c for each cup of coffee, selling their beans to brands. Now they earn 150% more, with their own brands
• Zespri – New Zealand’s farmers grew more Chinese gooseberries than anyone else, but sold them cheap, but then rebranded their product as the “Kiwi Fruit”
• Cemex – the world’s largest cement company reframes itself as a builder of cities, communities and infrastructures, adding value through global services.
• Syngenta – fertilizer is certainly seen as a commodity, but Syngenta’s brands are segmented by need, plus services and mobile apps to enhance forming

These are just a few stories. There are so many more ways to “change the game”, to add value far beyond the product, and avoid diminishing cycle of price.

Smarter innovation, faster growth

The best opportunities for business – to find new growth, to engage consumers more deeply, to stand out from the crowd, to improve their profitability – is by seizing the opportunities of changing markets. The best way to seize these changes is by innovating – not just innovating the product or service, the customer experience or business model – but by shaping the market in your vision – the “who, why, what and where”.

In a digitally-fuelled world, the most successful brand innovators 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 days.

In healthcare, look to the disruptions of the likes of 23andMe’s DNA profiling and PatientsLikeMe, Editas’ gene editing through to Infervision’s AI diagnostics, AliveCor’s realtime tracking and Organova’s 3D printed organs. Simple solutions by thinking differently work too, like Narayana Hospitals in India or Aravind Eyecare.

Innovators start from the future back, making sense of change, seeing the new patterns and possibilities, innovation pervades everything they do, rethinking the way the business and the market work, engaging consumers in a world of noise and distrust, to create new value and accelerate new growth.

By starting from the outside world, by looking at other sectors, we create a mindset for change – to believe it is possible, to explore the many ways to add value, and to start the creative journey of being more.

The keynote is 90 minutes, learning from other sectors and applying the ideas to healthcare, ready for participants to work on them in following sessions. It includes a small number of Fast Thinking interactive sessions to kick-start the new mindset.

Summary of keynote

World Changing : Exploring the opportunities of a changing world

• Relentless change brings new challenges and opportunities
• New consumers with new dreams and new expectations
• Applying technology in smarter, human and more distinctive ways
• Thinking bigger to solve problems, 10x not 10%
• Fast Thinking: So where are the biggest opportunities for us?

Game Changing : Inspired by other sectors to change the game 

• The world’s 100 most innovative brands, shaking up the world right now
• Amazon to Glossier, Nespresso and Tesla, Jio and Maituan Dianping
• How can you make unusual connections – the power of copy, adapt, paste
• Being more audacious, networked, collaborative, and intelligent
• Fast Thinking: What can we learn from them? How could we change our game?

Leading Change: Getting started on the journey to be more

• Starting from the future back, then delivering practically now forwards
• Working from the outside in, finding a bigger purpose, more relevance and value
• Delivering experiences that enable doctors and patients to achieve more
• Harnessing the power of people, connected through brand communities
• What will you do? Time to be bold, brave and brilliant

Download a summary of WaveRiders: Leading the Future Megatrends by Peter Fisk  

Key points

• We live in a time of incredible change. Dramatic, pervasive, and relentless. More change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years. Incredible technologies, expectant consumers, climate crisis, social distrust, and much more. The biggest question for leaders is “How do you see the future?”
• The old codes of business don’t work anymore. The most innovative companies – from Alibaba and Bytedance, to Casper and Deepmind – succeed with new codes. So what are the new ideas to win in a fast and dynamic world of Asian renaissance, entrepreneurial supremacy, social conscience and smarter machines?
• How will you embrace the megatrends – disruptive technologies, connected and intelligent; economic power shifts, 80% of the middle class in emerging markets; resource scarcity, where water is the biggest risk; demographic change, where markets are older, demanding and mobile; and rapid urbanisation, 33 of the 45 megacities in Asia?
• Where do you start? Look forwards not back. Start from the future. Seek purpose before profit. Connect talent and technology. Turn hierarchies into ecosystems. And what does it take to lead in this future? Curiosity and imagination, humanity and responsibility, transformation and collaboration, grit and impact.
• Do you have the courage to create a better future, for yourself and your business? Time to be inspired by the passion of Tan Le, the vision of Masayoshi Son, endurance of Eliud Kipchoge, to transform like Satya Nadella, create legacy like Jack Ma, and realise dreams like JK Rowling.

So how do you see the future?

That’s the biggest question for business leaders today. They should spend much less time focused on the past or present, much more looking at where they are going.

Sensemaking is your new competitive advantage.

Understanding your future better than others. Or at least shaping a future out of uncertainty, into something which you turn into your advantage.

Of course we can make excuses. That uncertainty ultimately means do nothing. That complexity requires simplicity. That we need to wait and see, live with ‘mindfulness’ today, engage customers the best we can, and hope that tomorrow will turn out in our favour. But there is a better way

We live in an incredible time.

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

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

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

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

Start from the “future back”

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

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

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

What might the future look like, and how will it affect you?

Predicting the future is a fun game, but also a series challenge for every business today. What might the future market look like, therefore which are the smartest choices of today?

Jumping to the future, we see dramatic change. For example, by 2050 ,the global population is likely to hit its highest point, then slowly reduce. By 2045, the much discussed “singularity” will be reached, where some machines have greater intelligence than humans. By 2040, a federated world government could be established, working with nations and tribes. And by 2035, a human population is likely to be established on Mars, perhaps by Chinese-owned SpaceX.

The World in 2030

By 2030 the average person in the U.S. will have 4.5 packages a week delivered with flying drones. They will travel 40% of the time in a driverless car, use a 3D printer to print hyper-individualized meals, and will spend most of their leisure time on an activity that hasn’t been invented yet. The world will have seen over 2 billion jobs disappear, with most coming back in different forms in different industries, with over 50% structured as freelance projects rather than full-time jobs.

Over 50% of today’s Fortune 500 companies will have disappeared, over 50% of traditional colleges will have collapsed, and India will have overtaken China as the most populous country in the world. Most people will have stopped taking pills in favor of a new device that causes the body to manufacture it’s own cures.

Here are 33 dramatic predictions by a range of the worlds think tanks and futurists:

• By 2030 over 80% of all doctor visits will have been replaced by automated exams.
• By 2030 over 90% of all restaurants will use some form of a 3D food printer in their meal preparations.
• By 2030 over 10% of all global financial transactions will be conducted through Bitcoin or Bitcoin-like crypto currencies.
• By 2030 we will seen a growing number of highways designated as driverless-vehicle only.
• By 2030, a Chinese company will become the first to enter the space tourism industry by establishing regular flights to their space hotel.
• By 2030, the world’s largest Internet company will be in the education business, and it will be a company we have not heard of yet.
• By 2030 over 20% of all new construction will be “printed” buildings.
• By 2030 over 2 billion jobs will have disappeared, freeing up talent for many new fledgling industries.
• By 2030 a new protest group will have emerged that holds anti-cloning rallies, demonstrating against the creation of “soul-less humans.”
• By 2030 we will see the first city to harvest 100% of its water supply from the atmosphere.
• By 2030 world religions will make a resurgence, with communities of faith growing by nearly 50% over what they are today.
• By 2030 over 50% of all traditional colleges will collapse, paving the way for an entire new education industry to emerge.
• By 2030 we will see a surge of Micro Colleges spring to life, each requiring less than 6 months of training and apprenticeship to switch professions.
• By 2030 scientists will have perfected an active cross-species communication system, enabling some species to talk to each other as well as humans.
• By 2030 we will see the first hurricane stopped by human intervention.
• By 2030 we will see wireless power used to light up invisible light bulbs in the middle of a room.
• By 2030 we will see the first demonstration of a technology to control gravity, reducing the pull of gravity on an object by as much as 50%.
• By 2030 democracy will be viewed as inferior form of government.
• By 2030 traditional police forces will be largely automated out of existence with less than 50% of current staffing levels on active duty.
• By 2030 over 90% of all libraries will offer premium services as part of their business model.
• By 2030 forest fires will have been reduced to less than 5% of the number today with the use of infrared drone monitoring systems.
• By 2030 over 30% of all cities in the U.S. will operate their electric utilities as micro grids.
• By 2030 we will have seen a number of global elections with the intent of creating a new global mandate, forcing world leaders to take notice.
• By 2030 traditional pharmaceuticals will be replaced by hyper-individualized medicines that are manufactured at the time they are ordered.
• By 2030 we will have seen the revival of the first mated pair of an extinct species.
• By 2030 swarms of micro flying drones – swarmbots – will be demonstrated to assemble themselves as a type of personal clothing, serving as a reconfigurable fashion statement.
• By 2030 marijuana will be legalized in all 50 states in the U.S. and half of all foreign countries.
• By 2030 cable television will no longer exist. By 2030 a small number of companies will begin calculating their labor costs with something called “synaptical currency.”
• By 2030 it will be common to use next generation search engines to search the physical world.
• By 2030 basic computer programming will be considered a core skill required in over 20% of all jobs.
• By 2030 we will have seen multiple attempts to send a probe to the center of the earth.
• By 2030 a form of tube transportation, inspired by Hyperloop and ET3, will be well on its way to becoming the world’s largest infrastructure project.

Counting back down through the next 10 years, the possibilities become ever more real, more predictable and influenceable:

Shaping the future to your advantage

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

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

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

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

Are you ready to create your better future?

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

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

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

Are you ready?

• Download my keynote with KEBA in Linz, Austria: Future Back
• Watch the video (starts after 28 mins): Future Back

More useful future links

• Winning with a future mindset article by Peter Fisk
• Journey from the future back keynote by Peter Fisk
• Global shifts and technological fusion article by Peter Fisk
• Map of Megatrends to 2050 by Richard Watson
• 100 Disruptive Technologies by Richard Watson
• How the world will change by 2030 video by Bill Gates
• 5 predictions for life in 2030 article by World Economic Forum
• Innovation in technology by 2030  article by Feras Antoon
• 7 amazing technologies by 2030 video by Business Insider
• Future Scenarios 2030 video by Deloitte Germany

 

Download the presentation: Exponential Innovation by Peter Fisk.  

“Exponential Innovation” is about harnessing the power of new technologies to create new markets, new business models, and new consumer propositions, that can grow and multiply at superfast speed.

Innovation has always been about making new and unusual connections. Leonardo da Vinci leapt forwards through the power of connecting ideas from different places – art and nature, anatomy and mechanics – to imagine possibilities that did not exist in his day. Today, innovation fuses imagination with incredible capability in the form of digital technologies, that allow us to reinvent the entire way in which markets work, businesses operate, and consumers thrive.

At the heart of exponential growth, is the power of network-based business models to drive multiplying growth. Most popular is the platform model that enables a small “butterfly” organisation to curate and connect huge numbers of suppliers and consumers. From Alibaba to Airbnb we see how platform businesses are transforming every sector. How would they work in your industry? How would they disrupt your market? How would you create value? Where would you start?

We will explore the latest thinking on innovation, and in particular new business models, shaping every market.

We will also take a whirlwind journey through IE’s “Global AMP”, its innovative flagship program for senior executives ready to shape the future of their business, and themselves. It brings together the best new ideas for business, with the most useful tools for business leaders. It connects technology and humanity, business and society, art and science, profit and progress. And it is inspired by some of the most amazing companies who are shaping today’s markets, and the people who lead them.

This is not a normal development program, this will change your future. It will not just give you knowledge and capabilities, but also the courage and confidence to go beyond today, beyond what you currently imagine, to create a better future.

It’s time to be bold, brave and brilliant!