Download summary of Peter Fisk’s workshop: Growth Engines

What is the benefit of having a purpose beyond profit?

Whilst for some people the notion of having an “inspiring purpose” is morally and commercially a no-brainer, for other people, a purpose can still seem like an irrelevant tagline.

You might argue that businesses have an ethical responsibility to contribute to the societies in which they exist, or that it simply makes economic sense because they can attract more customers and maybe even charge them more, but having purpose is still not obvious.

Back in 2010 I wrote the book People Planet Profit which explored the drive and desire for more purpose in business, and the benefits it can deliver. A decade later, it still seems a new concept to many people.

This new program, developed for YPO business leaders gives a glimpse of the opportunities to grow a better business. In. my short session I will explore some of the following:

  • Harnessing the power of business for good – leveraging profit-making assets and technologies to solve societal issues in radical ways
  • Leading a revolution – reframing your business with a more purposeful “why what and how” to lead the business further and faster
  • Purpose-driven strategies and brands – finding your higher purpose, then turning it into practical concepts, and a strategic framework
  • Using your purpose orientation to make better choices – how it changes the strategic choices you make, and impact you ultimately have
  • Purpose-driven strategies – and how to reshape brands, business models, and value propositions to deliver more than profit
  • Sustainable innovation – embracing the triple goal model to drive richer and more distinctive innovation for profitable growth

The Business Case

79% of business leaders recently surveyed by PwC believe that an organisation’s purpose is central to business success, yet 68% shared that purpose is not used as a guidepost in leadership decision making processes within their organisation. Millennials who have a strong connection to the purpose of their organization are 5.3 times more likely to stay.

Add to this, the Edelman Trust Barometer 2019, just released shows that people are more trusting of the employer they work for, than almost any other kind of organisation – from NGOs to governments, well-known brands or social influencers.

Yet the vast majority of employees remain disengaged from work, and only 33% draw real meaning from their employer’s purpose. So there is still much to be done.

Customers view purpose-driven brands as being more caring and, as a result, are more loyal to them. Cone and Porter Novelli consumer researchshowed that 67% of people feel companies with a purpose care more about them and their families. 79% said they’re more loyal to purpose brands, and 73% said they would defend them. Another 67% said they are more willing to forgive such a company for a mistake.

Recent analysis of “purposeful” companies by the Corporate Board/EY Global Leadership Forecast has the most compelling financial evidence – suggesting that purposeful companies outperform the stock market by 42%. It goes on to compare those who have a purpose statement but no more, who deliver average performance, and those who embed it in everything they do. Companies without a sense of purpose within their vision/mission, underperform the market by 40% it says.

Yet, there is a gap between what business leaders believe their purpose to be and what their behaviours suggest their purpose truly is. The windfalls of purpose may be severely capped by actual business practices, and while it’s only natural to leverage your organisation’s purpose to appeal to job candidates, current employees, customers and prospects, that approach might be underselling the true power of purpose.

Here are some great sources of more detailed insight, including some of the companies who I have worked with on this challenge, like Coca Cola and DSM, who have cracked the code of how purpose and sustainability directly influence business results:

Purpose does more than make a brand unique. It can highlight a business’ evolutionary path. At a basic level, purpose can simply express what an organization aspires to be and do. But at a more advanced one, it becomes a conscious expression of how an organisation intends to evolve and transform itself. The best type of purpose is not passive, or even linear, it is transformational. It is ambitious, a cause, something which the organisation and its customers can strive for together. This drives more direction, more innovation and is more energising.

The Purpose Wheel

Inspired by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and what motivates human satisfaction, IDEO created a purpose framework called the Purpose Wheel. The development of a sense of purpose starts by imagining various ways an organisation might have impact on the world.

The Purpose Wheel drives conversations about future goals, and ultimately create a foundation that the organisation’s leadership can align on before sitting down to write out the statement that answers “the why.”

The center of the wheel proposes five ways a company or organisation might have an impact on the world. Each slice answers the “Why do we exist beyond profit?” question in a different way.

  • We exist to Enable Potential … Creating impact by inspiring greater possibilities. (Tesla, Nike)
  • We exist to Reduce Friction … Creating impact by simplifying and eliminating barriers. (Google, Spotify)
  • We exist to Foster Prosperity … Creating impact by supporting the success of others. (Pampers, Warby Parker)
  • We exist to Encourage Exploration … Creating impact by championing discovery. (Airbnb, Adobe)
  • We exist to Kindle Happiness … Creating impact by inciting joy. (Dove, Zappos)

The outer wheel is there to push your imagination and force you to consider how your company might make an impact. With it, you continue to engineer your purpose statement: We exist to (inner wheel) through (outer wheel) to impact society for the better.

Consider some familiar examples of companies with purpose:

The Body Shop

The Body Shop’s motto is “Enrich, Not Exploit.” It is committed to enriching its people, products, and planet. The company has several lofty objectives: To help 40,000 economically vulnerable people access work around the world. To ensure 100 percent of our natural ingredients are traceable and sustainable sourced, protecting 10,000 hectares of forest and other habitat. To build bio-bridges, protecting and regenerating 75 million square meters of habitat helping communities to live more sustainably.

Icelandic Glacial

Icelandic Glacial became the world’s first certified carbon-neutral manufacturer of natural spring water, using green energy to deliver a premium product with a completely offset carbon footprint. Available in 24 countries around the world, the company also provides plenty of water to those in need, from US flood victims to aspiring musicians in Cuba. The water itself is also a winner, according to culinary experts, having won the Superior Taste Award.

Novo Nordisk

Novo Nordisk is a global leader within diabetes care. The Danish pharma company’s key contribution is “to discover, develop and manufacture better biological medicines and make them accessible to people with diabetes throughout the world.”

Patagonia

A commitment to sustainability is sewn into the very fabric of clothing company Patagonia. In addition to supporting numerous environmental initiatives and remaining transparent about their sourcing and production processes, the company has gone so far as to tell its customers not to buy its products, launching the Common Threads Partnership program to encourage people to repair, reuse or recycle instead.

Salesforce

The company’s commitment to social change is reflected in it’s 1-1-1 model – called Pledge 1% – whereby Salesforce contributes one percent of product, one percent of equity, and one percent of employee hours back to the communities it serves globally.

Unilever

In the 1890s, Unilever founder William Lever set the company’s purpose as “making cleanliness commonplace”. In 2010, the consumer goods giant further honed this purpose to better respond to a world that is “starting to exceed its capacity”. Under this revised purpose of “making sustainable living commonplace”, Unilever has three targets to measure its progress against: improving the health and wellbeing of one billion people, reducing negative environmental impact and sourcing raw materials in a sustainable way while enhancing livelihood. Brands like Dove have taken this mission much further.

Whole Foods

“With great courage, integrity and love,” reads the higher purpose statement of Whole Foods, the Amazon-owned organic grocer, “we embrace our responsibility to co-create a world where each of us, our communities and our planet can flourish.” To this end, the multibillion dollar business donates over 5 per cent of its annual net profits to charitable causes and is involved in efforts to safeguard the environment, foster fair trade in its supply chains, improve food safety and ensure the humane treatment of animals.

More great examples here

There is often a misconception that companies must be either purpose-driven or profit-driven, but cannot be both. Which of course is wrong.

Also the words purpose and passion are often used together. This leads to an interesting thought from Ha Nguyen from Omidyar Networks, who distinguished the two

  • Passion is about finding yourself.  It is about following our interests. Sometimes, we fulfill that part of our lives with hobbies. In other cases, we end up doing what we love for work, and it can lead to very successful careers. While many of us may find our passions and build successful careers that we enjoy, not all of us find purpose in the work.
  • Purpose is about losing yourself— in something bigger than you. It is about wanting to make a difference and do for others—to help, to give, to serve. It is the legacy you are going to leave behind.

Fulfillment, says Nguyen, comes not only from doing what you enjoy, but also serving a bigger mission. When you find your purpose, you will have a more far-reaching impact by touching the lives of others in meaningful ways. When you find your purpose, you can also be part of a successful company that makes the world a better place.

In general, purpose-driven companies are more likely perform better because they have:

1. More motivated and energized employees

Currently, 71% of millennials report feeling not engaged or actively disengaged at work. But if you are able to create a situation where employees derive meaning from their work, then everything changes. A recent Harvard Business Review study found that employees who derive meaning from their work report almost twice the job satisfaction and are three times more likely to stay with their organization to fuel business success. The Global Leadership Forecast found that in purposeful organizations engagement levels are 12% higher and employees’ intent to stay is 14% higher.

2. More delighted, loyal and satisfied customers

In this crazy competitive world for talent, having a company with purpose allows you to stand out and becomes a secret weapon. According to New York Times bestselling author Simon Mainwaring, 91% of consumers would switch brands if a different one was purpose-driven and had similar price and quality. Not only does having a strong purpose engage employees, it also helps attract customers and make them more loyal. Product folks know that connecting with customers and putting customers first is critical.

3. More agile and resilient organisations

Purposeful companies deal with volatility much better. They have a strong “North Star” that keeps them focused and aligned even when markets are turbulent. Having employee and stakeholder buy-in enables a purposeful organization to respond more quickly and effectively when opportunities arise or danger threatens (50% higher than non-purposeful organizations). Purposeful companies enjoy higher levels of trust and loyalty, making them more resilient when the going gets tough.

4. Better business outcomes

Given that companies with purpose better motivate employees and satisfy customers, it is not surprising that these companies also have higher business success. In Corporate Culture And Performance, HBS professors John Kotter and James Heskett show that over a decade-long period, purposeful, value-driven companies outperform their counterparts in stock price by a factor of twelve.

Simon Sinek who has given one of the most watched Ted Talks of all time states in a 2017 HBR article, “Profit isn’t a purpose. It’s a result. To have purpose means the things we do are of real value to others.”

Purpose-driven companies attract the best minds, have the most passionate customers, achieve wild success and change the world. When purpose and passion are combined, the impact is powerful not only for individuals, but also on the public they serve to help create a brighter future for everyone.

“Leaders of business. This is your wake-up call. You’ve been living on borrowed time. Raping the natural world of its resources, and leaving a toxic mess in its place. These weather patterns are not freaks, they are the world you have created. Blinding the man on the street with your superficial innovations and image. What about the sweatshops, the emissions, the packaging, the greed? It doesn’t look good” 

Sustainability is the best opportunity for business to drive smarter innovation and profitable growth.

Peter Fisk’s book People Planet Profit explores how to address social and environmental challenges through customers and brands in a way that has more impact than politicians or environmentalists ever could. It introduces a more inspired, more balanced approach to business. Full of case studies and practical tools, it is the essential guide for managers. People do not trust business. They increasingly see companies as irresponsible, greedy and inhuman. Climate change and economic downturn have accelerated new expectations.

Businesses need to reengage people, to understand their new priorities, rethink their role and propositions, work in new ways, and enable people to do more themselves.  Resolving the many paradoxes faced by customers who want the best things but also to do “the right thing” and business leaders who want to grow but in more responsible ways.

There are many books about sustainability – mostly around the worthy themes of “reduce, recycle, reuse”. However this goes beyond that initial phases to “rethink” business.

It is positive not negative, about opportunities not problems, driven by creativity not compliance, a whole business challenge, not left to a few people. It is about connecting social, environment and economic challenges, to achieve a new balance, that is more different from competitors and inspiring your people. And its about building brands in way that builds capacity rather than just making sales, enabling people to do more for themselves and their worlds, rather than just buy your product or service.People Planet Profit by Peter Fisk 3

People Planet Profit is about that these three agendas. But more importantly, about how they connect. How doing more for the Planet can create more for People and more for Profit. Innovation is about making new connections, and that is what this book is about, and why sustainability is the biggest catalyst, for more enlightened innovation, and more enduring growth.

  • Purpose beyond Profits : Business should be about making people’s lives better, defining an inspiring purpose and turning promises into reality.
  • Strategies for Growth : Business strategy must focus on finding markets with sustainable growth, creating differentiation by doing good and new business models for a new world.
  • Inspiring Leadership : Leaders of the new business world are the catalysts of change, the conscience of a better business, and facilitators of rethinking and innovation.
  • Conscience Consumers : There is a new consumer agenda, based around me, my world, and the world. Business must create more capacity, enabling people to do more.
  • Sustainable Innovation : Resolving the paradox between what people dream of, and what is good for all of us, between what makes most money and what is the right thing to do.
  • Engaging consumers : People are engaged through enlightened dialogue, building networks to enable collaborative actions, and delivering a more authentic consumer experience
  • Sustainable Operations : Businesses must learn to work better together – good sourcing, transporting and producing, embracing the power of sustainable energy and technology.
  • Delivering Performance : Certification, labels and sustainable impacts, linking sustainability to business results, managing business performance and reputation
  • Transforming Business : Making sustainable change happen, starting by articulating a better case for change, commercial and caring, and managing the implementation
  • Sustainable Futures : Leading in the new business world is about sustainable innovation and lifestyles, where business and brands are the new force for positive change

The book ends with a vision of the future business leader, Joachim Cruz, the CEO of BlueSky, an innovative travel business based in Copenhagen. He embraces the new agendas, the new technologies, the new capital markets. But he also has time to smile, to pick up his kids from school, and sit back and enjoy his home-grown glass of Tempranillo.

Covid-19

How has the recent pandemic challenged and heightened our thinking about these issues – purpose, sustainability, ESG and CSR, inequality, climate crisis and much more?

At the most fundamental level, Covid-19 has revealed three things:

1. Planet: Human activity is strongly related to climate change. The lockdown has resulted in rare sightings of blue skies from Beijing to Delhi, and worldwide CO2 emissions are predicted to fall by 8% in 2020.

2. People: COVID-19 has been hailed as the “big equalizer,” but the reality is that we aren’t equally resilient as a society. Socio-economic status is strongly related to vulnerabilities of all sorts, with the poor and underprivileged in harm’s way to a disproportionate extent.

3. Profit: We cannot survive for long without economic activity and the creation of financial value. Millions of businesses are failing in the face of the pandemic and as many as 40% of businesses may not reopen after this disaster.

In essence, we need to manage climate-related risks, strengthen our social fabric and inspire economic activity that creates value for humankind if we are to create a world that is sustainable and well-equipped to combat impending crises.

So what will it take to achieve this symbiosis between people, planet and profit – also referred to as the “triple bottom line” – in contrast to the single bottom line of profit alone?

For starters, we must accept a basic truism: in a world of finite resources, maximizing private gain inevitably leads to collective loss – that is, the loss of common goods, a phenomenon known as the tragedy of the commons. For example if, in a bid to boost profits, global multinationals build and run factories but do not pay for the pollution they create, we get global warming. The collective is more important than the individual.

If Covid-19 has taught us anything about how to surmount our socio-environmental challenges, it is that each one of us – as individuals, companies or governments – needs to take ownership of our future. Being a bystander is no longer an option. Yet, if you’re like one of the thousands of executives I have encountered over the years, you likely believe that sustainability – that is, the wellbeing of our planet and its people – is important, but it’s “someone else’s problem”. In companies with a sustainability department, everyone points to that department as being responsible for everything sustainability-related.

Why is it that something as important as sustainability is given short shrift by so many in the corporate sphere? Over the past years, I’ve visited dozens of large, publicly listed companies and spoken with hundreds of employees to try to find out. I’ve been to head offices, mines, stores and factories, travelling from Madagascar to India to Chile’s Atacama Desert.

1. Find more purpose

To take ownership of our post-pandemic future, businesses must start by asking the all-important question of corporate purpose – or “why do we do what we do”? Leaders must articulate how the firm creates value for all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and accept that profit is the consequence of such value creation. This process of defining purpose makes it clear that businesses exist to serve society and not the other way round, and the link to sustainability becomes clear. As Paul Polman, ex-CEO of Unilever, said: “Sustainability is totally driven by purpose. It starts with the overall firm belief that we are here to serve society … and only by doing that well, we can make all our stakeholders, including our shareholders, happy.”

How can leaders discover that “true north” – their company’s purpose? Often, it happens via epiphanies or first-hand experience on the front lines. Francesco Starace, the CEO of Enel, one of the largest energy companies in the world, had his epiphany while working in the Middle East in the mid-1980’s. He realized that an energy company’s job was not to foist new habits on people, but rather to enable them to do what they wanted to do in the first place. Crossing an emotional barrier, as Starace did in the 1980s, and identifying with a company’s purpose in a new and personal way enables leaders to build their own sense of sustainability ownership and address the critical problems of our world. “Sooner or later,” as Starace told me, “you have to face up to the facts about why you do what you do.”

2. Engage all stakeholders

Armed with a sense of purpose and a set of concrete sustainability goals, your company is ready to create motivation and ability among your stakeholders, and to help integrate those sustainability goals into their daily work routines.

Market sustainability to stakeholders as an opportunity to contribute to the future wellbeing of the company and the world. To entice employees and other stakeholders to engage in sustainability, appeal sometimes to the head (this is the smart thing to do), other times to the heart (right thing to do), and often both. Lisa Jackson, vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives at Apple told me: “The easiest and most fun part of sustainability is when you can go to the business – as we have done now several times – and say, ‘It will save you money to reduce the amount of scrap metal that is produced. It will save you money to think about packaging in a different way’.”

Alongside motivation, you also have to create the ability to act sustainably. Increase the capability of your workforce by putting systems, structures and training in place that make it easier to act sustainably. Give your stakeholders the tools, confidence and freedom they need. In a word, make sustainability everybody’s job. “If there’s one exception, everyone thinks they’re the exception,” said Keith Weed, Unilever’s chief marketing officer and head of sustainability at the time.

3. Achieve more together

Form broader industry collaborations to address complex problems. Such collaborations, often with traditional competitors, help create the systemic changes that our planet and its people need – and that businesses need, too. “If everything fails around us, we fail too,” said the chief sustainability officer of Marks & Spencer.

Topics such as deforestation, effluent in waterways, or buying minerals from the Congo can only be addressed by a consortium, in which each party, again, needs to rise above self-interest and think about the wellbeing of the collective. Paul Polman has been quick to point out: “We don’t have the right level of cooperation at the global governance level to deal with these issues, and I hope that the business community will step up and fill that void.”

Watching the pandemic unfold before us and seeing both the healing effects of our slowed economic activity on the skies and our planet as well as the horrific plight of our fellow human beings, leaves most of us “uncomfortably numb” and yearning to do something about securing the future. Issues such as global warming, inequality and poverty – as outlined in the SDGs – are gaining urgency. Taking ownership of addressing such issues should form the new leadership mandate.

More from Peter Fisk

More from outside

The high-energy one day workshop for business leaders explores leadership in the context of today’s fast-changing world, and the relentless barrage of new challenges and opportunities that it brings.

It is inspiring, about the incredible opportunities for business to grow and innovate in new ways … and also challenging, in the sense understanding why and how leaders need to act differently.

Above all it is about leading the future – understanding and exploring the implications for organisations and leadership – and deciding what will you do to create a better future, for you and your business.

Part 1 : Changing the World

  • Leaders of Change … Inspired by Anne Wojcicki and Tan Le, Satya Nadella and Mayayoshi Son
  • Exploring the seismic shifts and emerging trends, economical and political, social and cultural
  • Understanding the power of AI and big data, automation and robotics, 3D printing and blockchain
  • The Spirit of Ikigai … Team work to explore the 7 business tensions in a changing world

Part 2 : Innovating the Business

  • Leaders of Innovation … Inspired by Mary Barra and Emily Weiss, Jeff Bezos and Jack Ma
  • Learning from the world’s 100 most inspiring companies, shaking up every market right now
  • Embracing purpose and ideas, people and partners, platforms and networks, to achieve more
  • The Potential of Goya …  Team work to break the rules, and remake the rules, of business today

Part 3 : Leading the Future

  • Leaders of the Future … Inspired by Eliud Kipchoge and Zhang Xin, Elon Musk and JK Rowling
  • How to be more insightful and innovative, creative and collaborative, agile and exponential
  • Starting from the future back, working from the outside in, fuelled by a growth mindset
  • The Courage of Sisu … Team work to generate a new DNA for the 21st century business

So why is the future “female”?

Well for starters, we need to address the basic inequalities, prejudices and sexism in the world. Women are equal to men. Second, diversity is not just good, but it creates better solutions, bringing together different perspectives and talents. But my point is more than this. In the new world, in particular driven by new technologies, we need new attributes to survive and thrive.

Making sense of today’s complexity requires us to rise above the data points and short-term priorities, to see a bigger picture – to make sense of a changing world. That requires intuition more than logic (intuition is more forwards looking, whilst logic looks back).

To add value beyond machines and AI, we need to unlock our humanity, our creativity. That requires us to be more empathetic, to make new connections. Ideas, design, relationships are most valued in today’s business world. And to solve the big problems of our world, we need to be more thoughtful – to find more responsible, caring and inspiring solutions.

This is why “the future is female”

It’s not just about getting to a level playing field in diversity and inclusion, which matters … but even more, its about taking those attributes, those qualities, which are typically “more female” and to embrace them … both for men and women. We could go into a biological and neurological discussion at this point, but I think the point is clear. Women therefore can have an advantage, whilst for men it might require some unlearning.

The future is not like the future used to be. Being a leader of the future, is not achieved by following the traits of the past success. It’s time to look forwards, together, with a positive mindset, to embrace the opportunities of an incredible new world.

Download a summary of my keynote: The Future is Female

While the world is evolving, women are still lagging behind when it comes to leadership roles in business. Today, only 26 women are in CEO roles at Fortune 500 companies, making up 5.2% of the female population, according to a report by Pew Research. The stats stay virtually the same for women CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies at 5.4%, showing that there is little movement of women making up these high-ranking positions as company leaders.

With women still pushing to reach the top, they are faced with a range of challenges that many of their male CEO counterparts don’t have an understanding of. It is these issues that are preventing many women from achieving their goal of becoming a leader at their company and diminishing their ability to get ahead in business.

Consider one example from the latter article, which demonstrates the attitudes which still need to be overcome, and to recognise the real value of women, and equally what is required to lead in today’s complex and connected world:

Here are some great examples of successful female leaders in business, women who have reached the top of organisations either as entrepreneurs or through managing the politics and power of corporate organisations to become successful:

Mary Barra, CEO General Motors … reinventing the auto business for the future

Ana Botin, Executive Chair, Santander … transformational leader of the Spanish bank

Cher Wang, Chairwoman, HTC … perhaps the world’s most successful female entrepreneur

Indra Nooyi, ex CEO, Pepsico … from India to America, bridging east and west 

Ginni Rometty, CEO IBM … leading one of the world’s largest consulting firms

Sara Al Madani, founder Rouge Couture … fashion designer and leadership coach

Ayah Bdeir, CEO Little Bits … the Lebanese founder of electronic building blocks

Forbes magazine recently asked 15 female leaders to share what they see as the big challenges, and their advice to take a lead:

1. Being Treated Equally

One of the biggest challenges my female clients are currently facing is equality in the workplace. My advice for women leaders everywhere is to go for what they want in their careers and not to give up. Hone the skills necessary to give you those opportunities, such as your communication skills, leadership development, and emotional intelligence. Raise your hand in meetings. Speak up, and be heard. –Valerie Martinelli, Valerie Martinelli Consulting, LLC

2. Building A Sisterhood

The biggest challenge my female clients face today is garnering support from other women. My advice to women worldwide is to support and empower each other, starting with our basic principles of who we are — our morals, values, integrity. We must be just. Be humbled, show togetherness, passion, excellence and enthusiasm toward laying the foundation for our progress through our work. – Nadidah Coveney, CTM Consulting Group LLC

3. Generating Revenue

One of the biggest challenges my female clients currently face is growing their revenues. Money solves everything; it gives you freedom and choices. My advice is to focus on what generates revenue wherever you are. After all, if you don’t have revenue, you don’t have a business. For entrepreneurs, that’s called a hobby. –Christine Hueber,ChristineHueber.com

4. Being Confident

One of the biggest challenges I see when I speak with females is their confidence. I tell them they need to get comfortable knowing that people will always try to take you off of “your game” or dislike you for no apparent reason. But if you go in knowing this, if you are clear on your purpose and on what you are trying to achieve, then you will be successful in getting what you want. – Francine Parham,FrancineParham & Co.

5. Speaking Up

It’s not enough to be in a role or to sit at the table. One must also speak confidently, regardless of odds faced. Women leaders fear being ostracized or rejected; however, respect comes when one’s voice is heard. I coach leaders to share their voice and perspective because it can help shape policy, the workforce and perspective. Make your presence known as a leader and collaborator for good. – LaKisha Greenwade, Lucki Fit LLC

6. Building Alliances With Decision-Makers

My female clients come to me because they’ve been put down, pushed aside, or told they don’t belong at the table. It’s not easy to be bullied, but there is a way to get past it. I suggest women build healthy relationships with advocates, create a strong personal brand, establish guidelines before each project, position themselves as experts in their field, and communicate with confidence. – Christina Holloway,Christina Holloway

7. Becoming A Member Of The C-Suite

Women everywhere are making auspicious moves in the workplace. They are taking more risks and preparing themselves to take on more challenging roles. That said, one of the greatest obstacles they face is making their way to the C-suite. My advice is that they take the bull by the horns: Know what you want and be relentless in your preparation. Equivocation will always be your worst enemy. –Karima Mariama-Arthur, Esq.,WordSmithRapport

8. Asking For Money

For over 32 years, I have led women entrepreneurs to their next levels in business, and often the challenge is sales and anything related to income — not charging enough, being afraid to ask, underpricing, marketing, promoting, “bragging” to establish authority, and giving away services for free. My advice is to learn to master sales and get confident in your skills so you price properly and gain respect. – Tracy Repchuk, InnerSurf Online Brand & Web Services

9. Standing In Their Success

Some women leaders shy away from speaking on their accomplishments for fear of being boastful or conceited. Women tend to think that it’s needed to shrink themselves to seem non-intimidating. I advise clients to gain the confidence to know that if they’re in the room, that means they deserve to be there. Shrinking does nothing but delay your voice from being heard and taken seriously. – Niya Allen-Vatel, Career Global

10. Tackling Imposter Syndrome

The biggest challenge my female clients face is an inability to internalize their accomplishments. We first get to the root of why this belief exists, then adjust their locus of control by making accurate assessments of their performance, then get feedback from other leaders to confirm their strengths. By tackling imposter syndrome, they are able to better develop their leadership. – Loren Margolis,Training & Leadership Success LLC

11. Overcoming Perfectionism

Many of the women leaders I coach get paralyzed by their perfectionist tendencies. I often recommend reflection for clients when they get really stuck. It might be a shorter pause, such as a few deep breaths or short meditation, or a longer activity like a walk, journaling exercise, or a Brené Brown book excerpt or TED Talk. All of these approaches have worked well to help manage perfectionism. – Jill Hauwiller,Leadership Refinery

12. Trusting Their Own Voice

In conversations with leaders, there is one recurring theme that haunts me. It is the virtually inaudible question I hear women asking themselves too often: “Who am I to…?” What I tell my clients is that right now, they are among the wealthiest, most educated and powerful women on the planet. They have not risen to their current title by accident. They must trust and use their own voice! – Susanne Biro,Susanne Biro & Associates CoachingInc.

13. Shifting Their Word Choice

Women share the challenge of reconciling an internal conflict between being perceived as a respected leader versus a bossy woman. Professional women can resolve this issue and own the respected leader role by shifting from judgmental to neutral words. This subtle transition positively influences the way a listener digests the message and perceives the speaker’s authority and leadership. – Elaine Rosenblum, J.D., ProForm U®

14. Dealing With Negative Thoughts

One of the biggest challenges my female clients face is they allow for the negative thoughts that arise in their mind to take control of their life. My advice for women everywhere is to take control of their thoughts by becoming consciously aware of them and to either replace them with more positive and encouraging thoughts or to accept them and decide to move forward despite them.

15. Re-Entering The Paid Workforce

Relaunching a career after a long hiatus as a full-time caregiver for children or aging parents is challenging. It requires combating ageism, rebuilding confidence, reconstructing a network, dusting off old skills or developing new ones, and catching up on technology. Women leaders — help these relaunchers advance themselves, even if your path was different and didn’t include a career break.

A recent article in Inc magazine says when people call for more women in the workplace, it may sound as though they’re just trying to meet a quota. Gender diversity, though, could be the key to any company’s success. Diversifying a variety of top positions, specifically executive roles, is more than a movement to level the corporate playing field — it’s about using the best resources to maximize every organization’s potential.

Effective but Underrepresented

“If women ran the world, there would be no wars.” It’s an old stereotype, but there’s something to be said for the effects of more women in leadership positions. In fact, according to a Morgan Stanley report, “more gender diversity, particularly in corporate settings, can translate to increased productivity, greater innovation, better products, better decision-making, and higher employee retention and satisfaction.”

Despite the observed benefits, however, company leadership around the world remains unbalanced, with women accounting for less than a quarter of management positions globally. The disparity is even greater when it comes to higher-level management positions. 24/7 Wall St. analyzed data compiled by the research group LedBetter and discovered that of the 234 companies that own almost 2,000 of the world’s most recognized consumer brands, only 14 of the companies had a female CEO, while nine of them had no women at all serving in executive positions or on their boards.

It’ll take more than just a motivated resistance to overturn years of systemic inequality and create opportunities for more female executives. But by employing a few key strategies, everyone from business leaders to individual employees can help combat the gender gap and move our workforce toward greater leadership balance.

1. Promote a Welcoming Culture

Creating more opportunities for women starts with creating a more inclusive environment. Any specific efforts to recruit women to leadership roles in corporate settings are useless if companies don’t encourage a work culture where they can succeed.

According to Anu Mandapati, founder of IMPACT Leadership for Women, some initial steps to creating this culture are to focus mainly on education and experience in the hiring process, offer salaries based on the market rate rather than salary history, and start rewarding outcomes achieved instead of hours worked. Each of these guidelines could build the foundation for gender equality in the workplace, thus creating an environment where women can thrive in leadership roles.

2. Invest in Companies That Champion Diversity

The business community can also have a positive impact on female equality by investing in companies that are pioneering this change. Christine Alemany, CEO advisor at Trailblaze Growth Advisors, claims it’s not enough to rely on existing, male-centric corporations to promote equality. “It’s time for women to start their own businesses and begin to invest in new ones that are diverse,” Alemany notes.

According to Alemany, there are a handful of venture capitalists and private equity firms that see diversity as a priority and focus on companies with diverse executive teams as part of their investment strategy. The firm 112Capital, for instance, has invested in female-led tech companies, while the JumpFund focuses on female-led ventures in the southeastern U.S.  If more firms embrace this objective, a new wave of female executives will emerge.

3. Make the Results Public

Improving the opportunities for female executives at your own company is one thing, but inspiring other organizations to do the same is where the real battle lies. One way to do that is by making women leaders visible. When Emily Culp, CMO of Keds, is invited to industry events, she shares her invitation with her female colleagues.

Culp raises the visibility of her entire team by encouraging them to partake in public speaking events and activities outside of work, such as serving on a board or volunteering. She explains the value: “Real business opportunities come out of these events, but you have to be present to network.”

Creating a more inclusive culture takes time, but with cooperation from companies around the world, gender equality in upper-level management may be closer than ever.

The high-energy one day workshop for business leaders explores leadership in the context of today’s fast-changing world, and the relentless barrage of new challenges and opportunities that it brings.

It is inspiring, about the incredible opportunities for business to grow and innovate in new ways … and also challenging, in the sense understanding why and how leaders need to act differently.

Above all it is about leading the future – understanding and exploring the implications for organisations and leadership – and deciding what will you do to create a better future, for you and your business.

Part 1 : Changing the World

  • Leaders of Change … Inspired by Anne Wojcicki and Tan Le, Satya Nadella and Mayayoshi Son
  • Exploring the seismic shifts and emerging trends, economical and political, social and cultural
  • Understanding the power of AI and big data, automation and robotics, 3D printing and blockchain
  • The Spirit of Ikigai … Team work to explore the 7 business tensions in a changing world

Part 2 : Innovating the Business

  • Leaders of Innovation … Inspired by Mary Barra and Emily Weiss, Jeff Bezos and Jack Ma
  • Learning from the world’s 100 most inspiring companies, shaking up every market right now
  • Embracing purpose and ideas, people and partners, platforms and networks, to achieve more
  • The Potential of Goya …  Team work to break the rules, and remake the rules, of business today

Part 3 : Leading the Future

  • Leaders of the Future … Inspired by Eliud Kipchoge and Zhang Xin, Elon Musk and JK Rowling
  • How to be more insightful and innovative, creative and collaborative, agile and exponential
  • Starting from the future back, working from the outside in, fuelled by a growth mindset
  • The Courage of Sisu … Team work to generate a new DNA for the 21st century business

So why is the future “female”?

Well for starters, we need to address the basic inequalities, prejudices and sexism in the world. Women are equal to men. Second, diversity is not just good, but it creates better solutions, bringing together different perspectives and talents. But my point is more than this. In the new world, in particular driven by new technologies, we need new attributes to survive and thrive.

Making sense of today’s complexity requires us to rise above the data points and short-term priorities, to see a bigger picture – to make sense of a changing world. That requires intuition more than logic (intuition is more forwards looking, whilst logic looks back).

To add value beyond machines and AI, we need to unlock our humanity, our creativity. That requires us to be more empathetic, to make new connections. Ideas, design, relationships are most valued in today’s business world. And to solve the big problems of our world, we need to be more thoughtful – to find more responsible, caring and inspiring solutions.

This is why “the future is female”

It’s not just about getting to a level playing field in diversity and inclusion, which matters … but even more, its about taking those attributes, those qualities, which are typically “more female” and to embrace them … both for men and women. We could go into a biological and neurological discussion at this point, but I think the point is clear. Women therefore can have an advantage, whilst for men it might require some unlearning.

The future is not like the future used to be. Being a leader of the future, is not achieved by following the traits of the past success. It’s time to look forwards, together, with a positive mindset, to embrace the opportunities of an incredible new world.

Download a summary of my keynote: The Future is Female

While the world is evolving, women are still lagging behind when it comes to leadership roles in business. Today, only 26 women are in CEO roles at Fortune 500 companies, making up 5.2% of the female population, according to a report by Pew Research. The stats stay virtually the same for women CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies at 5.4%, showing that there is little movement of women making up these high-ranking positions as company leaders.

With women still pushing to reach the top, they are faced with a range of challenges that many of their male CEO counterparts don’t have an understanding of. It is these issues that are preventing many women from achieving their goal of becoming a leader at their company and diminishing their ability to get ahead in business.

Consider one example from the latter article, which demonstrates the attitudes which still need to be overcome, and to recognise the real value of women, and equally what is required to lead in today’s complex and connected world:

Here are some great examples of successful female leaders in business, women who have reached the top of organisations either as entrepreneurs or through managing the politics and power of corporate organisations to become successful:

Mary Barra, CEO General Motors … reinventing the auto business for the future

Ana Botin, Executive Chair, Santander … transformational leader of the Spanish bank

Cher Wang, Chairwoman, HTC … perhaps the world’s most successful female entrepreneur

Indra Nooyi, ex CEO, Pepsico … from India to America, bridging east and west 

Ginni Rometty, CEO IBM … leading one of the world’s largest consulting firms

Sara Al Madani, founder Rouge Couture … fashion designer and leadership coach

Ayah Bdeir, CEO Little Bits … the Lebanese founder of electronic building blocks

Forbes magazine recently asked 15 female leaders to share what they see as the big challenges, and their advice to take a lead:

1. Being Treated Equally

One of the biggest challenges my female clients are currently facing is equality in the workplace. My advice for women leaders everywhere is to go for what they want in their careers and not to give up. Hone the skills necessary to give you those opportunities, such as your communication skills, leadership development, and emotional intelligence. Raise your hand in meetings. Speak up, and be heard. –Valerie Martinelli, Valerie Martinelli Consulting, LLC

2. Building A Sisterhood

The biggest challenge my female clients face today is garnering support from other women. My advice to women worldwide is to support and empower each other, starting with our basic principles of who we are — our morals, values, integrity. We must be just. Be humbled, show togetherness, passion, excellence and enthusiasm toward laying the foundation for our progress through our work. – Nadidah Coveney, CTM Consulting Group LLC

3. Generating Revenue

One of the biggest challenges my female clients currently face is growing their revenues. Money solves everything; it gives you freedom and choices. My advice is to focus on what generates revenue wherever you are. After all, if you don’t have revenue, you don’t have a business. For entrepreneurs, that’s called a hobby. –Christine Hueber,ChristineHueber.com

4. Being Confident

One of the biggest challenges I see when I speak with females is their confidence. I tell them they need to get comfortable knowing that people will always try to take you off of “your game” or dislike you for no apparent reason. But if you go in knowing this, if you are clear on your purpose and on what you are trying to achieve, then you will be successful in getting what you want. – Francine Parham,FrancineParham & Co.

5. Speaking Up

It’s not enough to be in a role or to sit at the table. One must also speak confidently, regardless of odds faced. Women leaders fear being ostracized or rejected; however, respect comes when one’s voice is heard. I coach leaders to share their voice and perspective because it can help shape policy, the workforce and perspective. Make your presence known as a leader and collaborator for good. – LaKisha Greenwade, Lucki Fit LLC

6. Building Alliances With Decision-Makers

My female clients come to me because they’ve been put down, pushed aside, or told they don’t belong at the table. It’s not easy to be bullied, but there is a way to get past it. I suggest women build healthy relationships with advocates, create a strong personal brand, establish guidelines before each project, position themselves as experts in their field, and communicate with confidence. – Christina Holloway,Christina Holloway

7. Becoming A Member Of The C-Suite

Women everywhere are making auspicious moves in the workplace. They are taking more risks and preparing themselves to take on more challenging roles. That said, one of the greatest obstacles they face is making their way to the C-suite. My advice is that they take the bull by the horns: Know what you want and be relentless in your preparation. Equivocation will always be your worst enemy. –Karima Mariama-Arthur, Esq.,WordSmithRapport

8. Asking For Money

For over 32 years, I have led women entrepreneurs to their next levels in business, and often the challenge is sales and anything related to income — not charging enough, being afraid to ask, underpricing, marketing, promoting, “bragging” to establish authority, and giving away services for free. My advice is to learn to master sales and get confident in your skills so you price properly and gain respect. – Tracy Repchuk, InnerSurf Online Brand & Web Services

9. Standing In Their Success

Some women leaders shy away from speaking on their accomplishments for fear of being boastful or conceited. Women tend to think that it’s needed to shrink themselves to seem non-intimidating. I advise clients to gain the confidence to know that if they’re in the room, that means they deserve to be there. Shrinking does nothing but delay your voice from being heard and taken seriously. – Niya Allen-Vatel, Career Global

10. Tackling Imposter Syndrome

The biggest challenge my female clients face is an inability to internalize their accomplishments. We first get to the root of why this belief exists, then adjust their locus of control by making accurate assessments of their performance, then get feedback from other leaders to confirm their strengths. By tackling imposter syndrome, they are able to better develop their leadership. – Loren Margolis,Training & Leadership Success LLC

11. Overcoming Perfectionism

Many of the women leaders I coach get paralyzed by their perfectionist tendencies. I often recommend reflection for clients when they get really stuck. It might be a shorter pause, such as a few deep breaths or short meditation, or a longer activity like a walk, journaling exercise, or a Brené Brown book excerpt or TED Talk. All of these approaches have worked well to help manage perfectionism. – Jill Hauwiller,Leadership Refinery

12. Trusting Their Own Voice

In conversations with leaders, there is one recurring theme that haunts me. It is the virtually inaudible question I hear women asking themselves too often: “Who am I to…?” What I tell my clients is that right now, they are among the wealthiest, most educated and powerful women on the planet. They have not risen to their current title by accident. They must trust and use their own voice! – Susanne Biro,Susanne Biro & Associates CoachingInc.

13. Shifting Their Word Choice

Women share the challenge of reconciling an internal conflict between being perceived as a respected leader versus a bossy woman. Professional women can resolve this issue and own the respected leader role by shifting from judgmental to neutral words. This subtle transition positively influences the way a listener digests the message and perceives the speaker’s authority and leadership. – Elaine Rosenblum, J.D., ProForm U®

14. Dealing With Negative Thoughts

One of the biggest challenges my female clients face is they allow for the negative thoughts that arise in their mind to take control of their life. My advice for women everywhere is to take control of their thoughts by becoming consciously aware of them and to either replace them with more positive and encouraging thoughts or to accept them and decide to move forward despite them.

15. Re-Entering The Paid Workforce

Relaunching a career after a long hiatus as a full-time caregiver for children or aging parents is challenging. It requires combating ageism, rebuilding confidence, reconstructing a network, dusting off old skills or developing new ones, and catching up on technology. Women leaders — help these relaunchers advance themselves, even if your path was different and didn’t include a career break.

A recent article in Inc magazine says when people call for more women in the workplace, it may sound as though they’re just trying to meet a quota. Gender diversity, though, could be the key to any company’s success. Diversifying a variety of top positions, specifically executive roles, is more than a movement to level the corporate playing field — it’s about using the best resources to maximize every organization’s potential.

Effective but Underrepresented

“If women ran the world, there would be no wars.” It’s an old stereotype, but there’s something to be said for the effects of more women in leadership positions. In fact, according to a Morgan Stanley report, “more gender diversity, particularly in corporate settings, can translate to increased productivity, greater innovation, better products, better decision-making, and higher employee retention and satisfaction.”

Despite the observed benefits, however, company leadership around the world remains unbalanced, with women accounting for less than a quarter of management positions globally. The disparity is even greater when it comes to higher-level management positions. 24/7 Wall St. analyzed data compiled by the research group LedBetter and discovered that of the 234 companies that own almost 2,000 of the world’s most recognized consumer brands, only 14 of the companies had a female CEO, while nine of them had no women at all serving in executive positions or on their boards.

It’ll take more than just a motivated resistance to overturn years of systemic inequality and create opportunities for more female executives. But by employing a few key strategies, everyone from business leaders to individual employees can help combat the gender gap and move our workforce toward greater leadership balance.

1. Promote a Welcoming Culture

Creating more opportunities for women starts with creating a more inclusive environment. Any specific efforts to recruit women to leadership roles in corporate settings are useless if companies don’t encourage a work culture where they can succeed.

According to Anu Mandapati, founder of IMPACT Leadership for Women, some initial steps to creating this culture are to focus mainly on education and experience in the hiring process, offer salaries based on the market rate rather than salary history, and start rewarding outcomes achieved instead of hours worked. Each of these guidelines could build the foundation for gender equality in the workplace, thus creating an environment where women can thrive in leadership roles.

2. Invest in Companies That Champion Diversity

The business community can also have a positive impact on female equality by investing in companies that are pioneering this change. Christine Alemany, CEO advisor at Trailblaze Growth Advisors, claims it’s not enough to rely on existing, male-centric corporations to promote equality. “It’s time for women to start their own businesses and begin to invest in new ones that are diverse,” Alemany notes.

According to Alemany, there are a handful of venture capitalists and private equity firms that see diversity as a priority and focus on companies with diverse executive teams as part of their investment strategy. The firm 112Capital, for instance, has invested in female-led tech companies, while the JumpFund focuses on female-led ventures in the southeastern U.S.  If more firms embrace this objective, a new wave of female executives will emerge.

3. Make the Results Public

Improving the opportunities for female executives at your own company is one thing, but inspiring other organizations to do the same is where the real battle lies. One way to do that is by making women leaders visible. When Emily Culp, CMO of Keds, is invited to industry events, she shares her invitation with her female colleagues.

Culp raises the visibility of her entire team by encouraging them to partake in public speaking events and activities outside of work, such as serving on a board or volunteering. She explains the value: “Real business opportunities come out of these events, but you have to be present to network.”

Creating a more inclusive culture takes time, but with cooperation from companies around the world, gender equality in upper-level management may be closer than ever.

Download a summary: Megatrends 2020-2030   The world is constantly changing, and many of these shifts have the potential to alter the investment landscape. While some of these changes can be temporary and fleeting, others can be powerful, transformative forces that shape how society is organized at a fundamental level.

“Megatrends” are powerful, transformative forces that can change the trajectory of the global economy by shifting the priorities of societies, driving innovation and redefining business models. They have a meaningful impact not just on how we live and how prioritise, but also on government policies and corporate strategies.

Agenda

1. Making sense of our changing world

– Trends: from weak signals to dramatic disrupters, in every region, every sector
– Shifts: from old world to new world, crossing the chasms, harnessing the trends
– Impacts: from economic to social, risks and rewards, defining why does it matter

2. Harnessing the trends for innovation and growth

– Future Back: creating tomorrow beyond today, managing portfolios and projects
– Outside in: insight with ideas, aspirations and expectations, business and society
– Fast Forwards: turning ideas into practical action, through enlightened innovation

3. Leading the future, turning trends into business success

– Cause: having a purpose beyond profit, to go further and faster to the future
– Collaboration: from ecosystems to communities, achieving much more together
– Courage: leaders who dare to shape the future, a better future, in their own vision

Download a summary: Megatrends 2020-2030   

Megatrends

There are five megatrends shaping our future, shifting the way we live and work.

  • T … Technological breakthrough
    Technology is driving exponential progress in the tech sector and far beyond. 125 billion internet-connected devices are expected to be in market by 2030, up from 17 billion in 2017.
  • S … Social and demographic change
    Longer lifespans and modern lifestyles will change medicine and consumer habits. 45% increase in the 60+ population worldwide is projected to take place as soon as 2030.
  • U … Rapid urbanisation
    Mass migration to cities will require new business models and infrastructure. 2/3rds of the world’s population will reside in cities by 2050, double the percentage from 1950.
  • R … Resource limits and climate change
    Demand for a clean, green tomorrow will advance energy and conservation. 50% of the world’s energy is predicted to come from solar and wind by 2050, up from just 7% in 2015.
  • P …  Shifting economic power
    Newly affluent consumers will expand in Asia and across emerging markets. Emerging market economies today are predicted to represent 6 out of the 7 largest economies by 2050.

Let’s consider each of them:

Technological breakthrough … Radical innovations, disrupting markets with exponential impacts 

10 years ago, you’d never imagine we’d be watching our favourite television programmes during our commute and enjoying shopping sprees in our living rooms. Or that we could order our dinner without speaking to anybody, and hail taxis to drive us from the middle of nowhere to the middle of anywhere.

New technologies lie at the heart of resolving or accelerating the five megatrends. Breakthrough innovation is necessary to address large-scale challenges (e.g. ageing economies, climate change), while new solutions are also targeting relatively minor problems (e.g. payments, streaming). This backdrop has created a fertile ground for disruptive innovation.

Consider the advent of electric vehicles, e-commerce, solar panels, robotics, cloud computing, streaming, smart grids and many other modern-day innovations. In each case, engineers and entrepreneurs are aiming to capitalize on the need for either a new solution or a better alternative in existing markets.

Breakthrough innovations have become more powerful in recent years thanks to globalisation and the ubiquity of technology. Together, they have lowered entry barriers for new competitors and accelerated the adoption of new technologies around the world, thereby unleashing a wave of disruptive opportunities across industries and economies. As such, technological growth has become exponential.

Demographics and social change … ageing populations, global migration and robotic automation

Changes in global demographics will bring significant challenges and opportunities for societies and businesses. The forces that underpin this megatrend include ageing populations in advanced economies and China, the outlook for future jobs, immigration pressure, skills imbalance and the radically different priorities of younger generations.

Italy and Germany lead the way in Europe, with the median age of their populations at 47.9 and 46.6 years (only behind Japan at 48.2).  In Western Europe, 1 in 5 people are older than 65 and this is expected to rise to 1 in 4 in the next decade.  These trends are likely to slowly, but steadily change the outlook for household spending (towards older consumers), inflation rates, economic growth and government policy (the US already spends over 18% of GDP on healthcare). Ageing and the resulting decline in the labour force will hence require dramatic social and technological changes.

Consider the case of Japan; the combination of ageing (about one-third of its population is over 65yr ) and low immigration has led to very tight labour markets; the jobs-to-applicant ratio in Japan stands at 1.63x, the highest level in 17 years.  A counter to this has been more Japanese women entering the workforce; between 2000-17, female workforce participation rose from <60% to 69.4%. At the same time, Japan has been one of the largest buyers (and makers) of robotics; it employs 308 robots for every 10,000 human workers compared to 200 for the US.

Smarter machines are a solution for countries with shrinking labour forces; but they are likely to trigger challenges for younger economies, by disrupting jobs and limiting wage growth. Automation and greater use of tech will require tomorrow’s workforce to develop new and more advanced skills; take the case of the UK, where less than 20% of the population had a university degree in 1990, but in 2000 that rose to 33% and reached 42% in 2017. As the competition for highly skilled labour heats up, companies will need to spend more resources to attract, train and retain talent.

Rapid urbanisation … Supercities of the new world, melting points of culture, demanding new infrastructure

Cities have always been hubs for talent, capital and innovation. In the last decade, hundreds of large cities have been built in emerging economies, attracting significant infrastructure investments. Large cities such as San Francisco, London, Paris and New York have also been the ideal launch pads for entrepreneurs given their large, dense populations. Understanding the advantages and challenges of future cities can help us identify the next sources of growth.

With more people in the world living in cities than ever before, cities’ share of global growth is rising. According to McKinsey as of October 2018, the top 50 cities account for 8% of global population, 21% of world GDP, 37% of urban high-income households and are home to 45% of firms with more than $1 billion (all amounts given in USD) in annual revenues.1

As cities grow large, they require significant infrastructure, including communication networks (e.g. 5G, fibre), transit and transportation (e.g. metro, bridges), social infrastructure (e.g. hospitals, schools) and housing. This was a key driver of commodity demand and fixed investments in the last 10-15 years as China and other developing economies industrialised rapidly and millions of people migrated to cities. This story is likely to continue as other emerging markets follow China’s lead (as discussed in the previous section).

Large cities that offer good infrastructure, greater convenience and attractive job opportunities typically attract global talent. This leads to higher population densities and younger consumers with higher disposable incomes: the perfect ingredients for innovation and entrepreneurship.

Climate change and resource scarcity … carbon, and the pressure on our planet for food, oil, and water

An expanding population and the rising demand for food, energy and materials continue to strain the finite resources of the planet. The need for solutions that improve energy efficiency, lower food waste and provide alternatives to scarce resources has never been greater. Underlying these trends is the persistent increase in global emissions which has led to intensifying debates around climate change and how we can resolve it.

In 2018, global emissions continued their march higher growing 1.7% yoy (year on year). In turn, the US National Climate Assessment report noted that sea levels are now rising twice as fast as 25 years ago, while re-insurance company Swiss Re estimated recently that natural catastrophes and extreme weather events caused $146 billion (all amounts given in USD) in damages in 2018. The social and economic consequences of climate change are substantial. How can this be slowed?

Investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy is an important step. The good news is that clean energy today is cheaper than it has ever been. The average price of a solar module has fallen 88% since 2010, while the cost of wind turbines has declined by over 40%. In some countries, clean energy sources are comparable to natural gas and coal power in terms of unit costs and rely less on government subsidies each year.

Shifting economic power … realigning the world’s economies, driving wealth and shifts in power

In the last twenty years, developing economies have been lifted by the rising tide of globalisation and manufacturing shifting to Asia. The emergence of a sizeable, aspirational middle class, particularly in China, has made it an important destination for global companies. We continue to expect emerging markets to offer significant growth potential for domestic and multinational firms.

Two decades of unprecedented growth has lifted China’s per capita GDP from a meagre 8% of US per capita GDP in 2000 to roughly 30% this year.1 This rapid growth has been enabled by significant infrastructure investments, support for an export-focused manufacturing base and increased spending on innovation. In turn this has resulted in persistent growth in household incomes; the World Bank notes that China alone is set to add one billion people to the global middle class between 2005-2030. It is not surprising then that China has been a key source of growth for companies exposed to Chinese consumers (e.g. luxury brands, autos, smartphones).

China’s significant economic progress has coincided with its foray abroad. Consider the approximate $1 trillion (all amounts given in USD) Belt and Road Initiative as China seeks to invigorate infrastructure and trade routes across south Asia and other parts of the emerging world. A new breed of Chinese companies are increasingly capturing market share at home and venturing overseas. This is a natural progression of an economy that has been steadily moving up the value curve in infrastructure, manufacturing and technology sectors.

Elsewhere, genuine reform can unlock potential in India, which benefits from an expanding labour pool (the working age population is set to grow by almost 14% by 2030E, compared to a -3% decline for China). As cost inflation in China pushes manufacturing jobs elsewhere, neighbouring southeast Asian economies are benefiting (e.g. Vietnam, Bangladesh). Another advantage for emerging markets is the ability to lead from advanced economies and adopt cheaper and better technologies to boost productivity (e.g. clean energy, communication). For instance, Mexico’s mobile penetration is at 90% while fixed-line penetration has plateaued at 16%.

Background

Future State 2030 is a report by KPMG which identifies nine global megatrends that are most salient to the future of governments. While they are highly interrelated, the megatrends can broadly be grouped into trends reflecting changes in the status and expectations of individuals, changes in the global economy and changes in the physical environment.

Demographics

Higher life expectancy and falling birth rates are increasing the proportion of elderly people across the world, challenging the solvency of social welfare systems, including pensions and healthcare. Some regions are also facing the challenge of integrating large youth populations into saturated labor markets.

Rise of the individual

Advances in global education, health and technology have helped empower individuals like never before, leading to increased demands for transparency and participation in government and public decision- making. These changes will continue, and are ushering in a new era in human history in which, by 2022, more people will be middle class than poor.

Enabling technology

Information and communications technology (ICT) has transformed society over the last 30 years. A new wave of technological advances is now creating novel opportunities, while testing governments’ ability to harness their benefits and provide prudent oversight.

Economic interconnectedness

The interconnected global economy will see a continued increase in the levels of international trade and capital flows, but unless international conventions can be strengthened, progress and optimum economic benefits may not be realized.

Public debt

Public debt is expected to operate as a significant constraint on fiscal and policy options through to 2030 and beyond. Governments’ ability to bring debt under control and find new ways of delivering public services will affect their capacity to respond to major social, economic and environmental challenges.

Economic power shift

Emerging economies are lifting millions out of poverty while also exerting more influence in the global economy. With a rebalancing of global power, both international institutions and national governments will need a greater focus on maintaining their transparency and inclusiveness.

Climate change

Rising greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change and driving a complex mix of unpredictable changes to the environment while further taxing the resilience of natural and built systems. Achieving the right combination of adaptation and mitigation policies will be difficult for most governments.

Resource stress

The combined pressures of population growth, economic growth and climate change will place increased stress on essential natural resources (including water, food, arable land and energy). These issues will place sustainable resource management at the center of government agendas.

Urbanization

Almost two-thirds of the world’s population will reside in cities by 2030. Urbanization is creating significant opportunities for social and economic development and more sustainable living, but is also exerting pressure on infrastructure and resources, particularly energy.

The future of cars

Autonomous driving will happen. Who does it first is the question. But it’s ready now. The issues with it really are to do with insurance and culpability. Currently, if an autonomous car hits a car which is being driven by a person, who’s at fault? The person driving could say, no, this machine was out of control… there are lots and lots of issues aside from the technology that are stopping autonomous driving. At some point, some state or some country will decide: this section of road is for autonomous cars. And then we’ll start to see it proliferate.

Urban driving

In a major city, does it make sense to own a car anymore? Not really. You can’t park it anywhere unless you have a fantastic house with a driveway and a garage. You’re always penalised, you’re always stuck in a traffic jam. So why not have, like bikes and scooters to rent per minute or km, cars that are autonomous. You can stick £10 in the slot and then use the car for a 30-minute journey in London. And, presto, because it’s connected, it takes you the best route. What happens to taxis? Maybe the taxis are there just for tourists. We will have this kind of technology, and it will probably be a lane splitter – in other words, it won’t be a wide car, it will be something quite narrow, so you can get three or four of them in a lane where you have one car currently. That way, you can transport more people around the city. Will they be electric, will they be hydrogen? Probably one of those two propulsion methods.

Luxury cars

What we call the high-luxury segments, or the premium segments, are growing globally. The one thing that we see in world economies and patterns of purchase are more freedom all the time, more choice left to the consumer. I think there will be a greater diversity of product. We’ve seen a proliferation already. If you look back to the 60s and 70s, there were many car manufacturers. But they probably made a handful of cars: a medium-sized car, a big car and then an estate version. Now the amount of cars, from micro cars to massive SUVs, crossovers and hybrid products – they just keep going.

AVL

AVL is the world’s largest independent company for the development, simulation and testing of powertrain systems (hybrid, combustion engine, transmission, electric drive, batteries, fuel cell and control technology) for passenger cars, commercial vehicles, construction, large engines and their integration into the vehicle.  The company has decades of experience in the development and optimization of powertrain systems for all industries. As a global technology leader, AVL provides complete and integrated development environments, measurement and test systems as well as state-of-the-art simulation methods.  As a pioneer in the field of innovative solutions, such as diverse electrification strategies for powertrains, AVL is increasingly taking on new tasks in the field of autonomous driving, especially on the basis of subjective human sensations (driveability, connectivity, ADAS, etc.).

Agenda for Peter Fisk’s keynote:

Mobility Recoded: Creating the future of automotive business

  • World changing
    • Every sector, every geography, every dimension is being shaken up
    • The disruption of technology, changing consumers, redefining priorities
    • Startups and traditionalists, tech and human, stability and agility, future and today
  • Business recoded
    • Winning in new ways, starting from the future back, and outside in
    • Inspired by Coca Cola and Disney, ARM and BNP Paribas, GE and Microsoft
    • Being the enabler, seeing the future, fast and agile, ecosystem partners together
  • Leading the future
    • What does it take to win in the future – to shape the future you want – to your advantage
    • Sales becomes strategists, technologists become ethnographers, finance become enablers
    • Be the change you want to see in the world – bold, brave brilliant

I’m here in Copenhagen to celebrate some of  the great female leaders around the world, shaking up business and shaping the future. From Anne Wojcicki leading the future of healthcare with 23andMe, to Mary Barra reinventing automative with GM, and Zhang Xin, the self-made richest women in China.

We will explore the attributes required to be a successful business leader in today’s world. The need for vision and intuition, empathy and engagement, creativity and collaboration, care and humanity, and much more. Of course men can have these attributes too, but they are certainly less “macho” characteristics, and more typically associated with female approaches.

Here is my recent keynote on The Future is Female.

And we’ll also take a look at some of the great Nordic female leaders:

Filippa Knutsson, Founder, Filippa K.

Filippa Martina Knutsson is a Swedish fashion designer. She is the owner of the fashion brand Filippa K, founded in 1993, and runs it with her former husband Patrik Kihlborg. She has been called “a household name” and “a superstar” in Sweden and much of Europe.

She has been immersed in the clothing and fashion industry for many years. Having spent her formative years in London, she returned to her native Sweden to work in her family’s fashion business. She later came together with two business partners to establish the Filippa K line in 1993. Based in Sweden, in just over 20 years the brand has expanded to fashion outlets in 20 markets and 50 brand stores across the Nordics as well as in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland.

The men’s and women’s lines can also be found at over 600 of other retailers worldwide. In 2014 turnover exceeded EUR 70 million. Ms Knutsson has been deeply involved in orchestrating the success of the Filippa K fashion lines and supervises all of the brand’s creative aspects, including conceptualization, design, retail concepts and brand communications.

Mette Lykke, CEO Too Good to Go

Lykke leads the Danish waste food business Too Good to Go. She was previously Vice President of Under Armour, International Digital and the co-founder & CEO of Endomondo. She and two business partners co-founded the fitness tracking app Endomondo in 2007 and by 2014 had grown the community-based venture to reach 20 million registered users. As chief executive, she successfully orchestrated the company’s acquisition for $85M by the US-based athletic apparel manufacturer Under Armour.

What happens when you take three business consultants and a gypsy? This isn’t the start of a joke. She  revealed that an unexpected encounter with a gypsy showed her that following her dreams could take her to places she’d never believed possible and that passion for what she does is the real measure of her success.

She showed she could walk the talk when she traded in a comfortable position at the international consulting firm McKinsey for the risks of entrepreneurship. Ms Lykke and two business partners co-founded the fitness tracking app Endomondo in 2007 and by 2014 had grown the community-based venture to reach 25 million users. As chief executive she successfully orchestrated the company’s acquisition for USD 85 million by the US-based athletic apparel manufacturer Under Armour, where she is now vice president.

Before her steep rise to business success, Ms Lykke worked as a journalist and researcher for a major Danish daily newspaper while pursuing a master’s degree in political science at Aarhus University. She was later recruited by McKinsey & Co as a management consultant. The rest, as they say, is history. In 2013 she received the Female Business Owners’ Inspirational award and in 2012 was granted the Founder of the Year award by the Nordic Startup Awards series, which celebrates startup ecosystems based in the Nordics.

Pia Vemmelund, Managing Director, Momondo

With more than 25 years under her belt in the travel industry it’s no surprise that Pia Vemmelund has worked her way to the top of one of the fastest-rising online travel and destination service providers, Momondo. Before joining Momondo, Vemmelund spent 19 years with the Scandinavian airline SAS, where she held several positions, including Director, Commercial Intelligence and Sales Support. In 2007 she moved to Momondo and took on the hefty portfolio of commercial manager with responsibility for sales, online marketing, finance and administration. By 2012 she had become the company’s managing director and was made a member of the board in 2013. As Momondo chief executive Ms Vemmelund has played a central role in securing financing for the venture. In 2014 she helped negotiation a USD 130 million investment in Momondo by the venture capitalist Great Hill Partners. She is also a board member of Greenland Travel and the Danish online bargain aggregator Bownty.

Azita Shariati, CEO Sodexo Sweden & Denmark

Iranian-born catering industry dynamo Azita Shariati leads the Swedish and Danish operations of the French-based multinational company Sodexo. The company’s Nordic operations employ 11,000 people and have a turnover of SEK 7.5 billion. Ms Shariati has earned every ounce of the respect and accolades she now enjoys, having worked her way up to the chief executive position during a relatively brief nine-year career with the company. During her impressive rise to the top of the organization she held roles such as sales director and country manager, Sweden. A passionate advocate of gender balance and multiculturalism, when she was appointed vice president in 2010, she famously set a challenge for the company to employ women in 50 percent of senior management positions by 2015 – a target that was later achieved. As a result, she was named Sweden’s most powerful business woman in 2015 by the weekly business magazine Veckans Affärer. In granting the award, the publication cited Ms Shariati’s inclusive leadership based on her advocacy for gender balance and diversity and her recognition that she has the power to change society.

Hilde Midthjell, Owner, Dale of Norway

Hilde Midthjell is a serial Norwegian entrepreneur with a background in medicine and a distinct flair for business. Ms Midthjell is currently main owner and board chair of Dale of Norway, a clothing company that produces outdoor lifestyle gear. The company is perhaps best known for its trademark lusekofte sweater, which features traditional Norwegian design and weaving methods. It has also been the official supplier of sweaters for the Norwegian ski team and winter Olympics since 1956. Prior to taking the helm at Dale, Ms Midthjell set up and ran a successful cosmetics company, Dermanor, part of the Dermagruppen group for more than 20 years. She sold the company for NOK 500 million. The cosmetics company now operates across the Nordics. She is also owner and chief executive of a series of companies, one of which is an investment firm through which she owns a controlling share of Dale of Norway and a minority stake in the sustainable tourism company Basecamp Explorer

Lotte Tīsenkopfa-Iltnere, CEO of Madara Cosmetics

A keen interest in sustainable living and home-made cosmetics led entrepreneur Lotte Tīsenkopfa-Iltnere to establish Madara Cosmetics, a manufacturer of organic skin care products, in 2006. Currently the company’s chief executive, Tīsenkopfa-Iltnere has expanded the product line and grown the reach of the business across northern and central Europe. The company posted revenues of 1.9 and 2.3 million euros in 2012 and 2013, respectively. In 2012 she was named one of the country’s top 25 women in business by Forbes Latvia and in 2014 one of the company’s facial products was named the best new cosmetic by the Latvian lifestyle magazine Pastaiga. Tīsenkopfa-Iltnere has also worked as a journalist and has studied Japanese language, culture and business in Latvia and Japan.

Björk Guðmundsdóttir, Musician and Entrepreneur

Widely known by her first name only, Björk has become a fixture on the international music scene during the 30 years of her career as a singer-songwriter, musician and producer. She has also championed environmental causes and has actively campaigned for environmental preservation in Iceland. In 2009 she collaborated with a venture capital firm to set up an investment fund to invest in green technology in her home country. In 2012 her net worth was estimated at more than USD 50 million. She is a lynchpin of the experimental music scene, yet has turned out a number of highly successful singles on mainstream music charts – reflecting her eclectic musical tastes and styles. Björk has had 30 hit singles in the Top 40 of global pop charts and has scored 22 Top 40 hits on UK charts. The Icelandic artist has been recognized with a number of music industry awards throughout her career. In 2011 she became the first artist to release an album, Biophilia, as a series of interactive apps, which were later inducted into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Download a summary: Leading the Future  

Every market is facing seismic change. This is driven by new technologies from big data to digital platforms, new start-ups and increased competition, and changing needs and expectations of customers.

The future is a leadership challenge – choosing where and how to drive innovation and growth, and how to work together to implement strategic, operational and cultural change across the business. In dynamic markets, clarity of vision and strategic priorities become crucial, as does the choice of which markets and innovations to focus on. Technology-driven innovation needs to be focused to ensure efficiency and competitive advantage, implementation must be aligned with process and cultural change, to avoid confusion and optimise the impact.

A “future mindset” is about business leaders taking a key role in defining and shaping the future they imagine for the bank, and then turning this into reality for all stakeholders. “Leading the future” demands both vision but also courage to change, to let go of the status quo, to challenge existing practices and conventions, to explore and experiment in ways that drive innovation, to get ideas and inspirations from other sectors where disruption is equally dramatic, and to take the responsibility for not just the business’s performance today, but the business of tomorrow too.

Peter Fisk is a world-leading expert on helping organisations create better futures, working with business leaders in all sectors around the world. He is a professor of leadership, strategy and innovation at IE Business School. He is founder of boutique consulting firm GeniusWorks, and author of 8 books including Gamechangers: Creating Innovative Strategies for Business and Brands. More information at theGeniusWorks.com

Workshop Part 1: Designing the Future (90 mins)

World Changing

  • Making sense of today’s world, the challenge and opportunity
  • East and West, Tech and Human, Profit and Purpose, Start-up and Corporate
  • The future isn’t like it used to be, we can’t keep doing what we used to do

Inspiring Purpose

  • What is the purpose of your business?
  • Business as a platform for good, combining purpose and profit
  • Using social and environmental issues to inspire your innovation

Disruptive Innovation

  • Learning from the world’s 100 most disruptive innovators, how to change your game
  • What are the secrets of today’s most innovative, most disruptive businesses?
  • 10 types of innovation, from products and services to experiences and business models

Starting from Future Back

  • Moonshots, 10x not 10%, and having a bigger ambition
  • Turning purpose and visions into projects and priorities, stories and journeys
  • Developing a future roadmap, 5 – 3 – 1, which captures your big ideas

Workshop Part 2: Delivering the Future (60 mins)

The Future Business

  • Defining the DNA of the future business
  • Resolving the tensions of the 21st century, to find a better way
  • Harnessing the power of new business models, platforms and big data

Working from Outside In

  • Customer thinking, reframing what you do, and what matters most
  • Deep dives and design thinking, experiences and communities
  • Engaging people with emotions and empathy

Fast Forwards

  • Accelerating ideas into action with experiments and speed
  • Building your S Curves to keep ahead of the game
  • Delivering today whilst creating tomorrow

Leaders with Courage

  • What it takes to be a great leader, inspired by Bezos and Branson, Ma and Musk
  • Start with a future mindset, jump ahead, look forwards not backwards
  • How will you be the change, how will you achieve more?

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 inspirations 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.

More ideas from Peter Fisk …

Download Peter Fisk’s masterclass in London: Leading the Future.  

“Leading the Future” is about stepping up to the challenge of new markets and technologies, with new leadership and new organisations.

Leading the future demands leaders of change rather than continuity, with the courage and capability to make sense of the rapidly emerging future and seize the best opportunities.

How will you shape your organisation and its strategies to take you forwards, how will you harness the power of technologies and ensure more positive impact, how will you shape markets in your vision rather being held hostage by the next generation of entrepreneurs and global competitors? How will you go beyond the strategies and minds of your own leaders of today? How can you be Gamechanger?

We will explore new research defining the emerging nature of future businesses, and what it takes to be a future leader – the DNA of the 21st century leader.

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!

Download Peter Fisk’s masterclass in Munich: Leading the Future

“Leading the Future” is about stepping up to the challenge of new markets and technologies, with new leadership and new organisations.

It is for business leaders ready to transform their businesses: to disrupt the current models of success, to work across the organisation to inspire and drive change, and to step up to becoming the leader of the future.

“Leading the future” therefore demands leaders of change rather than continuity, with the courage and capability to make sense of the rapidly emerging future and seize the best opportunities.

Masterclass “Leading the Future” with Peter Fisk, 6 February, Munich:

  • How is the 21st Century Business different from the 20th Century Business?
  • East and west, tech and human, profit and purpose, start-up and corporate
  • 100 disruptive innovators shaking up the world right now, every sector and country
  • How will German business win again – inspired by Bosch and Daimler, SAP and Siemens
  • Defining the DNA of the future business, and what are the new measures of success
  • Leading the future: how leaders need to transform  yourself and your business
  • IE Business School’s Global AMP: the best way to step up, and get started

Download Peter Fisk’s masterclass in Munich: Leading the Future

Explore more about IE Business School’s Global Advanced Management Program

How will you shape your organisation and its strategies to take you forwards, how will you harness the power of technologies and ensure more positive impact, how will you shape markets in your vision rather being held hostage by the next generation of entrepreneurs and global competitors?

How will you go beyond the strategies and minds of your own leaders of today? How can you be Gamechanger?

We will explore new research defining the emerging nature of future businesses, and what it takes to be a future leader – the DNA of the 21st century leader.

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.

Here are some examples of the inspiring content from the Global AMP:

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

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 previewing the World Expo 2020, and taking inspirations 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.

More ideas from Peter Fisk …