Peter Fisk

How can you be a genius?

Peter Fisk explores how to think more creatively by more effectively connecting your intelligence (left brain, analytical, logical, incremental thinking) with your imagination (right brain, intuitive, conceptual, borderless thinking).

Inspired by Einstein and Picasso, we look at how “geniuses” combine the thinking, using the power of hypothesis-based methodology. Genius is the ability to do both. It combines data and ideas, backwards and forwards, big and small.

Free gift: The Little Book of Genius

Peter Fisk is the author of 4 books on “genius” thinking. In an interview with one of the world’s leading business journal, he explains how he got started in business, and where his genius thinking originated:

I started with a passion to understand the world. At school I loved sciences, the path of discovery, making sense, and exploring possibilities. I went on to study nuclear physics, the potential of the invisible world, and harnessing the smallest particles to innovate everything from nanotech healthcare to superfast travel.

But I wanted to progress faster. So I joined the world’s largest airline, entering the much more creative and human world of marketing, and by 28 years old I had my dream job – managing the supersonic Concorde brand.  I went on to work with all types of companies, with innovative brands and in markets all around the world.

Years later, when I wrote my first book, I wanted to find something personal to write about. When I started in business, people always gave me the analytical jobs because of my scientific background. But I loved people and the excitement of creativity much more. Then I realised the best people can do both – they have a left and right brain – they can be Einstein and Picasso at the same time.

I called it “genius” – to be creative and analytical, to be local and global, the yin and the yang, to create the future whilst also delivering today. My first book “Marketing Genius” was translated into 35 languages, and about how Einstein and Picasso would do business today. Since then I’ve written 7 books, most recently “Gamechangers”, about how you can think bigger and different, and have the potential to change your world.

Let’s start with the dictionary

genius ˈdʒiːnɪəs

noun

1. exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability.

“she was a teacher of genius”

synonyms: brilliance, great intelligence, great intellect, great ability, cleverness, brains, erudition, wisdom, sagacity, fine mind, wit, artistry, flair, creative power, precocity, precociousness.

2. an exceptionally intelligent person or one with exceptional skill in a particular area of activity.

“a mathematical genius”

synonyms: brilliant person, mental giant, mastermind, Einstein, intellectual, intellect, brain, highbrow, expert, master, artist, polymath.

A recent article in the LA Times:

National Geographical ran a great series exploring the meaning of genius:

James Gleich is a great thinker, here considering the traits of genius:

Scientists explored the concept of beautiful minds at the World Science Festival.

And finally, are you more intelligent than you realise?

We used to think we knew it all.

We used to go to business school and emerge with MBA-style passports to a long and prosperous career. We used to top up our business skills with the occasional workshop, maybe augmented by a business book or two. We used to go through those chaotic moments of “change” when organisations shake up, and then settle down again. We used to become increasingly expert in our chosen field. And do what we do.

But the world isn’t like that anymore.

Change is relentless, everywhere and in everything. More change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years. Technology, but also its applications and consequences. Changing what people want, their aspirations and expectations. Changing how we work, our business models and daily tasks. Changing what success looks like, from productivity and scale, to new measures of impact and progress.

How do we keep pace with this incredible world?

What we learnt 10, maybe even 20 or 30, years ago just isn’t relevant, or even sufficient anymore. The capabilities that made us great have been superseded by new skills or even machines. The ability to keep doing the same thing, or evolving the same model doesn’t work. And as change accelerates, it feels like there is no time for anything – shorter cycle times, faster delivery, instant results.

So when is there time to learn, to develop ourselves?

Taking time out to refuel your mind, to attend a training program, seems impractical and impossible. 4 weeks for an executive program seems like a lifetime. A book is quickly distracted. Even sitting down to watch a TED Talk seems like a luxury. Yet there is a whole new world to explore – new knowledge, new skills, new opportunities.

The problem is not time, it is our mindset.

Too many of us still try to optimise the whole world. To keep doing what we have always done, but better, evolving and adapting, in search of perfection. Instead we need to let go, to adopt a growth mindset, where we constantly seek to explore and experiment. To grow. To move ourselves and our organisations forwards in new ways. To be interested, curious and creative, to learn in everything we do.

So here’s a summary of the 15 minute brain hack:

 We live in an incredible time

• More change in next 10 years than last 250 years
• Dramatic advances in healthcare, therapies and devices
• But change is challenging – keep pace, tyranny of time, the future you want
• Imagine if you were an entrepreneur – Anne Wojicki at 23andMe

 Winning is a mindset

• Fixed mindset, or growth mindset – seeking perfection, or exploring future
• We not me – collective intelligence requires relational strength
• IQ to EQ to EA – emotional agility to surive and thrive on relentless change
• Google’s moonshot mindset – 10x not 10%

 Learn to learn everyday

• 100 year life, 6 different careers, Udacity’s nanodegress – learn to learn different
• Active learning (realtime, collaborative) beats Passive learning (courses, books)
• 1% learning every day – not 3.65x better in a year, but 37x better
• The Netflix way – Outpace the market

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF0cu4XQIv8

 21 quick “brain hacks”

• Make every day, your first day … says Jeff Bezos from Amazon
  • keep the dream – be excited every morning
  • stay fresh – don’t get dull/bored/tired
  • be optimistic – be the positive one
• Listen smarter … says Indra Nooyi from Pepsico
  • customer world – start outside
  • the 7 whys – dig deeper to discover more
  • go to the edge – newness is in the margins
• Be curious … says Mark Parker from Nike
  • ask questions – bigger, better questions
  • be playful – experiment, try new
  • make unusual connections – the da Vinci
• Share more … says Adam Grant from Wharton
  • give to take – the secret of reciprocity
  • teach others – best way to learn
  • be interested/ing
• Express yourself … says Jack Ma from Alibaba
  • have a point of view – don’t be bland
  • blog, vlog, tweet, post – be out there
  • build your character not reputation
• Find your Ikigai … says Elon Musk from Tesla
  • align purpose – match life and work
  • do what love – what do you love
  • find relevance – why you
• Reinvent yourself … says Clay Christiansen from Harvard
  • disrupt – challenge, reinvent
  • simplify – make things as simple as possible
  • stay ahead – be the disruptor not the disrupted

What will you do? Be bold, be brave, be brilliant.

Fund Grube is one of the leading retailing companies across the Canary Islands. Our chain of outlets specializes in beauty, lifestyle and fashion products such as fragrances, cosmetics, make-up, watches, eyewear, fashion jewelry, leather goods, footwear, fashion and tobacco.

Our team of more than 500 professionals with over 30 years’ experience is focused in delivering the best customer service, constantly developing a range of products based on the current season trends. Quality, service and innovation are the focal points of our customer-oriented strategic vision.

Fund Grube aims to provide services to all visitors and customers either demanding products that fall into any of the categories included in our range of products or simply looking for a satisfactory buying experience at any of our 20 outlets, spread across urban and tourist areas in Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura.

Also, as part of a significant bid by Fund Grube to offer exclusive luxury brands, our product range, as well as our sales volume, has been steadily growing over the years.

In 1983, Girdhari Chhabria and Manu Chhabria, two brothers from India, decided to start a retail business in San Bartolomé de Tirajana, Gran Canaria, opening the first Fund Grube outlet at the CITA Shopping Center. The store introduced an innovative sales strategy –a novelty in Europe at the time–, moving from counter service by retailing staff to self-service. Tobacco products were sold almost at cost price to a growing number of foreign visitors.

Growth Accelerator

Session 1 … Day 1, 0900 – 1230 … Exploring the future possibilities

• new ideas from the fast-changing business world
• drivers of change, challenges and opportunities – from every sector and country
• retail futures, digital and physical innovators
• inspired by the most successful business leaders and entrepreneurs

Session 2 … Day 1, 1330 – 1730 … Strategies for accelerating growth

• what does the future look like for Fund Grube
• defining vision and strategic goals, 5+3+1 years, ie 2019-2023
• today v tomorrow gap analysis – customers, competitors and commercials
• evaluating the options/scenarios and defining priorities for Fund Grube to drive growth

Session 3 … Day 2, 0900 – 1230 … New ideas for smarter innovation

• creative ideas to drive Fund Grube growth, customer insights and creative fusions
• who to target and what they want, shaping brands and propositions,
• innovative business models and customer experiences
• defining the best concepts for innovative delivery

Session 4 … Day 2, 1330 -1730 … Leading to make it happen

• developing a future-back roadmap for practical growth
• mapping the outputs and inputs, over the next 5 (or 3?) years
• building the future story of Fund Grube to engage our stakeholders
• what will you do differently as leadership the future

 

• Communicating brands in fast and social markets
• Engaging with people in a C2C world, rebuilding trust and affinity
• Communicating in ways that engage people on their terms
• Enabling experiences that help people to achieve more
• Aligning the business, portfolio and marketing for more impact

1430 – 1530 : Unlocking brand strength to amplify marketing impact

• with Mike Rocha, Global VP of Brand Valuation, Interbrand

1530 – 1630 : Winning with the Vodafone Brand

• What should be our priorities and approaches to brand marketing
• Reflect on how brands and brand building has changed in recent years
• What moves from a brand from good to great, liked to loved
• How to leverage the brand concept in practical everyday ways
• What to stop, start and do different

Behind this agenda are a range of key questions and concepts to explore. In particular the changing nature of brands in a world of hyper-connected markets, impatient consumers, a deficit of trust and desire for authenticity, where  new brands emerge rapidly, and can be destroyed just as quickly … How does a brand enable better marketing, and how does marketing build stronger brands?

• How do brands create more value for customers?
  • The customer-centric brand, is about the customer not the business, about their aspirations not the products … therefore brands are about enabling customers to achieve more (e.g. Airbnb belong anywhere, Nike to perform better, Lego to play better) … therefore the brand reframes the context in which we engage customers,  to a wide platform through which we support customers to do what they aspire to do, better
  • The customer-centric brand narrative, is therefore about a bigger idea, about more than communication and devices … our opportunity is to engage people in this bigger context (e.g. Red Bull’s Air Race is not about energy drinks, but adrenalin experiences), Nike’s events are not about shoes (but Rockstar Workouts, or whatever engages the target segment), similarly all content, promotions etc.
  • The customer-centric brand experience, is also therefore about a bigger idea – its not simply “the touchpoints with the organisation” but the experience which the customer has in doing what they do (e.g. making mobile payments, taking better photos, finding new friends, monitoring business operations etc).
• How do you make brands more relevant when everyone is different?
  • The framework for connecting monolithic brands and CVPs, making brands engaging to each audience in different, relevant and practical ways  … from marketing communication and delivered experiences. Learning from customer-centric brand proprosition models like Umpqua Bank, and its implications on the business to deliver in relevant ways
  • Aligning products and services, tariffs and incentives, to the propositions in smarter ways, to achieve clarity and maximum perceived value, whilst also reducing complicity and cost. In particular using relevant partner brands to build affinity bridges with other brands that a most resonant with each audience
  • How this makes the Vodafone brand more multi-dimensional, more pull than push, and how to retain the consistency of a brand strategy whilst also multiple meanings and executions. Specifically what it means for brand identity, brand messaging, and service styles online, and within stores and call centres.
• What’s the new ways to communicate brands in fast and social markets?
  • Connecting the brand stories together so they become “liquid and linked” – learning how Coca Cola turn all these fragments Facebook posts, Tweets, Instagram messages, online blogs, sponsorship activities, multi-channel, activities into a coherent and progressive story that has structure and progress. In particular, when most of the content is created from outside not inside.
  • Being fast and responsive in communication across all media – moving from the old model of planned campaigns and push execution, to a more dynamic model that is “realtime, relevant and responsive” so that media assets can be aligned and executed within minutes, in order to connect with topical activities, or to address problems. Learning from Nestle Digital
  • Aligning these together for more impact, understanding the new metrics of customer-centric, digital-enabled, realtime brand marketing … both in tactical KPIS, but also how it can be actively managed to optimise sales and profitability, and ultimately to enhance and protect brand reputation, and enhance the economic value of the brand
• How do we use the power of networks, of customer communities, to achieve more together?
  • What is brand trust and loyalty … Trust is low, loyalty is rare … so how do we engage people, build relationships that endure retention and advocacy amongst our audiences? – Today’s winning brands, Lego to Snap, Google to IBM, is facilitate relationships between them, rather than try to have relationships with them (the old CRM) … a community with a higher purpose, to achieve more together.
  • Bringing more brand partners together to achieve the higher goals of the community, and for Vodafone to take a lead facilitator role in being that – like Rapha brings together the passion of cyclists – more than bikes and clothing, it gives them a place and a club, stories and dreams, to share. This community becomes the gateway to customer-centric solutions, and brand portfolios.
  • Using the brand community to achieve more – from co-creating and co-selling, to co-supporting and co-empowering … building on previous successes like Vodafone’s shared giving, farmer’s clubs to achieve more – and in particular to fuse digital and physical assets together in more innovative ways – stores, events, bills, phones – whilst also exploring new revenue streams.

1700 – 1800. Future Hackers.

Peter Fisk explains what it takes to lead the future.

How do you win in a world of relentless change?

You know need to innovate more than ever. You need to think bigger, and different. Not just as an occasional project, but as a continual stream of revolution. You need to think more significantly, how to solve the big problems, to seize the new opportunities to make life better in useful and meaningful ways. Not just the technology, but the smart application of it to the real world, socially and commercially.

Smaller, incremental innovations are quickly swallowed up, or made irrelevant by the next thing. Consumers see through the hype and fragility. Or don’t have time for the frivolity of irrelevance.

Of course, small changes can add to bigger ones, but if they collectively don’t achieve more, and move you forwards in a bigger way, then they are distracting and wasted.

We need bigger ideas. But they are hard to deliver, particularly when the landscape keeps moving. When the future is imperfect or even unpredictable. When the business case is difficult to make. When everything seems to have been already, and most competitors are into marginal gains – discounts and tweaks to almost perfect products and services.

Stop! Think again.

Switch on your Musk mindset … Unlock your Einstein dreams and Picasso passion … Embrace your Mandela courage and Ghandi spirit.

Is this what will take SpaceX to Mars by 2025? Is this why Zespri reinvented the chinese gooseberry? Is this how Netflix came to be, or NuTonomy, or Nespresso, or Nyx?

Is this what motivates Jeff Bezos to say “every day is day one”? Is this how Anne Wojicki seeks to cure cancer? Is this why Jack Ma ignored everyone to create $500bn in 15 years?

We need to think bigger, but we also need to think actively. The future is malleable, so we need to grab hold of it, to shape it in our own vision. To our advantage. This is what “game changers” do. They take a market, and reinvent it, or even create a new one, on their terms. Don’t just innovate a product, service, or even business model – innovate the market.

Of course, they can’t plan exactly how to get there. That would be ridiculous, like trying to climb Mount Everest without the agility to sense and respond to the changing weather conditions. But they know where they are going. They have a bigger dream. And they are willing to fight and flex to get there.

And then they hack.

Hacking.

You think of it as a nerdy kid sitting in front of a bank of computers, trying to infiltrate the most cybersecure fortresses. But its much more than that. It’s about using your  brain, curiosity, intuition, hypothesis, resourcefulness, and experimentation. It’s about sensing your way, being bold yet also adaptive, being flexible but also driven.

There is no space into today’s business world for a fixed mindset. One which seeks to sit an optimise the current world, in search of ever greater efficiency and ultimate perfection. That is a route of diminishing returns. It’s also what you’ve been doing for decades. Trying to hang on to the old model of success. Instead we need a future mindset. To face the future every day, find new ways forward, to a better world.

Future Hacking

A future mindset needs an organisational context in order to be shared and thrive – an agile innovation culture. Business is shifting from a passive to active dynamic – where 80% of activities are active (project-type working focused on innovation, experimentation and customisation) and only 20% passive (ongoing-type working focused on administration, production and standardised delivery), rather than the opposite.

In this active culture, work becomes fast and flexible, innovation becomes the core rather than a occasional luxury, where there are no limiting strategies and fixed ways of working, unhindered by internally-focused structures and process, and where ideas and experiments can thrive. And where the focus is no longer about living off the past, or surviving for today. But about inspired by a better future.

This is future hacking.

We all need to be future hackers today.

1800 – 1830. Preview of Thinkers50 EBF18

Peter Fisk introduces a preview of Europe’s top business summit

The European Business Forum is the premier meeting place for business leaders in Europe. It brings together the continent’s top business people with the world’s leading management gurus in “the Davos of business thinking”.

“Making better choices” is the theme of EBF18, on 26-27 September 2018.

Business leaders face more choices than ever before – there are few limits to the ways a business can grow – any geographical market, any industrial sector, any business model – enabled by technology, partners, people and investment. In fact, in a world of infinite possibilities, the hardest part is often deciding what not to do – to make choices.

Download: NOW+NEXT Preview of the European Business Forum 2018

In the “fourth industrial revolution” it is the new generation of technologies – from digital networks and blockchain, to robotics and artificial intelligence, 3d printing and biotechnologies – that challenge business leaders to rethink what matters, how to embrace the new capabilities, and what creates sustained economic value.

Yet another challenge – how the business exists within society, and the value it adds to people, local communities and social progress – might have just as much impact on a business’ future success. What is fair, what is good, what is progress, have become huge questions – particularly for business leaders.

At the previous forum, Europe’s business leaders said “Fast change has left business out of touch with people. Leaders are complacent, and innovation is wasted.” Collectively we asked ourselves how can European business rediscover its place in the world. There was a strong and overwhelming message from participants: “Business should be a force for positive progress.” This year we build on your agenda.

“Making Better Choices” is about connecting these challenges and new opportunities – exploring how business leaders can most effectively apply these new technologies for more impact, for both people and profit. This requires new options, new choices, and smarter decisions.

Agenda Day 1

0900 – 1015 … Technologies that will change our world

The “Odense Moonshot” explores the incredible potential of new technologies to transform every market. Whilst Bitcoin has grabbed headlines, the underlying blockchain technologies could transform the way every market works, and not just in financial services. It could transform business models and supply chains, whilst reinventing the ways in which consumers engage, and their trust in brands. This will be enhanced by other technologies, adding intelligence, speed and efficiency. Which technologies matter most to your future, and how will you embrace their potential?

• Don Tapscott is often known as Mr Wikinomics, and is #2 in the Thinkers50 global ranking of business gurus. He has become the spokesperson of the network age – explaining the exponential potential of networks when you make them work for you (like Wikipedia, but equally by turning your customer base into a vibrant community). Now he turns his attention to Blockchain, one of the many new technologies that fascinate and baffle most business leaders. His new book is Blockchain Revolution. How will distributed, network-based transaction systems transform the way money works, and almost every other industry too?

1045 – 1200 … Social issues that will change our world

Dramatic change brings new tensions, not least in how business progress is challenging our ways of life, our society and environment. Global and local, rich and poor, fake and authentic, climate and ecology, fairness and ethics. What is the impact of your business on our world, in your local community and far across continents? At the same time, social issues provide new opportunities for business to do good. How could you innovate your business activities in a way that does more for society, engaging people more deeply and maybe even more profitable too? This is no longer about CSR, but has profound implications for every part of business.

1230 – 1330 … Big Talk: Defining the Choices

What are the biggest challenges for us all, as business leaders? The forum works together in roundtables, speakers and participants, to explore the questions, tensions and dilemmas we face in business – the role of technology in driving progress, and the impact financially and socially which they can have. Together we will create an “agenda” for European business, considering which factors are most significant together and individually. By learning from each other, we may uncover choices we didn’t even realise we had, and new opportunities to innovate and grow.

1430 – 1515 … Rethinking Purpose

Entrepreneurs have a clarity of purpose when they set out, which is often lost or confused as their businesses grow and evolve. Finding a purpose beyond profit has become the guiding path of most enlightened businesses today, rethinking “why” the business exists before “what and how” to do. Purpose gives you a north star, and source of enduring difference. By rediscovering the mindset of your founder, businesses can often rekindle their creativity, reneergise their people, and refocus their priorities. This often involves applying innovation to every aspect of the business, and its wider impact.

1545 – 1700 … Rethinking Organisations

Disruptive technologies are unlikely to thrive in traditional organisations built around hierarchies of people and products. Creativity and agility comes from new ways of working together, more flexibly and collaboratively, building new types of partnerships with new capabilities. Organisations need in many ways to mirror the new market models, speed and agility, but also human and responsible. They need to harness their connected intelligence, whilst maintain emotional agility to sustain the delivery of projects and results. How can you build the right organisation for the future? What are the big choices, and best solutions?

Agenda Day 2

0900 – 1015 … Innovation Accelerator

Innovation drives business progress. It has become core to what the organisation does, and all embracing in its scope, rethinking everything from business models to customer experiences. At the same time, the process of innovation has become smarter, faster, more collaborative and more creative. From design thinking to lean implementation, organisations seek to bring an entrepreneurial mindset to the development process. At the heart of all of this sits the business model. And often one that can be expressed on a one page canvas. So how can you develop a better business model, and in particular, one that embraces the potential of technologies for both people and profit?

• Alex Osterwalder is popular for his Business Model Canvas, a one-page framework in which you map and then creatively explore the opportunities for rethinking every aspect of your business. With post-it notes, and a blank canvas you can play with your future business model, including how to achieve those new choices. Together with Yves Pigneur, and 470 co-creators, the Swiss innovation guru has authored three books, and is now #7 on the Thinkers50 global ranking.

1045 – 1200 … Rethinking Networks

Networks are the drivers of exponential growth – social media, distribution partners, licensing models, business ecosystems, media networks. Every additional member creates a multiplying effect through its added connections. As a result, customers trust customers, businesses work together to share capabilities, and reaching across markets is fast and easy. What are the best ways to make networks work? How can you engage business partners more effectively, and more consumers faster and more authentically?

1230 – 1330 … Big Talk: Making Better Choices

So how can we, as business leaders, make better choices? The forum works together in roundtables, speakers and participants, to address the core theme, building on the ideas of previous sessions, and the experiences of all of us. How can the new technologies help us to make better choices, in a way that delivers success for society, and profitable growth too? What are the new choices? How do we choose? What difference will it make?

1430 – 1515 … Rethinking Leadership

Leaders are the ultimate decision makers. How has decision-making changed in today’s world? With ever greater complexity and relentless change, multiple cultures and dispersed working, how do you make better choices? Information is ubiquitous, analytics are rampant, yet making the right choices requires more than lots of data. It is about understanding the choices – what options are available; and then the impacts – the consequences of decisions. Do you have what it takes to rethink your role as leader, maybe even to disrupt yourself, and to rethink how you think, decide and lead?

1545 – 1700 … European Business Lecture 2018

The European Business Lecture defines the agenda for business across the continent in the year ahead, a seminal moment in the European business calendar. What are the priorities for business, for governments, and others? How will Europe win in a fast and dynamic world? How can smarter choices enable leaders to see their future differently, to focus on new priorities and practices, and to have more impact?  Good judgement is a rare but crucial quality in today’s business leaders. Winners, particularly in a world of new technologies and new priorities, are the ones who make great choices.

• Roger Martin is the world’s #1 business thinker, and tops the 2017 Thinkers50 ranking of global management gurus. He is a Canadian strategist, formerly Dean of the Rotman School of Management. He is perhaps most famous for his “Playing to Win” collaboration with P&G’s former CEO AG Lafley, which defined the key choices to make in developing a great strategy. He has almost dedicated much of his time to social entrepreneurship, and has a new book just out called Creating Great Choices, which explores how “integrative thinking” can lead to solutions which are not trade-offs or compromises, but adopt a better way.

Keynote speakers

Peter Fisk will be hosting the event again, and working with my Thinkers50 colleagues Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove to design an event that brings together the best ideas in a fresh and though-provoking. Here are some of this years top speakers who will be working together, and with you:

• Roger Martin, author of Creating Great Choices, the world’s #1 business guru
• Don Tapscott, author of Blockchain Revolution, the world’s #2 business guru
• Alex Osterwalder, co-author of Business Model Generation, and #7 business guru

Together with:

• Jim Hageman Snabe, Chairman of AP Moller-Maersk, one of Europe’s top leaders
• Chris Zook, Bain & Co partner, and author of Founders Mentality
• Johanna Mair, German social innovation expert from Stanford
• Martin Lindstrom, Denmark’s Lego kid, and though leader on consumer insight
• Erica Dhawan, from Harvard on the power of Connectional Intelligence
• Casper von Koskull, Finnish banker and CEO of Nordea Bank
• Nikolaj Coster Waldau, UN Ambassador and star of Game of Thrones
• Alexandra, Countess of Frederiksborg, author of The Sincerity Edge
• Tania de Jong, Dutch Australian operatic-singing creative catalyst
• Ricardo Vargas, CEO of Brightline Initiative, on a mission to make strategy happen
• Jimmy Maymann-Holler, EVP of AOL, previously CEO of Huff Post
• Andrew Shipilov, Insead professor, and author of Network Advantage
• Esben Østergaard, founder and CTO of Universal Robotics
• Whitney Johnson, Harvard executive coach, author of Disrupt Yourself

Across the world, new ideas, new businesses and new solutions are transforming every market. “Gamechangers” think and act differently. They innovate every aspect of their brand and marketing. From Alibaba to Zipcars, Ashmei to Zidisha, Azuri and Zynga, a new generation of businesses are rising out of the maelstrom of economic and technological change across our world. These are just a few of the companies shaking up our world.

Gamechangers are disruptive and innovative, start-ups and corporates, in every sector and region, reshaping our world. They are more ambitious, with stretching vision and enlightened purpose. They see markets as kaleidoscopes of infinite possibilities, assembling and defining them to their advantage. They find their own space, then shape it in their own vision. Most of all they have great ideas. They outthink their competition, thinking bigger and different. They don’t believe in being slightly cheaper or slightly better. That is a short-term game of diminishing returns.Peter started the Gamechangers project by asking 1000 business leaders to nominate the companies who they believe are creating the future in each different sector. The top 100 innovators are big and small, spread across every sector and continent, from Asia to the Americas, finance to fashion. And then we wanted to understand what they did differently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppOPf8bm69w

They range from well known innovators like Amazon and Apple – the magic Dash buttons creating a direct link between consumer and brands, the ecosystems that go beyond devices – to new brands like Brazil’s Beauty’in fusing the world of food and cosmetics, or even Zespri redefining the obscure Chinese gooseberry as the superfood Kiwi fruit.

They capture their higher purpose in more inspiring brands that resonate with their target audiences at the right time and place, enabled by data and technology, but more through empathetic design and rich human experiences. They fuse digital and physical, global and local, ideas and networks. Social media drives reach and richness, whilst new business models make the possible profitable. They collaborate with customers, and partner with other business, connecting ideas and utilising their capabilities. They look beyond the sale to enable customers to achieve more, they care about their impact on people and the world, whilst being commercially successful too.

As they say in the GoogleX moonshot factory, in seeking to reinvent everything from cars to healthcare, “Why be 10% better, when you could be 10 times better?”

Example topics

Kaleidoscope World … Making sense of fast changing markets to find the best new opportunities locally and globally.

Key concepts

• Change drivers, global trends and new opportunities
• Exploring the new customer expectations and aspirations
• Thinking bigger, thinking different, 10 times not 10%
• Emerging markets, powerful millenials, and new women
• Winning in an ideas economy – outthinking your competition
• So how could you change the world? Exploring the 10 themes

New insights

• Aeromobil – the flying car from a little town in Slovakia
• Li and Fung – the Hong Kong business that can do anything
• Google X – driverless cars and free wifi from the Moonshot Factory
• 23andMe – DNA profiling for $99 changes the future of healthcare
• Zespri – redefining your market in your own vision, words and rules
• Corning – industrial manufacturing is about people and emotions too

Distruptive Innovators … Learning from the next generation of business and brands, to drive innovation and growth

Key concepts

• The world’s 100 most disruptive businesses and brands
• The future of banking, technolodgy, retail, healthcare and more
• Why fast speedboats will beat the big supertankers
• Being digital and physical, to create reach and richness
• Designing new business models, including 36 new templates
• Driving innovation, that disrupts and transforms markets

New insights

• Airbnb – the sharing economy beats the old economy
• Juan Valdez – better than Starbucks with local authenticity
• Nespresso – the power and profitability of new business models
• Tesla – harnessing technology to make life better
• Umpqua Bank – learning from anywhere but your competitors
• Xiaomi – from start-up to global superstar in three years

Winning Strategies … Creating innovative strategies to outthink the competition and shape markets in your own vision

Key concepts

• Building brands that are inspiring, collaborative and enabling
• Combining big data with big ideas to focus and engage people
• Telling stories, through liquid and linked content that keeps moving
• Real time marketing, that is fast and personal, real and believable
• Creating richer customer experiences, about customers not products
• Building communities that connect and mobilise people

New insights

• GE – connecting the ideas of B2C to B2B businesses
• Jonny Cupcakes – turning t-shirts into a richer experience
• Nike+ – its not about the shoes, its how fast you can run
• Periscope – inspired by revolution, how new ideas go viral
• Rapha – building clubs and communities around people and passion
• Threadless – being a little crazy, and more loved, in a changing world

Be the Gamechanger … how you can drive innovation, change and growth … how will your change your game?

Key concepts

• Where to start – where you’re a big company or small company
• Building your momentum – finding ways to accelerate growth
• What leaders do – the new role and rules for effective leadership
• Changing your brain, to change your game
• Getting started with the Gamechangers Toolkit
• Q&A
• Being bold, brave and brilliant

Download Peter Fisk’s keynote: Future Hackers

How do you win in a world of relentless change?

You know need to innovate more than ever. You need to think bigger, and different. Not just as an occasional project, but as a continual stream of revolution. You need to think more significantly, how to solve the big problems, to seize the new opportunities to make life better in useful and meaningful ways. Not just the technology, but the smart application of it to the real world, socially and commercially.

Smaller, incremental innovations are quickly swallowed up, or made irrelevant by the next thing. Consumers see through the hype and fragility. Or don’t have time for the frivolity of irrelevance.

Of course, small changes can add to bigger ones, but if they collectively don’t achieve more, and move you forwards in a bigger way, then they are distracting and wasted.

We need bigger ideas. But they are hard to deliver, particularly when the landscape keeps moving. When the future is imperfect or even unpredictable. When the business case is difficult to make. When everything seems to have been already, and most competitors are into marginal gains – discounts and tweaks to almost perfect products and services.

Stop! Think again.

Switch on your Musk mindset … Unlock your Einstein dreams and Picasso passion … Embrace your Mandela courage and Ghandi spirit.

Is this what will take SpaceX to Mars by 2025? Is this why Zespri reinvented the chinese gooseberry? Is this how Netflix came to be, or NuTonomy, or Nespresso, or Nyx?

Is this what motivates Jeff Bezos to say “every day is day one”? Is this how Anne Wojicki seeks to cure cancer? Is this why Jack Ma ignored everyone to create $500bn in 15 years?

We need to think bigger, but we also need to think actively. The future is malleable, so we need to grab hold of it, to shape it in our own vision. To our advantage. This is what “game changers” do. They take a market, and reinvent it, or even create a new one, on their terms. Don’t just innovate a product, service, or even business model – innovate the market.

Of course, they can’t plan exactly how to get there. That would be ridiculous, like trying to climb Mount Everest without the agility to sense and respond to the changing weather conditions. But they know where they are going. They have a bigger dream. And they are willing to fight and flex to get there.

And then they hack.

Hacking.

You think of it as a nerdy kid sitting in front of a bank of computers, trying to infiltrate the most cybersecure fortresses. But its much more than that. It’s about using your  brain, curiosity, intuition, hypothesis, resourcefulness, and experimentation. It’s about sensing your way, being bold yet also adaptive, being flexible but also driven.

There is no space into today’s business world for a fixed mindset. One which seeks to sit an optimise the current world, in search of ever greater efficiency and ultimate perfection. That is a route of diminishing returns. It’s also what you’ve been doing for decades. Trying to hang on to the old model of success. Instead we need a future mindset. To face the future every day, find new ways forward, to a better world.

Future Hacking

A future mindset needs an organisational context in order to be shared and thrive – an agile innovation culture. Business is shifting from a passive to active dynamic – where 80% of activities are active (project-type working focused on innovation, experimentation and customisation) and only 20% passive (ongoing-type working focused on administration, production and standardised delivery), rather than the opposite.

In this active culture, work becomes fast and flexible, innovation becomes the core rather than a occasional luxury, where there are no limiting strategies and fixed ways of working, unhindered by internally-focused structures and process, and where ideas and experiments can thrive. And where the focus is no longer about living off the past, or surviving for today. But about inspired by a better future.

This is future hacking.

We all need to be future hackers today.

Download Masterclass Summary

“The best way to predict the future is to create it” said Abraham Lincoln.

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

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

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

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

The best leaders have the courage to create a better future

… to think bigger and smarter, to shape the future to their advantage, to drive innovation across the business in a way that reinvents markets and organisations.

The best opportunities for business – to find new growth, to engage customers more deeply, to stand out from the crowd, to improve their profitability – is by seizing the opportunities of changing markets. The best way to seize these changes is by innovating – not just innovating the product, or even the business itself – but by innovating the market.

In the old world we accepted markets as a given – the status quo – and competed within it, with slightly different products and services, or most usually by competing on price. Most new products were quickly imitated, leading to declining margins and commoditisation. Most companies now receognise that this is not a route to long-term success in a rapidly changing world.

Fast-changing markets demand fast-changing businesses.

Find out more and book >

• Download my keynote in Linz on 7 June: Future Back
• Download more: articles and videos

How do you see your future?

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

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

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

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

Innovation starts from the “future back”

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

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

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

What might your world look like in 2025?

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

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

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

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

Are you ready to create your better future?

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

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

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

Are you ready?

Download a summary of Peter Fisk’s workshop Gamechangers: Digital Reinvention

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

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

The most innovative businesses see the world differently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you have a future mindset?

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

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

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

With a future mindset, the CEO needs new attributes:

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

The future is a better place to start

Start from the “future back”.

Trying to evolve in today’s complex and confused world is unlikely to lead you towards a bright and distinctive future. It will extend your life a little longer, but it will be tough and uninspiring, with diminishing returns.Instead jump to the future. I tend to start with five years ahead, although it may differ by company. 5 years is long enough to change the world, but close enough to be real. Start by creating a positive, collective and inspiring vision of the future market. What will it be like? What will people want? Why? How? Where? Then consider how to win in this new world.

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

Be inspired by ideas from other places.

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

Copy. Adapt. Paste.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Change the way we think, resolve the conflicts

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

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

Digital and physical are two sides of the same coin.

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

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

Global and local are opportunities for every business.

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

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

Ideas and networks should be the core of your business.

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

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

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

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

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

Time to embrace your Musk mindset

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The secret is the future mindset.

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

This is what “gamechangers” do.

Are you ready?

Download the article: Winning with a Future Mindset

Dimension Data, part of NTT, is a global technology integrator and managed services provider that helps our clients do great things through the use and adoption of technology. The business bring together the world’s best technology provided by market leaders and niche innovators and providing you with the service support that you need for your business – from consulting, technical, and support services to a fully managed service.

Dimension Data’s vision: The Exponential Digital Social World