Superfast-gaming chips and fat-busting superdrugs, asteroid-chasing rockets and carbon-capturing technologies, 4 day working weeks and chess reinvented as a reality TV game, health-enhancing fashions and the rebirth of the hairy mammoth. Nvidia is transforming tech, while Novo Nordisk innovates healthcare, KinetX changes the space race, while Climeworks eliminates carbon.
We used to marvel at innovations with a leap of imagination. Ideas and technologies that promised to transform our world, but seemed a little out of reach. Now, science fiction has collided with practical reality, powered by mind-boggling technologies that are evolving at incredible speed, but also rapid social and cultural change, accelerating human possibilities into practice.
Next is now, not only because of the pace of innovation, but also the convergence of pathways – technologies, industries, customers, applications and expectations.
What’s happening in gaming today, shapes new experiences in retail or finance. New possibilities of space travel accelerate the evolution of EVs. Clean energy meets green cement. Pharma tech meets fashion tech. Physical and digital are one, fast developing markets outpace the old stagnated developed markets, and GenZ outthink their GenX leaders.
The future is already here, even if it’s unevenly distributed. Curiosity drives creativity, enabled by new capabilities to address the biggest challenges. So what could you do? What’s your vision of next, and how do you start now?
24 for 2024… new ideas, new innovators, new possibilities
Future Recoded … an online learning and knowledge platform
Colossal Biosciences seeks to reawaken the past, to bring back extinct species, to expand endangered populations through genetic rescue, to support biodiversity. In a world pushed to the brink, Colossal is optimising conservation, exogenous development, bioinformatics, modern genetics, cellular engineering, paleogenetics, biodiversity, genomics, embryology, stem cell reprogramming, computational biology, artificial intelligence, bioethics, and de-extinction.
The Austin-based genetic engineering company, founded by geneticist George Church and entrepreneur Ben Lamb, is working to de-extinct the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo.
Because the woolly mammoth and Asian elephant share 99.6% of the same DNA, Colossal is seeking to develop a proxy species by swapping enough key mammoth genes into the Asian elephant genome. Key mammoth genealogical traits include: a 10cm layer of insulating fat, five different types of shaggy hair, and smaller ears to help the hybrid tolerate cold weather.
Colossal launched as a fully-fledged business in 2021, with a mission to preserve endangered animals through gene-editing technology and use those same animals to reshape the world’s natural ecosystems to combat climate change.
Colossal’s lab will pair CRISPR/Cas9 with other DNA-editing enzymes, such as integrases, recombinases, and deaminases, to splice woolly mammoth genes into the Asian elephant. The company plans on sequencing both elephant and mammoth samples in order to identify key genes in both species to promote population diversification. By doing so, Colossal hopes to prevent any rogue mutations within the hybrid herd.
Back in a 2008 interview with The New York Times, George Church first expressed his interest in engineering a hybrid Asian elephant-mammoth by sequencing the woolly mammoth genome. In 2012, Church was part of a team that pioneered the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool, through which the potential for altering genetic code to engineer the envisioned “mammophant” surfaced. He presented a talk at the National Geographic Society in 2013, where he mapped out the idea of Colossal.
Church and his genetics team used CRISPR to copy mammoth genes into the genome of an Asian elephant in 2015. That same year, his lab integrated mammoth genes into the DNA of elephant skin cells; the lab zeroed in on 60 genes that experiments hypothesized as being important to the distinctive traits of mammoths, such as a high-domed skull, ability to hold oxygen at low temperatures, and fatty tissue. By 2017 it had successfully added 45 genes to the genome of an Asian elephant.
While Colossal’s de-extinction business might seem like science fiction, the latest movie from Jurassic Park, it echoes the progress by companies like CRISPR Therapeutics in Zurich, led by Nobel prize winner Jennifer Doudna, who applying the same science to humans. With all the same technical and ethical challenges which it brings. It also demonstrates how rapidly ideas of fiction are now becoming reality.
The new Big Ideasreport by ARK Invest captures the disruptive impact of technologies right now. It suggests that by 2030, the convergence of 5 significant technologies, accelerated by artificial intelligence, will have an unprecedented economic impact. AI provides the “intelligent glue” to bring together the potential of public blockchains, multigenomic sequencing, energy storage, and robotics, in a way that could transform global economic activity more significantly than any previous industrial revolution.
Globally, real economic growth could accelerate from 3% on average during the past 125 years to more than 7% during the next 7 years as robots reinvigorate manufacturing, robotaxis transform transportation, and AI amplifies knowledge worker productivity.
As a result the global equity market value specifically associated with disruptive innovation could increase from 16% of the total to more than 60% by 2030, resulting in annualised equity returns of 40%, or increasing the total market capitalisation driven by disruptive tech from $19 trillion today to roughly $220 trillion by 2030.
The Future Possibilities Index 2024 also explores the applications of these fast-emerging tech, and how they will shape new economies. It focus on 6 transformational trends that are creating possibilities and the factors that determine our readiness and capacity to leverage these trends over the next 5-10 years. All have emerged from a combination of new business models, technologies, and changes in attitudes and behaviours. The six trends are the Exabyte Economy, the Wellbeing Economy, the Net Zero Economy, the Circular Economy, the BioGrowth Economy and the Experience Economy.
Fast Company’s latest ranking of the world’s Most Innovative Companies 2024 showcases some of the most exciting innovators who are both driving this tech acceleration, and embracing its benefits. While BCG also produces an innovation ranking each year, quantitatively evaluating the R&D efforts of corporations, the FC version is far more insightful, about the people driving the innovations, and the solutions that are emerging.
This year’s #MIC24 ranking includes:
Nvidia is riding a wave of warp-speed AI progress, having lagged far behind Intel for decades, Jensen Huang’s $1.5 trillion business which he founded in 1993 on his 30th birthday, leapt ahead of tech monoliths like Alphabet and Amazon in recent months, driven by the rush for high-powered immersive gaming, and the relentless growth of AI.
Novo Nordisk found in its latest diabetes drug Ozempic, an obesity-busting sensation, that together with its lower dosage sister-brand Wegovy, has taken the world by storm. The Danish pharma business can’t make enough of it, and has soared to become Europe’s most valuable company, and more valuable than Denmark’s entire GDP.
Perplexity is creating an entirely new way to search the web, by leveraging AI to provide more contextualised and accurate answers, rather than a list of relevant links. It uses a combination of homegrown large language models (LLMs) and third-party models (like OpenAI’s GPT-4) plus retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
KinetX helped navigate a spacecraft on a 4.4 billion-mile mission to land on an asteroid and return home. Founded in 1992 as a spinoff of Lockheed Martin, it is partnering NASA on deep-space missions like New Horizons (to Pluto, then the edge of the solar system) and Messenger (orbiting Mercury for the first time).
Climeworks uses direct air capture to scrub carbon from the atmosphere. It operates the world’s largest DAC plants, both in Iceland, which remove around 10,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year—and about half of that is being done by the Zurich-based DAC pioneer.
Innovations enabling radically better lives
The new Global 50 Opportunities report by Dubai Future Foundation takes a global perspective on the innovative applications emerging from a rapidly changing world, partly driven by technologies, but much more too.
It starts by exploring the megatrends which it sees as most influential right now, and then how these are unlocking 50 opportunities for future growth, prosperity and well-being. Some opportunities may be in their early days of exploration, some require reflection, and some feel very far away. “Shaping the future cannot be done by just waiting for it but rather by utilizing the latest technologies and knowledge tools and meeting its challenges starting from today.”
The 8 megatrends include materials revolution (from which opportunities emerge like 3d printing of human organs, green plastics, and fashion with embedded health benefits), future humanity (school for wisdom, open source science, and flipping career ladders), and advanced health (mental AI, pulse over pills, and biohacking 2.0). These are just a few examples (dive into the digital report to explore the opportunities in more detail):
100 Reasons to Love the Future is a fabulous new report from AXA’s foresight team, promising “new narratives of hope” and inspiring us to “imagine utopia rather than retreat to dystopia”. The report argues that in a world of escalating risks, our societies and economies cannot afford to become paralysed by uncertainty. We are all living through a deep transformation. Far better to embrace it than retreat into anxiety and doubt.
In the midst of the 100 reasons is a great insight from Plurality University about what organisations could look like in 2050 – from the Marketrix to the Reactivator, the Enterpocine and the Zombinc. There’s also a great insight about Te Korekoreka, and navigating futures with Māori Wisdom. The New Zealand initiative uses social innovation to achieve equity in education, employment, and income for Māori people. And much more, a great report!
Take another look at Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies 2024 list, and beyond the big names like Nvidia you will find a wealth of smaller companies making significant human impacts, harnessing tech for good, rather than just for tech. Yet the new tech capabilities are incredible, providing new ways to solve some of the biggest problems; while also shaping cultures through exponential social influence; and enabling people to access, and do, what they could never before:
Solfácil the Brazilian solar investment company is bringing solar power to people living in the Amazon, and has financed approximately $450 million in solar loans, working with more than 4,250 active solar installers and has 66,000-plus customers to date.
4 Day Week Globalconvinced companies around the world to adopt a shorter work week, the nonprofit brought together hundreds of companies to create a post-pandemic revolution in the workplace, encouraged by its research which showed that a 4 day week delivered an average 36% rise in revenue.
Chess.com is turning a centuries-old game into must-see reality TV. The freemium chess platform logged more games played (12.5 billion) than ever before, while establishing itself as the game’s cultural hub, full of everything from news to memes to the best Twitch streamers.
Sea Forest, a Tasmanian business which scooped the 2023 Earthshot Prize, has a seaweed supplement to stop cows from burping up methane. It is the first company in the world to farm methane-busting Asparagopsis, a red seaweed native to Australian coastal waters, reducing methane production by up to 90%.
Mattel took its 65 year old Barbie dolls and turned the brand into a $1.4 billion global movie blockbuster, the highest grossing film of 2023, with a series of agenda-setting messages not just saccharine sassiness, and became a cultural event that attracted diverse audiences, plus all types of pink-coloured spinoffs.
So while the world of technology is complex and relentless, with profound questions about ethics and humanity, our rapidly changing world can also be deeply human, sometimes frivolous, sometimes profound.
The opportunities to innovate are everywhere. And while average, old markets might seem to have stagnated, the world continues to move forwards at incredible pace. We have huge challenges, where issues like climate change will only be conquered with radical new thinking, and enabled by new technologies.
We also have an opportunity to create a happier, healthier world. Embrace utopia, don’t retreat to dystopia. By jumping to the future we can see problems differently, the impossible becomes possible, and we can accelerate progress.
Next is now. There is only ever today. Let the future begin.
What’s the future of energy?
The energy transition dominates many business agendas, both in the energy sector as companies seek to shape the future markets, and in other industries as they seek to reduce emissions.
While some will focus on the relative merits of wind, solar and hydro – adding in geothermal, biomass and hydrogen – others will focus on the challenges of migration, adoption and regulation – and more generally on optimising energy generation, storage and distribution.
Battery technology enables us to store excess energy generated by renewable sources such as solar and wind power, making them more reliable and flexible. Smart grids, which use sophisticated algorithms to balance supply and demand, are another key trend that is helping to optimize the use of renewable energy.
Recognising the limitations of land, and the use of previously farming or domestic land for energy generation, the sea is the next frontier (and then space of course, with asteroid mining and more!). Orsted is leading the development of wind islands, elsewhere floating solar platforms, tidal energy, and bioenergy from algae.
Solar, South Korea … The world’s largest floating solar power platform is currently being developed in South Korea. It’s located near Saemangeum, an estuarine tidal flat on the coast of the Yellow Sea. This impressive 2.1 GW floating solar farm is part of a planned mega renewable energy project that aims to generate up to 3 GW of electricity in the Yellow Sea. Once operational, it’s expected to provide enough electricity to serve the needs of approximately one million homes
Geothermal, Iceland … 85% of Iceland’s energy needs are met through geothermal energy, making it one of the world’s leaders in this field. The Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant is the world’s largest geothermal power plant and generates 303 MW of electricity. Geothermal energy is a renewable energy source that uses the natural heat of the Earth to generate electricity without emitting greenhouse gases.
Tidal, Scotland … harnessing the power of ocean tides to generate electricity, the MeyGen project in Scotland is a notable example of this technology in action. The project involves the installation of tidal turbines in the Pentland Firth, which is known for having some of the strongest tides in the world. The project has the potential to generate up to 398 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to power approximately 175,000 homes.
Hydrogen, Japan … Fuel cell vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells are already on the market, with companies like Toyota and Honda leading the charge in this area. In Germany, a hydrogen fuel cell-powered train called the Coradia iLint has been developed as an alternative to diesel trains. The train emits only water vapor and has a range of up to 600 miles on a single tank of hydrogen.
Bioenergy, UK … Drax power station is exploring the use of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions from biomass combustion. This technology has the potential to achieve negative emissions, effectively removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
However generating the energy is only the starting point.
Smart grid systems are being implemented in many countries to optimize the distribution of renewable energy and reduce energy waste. For example, in the United States, Pacific Gas and Electric Company has implemented a smart grid system that allows customers to monitor their energy usage in real-time and receive alerts during peak energy usage periods.
AI-enabled energy management systems are being developed to optimize energy usage and reduce energy waste. For example, Siemens has developed a system called the EnergyIP Smart Grid Platform that uses AI to analyze data and provide real-time energy management solutions.
Explore the drivers of future change, learning from the world’s most innovative companies
Consider the challenges and opportunities of disruption, and specifically related to data
Evaluate alternative future scenarios, and how we help our clients develop better futures
Explore what innovation and transformation, means for every part of our business
Reflect on what it takes to lead today and tomorrow, to be a performer and transformer.
Agenda
Session 1: World Changing
Riding the waves of change – purpose, profits and value creation
Customer agendas, health to home, social to sustainable
Rethinking everything, discontinuities and disruptors
Inspired by SpaceX and Biontech, Jio and DBS
Session 2: Future Scenarios
Exploring alternative futures, change drivers and uncertainties
Strategies and plans, making choices from the future back
Building a future portfolio, to exploit and explore
Inspired by the rapidly changing world of mobility
Session 3: Moonshot Innovation
Moonshots and Gamechangers, breaking free of old mindsets
Human and tech, customer and brands, sustainable and better
Rethinking the future of energy, beyond traditional boundaries
Inspired by Google and Twelve, Northvolt and Lanzatech
Session 4: Business Models
10 types of innovation, new business models and ecosystems
Business models as a source of competitive advantage
Dynamic business modelling and transformation
Inspired by Seimens and Tesla, Schneider and Orsted
Session 5: Winning Leaders
What it takes to be a “Performer Transformer” – in mindset, roles and actions
Creating tomorrow while delivering today, turning purpose into practical action
Using the catalyst of external change to drive and guide your internal change
Inspired by Satya Nadella, Anne Wojcicki, Melanie Perkins and Hamdi Ulukaya
The energy sector has been undergoing significant transformations, with emerging business models reflecting the changing landscape. Here are some new and evolving business models in the energy industry:
Energy as a Service (EaaS): This model involves providing energy solutions as a service rather than a commodity. Companies offer comprehensive energy services, including generation, storage, and management, with customers paying for outcomes rather than infrastructure.
Virtual Power Plants (VPPs): VPPs aggregate the capacities of multiple distributed energy resources (DERs) like solar panels, wind turbines, and energy storage systems. By centrally managing these resources, VPPs can provide grid services, optimize energy use, and enhance reliability.
Blockchain-Based Energy Trading: Blockchain technology enables transparent and secure peer-to-peer energy transactions. Consumers with renewable energy sources can sell excess energy directly to others on a decentralized platform, bypassing traditional energy providers.
Demand Response Platforms: These platforms enable consumers to adjust their energy consumption based on real-time pricing or grid demand. Businesses and individuals can receive incentives for reducing energy usage during peak periods or when the grid is under stress.
Community Solar: Community solar projects allow individuals or businesses to invest in or subscribe to a shared solar facility. Participants receive credits on their electricity bills based on the energy generated by the communal solar installation.
Energy Storage as a Service (ESaaS): This model involves offering energy storage solutions on a subscription or pay-as-you-go basis. Customers can benefit from energy storage without the upfront costs and complexities of ownership.
Microgrids and Nanogrids: Microgrids are localized energy systems that can operate independently or in conjunction with the main grid. Nanogrids are even smaller, serving a single building or a small community. These systems enhance resilience, provide energy security, and support the integration of renewables.
Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading Platforms: Platforms enable individuals or businesses with renewable energy sources to directly sell excess energy to nearby consumers. Blockchain technology or other secure systems facilitate transparent and automated transactions.
Energy Efficiency as a Service (EEaaS): Companies provide energy efficiency solutions to businesses on a subscription or performance-based model. Customers pay based on the energy savings achieved through implemented efficiency measures.
Circular Economy Models: Companies are exploring circular economy principles, where energy systems are designed for longevity, reuse, and recycling. This involves a shift from a linear “take, make, dispose” model to a more sustainable and circular approach.
Here are some of the players at the forefront of shaping the future of energy:
Tesla: While often associated with electric vehicles, Tesla is also a major player in energy innovation. The company is involved in the development of energy storage solutions (Powerwall, Powerpack, and Megapack), solar products, and grid management systems.
Enel: An Italian multinational energy company, Enel has been actively pursuing a transition to renewable energy. The company is involved in wind, solar, and hydroelectric power projects and is known for its commitment to sustainability and innovation.
Orsted: Formerly known as DONG Energy, Orsted is a Danish energy company that has undergone a transformation, shifting its focus from fossil fuels to renewable energy. It is a global leader in offshore wind power.
NextEra Energy: Based in the United States, NextEra Energy is one of the largest renewable energy companies globally. It has a significant presence in wind and solar power generation and is known for its forward-looking approach to clean energy.
Vestas Wind Systems: A Danish company, Vestas is a leading player in the wind turbine manufacturing industry. It is known for its innovations in wind turbine technology and has a global presence in the wind energy market.
Pattern Energy Group: Specializing in renewable energy, Pattern Energy is involved in the development, ownership, and operation of wind, solar, and transmission assets. The company focuses on sustainable and responsible energy solutions.
Siemens Energy: Siemens Energy is a global player in energy technology, providing solutions for power generation and transmission. The company is involved in both conventional and renewable energy technologies and is actively working on innovations in the energy sector.
BloombergNEF (BNEF): While not a traditional energy company, BloombergNEF is a research organization providing insights into clean energy, advanced transportation, and sustainable industries. It tracks and analyzes trends and innovations in the energy sector.
More from Peter Fisk
Next Agenda of best ideas and priorities for business
100 leaders with the courage to shape a better future
Education that is innovative, issue-driven, action-driving
Consulting that is collaborative, strategic and innovative
Speaking that is inspiring, topical, engaging and actionable
Welcome to the future, right now.
Superfast-gaming chips and fat-busting superdrugs, asteroid-chasing rockets and carbon-capturing technologies, 4 day working weeks and chess reinvented as a reality TV game, health-enhancing fashions and the rebirth of the hairy mammoth. Nvidia is transforming tech, while Novo Nordisk innovates healthcare, KinetX changes the space race, while Climeworks eliminates carbon.
We used to marvel at innovations with a leap of imagination. Ideas and technologies that promised to transform our world, but seemed a little out of reach. Now, science fiction has collided with practical reality, powered by mind-boggling technologies that are evolving at incredible speed, but also rapid social and cultural change, accelerating human possibilities into practice.
Next is now, not only because of the pace of innovation, but also the convergence of pathways – technologies, industries, customers, applications and expectations.
What’s happening in gaming today, shapes new experiences in retail or finance. New possibilities of space travel accelerate the evolution of EVs. Clean energy meets green cement. Pharma tech meets fashion tech. Physical and digital are one, fast developing markets outpace the old stagnated developed markets, and GenZ outthink their GenX leaders.
The future is already here, even if it’s unevenly distributed. Curiosity drives creativity, enabled by new capabilities to address the biggest challenges. So what could you do? What’s your vision of next, and how do you start now?
24 for 2024… new ideas, new innovators, new possibilities
Future Recoded … an online learning and knowledge platform
Colossal Biosciences seeks to reawaken the past, to bring back extinct species, to expand endangered populations through genetic rescue, to support biodiversity. In a world pushed to the brink, Colossal is optimising conservation, exogenous development, bioinformatics, modern genetics, cellular engineering, paleogenetics, biodiversity, genomics, embryology, stem cell reprogramming, computational biology, artificial intelligence, bioethics, and de-extinction.
The Austin-based genetic engineering company, founded by geneticist George Church and entrepreneur Ben Lamb, is working to de-extinct the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo.
Because the woolly mammoth and Asian elephant share 99.6% of the same DNA, Colossal is seeking to develop a proxy species by swapping enough key mammoth genes into the Asian elephant genome. Key mammoth genealogical traits include: a 10cm layer of insulating fat, five different types of shaggy hair, and smaller ears to help the hybrid tolerate cold weather.
Colossal launched as a fully-fledged business in 2021, with a mission to preserve endangered animals through gene-editing technology and use those same animals to reshape the world’s natural ecosystems to combat climate change.
Colossal’s lab will pair CRISPR/Cas9 with other DNA-editing enzymes, such as integrases, recombinases, and deaminases, to splice woolly mammoth genes into the Asian elephant. The company plans on sequencing both elephant and mammoth samples in order to identify key genes in both species to promote population diversification. By doing so, Colossal hopes to prevent any rogue mutations within the hybrid herd.
Back in a 2008 interview with The New York Times, George Church first expressed his interest in engineering a hybrid Asian elephant-mammoth by sequencing the woolly mammoth genome. In 2012, Church was part of a team that pioneered the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool, through which the potential for altering genetic code to engineer the envisioned “mammophant” surfaced. He presented a talk at the National Geographic Society in 2013, where he mapped out the idea of Colossal.
Church and his genetics team used CRISPR to copy mammoth genes into the genome of an Asian elephant in 2015. That same year, his lab integrated mammoth genes into the DNA of elephant skin cells; the lab zeroed in on 60 genes that experiments hypothesized as being important to the distinctive traits of mammoths, such as a high-domed skull, ability to hold oxygen at low temperatures, and fatty tissue. By 2017 it had successfully added 45 genes to the genome of an Asian elephant.
While Colossal’s de-extinction business might seem like science fiction, the latest movie from Jurassic Park, it echoes the progress by companies like CRISPR Therapeutics in Zurich, led by Nobel prize winner Jennifer Doudna, who applying the same science to humans. With all the same technical and ethical challenges which it brings. It also demonstrates how rapidly ideas of fiction are now becoming reality.
The new Big Ideasreport by ARK Invest captures the disruptive impact of technologies right now. It suggests that by 2030, the convergence of 5 significant technologies, accelerated by artificial intelligence, will have an unprecedented economic impact. AI provides the “intelligent glue” to bring together the potential of public blockchains, multigenomic sequencing, energy storage, and robotics, in a way that could transform global economic activity more significantly than any previous industrial revolution.
Globally, real economic growth could accelerate from 3% on average during the past 125 years to more than 7% during the next 7 years as robots reinvigorate manufacturing, robotaxis transform transportation, and AI amplifies knowledge worker productivity.
As a result the global equity market value specifically associated with disruptive innovation could increase from 16% of the total to more than 60% by 2030, resulting in annualised equity returns of 40%, or increasing the total market capitalisation driven by disruptive tech from $19 trillion today to roughly $220 trillion by 2030.
The Future Possibilities Index 2024 also explores the applications of these fast-emerging tech, and how they will shape new economies. It focus on 6 transformational trends that are creating possibilities and the factors that determine our readiness and capacity to leverage these trends over the next 5-10 years. All have emerged from a combination of new business models, technologies, and changes in attitudes and behaviours. The six trends are the Exabyte Economy, the Wellbeing Economy, the Net Zero Economy, the Circular Economy, the BioGrowth Economy and the Experience Economy.
Fast Company’s latest ranking of the world’s Most Innovative Companies 2024 showcases some of the most exciting innovators who are both driving this tech acceleration, and embracing its benefits. While BCG also produces an innovation ranking each year, quantitatively evaluating the R&D efforts of corporations, the FC version is far more insightful, about the people driving the innovations, and the solutions that are emerging.
This year’s #MIC24 ranking includes:
Nvidia is riding a wave of warp-speed AI progress, having lagged far behind Intel for decades, Jensen Huang’s $1.5 trillion business which he founded in 1993 on his 30th birthday, leapt ahead of tech monoliths like Alphabet and Amazon in recent months, driven by the rush for high-powered immersive gaming, and the relentless growth of AI.
Novo Nordisk found in its latest diabetes drug Ozempic, an obesity-busting sensation, that together with its lower dosage sister-brand Wegovy, has taken the world by storm. The Danish pharma business can’t make enough of it, and has soared to become Europe’s most valuable company, and more valuable than Denmark’s entire GDP.
Perplexity is creating an entirely new way to search the web, by leveraging AI to provide more contextualised and accurate answers, rather than a list of relevant links. It uses a combination of homegrown large language models (LLMs) and third-party models (like OpenAI’s GPT-4) plus retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
KinetX helped navigate a spacecraft on a 4.4 billion-mile mission to land on an asteroid and return home. Founded in 1992 as a spinoff of Lockheed Martin, it is partnering NASA on deep-space missions like New Horizons (to Pluto, then the edge of the solar system) and Messenger (orbiting Mercury for the first time).
Climeworks uses direct air capture to scrub carbon from the atmosphere. It operates the world’s largest DAC plants, both in Iceland, which remove around 10,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year—and about half of that is being done by the Zurich-based DAC pioneer.
Innovations enabling radically better lives
The new Global 50 Opportunities report by Dubai Future Foundation takes a global perspective on the innovative applications emerging from a rapidly changing world, partly driven by technologies, but much more too.
It starts by exploring the megatrends which it sees as most influential right now, and then how these are unlocking 50 opportunities for future growth, prosperity and well-being. Some opportunities may be in their early days of exploration, some require reflection, and some feel very far away. “Shaping the future cannot be done by just waiting for it but rather by utilizing the latest technologies and knowledge tools and meeting its challenges starting from today.”
The 8 megatrends include materials revolution (from which opportunities emerge like 3d printing of human organs, green plastics, and fashion with embedded health benefits), future humanity (school for wisdom, open source science, and flipping career ladders), and advanced health (mental AI, pulse over pills, and biohacking 2.0). These are just a few examples (dive into the digital report to explore the opportunities in more detail):
100 Reasons to Love the Future is a fabulous new report from AXA’s foresight team, promising “new narratives of hope” and inspiring us to “imagine utopia rather than retreat to dystopia”. The report argues that in a world of escalating risks, our societies and economies cannot afford to become paralysed by uncertainty. We are all living through a deep transformation. Far better to embrace it than retreat into anxiety and doubt.
In the midst of the 100 reasons is a great insight from Plurality University about what organisations could look like in 2050 – from the Marketrix to the Reactivator, the Enterpocine and the Zombinc. There’s also a great insight about Te Korekoreka, and navigating futures with Māori Wisdom. The New Zealand initiative uses social innovation to achieve equity in education, employment, and income for Māori people. And much more, a great report!
Take another look at Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies 2024 list, and beyond the big names like Nvidia you will find a wealth of smaller companies making significant human impacts, harnessing tech for good, rather than just for tech. Yet the new tech capabilities are incredible, providing new ways to solve some of the biggest problems; while also shaping cultures through exponential social influence; and enabling people to access, and do, what they could never before:
Solfácil the Brazilian solar investment company is bringing solar power to people living in the Amazon, and has financed approximately $450 million in solar loans, working with more than 4,250 active solar installers and has 66,000-plus customers to date.
4 Day Week Globalconvinced companies around the world to adopt a shorter work week, the nonprofit brought together hundreds of companies to create a post-pandemic revolution in the workplace, encouraged by its research which showed that a 4 day week delivered an average 36% rise in revenue.
Chess.com is turning a centuries-old game into must-see reality TV. The freemium chess platform logged more games played (12.5 billion) than ever before, while establishing itself as the game’s cultural hub, full of everything from news to memes to the best Twitch streamers.
Sea Forest, a Tasmanian business which scooped the 2023 Earthshot Prize, has a seaweed supplement to stop cows from burping up methane. It is the first company in the world to farm methane-busting Asparagopsis, a red seaweed native to Australian coastal waters, reducing methane production by up to 90%.
Mattel took its 65 year old Barbie dolls and turned the brand into a $1.4 billion global movie blockbuster, the highest grossing film of 2023, with a series of agenda-setting messages not just saccharine sassiness, and became a cultural event that attracted diverse audiences, plus all types of pink-coloured spinoffs.
So while the world of technology is complex and relentless, with profound questions about ethics and humanity, our rapidly changing world can also be deeply human, sometimes frivolous, sometimes profound.
The opportunities to innovate are everywhere. And while average, old markets might seem to have stagnated, the world continues to move forwards at incredible pace. We have huge challenges, where issues like climate change will only be conquered with radical new thinking, and enabled by new technologies.
We also have an opportunity to create a happier, healthier world. Embrace utopia, don’t retreat to dystopia. By jumping to the future we can see problems differently, the impossible becomes possible, and we can accelerate progress.
Next is now. There is only ever today. Let the future begin.
Future Radar
“Future Radar” is not science fiction, or even futurology. It is about exploring and learning from the new businesses, and behaviours, emerging on the edges of markets right now.
How will your marketspaces evolve over the next 5-10 years? Where are you best opportunities?
Which companies will shape this future? What can you learn from them and their strategies?
What are the next agendas for customers and investors? How can you shape and lead them now?
We explore how to reimagine business, to reinvent markets, to reengage people – to survive and thrive, and move forwards to create a better future. We consider what it means to combine profit with more purpose, intelligent technologies with creative people, radical innovation with sustainable impact.
We learn from the innovative strategies of incredible companies, leading today, and shaping tomorrow – from Aerofarms and Amazon, to Biontech and Bolt, Canva and Carbon, Darktrace to DBS, Glossier and Gymshark, Notpla and Northvolt, On and Orsted, Patagonia and PingAn, Rappi and Revolut, to Zipline and Zozo, and many more.
What are the most significant trends and innovations driving the sector right now? And who are the most interesting innovators, startups and established companies, who are driving this progress?
Future Radar in Real Estate … from co-ownership models to regenerative cities
Superfast-gaming chips and fat-busting superdrugs, asteroid-chasing rockets and carbon-capturing technologies, 4 day working weeks and chess reinvented as a reality TV game, health-enhancing fashions and the rebirth of the hairy mammoth. Nvidia is transforming tech, while Novo Nordisk innovates healthcare, KinetX changes the space race, while Climeworks eliminates carbon.
We used to marvel at innovations with a leap of imagination. Ideas and technologies that promised to transform our world, but seemed a little out of reach. Now, science fiction has collided with practical reality, powered by mind-boggling technologies that are evolving at incredible speed, but also rapid social and cultural change, accelerating human possibilities into practice.
Next is now, not only because of the pace of innovation, but also the convergence of pathways – technologies, industries, customers, applications and expectations.
What’s happening in gaming today, shapes new experiences in retail or finance. New possibilities of space travel accelerate the evolution of EVs. Clean energy meets green cement. Pharma tech meets fashion tech. Physical and digital are one, fast developing markets outpace the old stagnated developed markets, and GenZ outthink their GenX leaders.
The future is already here, even if it’s unevenly distributed. Curiosity drives creativity, enabled by new capabilities to address the biggest challenges. So what could you do? What’s your vision of next, and how do you start now?
Colossal, the de-extinction company
Colossal Biosciences seeks to reawaken the past, to bring back extinct species, to expand endangered populations through genetic rescue, to support biodiversity. In a world pushed to the brink, Colossal is optimising conservation, exogenous development, bioinformatics, modern genetics, cellular engineering, paleogenetics, biodiversity, genomics, embryology, stem cell reprogramming, computational biology, artificial intelligence, bioethics, and de-extinction.
The Austin-based genetic engineering company, founded by geneticist George Church and entrepreneur Ben Lamb, is working to de-extinct the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo.
Because the woolly mammoth and Asian elephant share 99.6% of the same DNA, Colossal is seeking to develop a proxy species by swapping enough key mammoth genes into the Asian elephant genome. Key mammoth genealogical traits include: a 10cm layer of insulating fat, five different types of shaggy hair, and smaller ears to help the hybrid tolerate cold weather.
Colossal launched as a fully-fledged business in 2021, with a mission to preserve endangered animals through gene-editing technology and use those same animals to reshape the world’s natural ecosystems to combat climate change.
Colossal’s lab will pair CRISPR/Cas9 with other DNA-editing enzymes, such as integrases, recombinases, and deaminases, to splice woolly mammoth genes into the Asian elephant. The company plans on sequencing both elephant and mammoth samples in order to identify key genes in both species to promote population diversification. By doing so, Colossal hopes to prevent any rogue mutations within the hybrid herd.
Back in a 2008 interview with The New York Times, George Church first expressed his interest in engineering a hybrid Asian elephant-mammoth by sequencing the woolly mammoth genome. In 2012, Church was part of a team that pioneered the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool, through which the potential for altering genetic code to engineer the envisioned “mammophant” surfaced. He presented a talk at the National Geographic Society in 2013, where he mapped out the idea of Colossal.
Church and his genetics team used CRISPR to copy mammoth genes into the genome of an Asian elephant in 2015. That same year, his lab integrated mammoth genes into the DNA of elephant skin cells; the lab zeroed in on 60 genes that experiments hypothesized as being important to the distinctive traits of mammoths, such as a high-domed skull, ability to hold oxygen at low temperatures, and fatty tissue. By 2017 it had successfully added 45 genes to the genome of an Asian elephant.
While Colossal’s de-extinction business might seem like science fiction, the latest movie from Jurassic Park, it echoes the progress by companies like CRISPR Therapeutics in Zurich, led by Nobel prize winner Jennifer Doudna, who applying the same science to humans. With all the same technical and ethical challenges which it brings. It also demonstrates how rapidly ideas of fiction are now becoming reality.
The new Big Ideasreport by ARK Invest captures the disruptive impact of technologies right now. It suggests that by 2030, the convergence of 5 significant technologies, accelerated by artificial intelligence, will have an unprecedented economic impact. AI provides the “intelligent glue” to bring together the potential of public blockchains, multigenomic sequencing, energy storage, and robotics, in a way that could transform global economic activity more significantly than any previous industrial revolution.
Globally, real economic growth could accelerate from 3% on average during the past 125 years to more than 7% during the next 7 years as robots reinvigorate manufacturing, robotaxis transform transportation, and AI amplifies knowledge worker productivity.
As a result the global equity market value specifically associated with disruptive innovation could increase from 16% of the total to more than 60% by 2030, resulting in annualised equity returns of 40%, or increasing the total market capitalisation driven by disruptive tech from $19 trillion today to roughly $220 trillion by 2030.
The Future Possibilities Index 2024 also explores the applications of these fast-emerging tech, and how they will shape new economies. It focus on 6 transformational trends that are creating possibilities and the factors that determine our readiness and capacity to leverage these trends over the next 5-10 years. All have emerged from a combination of new business models, technologies, and changes in attitudes and behaviours. The six trends are the Exabyte Economy, the Wellbeing Economy, the Net Zero Economy, the Circular Economy, the BioGrowth Economy and the Experience Economy.
Fast Company’s latest ranking of the world’s Most Innovative Companies 2024 showcases some of the most exciting innovators who are both driving this tech acceleration, and embracing its benefits. While BCG also produces an innovation ranking each year, quantitatively evaluating the R&D efforts of corporations, the FC version is far more insightful, about the people driving the innovations, and the solutions that are emerging.
This year’s #MIC24 ranking includes:
Nvidia is riding a wave of warp-speed AI progress, having lagged far behind Intel for decades, Jensen Huang’s $1.5 trillion business which he founded in 1993 on his 30th birthday, leapt ahead of tech monoliths like Alphabet and Amazon in recent months, driven by the rush for high-powered immersive gaming, and the relentless growth of AI.
Novo Nordisk found in its latest diabetes drug Ozempic, an obesity-busting sensation, that together with its lower dosage sister-brand Wegovy, has taken the world by storm. The Danish pharma business can’t make enough of it, and has soared to become Europe’s most valuable company, and more valuable than Denmark’s entire GDP.
Perplexity is creating an entirely new way to search the web, by leveraging AI to provide more contextualised and accurate answers, rather than a list of relevant links. It uses a combination of homegrown large language models (LLMs) and third-party models (like OpenAI’s GPT-4) plus retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
KinetX helped navigate a spacecraft on a 4.4 billion-mile mission to land on an asteroid and return home. Founded in 1992 as a spinoff of Lockheed Martin, it is partnering NASA on deep-space missions like New Horizons (to Pluto, then the edge of the solar system) and Messenger (orbiting Mercury for the first time).
Climeworks uses direct air capture to scrub carbon from the atmosphere. It operates the world’s largest DAC plants, both in Iceland, which remove around 10,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year—and about half of that is being done by the Zurich-based DAC pioneer.
Innovations enabling radically better lives
The new Global 50 Opportunities report by Dubai Future Foundation takes a global perspective on the innovative applications emerging from a rapidly changing world, partly driven by technologies, but much more too.
It starts by exploring the megatrends which it sees as most influential right now, and then how these are unlocking 50 opportunities for future growth, prosperity and well-being. Some opportunities may be in their early days of exploration, some require reflection, and some feel very far away. “Shaping the future cannot be done by just waiting for it but rather by utilizing the latest technologies and knowledge tools and meeting its challenges starting from today.”
The 8 megatrends include materials revolution (from which opportunities emerge like 3d printing of human organs, green plastics, and fashion with embedded health benefits), future humanity (school for wisdom, open source science, and flipping career ladders), and advanced health (mental AI, pulse over pills, and biohacking 2.0). These are just a few examples (dive into the digital report to explore the opportunities in more detail):
100 Reasons to Love the Future is a fabulous new report from AXA’s foresight team, promising “new narratives of hope” and inspiring us to “imagine utopia rather than retreat to dystopia”. The report argues that in a world of escalating risks, our societies and economies cannot afford to become paralysed by uncertainty. We are all living through a deep transformation. Far better to embrace it than retreat into anxiety and doubt.
In the midst of the 100 reasons is a great insight from Plurality University about what organisations could look like in 2050 – from the Marketrix to the Reactivator, the Enterpocine and the Zombinc. There’s also a great insight about Te Korekoreka, and navigating futures with Māori Wisdom. The New Zealand initiative uses social innovation to achieve equity in education, employment, and income for Māori people. And much more, a great report!
Take another look at Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies 2024 list, and beyond the big names like Nvidia you will find a wealth of smaller companies making significant human impacts, harnessing tech for good, rather than just for tech. Yet the new tech capabilities are incredible, providing new ways to solve some of the biggest problems; while also shaping cultures through exponential social influence; and enabling people to access, and do, what they could never before:
Solfácil the Brazilian solar investment company is bringing solar power to people living in the Amazon, and has financed approximately $450 million in solar loans, working with more than 4,250 active solar installers and has 66,000-plus customers to date.
4 Day Week Globalconvinced companies around the world to adopt a shorter work week, the nonprofit brought together hundreds of companies to create a post-pandemic revolution in the workplace, encouraged by its research which showed that a 4 day week delivered an average 36% rise in revenue.
Chess.com is turning a centuries-old game into must-see reality TV. The freemium chess platform logged more games played (12.5 billion) than ever before, while establishing itself as the game’s cultural hub, full of everything from news to memes to the best Twitch streamers.
Sea Forest, a Tasmanian business which scooped the 2023 Earthshot Prize, has a seaweed supplement to stop cows from burping up methane. It is the first company in the world to farm methane-busting Asparagopsis, a red seaweed native to Australian coastal waters, reducing methane production by up to 90%.
Mattel took its 65 year old Barbie dolls and turned the brand into a $1.4 billion global movie blockbuster, the highest grossing film of 2023, with a series of agenda-setting messages not just saccharine sassiness, and became a cultural event that attracted diverse audiences, plus all types of pink-coloured spinoffs.
So while the world of technology is complex and relentless, with profound questions about ethics and humanity, our rapidly changing world can also be deeply human, sometimes frivolous, sometimes profound.
The opportunities to innovate are everywhere. And while average, old markets might seem to have stagnated, the world continues to move forwards at incredible pace. We have huge challenges, where issues like climate change will only be conquered with radical new thinking, and enabled by new technologies.
We also have an opportunity to create a happier, healthier world. Embrace utopia, don’t retreat to dystopia. By jumping to the future we can see problems differently, the impossible becomes possible, and we can accelerate progress.
Next is now. There is only ever today. Let the future begin.
Procurement as the catalyst of innovation
Companies are making their supply chains more cost-efficient, resilient and sustainable in an increasingly uncertain world. Inflationary pressure, supply uncertainty, geopolitical, economic, and ESG pressures are causing a rethink of traditional global supply chain models. Linear, lowest-cost supply chains are giving way to more multi-dimensional supply networks that better balance risk, sustainability, speed, agility and cost.
Procurement leaders need to rethink where they operate, the materials they source, the suppliers they buy from, and their physical supply footprint and operating model.
However, seizing new opportunities demands transformation across the entire supply chain. While we often think from the end-backwards, from the customer perspective, it can also start from the beginning, from the supply perspective. This becomes particularly critical when the agenda is to grow with less, to reduce resource consumption, and impact on the environment.
Procurement as the engine of transformation
While not obviously an engine of transformation, the sourcing and procurement functions can be a key driver of transformational processes and outcomes across the business. The shift to circular economy models, for example, demands we think differently about what and how we source. The demand for lower carbon, reduced energy, more sustainable solution requires innovation in how they are sourced.
Apple’s partnership with Foxconn, one of its primary suppliers, is a prime example of close collaboration driving innovation. Apple works closely with Foxconn to develop and manufacture its products, ensuring high standards of quality and efficiency. This collaboration has enabled Apple to rapidly innovate and bring new products to market.
Nike’s partnership with Zotefoams is another excellent example. By collaborating with Zotefoams, Nike has developed high-performance foam materials for its footwear, leading to innovations in athletic shoes. This partnership highlights how working closely with suppliers can result in specialized, high-quality products.
Toyota is renowned for its close collaboration with suppliers through its Toyota Production System (TPS). This system emphasizes continuous improvement and lean manufacturing, involving suppliers in the innovation process to enhance efficiency and quality. Toyota’s approach has led to significant advancements in automotive technology and manufacturing processes.
P&G’s Connect + Develop program is designed to foster innovation through external partnerships, including suppliers. This program has led to numerous product innovations by tapping into the expertise and capabilities of external partners. It exemplifies how strategic supplier collaboration can enhance a company’s innovation pipeline.
Some useful articles exploring transformation, include
Incredible technologies and geopolitical shifts, complex markets and stagnating growth, demanding customers and disruptive entrepreneurs, environmental crisis and social distrust, unexpected shocks and uncertain futures.
How do you make sense of today’s rapidly changing world? How will you succeed in tomorrow’s world?
We explore how businesses can survive and thrive, and move forwards to create a better future. How to reimagine strategy, to reinvent markets, to reenergise people. We consider what it means to combine meaningful purpose with superior profits, intelligent technologies with creative people, radical innovation with sustainable impact.
The old codes of business don’t work anymore. The most innovative companies – from Amazon and Anthropic, to Blackrock and Bytedance, Climeworks and Coupang, to DJI and Deepmind – succeed with new codes.
So what are the new ideas to win in a fast and dynamic world of Asian renaissance, entrepreneurial supremacy, social conscience and smarter machines? What can you learn from Jio’s revolution from petrochemicals to phones, and DBS’s transformation of banking? How can you be inspired by courageous leaders like 23andMe’s Anne Wojcicki, Haier’s Zhang Ruimin and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser?
And apply these ideas to shape the future of EXIM Bank.
The Saudi Export-Import Bank aims to promote non-oil Saudi exports and enhance their competitiveness in global markets across various, this is achieved through providing credit solutions for export financing, guarantees, and export credit insurance with competitive advantages. These efforts align with the goals and foundations of Saudi Vision 2030, which focuses on increasing the share of non-oil exports in the non-oil GDP.
“We aim to maximize the economic impact of our activities and credit facilities by integrating with commercial banks to enable non-oil Saudi exports.”
Changing World, Leading Change
Key takeaways from the day will include
Start from the future back. The future is already here, just unevenly distributed. Leaders need foresight and imagination to make sense of changing markets, to address new agendas, to embrace the best new opportunities, and find purpose and direction in a world that might seem stagnant, chaotic and uncertain.
Innovate and transform. Businesses are platforms for change, to engage all stakeholders in exploring better. Innovation can take many different forms, from new business models to ecosystem design, to reframe markets and redefine business, typically enabled by sustained transformational change.
Step up to lead the future. Value creation in fast changing markets demands leaders to embrace new mindsets and approaches, to engage people in an inspiring future story, and to accelerate its delivery – exploiting the present and exploring the future – to be a performer and transformer at the same time – to be curious, creative and courageous
The executive team workshop explores the rapidly changing markets around the world, learning from other sectors and companies, and considers the strategic implications for their own business futures, and personal leadership:
Session 1: World Changing … Market and Megatrends
Riding the waves of change – purpose, profits and value creation
Customer agendas, tech possibilities, social to sustainable
Rethinking everything, discontinuities and disruptors
Inspired by SpaceX and Biontech, Jio and Nvidia, Savola and STC
Session 2: Future Thinking … Scenario Planning
Exploring alternative futures, change drivers and uncertainties
Strategies and plans, making choices from the future back
Building a future portfolio, to exploit and explore
Inspired by Colossal and Climeworks, Nubank and NotCo, PingAn and Tesla
Gamechangers and Moonshots, breaking free of old mindsets
10 types of innovation, new business models and ecosystems
Human and tech, customer and brands, sustainable and better
Inspired by DBS and Haier, BYD and Xiaomi, On and Schneider
Session 4: Leading Change … Performer Transformers
What it takes to be a “Performer Transformer” leader
Creating tomorrow while delivering today, turning purpose into practical action
Using the catalyst of external change to drive and guide your internal change
Inspired by the world’s best leaders, to be bold, brave and brilliant.
What will you do?
We live in a time of great promise but also great uncertainty.
Markets are more crowded, competition is intense, customer aspirations are constantly fuelled by new innovations and dreams. Technology disrupts every industry, from banking to construction, entertainment to healthcare. It drives new possibilities and solutions, but also speed and complexity, uncertainty and fear.
As digital and physical worlds fuse to augment how we live and work, AI and robotics enhance but also challenge our capabilities, whilst ubiquitous supercomputing, genetic editing and self-driving cars take us further.
Technologies with the power to help us leap forwards in unimaginable ways. To transform business, to solve our big problems, to drive radical innovation, to accelerate growth and achieve progress socially and environmentally too.
We are likely to see more change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years.
Markets accelerate, 4 times faster than 20 years ago, based on the accelerating speed of innovation and diminishing lifecycles of products.
People are more capable, 825 times more connected than 20 years ago, with access to education, unlimited knowledge, tools to create anything.
Consumer attitudes change, 78% of young people choose brands that do good, they reject corporate jobs, and see the world with the lens of gamers.
However, change goes far beyond the technology.
Markets will transform, converge and evolve faster. From old town Ann Arbor to the rejuvenated Bilbao, today’s megacities like Chennai and the future Saudi tech city of Neom, economic power will continue to shift. China has risen to the top of the new global business order, whilst India and eventually Africa will follow.
Industrialisation challenges the natural equilibrium of our planet’s resources. Today’s climate crisis is the result of our progress, and our problem to solve. Globalisation challenges our old notions of nationhood and locality. Migration changes where we call home. Religious values compete with social values, economic priorities conflict with social priorities. Living standards improve but inequality grows.
Our current economic system is stretched to its limit. Global shocks, such as the global pandemic of 2020, exposes its fragility. We open our eyes to realise that we weren’t prepared for different futures, and that our drive for efficiency has left us unable to cope. Such crises will become more frequent, as change and disruption accelerate.
However, these shocks are more likely to accelerate change in business, rather than stifle it, to wake us up to the real impacts of our changing world – to the urgency of action, to the need to think and act more dramatically.
The old codes don’t work
Business is not fit for the future. Most organisations were designed for stable and predictable worlds, where the future evolves as planned, markets are definitive, and choices are clear.
The future isn’t like it used to be.
Dynamic markets are, by definition, turbulent. Whilst economic cycles have typically followed a pattern of peaks and troughs every 10-15 years, these will likely become more frequent. Change is fast and exponential, uncertain and unpredictable, complex and ambiguous demanding new interpretation and imagination.
Yet too many business leaders hope that the strategies that made them successful in the past will continue to work in the future. They seek to keep stretching the old models in the hope that they will continue to see them through. Old business plans are tweaked each year, infrastructures are tested to breaking point, and people are asked to work harder.
In a way of dramatic, unpredictable change, this is not enough to survive, let alone thrive.
Growth is harder. Global GDP growth has declined by more than a third in the past decade. As the west stagnates, Asia grows, albeit more slowly.
Companies struggle, their average lifespan falling from 75 years in 1950 to 15 years today, 52% of the Fortune 500 in 2000 no longer exist in 2020.
Leaders are under pressure. 44% of today’s business leaders have held their position for at least 5 years, compared to 77% half a century ago.
Profit is no longer enough; people expect business to achieve more. Business cannot exist in isolation from the world around them, pursuing customers without care for the consequence. The old single-minded obsession with profits is too limiting. Business depends more than ever on its resources – people, communities, nature, partners – and will need to find a better way to embrace them.
Technology is no longer enough; innovation needs to be more human. Technology will automate and interpret reality, but it won’t empathise and imagine new futures. Ubiquitous technology-driven innovation quickly becomes commoditised, available from anywhere in the world, so we need to add value in new ways. The future is human, creative, and intuitive. People will matter more to business, not less.
Sustaining the environment is not enough. 200 years of industrialisation has stripped the planet of its ability to renew itself, and ultimately to sustain life. Business therefore needs to give back more than it takes. As inequality and distrust have grown in every society, traditional jobs are threatened by automation and stagnation, meaning that social issues will matter even more, both globally and locally.
The new DNA of business
As business leaders, our opportunity is to create a better business, one that is fit for the future, that can act in more innovative and responsible ways.
How can we harness the potential of this relentless and disruptive change, harness the talents of people and the possibilities of technology? How can business, with all its power and resources, be a platform for change, and a force for good?
We need to find new codes to succeed. We need to find new ways to work, to recognise business as a system that be virtuous, where less can be more, and growth can go beyond the old limits. This demands that we make new connections:
Profit + Purpose … to achieve more enlightened progress
Technology + Humanity … to achieve more human ingenuity
Innovation + Sustainability … to achieve more positive impact
We need to create a new framework for business, a better business – to reimagine why and redesign how we work, as well as reinvent what and refocus where we do business.
Imagine a future business that looks forwards not back, that rises up to shape the future on its own terms, making sense of change to find new possibilities, inspiring people with vision and optimism. Imagine a future that inspires progress, seeks new sources of growth, embraces networks and partners to go further, and enables people to achieve more.
Imagine too, a future business that creates new opportunity spaces, by connecting novel ideas and untapped needs, creatively responding to new customer agendas. Imagine a future business that disrupts the disruptors, where large companies have the vision and courage to reimagine themselves and compete as equals to fast and entrepreneurial start-ups.
Imagine a future business that embraces humanity, searches for better ideas, that fuse technology and people in more enlightened ways, to solve the big problems of society, and improve everyone’s lives. Imagine a future business that works collectively, self-organises to thrive without hierarchy, connects with partners in rich ecosystems, designs jobs around people, to do inspiring work.
Imagine also, a future business which is continually transforming, that thrives by learning better and faster, develops a rich portfolio of business ideas and innovations to sustain growth and progress. Imagine a future business that creates positive impact on the world, benefits all stakeholders with a circular model of value creation, that addresses negatives, and creates a net positive impact for society.
Creating a better business is an opportunity for every person who works inside or alongside it. It is not just a noble calling, to do something better for the world, but also a practical calling, a way to overcome the many limits of today, and attain future success for you and your business.You could call it the dawn of a new capitalism.
More from Peter Fisk linked to these sessions
Next Agenda of best ideas and priorities for business
RVU is a UK-based household decision platform, combining together digital capabilities and industry expertise to help customers choose the right services and deals for their circumstances.
Or as the mission statement says “Empowering people to make confident decisions”.
The company’s brands including confused.com and uswitch.com and money.co.uk are uniquely positioned to work across one common goal: to help UK customers find the deal that works for them financially and beyond.
Of course it’s always been important to save money where possible, but the overall financial landscape has made this a necessity for customers. Finding the right deal on insurance, broadband, mobiles or energy isn’t just about saving money, though. Different factors, such as customer service and environmental responsibility, influence customers in different ways.
Today’s keynote is about going further. Do immerse ourselves in the customer world, to be the customer. And to explore what the world’s best customer-centric companies do differently and better.
Building a Customer Mindset
“Hello, I am your customer. Do you see the world like I do? It’s simple really. Start with me and everything else follows. Together we can do extraordinary things … “
Customers are now in control of our markets, demanding that we do business on their terms. Their expectations are high, and loyalty is rare. They are individual and emotional, well-informed and highly organized. They know what they want, and only accept the best.
In my book “Customer Genius” I explore a 10 step blueprint for building a customer-centric business; proving that the right customer strategies, based on deeper customer insight, driving more compelling propositions and distinctive experiences, can engage those ‘wonderful people’ we call customers.
Outside in. Power has shifted to customers, and business must learn to think and act from the outside in.
Bigger picture. Customers see their challenges and solutions more holistically, without sectors or categories.
Less is more. Better to attract and retain fewer, more profitable customers than to try to serve everyone.
Deep diving. Use more personal immersion to discover what factors really drive attitudes and behaviours.
Get personal. People are more irrational and emotional. Focus on the energisers, not just the essentials.
Pull don’t push. Don’t sell products, engage people on what matters to them – where, when and how they want.
Work together. Collaborative, help people to solve problems and achieve more with co-created solutions.
Intuition rules. Throw away the rule book, and enable customer service people to be human and responsive.
Word of mouth. Customers are more loyal to each other than any business, so harness the power of advocacy.
Future results. Customer metrics are lead indicators, whilst financials only tell you about the past.
There’s nothing new about customer-centricity. Call if customer-focus, customer-driven, customer-intimacy, or customer-obsession, companies have been seeking to install a customer mindset in their organisation’s culture for many decades. It’s obvious, but not easy. It’s easy to start from what you know, what your organisation does, what products you offer, and what you think. It’s much more difficult to start with the customer.
Amazon seeks to be the world’s most customer-centric business, and indeed customer obsession means that every decision – strategic or operational – starts with what’s right for the customer, and then finding a way to make it happen practically, and hopefully profitably too. Disney has long communicated a story of magic, and seeks to deliver magic moments in everything it does. Apple famously don’t research what customers say they want, but use their intuition to solve the right problem, thinking like a customer. It’s about being human, its about looking beyond the transaction, and its more fun and rewarding too.
So what’s a customer mindset?
Be me: put yourself in the mind of your customer, what’s going on in their world, what makes them tick; listen harder, what do they really want to achieve, use their language, make connections, meet their needs?
Be more: how can you enable your customer to achieve more, not just the product or service they’re buying, but how they will use it, what it helps them to do; save time, live better, care for the environment?
Be magic: what’s the special thing you can do for your customer; a small favour, something personal, a joke, a smile; how will you leave an impression, be a little different, and memorable?
And what does this take?
Customer Purpose: start with why your business exists, what’s your purpose, how do you make the world better in some way, and typically the lives of customers.
Customer First: make choices from the customer’s perspective first, meeting their need, solving their problem, and then find a way to achieve it practically and profitably.
Customer Insight: remember Maslow’s pyramid has functional things at the bottom (and that includes price!), and more emotional things at the top (everybody is emotional, you just have to find it).
Customer Problem: what’s the context, the job to be done, the bigger thing which your customer is trying to achieve; not just the product or service they say they need?
Customer Journey: consider the stepping stones in what they’re doing, and how you can be a better part of it, not just by addressing your specific items, but facilitating more of it too.
Customer Personalisation: how can you use AI, or data, or simple listening, to deliver a more personal solution for the customer, perhaps by anticipating what they need, or tweaking something to make it more relevant.
Customer Loyalty: this starts with trust, and ideally moves to return, and recommendation; but look beyond the cards and points schemes, to think what genuinely earns the customer gratitude and support over time.
Here are some of the world’s most customer-centric companies:
Harley Davidson dont necessarily make the best bikes, but they have the most loyal customers …
DBS is the world’s most innovative bank, with a purpose to help customers “live more, bank less” …
Revolut îs the leading digital bank, here’s an insight into the values that dr
Walk into an IKEA, pull out your phone and use their AR app, and you’re transported to your future home …
Nike is not a sportswear company, it’s a sports company … obsessed with helping people do better sport
Virgin is all about being human, as captured in its cultural values …
Buc-ee’s is a Texan gas station, ranked as the world’s most customer-centric business …
Zappos is a story of happiness, how to do more for every customer … happiness delivered
The Sagas of the Icelanders, written in the 12th and 13th centuries and telling the stories of the early settlers of Iceland from the 10th century, are an amazing treasure trove of historical knowledge about the early years of settlement in Iceland. Better yet, they’re also impressive examples of literary excellence that still hold their own when it comes to enthralling storytelling.
While reading the sagas shouldn’t exactly be compared to reading modern day thrillers; their gripping subjects and epic storytelling might still surprise you. Woven in with long chapters about genealogy and a host of stories about people who all seem to be named Þórólfur are grand stories about love, honour, friendship, and fate. They’re funny, sad, thrilling, and everything in between.
The sagas are an exercise in subtlety. Modern stories might have lines like “He couldn’t even hear the last part of the insult before the anger consumed him. It felt like his blood was boiling as a mixture of humiliation and fury tore him apart from the inside.” The sagas will have lines conveying the same sentiment in words like “he said nothing and for a moment, his cheeks turned red.” While reading, you have to pay close attention to descriptions and you really can’t skip chapters, because…
When reading the sagas, a lot of the first chapters might seem superfluous. The thing is, if they were, they wouldn’t have been written down. The manuscripts were made of calfskin and were very expensive. Everything they could skip, they did. The early setup may feel unimportant at first, (sometimes even happening years before the main characters were born) but it’s all a part of the chain of events that eventually set the stage for the plot of the saga to progress.
Honour was the basis of society in those days. In a country without law enforcement, people lived highly moral (according to their values) lives or faced the consequences. Family was everything and if someone wronged a cousin of yours, you were not only expected, but required to avenge him, either by money or blood. Last but not least, there was also a strong belief in fatalism, dreams in the sagas are often prophetic and wise men could see the future.
The stories supposedly happened in the 10th century but weren’t written down until a couple of hundred years later. There’s reason to believe some events might have been poetically adjusted in the meantime. While we’re pretty sure most (at the very least, some) of these people lived in Iceland at some point, we’re pretty sure the stories have at least been somewhat exaggerated. Still, they’re the cornerstone of Icelandic culture and self-value as we know them.
Who is TÜV NORD?
As a knowledge company, we have our sights firmly set on the digital future. Whether engineers, IT security experts or specialists for the mobility of the future: We ensure that our customers become even more successful in the networked world worldwide.
The TÜV NORD GROUP has been active in the TICCET (Testing, Inspection, Certification, Consulting, Engineering, Training) market for over 150 years.
The inspection, consulting and training business is off ered in six operating business units; thanks to the services in the Engineering and Natural Resources as well as Aerospace business units, the Group has a unique selling proposition compared to its competitors in the sector. In addition to its operating business units, the Group’s internal services are also grouped together in the Holding / Services division.
TÜV NORD Group is positioning itself for sustainable solutions for the energy and mobility transition, pushing innovation and digital services, secure applications for AI and the quantum age.
Mobility: Intermodally linked transport
Cars, lorries, buses and trains – the various modes of transport are becoming increasingly interlinked in the market. And the focus remains on electromobility. TÜV NORD is bundling its intermodal expertise in the new Mobility Business Unit. This includes periodic inspections and driving tests as well as providing support for new vehicle approvals and the safe interlinking of vehicles and infrastructure on road and on rail.
Industry: Safety for the digitalised industry
The digital industry requires both knowledge of traditional plant safety and expertise in networked systems. In the industrial sector, TÜV NORD focuses on testing and inspection activities in process technology, manufacturing technology and buildings. The internationally active test laboratories for food, environmental analyses and technical assessments are also bundled here.
Energy & Resources: driving forward the energy transition
The energy world is transforming into a decentralised interplay of different energy sources – fossil, nuclear and, in future, even more renewable. This requires comprehensive expertise for the ramp-up of the hydrogen economy and knowledge about the sustainable use of raw materials. TÜV NORD and DMT therefore support customers worldwide with integrated services in the new Energy & Resources Business Unit.
Certification: Certifications build trust
In an increasingly complex world, orientation and transparency are required. This is provided by independent, verifiable certifications, for example for sustainability, cybersecurity, management systems or social standards. In future, TÜV NORD will bundle certification services worldwide in the Certification business unit. Around three quarters of the employees in this business unit already live and work outside Germany.
Digital & Semiconductor: Essential technologies for a digital world
All areas of life and the economy are already heavily influenced by digitalization. Semiconductor technologies are an important key factor and the basis of most of the existing technologies that characterize our modern and networked world. The security and reliability of sensitive data, electronic components and systems are also essential. The new Digital & Semiconductor business unit brings together ALTER and TÜVIT‘s expertise in semiconductors, IT security and communication technologies. Knowledge of artificial intelligence, quantum and nanotechnologies and new space will also be pooled here.
People & Empowerment: empowering and strengthening people
What do people need to be able to move safely in an increasingly technological world? With this focus on competences, TÜV NORD bundles diagnostics, consulting and further development in the new People & Empowerment business unit. It encompasses the large area of further training for professionals and executives, occupational health services and driving licence renewal.
Superfast-gaming chips and fat-busting superdrugs, asteroid-chasing rockets and carbon-capturing technologies, 4 day working weeks and chess reinvented as a reality TV game, health-enhancing fashions and the rebirth of the hairy mammoth. Nvidia is transforming tech, while Novo Nordisk innovates healthcare, KinetX changes the space race, while Climeworks eliminates carbon.
We used to marvel at innovations with a leap of imagination. Ideas and technologies that promised to transform our world, but seemed a little out of reach. Now, science fiction has collided with practical reality, powered by mind-boggling technologies that are evolving at incredible speed, but also rapid social and cultural change, accelerating human possibilities into practice.
Next is now, not only because of the pace of innovation, but also the convergence of pathways – technologies, industries, customers, applications and expectations.
What’s happening in gaming today, shapes new experiences in retail or finance. New possibilities of space travel accelerate the evolution of EVs. Clean energy meets green cement. Pharma tech meets fashion tech. Physical and digital are one, fast developing markets outpace the old stagnated developed markets, and GenZ outthink their GenX leaders.
The future is already here, even if it’s unevenly distributed. Curiosity drives creativity, enabled by new capabilities to address the biggest challenges. So what could you do? What’s your vision of next, and how do you start now?
Colossal, the de-extinction company
Colossal Biosciences seeks to reawaken the past, to bring back extinct species, to expand endangered populations through genetic rescue, to support biodiversity. In a world pushed to the brink, Colossal is optimising conservation, exogenous development, bioinformatics, modern genetics, cellular engineering, paleogenetics, biodiversity, genomics, embryology, stem cell reprogramming, computational biology, artificial intelligence, bioethics, and de-extinction.
The Austin-based genetic engineering company, founded by geneticist George Church and entrepreneur Ben Lamb, is working to de-extinct the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo.
Because the woolly mammoth and Asian elephant share 99.6% of the same DNA, Colossal is seeking to develop a proxy species by swapping enough key mammoth genes into the Asian elephant genome. Key mammoth genealogical traits include: a 10cm layer of insulating fat, five different types of shaggy hair, and smaller ears to help the hybrid tolerate cold weather.
Colossal launched as a fully-fledged business in 2021, with a mission to preserve endangered animals through gene-editing technology and use those same animals to reshape the world’s natural ecosystems to combat climate change.
Colossal’s lab will pair CRISPR/Cas9 with other DNA-editing enzymes, such as integrases, recombinases, and deaminases, to splice woolly mammoth genes into the Asian elephant. The company plans on sequencing both elephant and mammoth samples in order to identify key genes in both species to promote population diversification. By doing so, Colossal hopes to prevent any rogue mutations within the hybrid herd.
Back in a 2008 interview with The New York Times, George Church first expressed his interest in engineering a hybrid Asian elephant-mammoth by sequencing the woolly mammoth genome. In 2012, Church was part of a team that pioneered the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool, through which the potential for altering genetic code to engineer the envisioned “mammophant” surfaced. He presented a talk at the National Geographic Society in 2013, where he mapped out the idea of Colossal.
Church and his genetics team used CRISPR to copy mammoth genes into the genome of an Asian elephant in 2015. That same year, his lab integrated mammoth genes into the DNA of elephant skin cells; the lab zeroed in on 60 genes that experiments hypothesized as being important to the distinctive traits of mammoths, such as a high-domed skull, ability to hold oxygen at low temperatures, and fatty tissue. By 2017 it had successfully added 45 genes to the genome of an Asian elephant.
While Colossal’s de-extinction business might seem like science fiction, the latest movie from Jurassic Park, it echoes the progress by companies like CRISPR Therapeutics in Zurich, led by Nobel prize winner Jennifer Doudna, who applying the same science to humans. With all the same technical and ethical challenges which it brings. It also demonstrates how rapidly ideas of fiction are now becoming reality.
The new Big Ideasreport by ARK Invest captures the disruptive impact of technologies right now. It suggests that by 2030, the convergence of 5 significant technologies, accelerated by artificial intelligence, will have an unprecedented economic impact. AI provides the “intelligent glue” to bring together the potential of public blockchains, multigenomic sequencing, energy storage, and robotics, in a way that could transform global economic activity more significantly than any previous industrial revolution.
Globally, real economic growth could accelerate from 3% on average during the past 125 years to more than 7% during the next 7 years as robots reinvigorate manufacturing, robotaxis transform transportation, and AI amplifies knowledge worker productivity.
As a result the global equity market value specifically associated with disruptive innovation could increase from 16% of the total to more than 60% by 2030, resulting in annualised equity returns of 40%, or increasing the total market capitalisation driven by disruptive tech from $19 trillion today to roughly $220 trillion by 2030.
The Future Possibilities Index 2024 also explores the applications of these fast-emerging tech, and how they will shape new economies. It focus on 6 transformational trends that are creating possibilities and the factors that determine our readiness and capacity to leverage these trends over the next 5-10 years. All have emerged from a combination of new business models, technologies, and changes in attitudes and behaviours. The six trends are the Exabyte Economy, the Wellbeing Economy, the Net Zero Economy, the Circular Economy, the BioGrowth Economy and the Experience Economy.
Fast Company’s latest ranking of the world’s Most Innovative Companies 2024 showcases some of the most exciting innovators who are both driving this tech acceleration, and embracing its benefits. While BCG also produces an innovation ranking each year, quantitatively evaluating the R&D efforts of corporations, the FC version is far more insightful, about the people driving the innovations, and the solutions that are emerging.
This year’s #MIC24 ranking includes:
Nvidia is riding a wave of warp-speed AI progress, having lagged far behind Intel for decades, Jensen Huang’s $1.5 trillion business which he founded in 1993 on his 30th birthday, leapt ahead of tech monoliths like Alphabet and Amazon in recent months, driven by the rush for high-powered immersive gaming, and the relentless growth of AI.
Novo Nordisk found in its latest diabetes drug Ozempic, an obesity-busting sensation, that together with its lower dosage sister-brand Wegovy, has taken the world by storm. The Danish pharma business can’t make enough of it, and has soared to become Europe’s most valuable company, and more valuable than Denmark’s entire GDP.
Perplexity is creating an entirely new way to search the web, by leveraging AI to provide more contextualised and accurate answers, rather than a list of relevant links. It uses a combination of homegrown large language models (LLMs) and third-party models (like OpenAI’s GPT-4) plus retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
KinetX helped navigate a spacecraft on a 4.4 billion-mile mission to land on an asteroid and return home. Founded in 1992 as a spinoff of Lockheed Martin, it is partnering NASA on deep-space missions like New Horizons (to Pluto, then the edge of the solar system) and Messenger (orbiting Mercury for the first time).
Climeworks uses direct air capture to scrub carbon from the atmosphere. It operates the world’s largest DAC plants, both in Iceland, which remove around 10,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year—and about half of that is being done by the Zurich-based DAC pioneer.
Innovations enabling radically better lives
The new Global 50 Opportunities report by Dubai Future Foundation takes a global perspective on the innovative applications emerging from a rapidly changing world, partly driven by technologies, but much more too.
It starts by exploring the megatrends which it sees as most influential right now, and then how these are unlocking 50 opportunities for future growth, prosperity and well-being. Some opportunities may be in their early days of exploration, some require reflection, and some feel very far away. “Shaping the future cannot be done by just waiting for it but rather by utilizing the latest technologies and knowledge tools and meeting its challenges starting from today.”
The 8 megatrends include materials revolution (from which opportunities emerge like 3d printing of human organs, green plastics, and fashion with embedded health benefits), future humanity (school for wisdom, open source science, and flipping career ladders), and advanced health (mental AI, pulse over pills, and biohacking 2.0). These are just a few examples (dive into the digital report to explore the opportunities in more detail):
100 Reasons to Love the Future is a fabulous new report from AXA’s foresight team, promising “new narratives of hope” and inspiring us to “imagine utopia rather than retreat to dystopia”. The report argues that in a world of escalating risks, our societies and economies cannot afford to become paralysed by uncertainty. We are all living through a deep transformation. Far better to embrace it than retreat into anxiety and doubt.
In the midst of the 100 reasons is a great insight from Plurality University about what organisations could look like in 2050 – from the Marketrix to the Reactivator, the Enterpocine and the Zombinc. There’s also a great insight about Te Korekoreka, and navigating futures with Māori Wisdom. The New Zealand initiative uses social innovation to achieve equity in education, employment, and income for Māori people. And much more, a great report!
Take another look at Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies 2024 list, and beyond the big names like Nvidia you will find a wealth of smaller companies making significant human impacts, harnessing tech for good, rather than just for tech. Yet the new tech capabilities are incredible, providing new ways to solve some of the biggest problems; while also shaping cultures through exponential social influence; and enabling people to access, and do, what they could never before:
Solfácil the Brazilian solar investment company is bringing solar power to people living in the Amazon, and has financed approximately $450 million in solar loans, working with more than 4,250 active solar installers and has 66,000-plus customers to date.
4 Day Week Globalconvinced companies around the world to adopt a shorter work week, the nonprofit brought together hundreds of companies to create a post-pandemic revolution in the workplace, encouraged by its research which showed that a 4 day week delivered an average 36% rise in revenue.
Chess.com is turning a centuries-old game into must-see reality TV. The freemium chess platform logged more games played (12.5 billion) than ever before, while establishing itself as the game’s cultural hub, full of everything from news to memes to the best Twitch streamers.
Sea Forest, a Tasmanian business which scooped the 2023 Earthshot Prize, has a seaweed supplement to stop cows from burping up methane. It is the first company in the world to farm methane-busting Asparagopsis, a red seaweed native to Australian coastal waters, reducing methane production by up to 90%.
Mattel took its 65 year old Barbie dolls and turned the brand into a $1.4 billion global movie blockbuster, the highest grossing film of 2023, with a series of agenda-setting messages not just saccharine sassiness, and became a cultural event that attracted diverse audiences, plus all types of pink-coloured spinoffs.
So while the world of technology is complex and relentless, with profound questions about ethics and humanity, our rapidly changing world can also be deeply human, sometimes frivolous, sometimes profound.
The opportunities to innovate are everywhere. And while average, old markets might seem to have stagnated, the world continues to move forwards at incredible pace. We have huge challenges, where issues like climate change will only be conquered with radical new thinking, and enabled by new technologies.
We also have an opportunity to create a happier, healthier world. Embrace utopia, don’t retreat to dystopia. By jumping to the future we can see problems differently, the impossible becomes possible, and we can accelerate progress.
Denmark, let’s create a better future, together
Danes are brought up to question authority, which makes them powerful innovators. This small country is constantly coming up with revolutionary approaches to design, environmental science, pharmaceuticals, biomedicine, food, agriculture, and many different types of technology.
From the time they are children, Danes are told to question conventional wisdom – and encouraged to come up with something better. That makes innovation and entrepreneurship a natural part of the Danish DNA. An economic system that encourages business risks and provides a social safety net helps too.
Danish design has been an international standard-bearer since the 1950s, and always-evolving industries like healthcare and pharmaceuticals also play a substantial role in the Danish economy. These days, Danish innovators are leaders when it comes to sustainability and green living.
Here are just a few of my favourite Danish innovators, shaking up their industries, and the world, right now:
Arla Foods, reinventing farming to packaging, flavours and foods
Bjarke Ingels Group, architectural boldness and regeneration
Coloplast, medical devices from ostomy, and urology, to wound care
Danfoss, everything from energy to hydraulics, pumps and valves
Flying Tiger Copenhagen, retail simplicity and novelty, that’s fun
Just Eat, a global lead in food delivery services, grown worldwide
Maersk, harnessing blockchain to reinvent global supply chains
Mikkeler, the world’s largest craft beer brand, and running club
Novonesis, merged biosciences giant, from enzymes to probiotics
Novo Nordisk, a disciplined focus on diabetes, and now obesity
Orsted, global clean energy pioneer, transformed from the old Dong
Trustpilot, giving consumers confidence in an online retail world
Universal Robotics, pioneering the rise of cobots and more
Zendesk, software as a service, embracing AI to revolutionise service
At this year’s event, I will be exploring what it really takes to create a better future.
Having optimism to seize the best new opportunities in a fast-changing world
Asking the big questions, making new connections, having bolder ambition
Technologies, and CTOs (also CIOs), as the catalysts and enablers of change
Starting from the future back, with a bolder vision, and now forwards roadmap
Transformation as the leadership superpower to create better, and accelerate change
Now is the moment. Time to step up, disrupt yourself, inspire others, and achieve more.
Where are the biggest opportunities in a world of uncertain yet frenetic change? How can companies harness the power of collective innovation through clusters and ecosystems for faster and more remarkable impact? And how can business and society work better together to create a sustain a world where we all want to live, and where we can all thrive?
Next is now. There is only ever today. Let the future begin.
Explore more
24 for 2024… new ideas, new innovators, new possibilities
Future Recoded … an online learning and knowledge platform
Incredible technologies and geopolitical shifts, complex markets and stagnating growth, demanding customers and disruptive entrepreneurs, environmental crisis and social distrust, unexpected shocks and uncertain futures.
How do you make sense of today’s rapidly changing world? How will you succeed in tomorrow’s world?
We explore how businesses can survive and thrive, and move forwards to create a better future. How to reimagine strategy, to reinvent markets, to reenergise people. We consider what it means to combine meaningful purpose with superior profits, intelligent technologies with creative people, radical innovation with sustainable impact.
We learn from the innovative strategies of incredible companies – Alibaba and Amazon, Biontech and BlackRock, Narayana and Netflix, Patagonia and PingAn, Spotify and Supercell, and many more.
And apply these ideas to shape the future of Minebea Mitsumi, a Japanese business that started with the production of ball bearings, and had grown and diversified into a global electronics innovator:
Minebea Mitsumi began its journey in 1951 as Nippon Miniature Bearing Company, Japan’s first specialised manufacturer of miniature ball bearings.
Over the years, it expanded its product portfolio and entered various industries, including electronics, automotive, and aerospace. The company has grown through mergers and acquisitions, including the integration with Mitsumi Electric, U-Shin, and ABLIC.
Today, Minebea Mitsumi is a global leader in precision components and electronic devices, with a unique product portfolio that includes ball bearings, motors, sensors, and semiconductors.
They have a diverse portfolio that includes ball bearings, motors, sensors, and semiconductors. The company is known for its commitment to innovation and quality, which has helped it maintain a strong position in various industries such as automotive, aerospace, industrial, healthcare, and medical technology.
Where are the next opportunities for innovation and growth?
Semiconductors & Electronics (SE): The SE segment is expected to see significant growth, particularly in analog semiconductors. Minebea Mitsumi’s focus on high value-added products and price adjustments will help them strengthen their position in the industry.
Access Solutions (AS): The AS segment is also poised for growth, with efforts to improve product mix and achieve a 10% operating margin. This will enhance their competitiveness and profitability.
Precision Technologies (PT): The PT segment, which includes ball bearings and camera actuators, is expected to perform well. The company is focusing on increasing production capacity and exploring new applications for these products.
Motor Lighting & Sensing (MLS): The MLS segment is another area with potential for growth. Minebea Mitsumi is working on improving operating income and exploring new opportunities in this segment.
Global Expansion: Minebea Mitsumi is actively seeking talented individuals to join their team worldwide, which will help them expand their global reach and tap into new markets.
By leveraging these opportunities, Minebea Mitsumi can continue to innovate and grow in the coming years. However this will demand new mindset and capabilities for innovation and leadership, to addresss the challenges of a changing world, to embrace AI and new technologies, and to grow in new ways.
Examples of topics explored, accelerating moonshot ideas and impacts:
Markets and Megatrends
Every market is shaken up, the big shifts, challenges and opportunities
Asia to AI, GenZ and gene-editing, carbon and wellbeing, and the super-apps
Disruptive technologies, society and environment, disrupt or be disrupted
The 6 megatrends shaping futures, and what they mean for me
Creating purposeful futures
Exploring the biggest challenges, and how business can be a force for good
Creating an inspiring purpose and direction for your business
Linking purpose to vision, mission, strategies, goals and operations
Framing your business to look beyond industry boundaries
Unlocking profitable growth
Developing strategic plans from the future back, and then now forward
Understanding customers and consumers, new agendas and behaviours
Innovative strategies for driving and accelerating (green) growth
Building dual portfolios to exploit today, and explore tomorrow
Powering strategic innovation
Driving strategic innovation, connecting insights and ideas, and moonshots
Sustainable innovation to embrace social and environmental issues
Exploring new business models, their diversity and implications
Innovating in more entrepreneurial ways, experimental and venture ways
Being a transformational leader
What does it take to lead in markets of relentless change and uncertainty?
The changing role of leaders, what you do uniquely, and what others do
Developing a transformational approach to your business and leadership
Being curious, creative and courageous to create a better future.
We live in a time of great promise but also great uncertainty.
Markets are more crowded, competition is intense, customer aspirations are constantly fuelled by new innovations and dreams. Technology disrupts every industry, from banking to construction, entertainment to healthcare. It drives new possibilities and solutions, but also speed and complexity, uncertainty and fear.
As digital and physical worlds fuse to augment how we live and work, AI and robotics enhance but also challenge our capabilities, whilst ubiquitous supercomputing, genetic editing and self-driving cars take us further.
Technologies with the power to help us leap forwards in unimaginable ways. To transform business, to solve our big problems, to drive radical innovation, to accelerate growth and achieve progress socially and environmentally too.
We are likely to see more change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years.
Markets accelerate, 4 times faster than 20 years ago, based on the accelerating speed of innovation and diminishing lifecycles of products.
People are more capable, 825 times more connected than 20 years ago, with access to education, unlimited knowledge, tools to create anything.
Consumer attitudes change, 78% of young people choose brands that do good, they reject corporate jobs, and see the world with the lens of gamers.
However, change goes far beyond the technology.
Markets will transform, converge and evolve faster. From old town Ann Arbor to the rejuvenated Bilbao, today’s megacities like Chennai and the future Saudi tech city of Neom, economic power will continue to shift. China has risen to the top of the new global business order, whilst India and eventually Africa will follow.
Industrialisation challenges the natural equilibrium of our planet’s resources. Today’s climate crisis is the result of our progress, and our problem to solve. Globalisation challenges our old notions of nationhood and locality. Migration changes where we call home. Religious values compete with social values, economic priorities conflict with social priorities. Living standards improve but inequality grows.
Our current economic system is stretched to its limit. Global shocks, such as the global pandemic of 2020, exposes its fragility. We open our eyes to realise that we weren’t prepared for different futures, and that our drive for efficiency has left us unable to cope. Such crises will become more frequent, as change and disruption accelerate.
However, these shocks are more likely to accelerate change in business, rather than stifle it, to wake us up to the real impacts of our changing world – to the urgency of action, to the need to think and act more dramatically.
Creating a better future
The old codes of business don’t work anymore. The most innovative companies – from Amazon and Bytedance, to Coupang and Deepmind – succeed with new codes. So what are the new ideas to win in a fast and dynamic world of Asian renaissance, entrepreneurial supremacy, social conscience and smarter machines? What can you learn from Jio’s revolution from petrochemicals to phones, and DBS’s transformation of banking? How can you be inspired by courageous leaders like 23andMe’s Anne Wojcicki, Haier’s Zhang Ruimin and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser?
Business is not fit for the future. Most organisations were designed for stable and predictable worlds, where the future evolves as planned, markets are definitive, and choices are clear.
The future isn’t like it used to be.
Dynamic markets are, by definition, turbulent. Whilst economic cycles have typically followed a pattern of peaks and troughs every 10-15 years, these will likely become more frequent. Change is fast and exponential, uncertain and unpredictable, complex and ambiguous demanding new interpretation and imagination.
Yet too many business leaders hope that the strategies that made them successful in the past will continue to work in the future. They seek to keep stretching the old models in the hope that they will continue to see them through. Old business plans are tweaked each year, infrastructures are tested to breaking point, and people are asked to work harder.
In a way of dramatic, unpredictable change, this is not enough to survive, let alone thrive.
Growth is harder. Global GDP growth has declined by more than a third in the past decade. As the west stagnates, Asia grows, albeit more slowly.
Companies struggle, their average lifespan falling from 75 years in 1950 to 15 years today, 52% of the Fortune 500 in 2000 no longer exist in 2020.
Leaders are under pressure. 44% of today’s business leaders have held their position for at least 5 years, compared to 77% half a century ago.
Profit is no longer enough; people expect business to achieve more. Business cannot exist in isolation from the world around them, pursuing customers without care for the consequence. The old single-minded obsession with profits is too limiting. Business depends more than ever on its resources – people, communities, nature, partners – and will need to find a better way to embrace them.
Technology is no longer enough; innovation needs to be more human. Technology will automate and interpret reality, but it won’t empathise and imagine new futures. Ubiquitous technology-driven innovation quickly becomes commoditised, available from anywhere in the world, so we need to add value in new ways. The future is human, creative, and intuitive. People will matter more to business, not less.
Sustaining the environment is not enough. 200 years of industrialisation has stripped the planet of its ability to renew itself, and ultimately to sustain life. Business therefore needs to give back more than it takes. As inequality and distrust have grown in every society, traditional jobs are threatened by automation and stagnation, meaning that social issues will matter even more, both globally and locally.
The new DNA of business
As business leaders, our opportunity is to create a better business, one that is fit for the future, that can act in more innovative and responsible ways.
How can we harness the potential of this relentless and disruptive change, harness the talents of people and the possibilities of technology? How can business, with all its power and resources, be a platform for change, and a force for good?
We need to find new codes to succeed. We need to find new ways to work, to recognise business as a system that be virtuous, where less can be more, and growth can go beyond the old limits. This demands that we make new connections:
Profit + Purpose … to achieve more enlightened progress
Technology + Humanity … to achieve more human ingenuity
Innovation + Sustainability … to achieve more positive impact
We need to create a new framework for business, a better business – to reimagine why and redesign how we work, as well as reinvent what and refocus where we do business.
Imagine a future business that looks forwards not back, that rises up to shape the future on its own terms, making sense of change to find new possibilities, inspiring people with vision and optimism. Imagine a future that inspires progress, seeks new sources of growth, embraces networks and partners to go further, and enables people to achieve more.
Imagine too, a future business that creates new opportunity spaces, by connecting novel ideas and untapped needs, creatively responding to new customer agendas. Imagine a future business that disrupts the disruptors, where large companies have the vision and courage to reimagine themselves and compete as equals to fast and entrepreneurial start-ups.
Imagine a future business that embraces humanity, searches for better ideas, that fuse technology and people in more enlightened ways, to solve the big problems of society, and improve everyone’s lives. Imagine a future business that works collectively, self-organises to thrive without hierarchy, connects with partners in rich ecosystems, designs jobs around people, to do inspiring work.
Imagine also, a future business which is continually transforming, that thrives by learning better and faster, develops a rich portfolio of business ideas and innovations to sustain growth and progress. Imagine a future business that creates positive impact on the world, benefits all stakeholders with a circular model of value creation, that addresses negatives, and creates a net positive impact for society.
Creating a better business is an opportunity for every person who works inside or alongside it. It is not just a noble calling, to do something better for the world, but also a practical calling, a way to overcome the many limits of today, and attain future success for you and your business.You could call it the dawn of a new capitalism.
More from Peter Fisk linked to these sessions
Next Agenda of best ideas and priorities for business
Incredible technologies and geopolitical shifts, complex markets and stagnating growth, demanding customers and disruptive entrepreneurs, environmental crisis and social distrust, unexpected shocks and uncertain futures.
How do you make sense of today’s rapidly changing world? How will you succeed in tomorrow’s world?
We explore how businesses can survive and thrive, and move forwards to create a better future. How to reimagine strategy, to reinvent markets, to reenergise people. We consider what it means to combine meaningful purpose with superior profits, intelligent technologies with creative people, radical innovation with sustainable impact.
We learn from the innovative strategies of incredible companies – Alibaba and Amazon, Biontech and BlackRock, Narayana and Netflix, Patagonia and PingAn, Spotify and Supercell, and many more.
Creating a better future
The old codes of business don’t work anymore. The most innovative companies – from Amazon and Bytedance, to Coupang and Deepmind – succeed with new codes. So what are the new ideas to win in a fast and dynamic world of Asian renaissance, entrepreneurial supremacy, social conscience and smarter machines? What can you learn from Jio’s revolution from petrochemicals to phones, and DBS’s transformation of banking? How can you be inspired by courageous leaders like 23andMe’s Anne Wojcicki, Haier’s Zhang Ruimin and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser?
Examples of topics explored, accelerating moonshot ideas and impacts:
Markets and Megatrends
Every market is shaken up, the big shifts, challenges and opportunities
Asia to AI, GenZ and gene-editing, carbon and wellbeing, and the super-apps
Disruptive technologies, society and environment, disrupt or be disrupted
The 6 megatrends shaping futures, and what they mean for me
Creating purposeful futures
Exploring the biggest challenges, and how business can be a force for good
Creating an inspiring purpose and direction for your business
Linking purpose to vision, mission, strategies, goals and operations
Framing your business to look beyond industry boundaries
Unlocking profitable growth
Developing strategic plans from the future back, and then now forward
Understanding customers and consumers, new agendas and behaviours
Innovative strategies for driving and accelerating (green) growth
Building dual portfolios to exploit today, and explore tomorrow
Powering strategic innovation
Driving strategic innovation, connecting insights and ideas, and moonshots
Sustainable innovation to embrace social and environmental issues
Exploring new business models, their diversity and implications
Innovating in more entrepreneurial ways, experimental and venture ways
Being a transformational leader
What does it take to lead in markets of relentless change and uncertainty?
The changing role of leaders, what you do uniquely, and what others do
Developing a transformational approach to your business and leadership
Being curious, creative and courageous to create a better future.
We live in a time of great promise but also great uncertainty.
Markets are more crowded, competition is intense, customer aspirations are constantly fuelled by new innovations and dreams. Technology disrupts every industry, from banking to construction, entertainment to healthcare. It drives new possibilities and solutions, but also speed and complexity, uncertainty and fear.
As digital and physical worlds fuse to augment how we live and work, AI and robotics enhance but also challenge our capabilities, whilst ubiquitous supercomputing, genetic editing and self-driving cars take us further.
Technologies with the power to help us leap forwards in unimaginable ways. To transform business, to solve our big problems, to drive radical innovation, to accelerate growth and achieve progress socially and environmentally too.
We are likely to see more change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years.
Markets accelerate, 4 times faster than 20 years ago, based on the accelerating speed of innovation and diminishing lifecycles of products.
People are more capable, 825 times more connected than 20 years ago, with access to education, unlimited knowledge, tools to create anything.
Consumer attitudes change, 78% of young people choose brands that do good, they reject corporate jobs, and see the world with the lens of gamers.
However, change goes far beyond the technology.
Markets will transform, converge and evolve faster. From old town Ann Arbor to the rejuvenated Bilbao, today’s megacities like Chennai and the future Saudi tech city of Neom, economic power will continue to shift. China has risen to the top of the new global business order, whilst India and eventually Africa will follow.
Industrialisation challenges the natural equilibrium of our planet’s resources. Today’s climate crisis is the result of our progress, and our problem to solve. Globalisation challenges our old notions of nationhood and locality. Migration changes where we call home. Religious values compete with social values, economic priorities conflict with social priorities. Living standards improve but inequality grows.
Our current economic system is stretched to its limit. Global shocks, such as the global pandemic of 2020, exposes its fragility. We open our eyes to realise that we weren’t prepared for different futures, and that our drive for efficiency has left us unable to cope. Such crises will become more frequent, as change and disruption accelerate.
However, these shocks are more likely to accelerate change in business, rather than stifle it, to wake us up to the real impacts of our changing world – to the urgency of action, to the need to think and act more dramatically.
The old codes don’t work
Business is not fit for the future. Most organisations were designed for stable and predictable worlds, where the future evolves as planned, markets are definitive, and choices are clear.
The future isn’t like it used to be.
Dynamic markets are, by definition, turbulent. Whilst economic cycles have typically followed a pattern of peaks and troughs every 10-15 years, these will likely become more frequent. Change is fast and exponential, uncertain and unpredictable, complex and ambiguous demanding new interpretation and imagination.
Yet too many business leaders hope that the strategies that made them successful in the past will continue to work in the future. They seek to keep stretching the old models in the hope that they will continue to see them through. Old business plans are tweaked each year, infrastructures are tested to breaking point, and people are asked to work harder.
In a way of dramatic, unpredictable change, this is not enough to survive, let alone thrive.
Growth is harder. Global GDP growth has declined by more than a third in the past decade. As the west stagnates, Asia grows, albeit more slowly.
Companies struggle, their average lifespan falling from 75 years in 1950 to 15 years today, 52% of the Fortune 500 in 2000 no longer exist in 2020.
Leaders are under pressure. 44% of today’s business leaders have held their position for at least 5 years, compared to 77% half a century ago.
Profit is no longer enough; people expect business to achieve more. Business cannot exist in isolation from the world around them, pursuing customers without care for the consequence. The old single-minded obsession with profits is too limiting. Business depends more than ever on its resources – people, communities, nature, partners – and will need to find a better way to embrace them.
Technology is no longer enough; innovation needs to be more human. Technology will automate and interpret reality, but it won’t empathise and imagine new futures. Ubiquitous technology-driven innovation quickly becomes commoditised, available from anywhere in the world, so we need to add value in new ways. The future is human, creative, and intuitive. People will matter more to business, not less.
Sustaining the environment is not enough. 200 years of industrialisation has stripped the planet of its ability to renew itself, and ultimately to sustain life. Business therefore needs to give back more than it takes. As inequality and distrust have grown in every society, traditional jobs are threatened by automation and stagnation, meaning that social issues will matter even more, both globally and locally.
The new DNA of business
As business leaders, our opportunity is to create a better business, one that is fit for the future, that can act in more innovative and responsible ways.
How can we harness the potential of this relentless and disruptive change, harness the talents of people and the possibilities of technology? How can business, with all its power and resources, be a platform for change, and a force for good?
We need to find new codes to succeed. We need to find new ways to work, to recognise business as a system that be virtuous, where less can be more, and growth can go beyond the old limits. This demands that we make new connections:
Profit + Purpose … to achieve more enlightened progress
Technology + Humanity … to achieve more human ingenuity
Innovation + Sustainability … to achieve more positive impact
We need to create a new framework for business, a better business – to reimagine why and redesign how we work, as well as reinvent what and refocus where we do business.
Imagine a future business that looks forwards not back, that rises up to shape the future on its own terms, making sense of change to find new possibilities, inspiring people with vision and optimism. Imagine a future that inspires progress, seeks new sources of growth, embraces networks and partners to go further, and enables people to achieve more.
Imagine too, a future business that creates new opportunity spaces, by connecting novel ideas and untapped needs, creatively responding to new customer agendas. Imagine a future business that disrupts the disruptors, where large companies have the vision and courage to reimagine themselves and compete as equals to fast and entrepreneurial start-ups.
Imagine a future business that embraces humanity, searches for better ideas, that fuse technology and people in more enlightened ways, to solve the big problems of society, and improve everyone’s lives. Imagine a future business that works collectively, self-organises to thrive without hierarchy, connects with partners in rich ecosystems, designs jobs around people, to do inspiring work.
Imagine also, a future business which is continually transforming, that thrives by learning better and faster, develops a rich portfolio of business ideas and innovations to sustain growth and progress. Imagine a future business that creates positive impact on the world, benefits all stakeholders with a circular model of value creation, that addresses negatives, and creates a net positive impact for society.
Creating a better business is an opportunity for every person who works inside or alongside it. It is not just a noble calling, to do something better for the world, but also a practical calling, a way to overcome the many limits of today, and attain future success for you and your business.You could call it the dawn of a new capitalism.
More from Peter Fisk linked to these sessions
Next Agenda of best ideas and priorities for business
Incredible technologies and geopolitical shifts, complex markets and stagnating growth, demanding customers and disruptive entrepreneurs, environmental crisis and social distrust, unexpected shocks and uncertain futures.
How do you make sense of today’s rapidly changing world? How will you succeed in tomorrow’s world?
We explore how businesses can survive and thrive, and move forwards to create a better future. How to reimagine strategy, to reinvent markets, to reenergise people. We consider what it means to combine meaningful purpose with superior profits, intelligent technologies with creative people, radical innovation with sustainable impact.
We learn from the innovative strategies of incredible companies – Alibaba and Amazon, Biontech and BlackRock, Narayana and Netflix, Patagonia and PingAn, Spotify and Supercell, and many more.
Creating a better future
The old codes of business don’t work anymore. The most innovative companies – from Amazon and Bytedance, to Coupang and Deepmind – succeed with new codes. So what are the new ideas to win in a fast and dynamic world of Asian renaissance, entrepreneurial supremacy, social conscience and smarter machines? What can you learn from Jio’s revolution from petrochemicals to phones, and DBS’s transformation of banking? How can you be inspired by courageous leaders like 23andMe’s Anne Wojcicki, Haier’s Zhang Ruimin and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser?
Examples of topics explored, accelerating moonshot ideas and impacts:
Markets and Megatrends
Every market is shaken up, the big shifts, challenges and opportunities
Asia to AI, GenZ and gene-editing, carbon and wellbeing, and the super-apps
Disruptive technologies, society and environment, disrupt or be disrupted
The 6 megatrends shaping futures, and what they mean for me
Creating purposeful futures
Exploring the biggest challenges, and how business can be a force for good
Creating an inspiring purpose and direction for your business
Linking purpose to vision, mission, strategies, goals and operations
Framing your business to look beyond industry boundaries
Unlocking profitable growth
Developing strategic plans from the future back, and then now forward
Understanding customers and consumers, new agendas and behaviours
Innovative strategies for driving and accelerating (green) growth
Building dual portfolios to exploit today, and explore tomorrow
Powering strategic innovation
Driving strategic innovation, connecting insights and ideas, and moonshots
Sustainable innovation to embrace social and environmental issues
Exploring new business models, their diversity and implications
Innovating in more entrepreneurial ways, experimental and venture ways
Being a transformational leader
What does it take to lead in markets of relentless change and uncertainty?
The changing role of leaders, what you do uniquely, and what others do
Developing a transformational approach to your business and leadership
Being curious, creative and courageous to create a better future.
We live in a time of great promise but also great uncertainty.
Markets are more crowded, competition is intense, customer aspirations are constantly fuelled by new innovations and dreams. Technology disrupts every industry, from banking to construction, entertainment to healthcare. It drives new possibilities and solutions, but also speed and complexity, uncertainty and fear.
As digital and physical worlds fuse to augment how we live and work, AI and robotics enhance but also challenge our capabilities, whilst ubiquitous supercomputing, genetic editing and self-driving cars take us further.
Technologies with the power to help us leap forwards in unimaginable ways. To transform business, to solve our big problems, to drive radical innovation, to accelerate growth and achieve progress socially and environmentally too.
We are likely to see more change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years.
Markets accelerate, 4 times faster than 20 years ago, based on the accelerating speed of innovation and diminishing lifecycles of products.
People are more capable, 825 times more connected than 20 years ago, with access to education, unlimited knowledge, tools to create anything.
Consumer attitudes change, 78% of young people choose brands that do good, they reject corporate jobs, and see the world with the lens of gamers.
However, change goes far beyond the technology.
Markets will transform, converge and evolve faster. From old town Ann Arbor to the rejuvenated Bilbao, today’s megacities like Chennai and the future Saudi tech city of Neom, economic power will continue to shift. China has risen to the top of the new global business order, whilst India and eventually Africa will follow.
Industrialisation challenges the natural equilibrium of our planet’s resources. Today’s climate crisis is the result of our progress, and our problem to solve. Globalisation challenges our old notions of nationhood and locality. Migration changes where we call home. Religious values compete with social values, economic priorities conflict with social priorities. Living standards improve but inequality grows.
Our current economic system is stretched to its limit. Global shocks, such as the global pandemic of 2020, exposes its fragility. We open our eyes to realise that we weren’t prepared for different futures, and that our drive for efficiency has left us unable to cope. Such crises will become more frequent, as change and disruption accelerate.
However, these shocks are more likely to accelerate change in business, rather than stifle it, to wake us up to the real impacts of our changing world – to the urgency of action, to the need to think and act more dramatically.
The old codes don’t work
Business is not fit for the future. Most organisations were designed for stable and predictable worlds, where the future evolves as planned, markets are definitive, and choices are clear.
The future isn’t like it used to be.
Dynamic markets are, by definition, turbulent. Whilst economic cycles have typically followed a pattern of peaks and troughs every 10-15 years, these will likely become more frequent. Change is fast and exponential, uncertain and unpredictable, complex and ambiguous demanding new interpretation and imagination.
Yet too many business leaders hope that the strategies that made them successful in the past will continue to work in the future. They seek to keep stretching the old models in the hope that they will continue to see them through. Old business plans are tweaked each year, infrastructures are tested to breaking point, and people are asked to work harder.
In a way of dramatic, unpredictable change, this is not enough to survive, let alone thrive.
Growth is harder. Global GDP growth has declined by more than a third in the past decade. As the west stagnates, Asia grows, albeit more slowly.
Companies struggle, their average lifespan falling from 75 years in 1950 to 15 years today, 52% of the Fortune 500 in 2000 no longer exist in 2020.
Leaders are under pressure. 44% of today’s business leaders have held their position for at least 5 years, compared to 77% half a century ago.
Profit is no longer enough; people expect business to achieve more. Business cannot exist in isolation from the world around them, pursuing customers without care for the consequence. The old single-minded obsession with profits is too limiting. Business depends more than ever on its resources – people, communities, nature, partners – and will need to find a better way to embrace them.
Technology is no longer enough; innovation needs to be more human. Technology will automate and interpret reality, but it won’t empathise and imagine new futures. Ubiquitous technology-driven innovation quickly becomes commoditised, available from anywhere in the world, so we need to add value in new ways. The future is human, creative, and intuitive. People will matter more to business, not less.
Sustaining the environment is not enough. 200 years of industrialisation has stripped the planet of its ability to renew itself, and ultimately to sustain life. Business therefore needs to give back more than it takes. As inequality and distrust have grown in every society, traditional jobs are threatened by automation and stagnation, meaning that social issues will matter even more, both globally and locally.
The new DNA of business
As business leaders, our opportunity is to create a better business, one that is fit for the future, that can act in more innovative and responsible ways.
How can we harness the potential of this relentless and disruptive change, harness the talents of people and the possibilities of technology? How can business, with all its power and resources, be a platform for change, and a force for good?
We need to find new codes to succeed. We need to find new ways to work, to recognise business as a system that be virtuous, where less can be more, and growth can go beyond the old limits. This demands that we make new connections:
Profit + Purpose … to achieve more enlightened progress
Technology + Humanity … to achieve more human ingenuity
Innovation + Sustainability … to achieve more positive impact
We need to create a new framework for business, a better business – to reimagine why and redesign how we work, as well as reinvent what and refocus where we do business.
Imagine a future business that looks forwards not back, that rises up to shape the future on its own terms, making sense of change to find new possibilities, inspiring people with vision and optimism. Imagine a future that inspires progress, seeks new sources of growth, embraces networks and partners to go further, and enables people to achieve more.
Imagine too, a future business that creates new opportunity spaces, by connecting novel ideas and untapped needs, creatively responding to new customer agendas. Imagine a future business that disrupts the disruptors, where large companies have the vision and courage to reimagine themselves and compete as equals to fast and entrepreneurial start-ups.
Imagine a future business that embraces humanity, searches for better ideas, that fuse technology and people in more enlightened ways, to solve the big problems of society, and improve everyone’s lives. Imagine a future business that works collectively, self-organises to thrive without hierarchy, connects with partners in rich ecosystems, designs jobs around people, to do inspiring work.
Imagine also, a future business which is continually transforming, that thrives by learning better and faster, develops a rich portfolio of business ideas and innovations to sustain growth and progress. Imagine a future business that creates positive impact on the world, benefits all stakeholders with a circular model of value creation, that addresses negatives, and creates a net positive impact for society.
Creating a better business is an opportunity for every person who works inside or alongside it. It is not just a noble calling, to do something better for the world, but also a practical calling, a way to overcome the many limits of today, and attain future success for you and your business.You could call it the dawn of a new capitalism.
More from Peter Fisk linked to these sessions
Next Agenda of best ideas and priorities for business
