Peter Fisk

Traditionally, cyber security software relies on reinforcing the perimeter of the network and applying rules or signatures that identify known threats.

Darktrace’s Enterprise Immune System uses AI algorithms to automatically detect and take action against cyberthreats within all types of network, including physical, cloud and virtualised, as well as internet of things and industrial control systems.

Modelled on the human immune system, it uses unsupervised machine learning and AI to detect threatening deviations from those considered ‘normal’, without relying on prior assumptions. Its technology then creates digital ‘antibodies’ to automatically fight back.

Darktrace was founded by a group of mathematicians from the University of Cambridge, and a group of government intelligence experts. It has raised over $100m (£76.6m) in funding to date, and the system has been deployed over 2,400 times across 64 countries worldwide and detected over 30,000 in-progress attacks.

Customers span all industries including financial services, healthcare, legal, retail, government and transportation.

Indonesia-based innovation catalyst Padang & Co works with businesses and governments, helping them to connect, create and innovate. In February this year it partnered with Unilever to launch Level3, a co-working space within Unilever’s Singapore headquarters, bringing the company together with startups and entrepreneurs to encourage innovation and create new partnerships.

Padang & Co was born out of social enterprise and technology company Newton Circus, founded by entrepreneur Daryl Arnold together with consultant, investor and entrepreneur Adam Lyle and Derrick Chiang, formerly a director at Newton Circus.

The self-funded company was incorporated at the start of 2014 to consolidate its open innovation activities, including the management of UP Singapore, an ‘urban prototyping’ community that encourages people to come together to solve issues affecting cities. Its initiatives include startup matching, hackathons and cloud-enabled challenges, designed to stimulate meaningful and effective outcomes for business and society.

Padang & Co has been growing over 50% year on year since inception.

LEVEL3 is an initiative of the Unilever Foundry and Padang & Co. Connected to Unilever’s regional headquarters, it is a new workspace that supports Singapore’s emerging startup ecosystem and entrepreneur community to create and connect to real business opportunities. It’s the first of its kind in corporate innovation.

LEVEL3 will be a vibrant and inspiring coworking and event space. This is where some of the most interesting startups with leading-edge technologies and business models come to work with the world’s biggest and most innovative companies.

LEVEL3 will open in January 2017. We are on the lookout for startups and enterpreneurs in Singapore and the region to join LEVEL3 as members. Get in touch if you are pioneering the future in marketing and AdTech, enterprise tech (analytics, IoT, etc.), product and ingredient tech and consumer insights. LEVEL3 is also perfect for those inventing new business models or making an impact through social entrepreneurship.

At the launch of LEVEL3 … Speakers (in order): Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever, Derrick Chiang, CEO of Padang & Co and Dr Beh Swan Gin, Chairman of EDB.

Founded in 2013, ZhongAn has rapidly shaken up the insurance market in China, with radically unusual policies targeted at younger consumers.

One such policy covered people for self-inflicted alcohol poisoning if they got drunk while watching football during the 2014 World Cup. Another pays out for delayed flights while customers are still in the airport, sending them electronic vouchers so they can occupy their time by shopping.

The online-only brand, founded by Alibaba’s executive chairman Jack Ma, Tencent’s chairman Pony Ma and Ping An Insurance, already has over half a billion customers holding more than seven billion policies and is likely to opt for an initial public offering in mainland China this year.

In November 2016, ZhongAn launched its own internal incubator focusing on an ‘ABCD’ strategy of artificial intelligence, Blockchain, cloud computing, and data, aiming to develop new technologies for itself and its partners.

Extract from Wall Street Journal, November 2016

Medical insurance often becomes invalid if the customer is drunk. But during the football World Cup in 2014, Shanghai-based Zhongan Insurance turned that rule upside down by offering Chinese football fans a policy specifically for self-inflicted liver damage.

It cost less than $1 and covered sports enthusiasts against alcohol poisoning for 30 days — paying out up to Rmb2,000 ($290) for hospital fees. It soon came to be known as “watching-football-drinking-too-much” insurance.

This has not been Zhongan’s only foray into more specialist areas of China’s insurance market. Another of its policies, called “high heat”, reimburses customers when the temperature hits 37°C. Another insures against flight delays — and, in many cases, pays out while the customer is still waiting in the departure lounge.

But while such products might seem niche, the company behind them is anything but. From a standing start three years ago, it has sold 5.8bn policies to 460m customers. This has quickly translated into profit. Zhongan went from making a loss in 2013 to posting Rmb168m in net profit two years later. Total assets jumped more than 500 per cent between 2014 and 2015, to Rmb8bn.

Now backed by Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba, internet group Tencent and financial conglomerate Ping An, Zhongan is often cited as a candidate for an initial public offering.

Wayne Xu, chief operating officer, does not dispute the often light-hearted nature of some of its products — admitting that some are simply designed to “make people feel better”.

The flight-delay insurance product gives customers digital coupons on their smartphones that they can redeem while still in the airport. “It gives them a reason to walk around while they wait for their flight,” Mr Xu explains. He sees this as a radical approach in an industry that has long struggled to attract young people.

All three investors have already collected user data across vast swaths of China’s internet, through online merchants, messaging applications and bank accounts. Now, when Zhongan underwrites its retail credit insurance products, it can tap into the personal credit scoring databases of the three Chinese internet groups — giving it one of the broadest views of credit data of any company in the country.

To continue the push, Zhongan has prioritised recruiting staff with tech, rather than insurance, backgrounds. “None of us have been working at an insurance company before this,” notes Mr Xu, formerly a product manager at Google.

Henri Arslanian, an adjunct associate professor at the University of Hong Kong who teaches financial technology, says he regards Zhongan as “a technology company that happens to focus on insurance, rather than an insurance firm that is looking at digital as simply another distribution channel”.

Alibaba has acted as the channel through which the majority of Zhongan’s products have been sold, and the insurer’s flagship policy is return shipping insurance for goods sold on Taobao — Alibaba’s online shopping platform. Zhongan’s policies reimburse the cost of shipping when a shopper returns a product.

Last year, on the Chinese shopping holiday known as Singles Day, which falls on November 11, the group sold more than 100m return shipping policies in a single day.

Zhongan is finding it has competition in the market for offbeat insurance policies. TongJuBao already sells specialist policies to cover for the cost of divorce lawyers and for search teams to look for missing children. It also sells insurance that offers income protection for people who leave their jobs to move to a different city.

Launching offbeat policies does not always go smoothly. Zhongan discontinued its product for heavy drinking football fans for an undisclosed reason, and China’s insurance regulator has since issued warnings about companies selling “exotic” insurance.

Some analysts also question the long-term viability of Zhongan’s other policies. It has several hundred low-cost niche products, from drone insurance to policies that cover cracked mobile phone screens and cost only a few renminbi. On these, customer uptake is likely to be slow, the analysts claim.

“We hear that they have many teams developing many different kinds of products but the volume on individual products is still very low,” says Li Jian, a Hong Kong-based insurance analyst at Autonomous Research. “If you don’t have scale the costs will go up.”

A pure online insurance operation also has its limits. Motor insurance is one of the fastest growing categories of property and casualty insurance in China today. But the business requires insurers to have big claims teams that can visit accident sites.

Lacking those capabilities, Zhongan has instead focused almost entirely on niche motoring policies, covering tyres and other individual parts — missing out on covering bigger ticket items, says Stella Ng, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Moody’s.

“Given an operating history of three years, with limited track record of good underwriting profitability, we still believe it remains to be tested over time,” Ms Ng warns.

Extract from Bitcoin News, November 2016

China’s First Online Insurance Firm Initiates the ‘ABCD Plan’

ZhongAn Online Property & Casualty Insurance was China’s first online insurance company. Partners Ant Financial, Tencent, and Ping An founded it in 2013. Now the service has over 460 million customers and 5.8 billion policies under its management. Then in the summer of 2015, it raised 5.78 billion yuan ($931.3 million USD).

The company is now focusing on its “ABCD plan” which aims to harness AI, blockchain, cloud management, and data-driven applications. Soon, the ZhongAn Technology subsidiary will launch its services using the blockchain cloud platform.

“With the creation of ZhongAn Technology, we are developing a new fintech ecosystem, integrating technological research with financial innovation,” said Xing Jiang, ZhongAn’s CTO and chairman. “We aim to be an accelerator for both finance and healthcare sectors.”

Jin Chen, Chief Executive Officer of ZhongAn, said as an internet-based company the firm has created its own ecosystem, tailored to clients. So far, the company has formed two pillars with its customer base: a “connector and a stabilizer.” Now Chen says ZhongAn’s third pillar will be at the forefront of accelerating financial technology, amplifying its benefits to become a “commercial driving force.”

ZhongAn Technology’s Blockchain-Based Open Platform

ZhongAn said the company has already been researching and developing an open blockchain platform. ZhongAn created its blockchain protocol to enable insurance transactions and cushion the growth of its insurance ecosystem. Moreover, the company says the secure platform provides connections between business partners and data of operations within a distributed ledger.

“The open technological platform has much lower technical doorsill and threshold in development and maintenance, reducing barriers to business cooperation, and improving operation efficiency,” the company stated.

ZhongAn Technology and twenty like-minded business partners will create a collaborative alliance. Members include representatives from financial institutions, insurance, construction & decoration, consumer finance, logistics, payment, security, healthcare, and retail services. The group has already established the Shanghai Blockchain Enterprise Development Alliance. The group says it is dedicated to promoting blockchain-focused research and development in China.

ZhongAn’s Blockchain Utilizes The Ethereum Protocol

ZhongAn’s website gives a lot of descriptions of the various use cases its blockchain protocol will offer. The Chinese online insurance firm uses the Ethereum blockchain for its operations.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin said he’s pleased to see ZhongAn implement the technology he helped create.

“ZhongAn Technology has integrated our technology to build an open platform and the Chinese insurance industry is actively exploring the applications of blockchain technology,” he said. “I hope that more and more Chinese companies can tap into this field and help develop this new area.”

In addition to the blockchain alliance and multiple R&D projects, the company is partnering with Fudan University School of Computer Sciences and Technology. The organizations will also develop a “blockchain and information security laboratory.”

The Babylon Health app lets users book face-to-face consultations with doctors via a smartphone or desktop computer. They can also check symptoms using artificial intelligence (AI), ask medical questions, monitor overall health indicators (including pulse, stress and blood pressure), carry out health tests and keep clinical records in one password protected, secure location.

“The majority of digital healthcare companies simply connect people to doctors through a mobile phone. Our next-generation app will harness the powers of AI and machine learning to not only prevent ill health, but also predict it and intervene when necessary,” says Dr Ali Parsa, CEO and founder of Babylon.

Prior to Babylon, Parsa founded Circle, Europe’s largest partnership of clinicians with £200m of revenue, 3,000 employees and a successful IPO. Babylon currently has more than one million downloads, 800,000 registered users worldwide and is free to 220,000 employees on benefit schemes at 120 companies.

How it works

With the intuitive design that makes it even easier to get medical advice than ever before, you can now chat to babylon and get 24/7 medical advice on your symptoms or health queries. Anywhere, any time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMD6B8h6Pzg&t=24s

It’s easier than ever to book an appointment with a doctor. Babylon enables you to talk to a doctor via live video chat straight through the babylon app, and all from the comfort of your own home, office or hotel, wherever you are in the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLOeTEVJB8c

Babylon GPs prescribe the medications you need to get you healthy, and keep you healthy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCI4AKr5SsM

Babylon also offers an easy and affordable way to talk to a fully-qualified therapist, wherever you feel the most comfortable. The babylon app covers a wide range of mental health conditions including stress, anxiety and depression:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlUjqdsU518

Dr Ali Parsa, CEO, Babylon Health, London, United Kingdom, discusses the Babylon health app which allows patients to get a virtual appointment with a qualified doctor on their mobile phone.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, lifestyle underwear brand MeUndies was launched in 2011 by graduate Jonathan Shokrian with $400,000 (£311,000) of startup funds raised from friends, family and angel investors. His aim was to produce the world’s most comfortable and sustainable underwear that is quick and easy to buy online.

MeUndies also taps into the growing desire for responsible manufacturing. Products are made from a carbon-neutral process that converts sustainably harvested beechwood pulp into fibres, while capturing excess chemicals. They are manufactured in Los Angeles, Sri Lanka and Turkey.

MeUndies offers a subscription service too, which claims to save customers 33% a month. Consumers select their style, size and plan (‘classic’, ‘bold’ or ‘adventurous’) and receive their order automatically each month.

The company is on track to sell five million units in 2017. Subscribers are located in 37 countries worldwide and account for around 25% of MeUndies’ overall business, which grew by 188% year on year to October 2016.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm6Tkgywbyg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpAea3ejpUM

The Meet Cute is a RomCommentary on how online dating services are changing the way people meet, for better or for worse. So often in a new relationship you are asked, “So how did you two meet?”, and if that answer is “Online”, would you tell the truth?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpW1VEh2kmk

Jonathan Shokrian, founder of y MeUndies is obsessed about designing, marketing, and photographing the best panties. The MeUndies founder talks about his first gig listing products on Ebay, pursuing his entrepreneurial vision, and his biggest piece of advice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc_1k6biMRQ

Watt himself is known for explosive, bombastic proclamations in the press: His press releases include “F**k the rules” announcing the launch of his new business book and an update on BrewDog’s crowdfunding campaign that quotes him as saying: “We’ve not just broken a record, we’ve smashed through it with a monster truck”.

But in person, when we meet to discuss his new entrepreneurial advice book “Business for Punks,” Watt is softly spoken, cheery, and pretty harmless. The closest he gets to swearing is saying “balls.”

Beer for Punks

“I just wanted to outline our off-the-wall, slightly anarchic approach to business so other people could see what we’ve done and realise that you don’t have to do what you’re supposed to do, you don’t have to follow the status quo, and you can do things on your own terms,” he says, explaining his motivation for writing the book.

“Before I set up the business I was captain of a fishing boat. I’d never done a business before, I’d never been involved in business. We didn’t know how things were meant to be done so we went ahead and did things on our own terms, in our own way, and almost inadvertently created a whole new approach to business along the way.”

BrewDog was one of the first breweries in Britain to pioneer a new wave of hoppy, American-style “craft” beers and its Punk IPA is one of the most popular and recognisable brands of British craft beer.

Watt and co-founder Martin Dickie became two of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs in recent years, building a network of bars across the UK, and and then looking across the world.

Watt likes to talk up his “anarchic” approach and chapters of his book include “Finance for visionary renegades,” “Marketing for postmodern dystopian puppets,” and “Sales for postmodern apocalyptic punks.”

But look past the flowery language and the advice in the book is pretty level-headed stuff — keep an eye on the bottom line, know your customers, and make sure staff are happy.

“The startup phase, finance, the bit about staff, company culture, finding time — all these things can apply to almost anyone in any business,” he says.

While Watt may not have run a business before BrewDog, but he’s clearly been keeping an eye on things, pointing to Apple, Zappos, and Danish restaurant Noma as good businesses based around a “cause” in the book.

BrewDog’s passion is good beer. Watt says: “As a company we focus on two things — our beer and our people. We have done some sort of high-octane, risky, edgy, marketing things but they’ve all been done to increase peoples’ awareness and understanding of good beer.”

But how “risky”, “edgy”, and “anarchic” is BrewDog these days? It’s beer is stocked in huge supermarkets like Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Waitrose.

“Our mission is to make other people as passionate about great beer as we are and we can’t do that if we don’t have the means to get the beer into people’s hands,” Watt says. “We’re about getting people excited about beer and do to that we need to get beer to market by any means possible.”

Equity for punks

BrewDog pioneered the idea of equity crowdfunding in the UK, launching its first “Equity for Punks” campaign on its website in 2009.

Watt recommends crowdfunding to entrepreneurs, saying: “We love the Equity for Punks model. We’ve now raised over £20 million ($30.5 million), we’ve got a community of over 14,000 Equity for Punks investors who are advocates, who are ambassadors, who are principally linked to our business.

“We just love the fact that our business is owned by people who love fantastic beer as much as we do.”

The money BrewDog raises is going to be put towards everything from expanding its network of bars to opening a beer-themed hotel in Scotland and breaking into the “craft” spirits business. But BrewDog is still, and always will be, a beer company, Watt says.

“I don’t think it is more than just beer,” he tells me. “The hotel tacks on to the hospitality side of our business and we’re not looking to open a chain of hotels, we’re just looking to open one hotel up in the north east of Scotland.”

He adds: “I think the spirits tacks on nicely if you look at people like [US craft breweries] Anchor Brewing, Dogfish Head, Rogue, New Holland. With a beer, we’re more than 50% there to making a fantastic tasting spirit and we just want to do some more experimentation in that space. But the company is very, very much about beer.”

Watt says he and co-founder Martin Dickie would never sell the business to one of the big brewing conglomerates.

That’s not to say we wouldn’t exit at some point but there’s no plans at the moment,” he says, “and if we did, instead of selling to a bigger company, it would be a management buyout or to release some more equity to our Equity for Punk holders.”

But then it all went wrong.

In 2020, BrewDog became the world’s first carbon-negative beer company and one year later, the company received its BCorp certification but also came under scrutiny after some employees accused the company of having a toxic work culture. BrewDog responded with an independent culture review and lots of new actions, for example, the creation of an Employee Representative Group.

A new start. A new blueprint.

In 2022, BrewDog released its new BrewDog Blueprint offering a nice glimpse into their new business practices and plans.

It was reported that the company received more than 1,000 job applications in the 10 days after the publication of the blueprint.

Here are some of the initiatives driven by the new blueprint:

People Blueprint

Employee-Ownership Programme

“Our Hop Stock programme will ensure that we are all in this together as we build the future of BrewDog.”

• Founder James Watt is giving away 5% of his BrewDog stake (worth around £100m) to its employees.
• This means, 3.7m shares in BrewDog will be distributed evenly amongst all employees with each team member receiving approximately £30,000 per year in shares over the next 4 years.

Profit-Sharing

“We want to create a radically new business model for hospitality – one that firmly puts the people who make the real difference in our bars, those who look after our customers every day, at the very core of what we do.”

• Each BrewDog Bar is going to share 50% of its profits evenly with team members.
• Profit share allocation is based on hours worked – so General Managers and bar crew share in the profits in the same way.
• Financial details will be shared fully transparent with all team members, every month

Alumni Club

“With the BrewDog Alumni Club we want to formally recognise the contribution that all of our former team members have made and also thank them for their efforts.”

• Free to join alumni club for all former team members.
• Benefits include amongst others a lifetime discount of 10% in all bars and on the online shop, a free 12 pack of beer every December and an invite to a yearly alumni social event

Sabbatical

• Employees get 4 weeks full paid leave – beyond their normal holiday allocation for every 5 years of service.

Salary Cap

• No-one can join the company for a salary higher than 7x of what the lowest full-time salary at Brewdog is.

Mental Health First Aiders

• By the end of 2022, 10% of Brewdog staff will be qualified as mental health first aiders.
• A monthly wellbeing lab covers topics from men’s mental health to menopause.

DEI Forum

• A crew-led Diversity, Equity and Inclusion forum meets weekly to drive actions within the company.

Planet Blueprint

Carbon Negative Business

“We believe that our carbon is our problem.”

• In August 2020, BrewDog became the world’s first carbon negative beer business. The company removes twice as much carbon from the air as they emit, every single year.
• BrewDog bought 9,308 acres in the Scottish highlands that will be restored and rewilded (including peatland restoration and native tree planting). The land is capable of pulling up to 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
• The project was developed in partnership with independent sustainability expert Prof. Mike Berners-Lee.

Carbon Reduction Strategy

“When we count our carbon, we count all of it; this includes all direct emissions which occur at our breweries and bars, the emissions from the electricity we purchase, as well as the emissions of our entire upstream and downstream supply chain, globally.”

• Brewdog invests close to £50m to reduce their environmental impact. Their carbon footprint has already been reduced by 20% vs its 2019 baseline, with a 35% reduction being the target for 2023.
• How?
  • A Bioplant was commissioned that will recycle and reuse most of the company’s wastewater. The plant will also generate green gas to power the brewery and delivery trucks.
  • CO2 recovery by capturing the CO2 produced by the bioplant and during beer fermentation is planned.
  • All of BrewDog’s UK business is already wind-powered, and all other global businesses purchase green electricity. Some, like BrewDog’s Australian brewery is solar-power driven.
  • BrewDog is in the process of swapping out all of the company’s delivery vehicles to low-carbon powered alternatives.
  • At BrewDog bars it’s also all about switching to eco-friendly consumables, building local brewing sites to shorten the supply chain, reducing waste, carbon footprint labeling, and 50% vegan and veggie menus, amongst other things.

While it hasn’t been an easy ride, Brewdog is back, still popular, still growing. But seeking to balance its irreverent style with a more responsible one too.

Business for Punks

Watt’s book Business for Punks bottles the essence of Brewdog an accessible, honest mani­festo, including mantras like

• Cash is motherf*cking king … Cash is the lifeblood of your company. Monitor every penny as if your life depends on it—because it does.
• Get people to hate you … You won’t win by try­ing to make everyone happy, so don’t bother. Let haters fuel your fire while you focus on your hard-core fans.
• Steal and bastardise from other fields … Take inspiration freely wherever you find it— except from people in your own industry.
• Job interviews suck … They never reveal if someone will be a good employee, only how good that person is at interviews. Instead, take them for a test drive and see if they’re passionate and a good culture fit.

Here is a longer list of the best moments and messages from the book, delivered in typically provocative yet inspiring style:

• At BrewDog we reject the status quo, we are passionate, we don’t give a damn and we always do something which is true to ourselves. Our approach has been anti-authoritarian and non-conformist from the word go.
• Ultimately for a crew to be effective leadership needs to come from the top down, the bottom up and everywhere in between.
• Michael Jackson led to Martin and I deciding to take the plunge, follow our dreams and start our very own craft brewery. Michael, upon tasting one of our home-brewed concoctions, told us to quit our jobs and start brewing beer. It was the last bit of advice we ever listened to.
• Rip up those stuffy old text books, reject the status quo, tear down the establishment and embrace the dawn of a new era.
• The decisions you make during your business’s formative months will define your place in the world. They will be the most monumental decisions you will ever make, shaping your fledgling business in ways you cannot yet imagine. So you’d better buckle up, hold tight and step up to the challenge. You will need to make sure your ideas, and their realization, are nothing short of awesome.
• Businesses fail. Businesses die. Businesses fade into oblivion. Revolutions never die. So start a revolution, not a business.
• Your biggest challenge from day one is to give people a reason to care, and that reason has got to be your mission.
• The market for something to believe in is infinite. You need to give people something to believe in.
• If money is your motivation then you need to be the greediest, meanest son of a bitch on the planet to make a business work. Solely money-focused businesses do exist, but I don’t like being around them or their people.
• Assume no one will care, assume no one will give a damn, assume no one will want to listen. Then figure out how to make people want to care about what you do. If you can’t, then your business is doomed.

• Twenty-first-century consumers increasingly want to align themselves with companies and organizations whose missions and beliefs are compatible with, and enhance, their own belief systems.
• Advice is for freaks and clowns. The thing about being driven is you need to know your own way.
• The only thing you learn from mistakes is that you are not good enough and that you need to get better.
• Don’t follow when you can lead.
• Be a selfish bastard. Seriously, you have to be. If you’re not 110% up for it, no one else is going to give a damn. So dance to your own tune and do it your way. Make crafted products you love, create environments you want to hang out in and give the kind of service you’d love to receive yourself.
• Choose a business partner as wisely as you would choose a spouse.
• The power of any brand is inversely proportional to its scope.
• Planning is merely glorified guesswork. Long-term planning is a vain, self-indulgent fantasy. Don’t waste your time.
• Act, don’t plan.
• Constraints are just advantages in disguise and opportunities to be innovative and imaginative. Cherish constraints. Embrace them.
• Be very wary of external agencies and partners. They all speak a good game and promise the earth but at the end of the day they have no reason to care as much as you.
• Living the punk DIY ethic means not relying on existing systems, processes or advisers as this would foster dependence on the system.
• You need to be an independent, an outsider, a nomad, a libertine. You need to be completely self-sufficient and not rely on anyone for anything. If a skill set is important to your business, then you better learn it and learn it fast.
• You need to create pull to be sustainable. And you don’t create pull through sales.
• Everything you do is sales and all of your employees are selling all the time. Act accordingly.
• Pretty much all you need to do for people to hate you is to be successful doing something that you love.
• When you manage to get the Holy Grail of other businesses copying you, whilst others are hating you, you know you have hit a home run.
• Eighty per cent of all new businesses fail. And they always fail for financial reasons. The more you understand the numbers the less likely they are to crush you and your dreams.
• Comfort zones are places where average people do mediocre things. If you are even the tiniest bit comfortable then you need to push harder.
• The lifeblood of your business is cash. If you can’t manage a cash flow, then you can’t run a business.
• Spend every last dime as if it actually was your last and ensure that your team spend every single cent as if it were their own.
• It was about empowering the change-makers, the misfits, the libertines, the community, the frustrated, the independents, the punks. Together we can, and will, change anything.
• There is a huge difference between making a sale and actually being paid for that sale.
• If you price down you down-sell everything, and there’s no going back.
• You need to defend your price point like a junkyard Rottweiler.
• The best way to decide how to allocate your cash and resources is to fully comprehend the opportunity-cost implications of every possible decision you could make in any situation.
• Everything you and your business does is marketing. Modern brands don’t belong to companies, they belong to the customer.
• Anything that you do, anywhere in your business, which is not completely aligned with your mission and your values is like a tiny little suicide.
• Today the only way to build a brand is to live that brand. People want to feel like they are buying into something bigger than themselves. Your brand must give them that opportunity.
• For a stunt to really work then it needs to be intrinsically linked to your mission and you already need to have a really strong following and a credible brand.
• Whatever type of business you are in you need to start building a community and start turning customers into fans.
• The biggest mistake you can make is actually caring what people think. To hell with opinions, conventions and consequences. It is all just a game.
• We hate bad beer so much that we are on a permanent campaign to destroy as much of it as we possibly can.
• Chasing someone else’s perception of cool is one of the stupidest mistakes it is possible to make.
• Having a target market and explicitly marketing to them is a sure-fire way to patronize and alienate pretty much all of the intelligent population.
• There are only three very simple things you need to know about sales.
  • Focus on the product.
  • Be open and honest.
  • Don’t compete on price.
• Sales are merely the by-product of being great elsewhere.
• If you can’t get your staff to fall in love with your business, you haven’t got a chance in hell of a customer to even consider liking it.
• Any great business today is built on these simple yet enduring and all encapsulating pillars. The three pillars are:
  • Company culture
  • The quality of your core offering
  • Gross margin
• Studies show that employees working in a company with a strong company culture are more than twice as effective as employees working in a company with a weak culture.
• The things that apply to your business externally are just as important, if not even more so, inside it.
• People mimic the behavior and beliefs of their leaders so make sure that you, and the people leading your business, live and breathe the behavior you want to perpetuate.
• It isn’t enough for people to know what their business is doing. They have to know why it is doing it.
• Companies need to wise up and max out. Smart companies realize, rather than minimizing wages, it is infinitely more productive and profitable in the long term to look to maximize engagement, loyalty, retention and productivity.
• Culture has to be a priority from the get-go and it has to start with the founders and then flow from the early employees.
• Working on your company culture is actually a much more effective form of marketing than pretty much all traditional marketing mediums combined. Culture is marketing. Culture is brand. Culture now resonates much more with consumers than advertising does.
• We have two simple rules for hiring:
  • They have to be as passionate about our mission as we are.
  • They have to be the right cultural fit.
• If you want your team to really rumble you’ll need to recognize their efforts. Explicitly and frequently. Leave your heartfelt praise and encouragement ringing in their ears and the impact can be off the charts.
• Unless you add amazing people to your team, you are going to spend a hell of a lot of time trying to get average people to consistently make great decisions.
• Teams tend to operate at, or close to, the ability level of the weakest team member.
• Whatever happens, good, bad or ugly, it is a direct consequence of your leadership.
• Leaders are rare inspirational beings. Managers are ten a penny; the world is full of adequately competent middle managers trapped in corporate hell.
• Work harder, think smarter and focus with laser-like efficiency.
• At BrewDog we have a fifty-fifty rule for our five directors. I and the other four people who lead our business are only allowed to spend half of our time working on the day-to-day operations of the company, on solving current challenges and dealing with existing issues and we have to spend at least half of our time working on ways to improve, grow and develop our business, on ways to drive us towards our next phase of growth.
• Look for inspiration everywhere. The only place you should never look is within your own industry. Screw what all the other clowns are doing. Ignore it, blank it out; it is of no relevance or significance whatsoever.
• Comfort zones are places where average people do mediocre things.
• You will not always get it right. But every time you move, every time you make a bold decision, it will take you one step closer to finding the path you are searching for.
• Your actions will determine your destiny.
• The more action you take, the more opportunities open themselves up to you.
• Your team should be governed by your values and your culture and not by policies and rules.
• Keep the team as well informed as possible so they can buy into the excitement of what the business is both planning and currently achieving, both of which act as a great motivator.
• Put systems in place before, as opposed to after, they are needed and put an infrastructure in place for where you want to be in two years’ time.
• Write down your five biggest problems, sit down in a room with your team, and solve them. Then on to the next five.
• Attitude is the difference between a setback and an adventure.
• So whilst the fools, rats and wannabes are massaging each other’s egos you need to be plotting your revenge. Not on them specifically, but on the system that bred such morons. You need to be quietly planning how to blow the status quo to pieces and create a whole new world order.
• You should always imagine the communication from the other party’s perspective. Put thought into what you say and how you say it.
• Don’t shout too often, so that you can make sure it truly counts when you want to roar.
• It is paramount you track at least ten of the most important performance indicators of your business monthly.
• When it comes to your management accounts you should definitely be tracking sales, cost of sales, overheads, gross margin, EBITDA and net margin. You will also need to monitor items on your balance sheet at regular and short intervals, such as debtors, creditors and, most importantly, your cash position. In addition you should track certain other KPIs (key performance indicators), depending on what is important in your business and your current focus. For instance, you should consider tracking things like: average spend per transaction, staff turnover, customer complaints, referrals, shipment accuracy, sales mix, refunds, wastage, sales growth, additional customers, online engagement or staff happiness (to name but a few). In determining which items you need to keep close tabs on it really depends on your business and your objectives.
• No measurement = no reporting = no visibility = no one cares = your ultimate demise.
• Always do your negotiation homework. Find out about the other party, what makes them tick, their likes and dislikes. Ultimately think about what’s in it for them. Then build your argument around how the deal helps them, because at the end of the day they care much more about what is in their interests than yours.
• Find a solution, structure and deal they feel comfortable with, and positive about. But one that is ultimately engineered around what you want.
• You need to provide the vision, strategy and tools to help your team achieve your goals.
• Whatever goals you’ve set, you should have a list of pint-sized systems, things which you rigorously adhere to without fail, that if consistently applied will help ensure you both achieve your goals and strengthen your brand and company in the long run too.
• Committees are breeding grounds for compromise as the tyranny of conformity rules the roost. Conformity is no place for risk and compromise is no place for innovation.
• Individual vision is always the force behind truly remarkable ideas and concepts.

& Other Stories was an instant hit when it was launched by H&M in 2013. It started out with seven stores – in Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Milan, Paris and Stockholm – and now has over 50 stores  in 13 countries.

The brand concept emerged from an internal H&M plan to launch a premium beauty brand. Sara Hildén-Bengtsson, together with colleagues Samuel Fernström, Karin Nordström and Helena Carlberg, pitched an alternative idea to create a beauty, fashion and accessories brand with a creative feel – an atelier that would allow women to curate their own personal style. Prices would sit somewhere between H&M and Cos’s and collections include staple items such as striped t-shirts and silk blouses alongside patterned dresses and trainers from Nike and Adidas.

“Everyone was talking about personal style and street style photography – this is 2010, so Instagram didn’t even exist back then,” says Hildén-Bengtsson. “We went back to our decision makers and said ‘we think we should do something about personal style’.”

The business was hesitant at first. “They said, ‘It looks exactly the same as H&M – you say you’re going to do beauty and shoes and ready to wear and accessories’ and we said ‘we know, but it will be founded in 2013 so believe us, it’s going to be different’. They said, ‘OK, let’s do it’ and that’s how it all got started,” she continues.

“Then we were only five people working with the project and I must say, I think the H&M group was really brave to start new brands and do new developments like this. They dare to do new things. Of course, they have the muscles as well, but I think they’re very exciting in that way.”

Hildén-Bengtsson studied graphic design and advertising at Sweden’s Forsbergs Skola and communications at the Royal College of Art. She joined the H&M group’s special projects team in 2007 after working at Neville Brody Associates and on creative projects for Kenzo and Liberty.

As creative director of the new concept, she worked with a small team to establish the brand’s tone of voice and its visual identity. From the outset, it has always felt more like a boutique label than a global brand owned by one of the world’s biggest retailers. Indeed its creative team operates independently from the H&M group, there is no clue of parentage in the store, and everything from photoshoots to clothing and creative campaigns are conceived in-house. The team occasionally collaborates with external agencies (it worked with Made Thought to create packaging) but oversees all of the brand’s creative output.

“We all talked about the fact that we are happiest when we are in the studio working and that is where everything gets done – from the collections to the packaging for the beauty, all the art direction, photo shoots, everything is happening with the studio and everything is fitting together,” says Hildén-Bengtsson.

“It’s almost like going back to the Royal College in a way with all of the different fields working together … there’s a lot of different disciplines and they all need to work together to make the brand as coherent as possible, and I think that’s the beauty of it. That’s kind of the heart of the whole story [and] the idea of the atelier needed to be reflected within the store. If you go into & Other Stories, it should feel almost like a pop-up shop. It has that creative vibe to it, you have that feeling of, ‘I’ve just been to a creative space’…. The online shop obviously needed to reflect that, so it’s almost like a digital mood board that you go to for inspiration.”

& Other Stories launches a handful of new collections each season. Each collection or ‘story’ is inspired by a different city and showcased in films and photo stories on its website and social channels. The brand regularly launches ‘co-labs’ with creatives and retailers – it has created capsule collections with Rodarte and singer Lykke Li as well as shoe brand Toms and Central Saint Martins graduate Sadie Williams. The choice of collaborators is diverse and often surprising.

“We did a collaboration with Sadie Williams when she was almost straight out of  Central Saint Martins – we just thought her degree show was fantastic – so it has been collaborations at all kinds of levels,” says Hildén-Bengtsson.

The brand also aims to continually surprise audiences with its advertising and celebrate individuals with their own distinct style. The lack of diversity remains a major issue in fashion but & Other Stories has been more inclusive than most when it comes to campaigns: for AW15 it launched a campaign starring trans models Hari Nef and Valentijn de Hingh and shot by trans photographer Amos Mac. The following year, it launched a Valentine’s Day campaign featuring a same sex couple and in 2014, teamed up with nonagenarian style icon Iris Apfel.

The brand’s films range from stop-motion shorts to a humorous tale directed by Wendy McColm and starring French model Jeanne Damas. The film pokes fun at the way women are often represented in fashion films with Damas presented as a self-indulgent bohemian. It also teamed up with Lena Dunham to create a short promoting a co-lab by designer Rachel Antonoff.

& Other Stories’ success is based not just on its clothes and unexpected collaborations but the attention to detail that runs through every aspect of the customer experience – from packaging to store design. In store, a pop-up feel is created with concrete floors, exposed lighting and clothes displayed on moveable racks and shelving units. “We have got good feedback from people saying that they felt when they went into the store, you could see there was a lot of love put into everything that was done,” says Hildén-Bengtsson.

The brand’s stripped back website features some lovely imagery and its Instagram feed offers a behind-the-scenes look at the atelier as well as close-ups of store displays and product shots. It also regrams customers’ posts, creating a feed with a personal, intimate feel. It produces bespoke content for different platforms but the same aesthetic and tone of voice runs throughout all of & Other Stories’ communications.

“I think customers don’t always remember or care about if they’ve seen something on Instagram or on Facebook or in a store … they just see that as the brand voice coming out and I just think it’s so important for everything to be as coherent as possible,” says Hildén-Bengtsson.

“That doesn’t mean that everything has to be exactly the same, but it should feel like it’s the same brand and the same voice coming through, so you feel that you trust the brand and you feel love for it or you feel excited about it – that you have some kind of connection to that brand. I hope that’s what we were able to create with & Other Stories.”

After six years at & Other Stories, Hildén-Bengtsson has left the brand to set up a new creative studio, Open. “I love the startup phase. I’m that kind of person that loves creating concepts and new brands,” she says. “I stayed for almost seven years. That’s a long time for someone who has this type of mindset but that’s because I’m totally in love with the brand and all the fantastic people that work with it so for me, I needed to be challenged again, and scared and thrilled and so on.”

As Hildén-Bengtsson notes, the retail experience has changed dramatically in the past few years. Brands are being more creative online – whether through their use of social media or creating more dynamic websites – but now face the challenge of enticing customers into physical stores when it’s often quicker and easier to shop online. The shops that are thriving are those who can offer something extra – whether it’s in-store stylists and beauty bars or florists and cafes. “I think we’re going to see a boom in the whole experience design or communication [design] in stores because they need to find their reason for being,” she says.

Online or off, the key to engaging with consumers is of course, devising compelling experiences that feel genuine and distinctive. “I think you have to be really good at storytelling – telling your story, why you exist on the market, what you are selling and why customers should choose to love this brand instead of another,” says Hildén-Bengtsson.

“There is so much information and so much going on now that people are very clever and they will only connect with things that are real so I think that’s the lesson now – to really tell all the great things that you do with the brand and why you’re doing them and how you do it and be clear in your communications.”

In the beginning, it was “Let’s disrupt the mattress industry. It’s broken.” That quickly morphed into “Let’s invent an industry around sleep” … Co-founder and COO Neil Parikh’s father is a sleep doctor, and he went to a year of medical school. The mattress industry was a mess. You walk into a store expecting a confusing experience, but you don’t expect the 35 models offered to be basically the same product with different labels. It’s worse than buying a used car–at least there you have data points like horsepower, air conditioning, and a Carfax report. But who knows how many springs are good for you?

Parikh retells the story: “After eight months of testing hundreds of mattress types, we learned that people need similar things, like back support, so we decided to make one mattress. Memory foam is super supportive, but it gets hot and it’s not very bouncy, so we added a layer of open-cell latex foam, which keeps you cool and adds just the right bounce. We’re the first company to put memory foam and latex together and have a patent pending.

Luke Sherwin, Casper’s chief creative officer and one of our co-founders, and I lived in a fourth-floor walkup and realized there was no way to get a queen-size bed up our stairs easily. We said, “What if we could compress a mattress to fit into a box the size of a dorm refrigerator?” This way, we can deliver it via UPS so it costs us a 10th of the price to ship. Plus, people can test the mattress in their homes. You have 100 days to try our mattress. If you don’t like it, we’ll come get it for free. Now, a few companies do this, but not long ago most stores required a several-hundred-dollar restocking fee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYcYcig7-As

Early on, a couple made a YouTube video about how our bed wasn’t exactly right for them but the experience was amazing. That is the goal. Those customers are still going to talk positively about our company and might even buy our sheets and pillows. Our return rate is low, and we try to donate those mattresses to a local charity, which is more cost-effective than taking them back halfway across the country to refurbish and resell.

People usually buy a mattress about every eight to 10 years. Most companies don’t care who you are–they’ve made their sale. For us, that’s the start of a long-term relationship. Half of our customers talk to someone in-house. The questions are technical, as in “Do I need a box spring?” (No.) “Does it work on this type of bed frame?” (Yes.) We use every conversation to learn something about the customer. We know how long you’ve had your bed, and if you have kids or a pet. We keep track of all that, and then send people anniversary gifts, or dog beds. It’s not about just selling you a bed. It’s “How do I make this person our biggest advocate?”

Casper Labs came from that customer database. We have 15,000 customers who are part of our product-development process. They come to events, and test prototypes. Many are obsessive about sleep. They send us sleep tracker data and say, “I tested this product versus this one, and here’s what I found.” That process has helped us build a group of evangelists.

We consider ourselves a tech company first. We’ve created software that lets us know exactly where our raw materials and mattress components are and how to forecast what and when to build. If the UPS truck is delayed, we can reach out to the customer and say, “Hey, we’ve been tracking your order and noticed something has gone awry.” If you’ve bought a mattress, instead of having to find your order number, our customer-care expert knows who you are without even asking.

By selling directly to customers, we don’t have the same cost structure. We thought about how much we needed to spend on the materials as well as service and returns. There’s a psychological barrier around $1,000, and most people spend $500 on their first bed. We had to be affordable enough so they could feel that they could reach up.

There are many more ways to create an ideal sleep environment. The day after we launched, we started working on pillows and sheets. We questioned how both are produced and then made prototypes. We tried 100 different densities of materials for pillows, including buckwheat, and had cus­tomers try many of them. It took 16 months to come up with one pillow that works for everyone. We did a similar process with our sheets and found most people want them to breathe well and last a long time. We’ve been taught to believe that 1,000-thread-count hotel collection sheets are what everyone wants. It turns out, the more threads, the more filler fiber, which means the sheets are going to sleep really hot. Our perfect balance is 90 threads one way, 110 the other. We haven’t decided what the next product is. Customers have asked for everything from lights to sleep trackers. But we do know the category is enormous.

Whole Foods helped shape the healthy-foods movement. We want to do the same for sleep.

While still small, direct-to-consumer mattress startups like Casper are keeping the sleep giants up at night. Mattress Firm, which in November announced it would acquire Sleepy’s, making it the largest U.S. mattress chain, has launched an online bed-in-a-box arm called Dream Bed, and it’s not the only incumbent to pull a copycat move. Given that in 2014 some 35 million people bought mattresses in just the U.S., many potential converts remain.

Momondo’s vision is of a world where our differences are a source of inspiration and development, not intolerance and prejudice. Its purpose is to give courage and encourage each one of us to stay curious and be open-minded so we can all enjoy a better, more diversified world.

To do this, the search engine has focused on rich, inspiring, human content. Telling great stories of people and their adventures across the world, inspiring people to “stay curious”, to explore and go further. In 2016, this content became remarkable with a project exploring how connected we all are to the world. At a time of social polarisation across the world, it reminded people that we are all citizens of the world.

The “DNA Journey” video campaign has been viewed more than 28 million times on their Facebook page, viewed more than five million times on their YouTube channel, shared more than 600,000 times globally and commented on by thousands of people from all over the world. 169,631 people entered our The DNA Journey competition with the hope of winning their very own DNA Journey (the competition is now closed).  

What is the purpose of The DNA Journey?

The purpose of The DNA Journey campaign is to show that we, as people, have more things uniting us than dividing us. The DNA Journey is part of momondo’s overall vision of a more open and tolerant world. You can read more about momondo’s vision and ongoing activities here: letsopenourworld.com.

How were the participants found?

As is the case with many campaign films, we employed casting agencies to help us find participants. Specifically, we used two agencies. These two agencies sourced participants via their extras databases, their own networks and via online forums. In the process of selecting the participants, momondo was presented with their ethnicity and family history only.

The casting agencies filmed 67 people talking about themselves and where they come from for 10 minutes each. After this, they were asked to take a saliva DNA test. Based on these results, together with the participants’ personal stories, we selected 16 for the shoot in Copenhagen. The criteria we looked at were their ancestry, their perception of themselves and the world, and if there was a surprise element in their DNA results.

Are there actors in the video?

The participants of The DNA Journey appear in their own name and receive their own DNA results. Neither their occupation nor their educational background had any bearing upon their selection.

Participants came from all walks of life and all kinds of occupations. Examples of the participants’ occupations are: secretary, dog trainer, actor, account manager and model. We did not carry out specific research into what kind of profession the participants had – or have had – as they would be appearing as themselves.

However, because of the great interest in the participants’ possible acting experience, we have since investigated how many have more or less experience acting or appearing as extras before. This applies to 10 of the participants. The only professional actress purposely cast was the role of the female interviewer. The background audience was bolstered with extras whom we did not DNA test.

Were the film’s participants told how to react to their DNA tests?

The participants in the film were not cast to act, and what they say in the film are their own words and thoughts. They were interviewed about their personal relationship to their ancestry and nationality, and later shown the result of the DNA analysis that was made a few weeks earlier.

Before the reveal of the DNA results, the contestants were very excited about their results and we talked with them about the fact that they were welcome to express this in the film. The participants were not directed individually in how to react or what to say about their DNA results.

Did the participants receive payment for their appearance?

As is normal practice in the production of an advertisement, participants were paid for both their appearance and rights.

How was the advertisement shot?

The campaign film was shot in a music venue, Vega, in Copenhagen from April 6th to April 8th 2016. While an intertitle in the film states, “Two weeks later”, all of the participants carried out their DNA test before the shoot. This is a modification we made for the sake of storytelling. Similarly, the spitting scenes were shot when the entire crew was together in Copenhagen for logistical reasons. During the shoot, participants were first interviewed about their views on their own nationality and other nations, and then presented with the results of their DNA test.

Were there any retakes in the film?

Yes. When a campaign film is shot, there can be multiple reasons for retakes, such as problems with the sound, an unclear image, people mumbling or the lighting being wrong. The important thing for us was to capture the spontaneous reactions when participants saw their DNA results for the first time. The participants only opened the envelope once and the film contains the reactions from that take. This is also why we used four cameras to ensure that we captured the reaction on film.

Is the story about two participants being related real?

Yes, the story is real and they were both overwhelmed when they found each other. We think it is a good story and they both shared it with their families after the shoot. The two participants are distant cousins. When you test your DNA with AncestryDNA, our partner for this campaign, you can check whether or not there are any distant cousins registered in AncestryDNA’s database. It was a pure coincidence that two out of the 67 people tested were related.

Who conducted the DNA tests in the film?

AncestryDNA carried out the tests. In the test you learn about your DNA based on 26 regions worldwide. AncestryDNA gives ethnicity estimates that map back to broad geographical regions, often including one or more countries.

AncestryDNA was able to provide each participant with a more detailed DNA map than the average taker of their DNA test, because the participant selection process had provided them with a greater understanding of each participant’s family history, surname and ancestral background.

How have the participants felt since the film was shot?

Many people have asked what reactions the participants have had since the shoot. Here are three participants’ testimonials.

‘Thank you so much for the amazing opportunity to be a part of your project. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I am so grateful to have lived that experience, grateful for the way it changed me and how it is shaping my work as an artist today. Grateful for the journey into myself and for seeing others uncovering their beautiful journeys while carrying a bit of my own. I feel invincible, ageless and ready to face what the future holds.’

‘It was a profoundly emotional experience, and made me question who I am and who I thought I was. My family and friends were inspired by my journey, and loved the idea behind the campaign! Many of them are now desperate to undergo their own tests to discover their origins.’

‘I feel eager, impatient, excited, motivated, grateful, surprised, overwhelmed and filled with beautiful energy after the experience we’ve lived together in the studio.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G84LJ5wkYJo

The minibus crosses the vast plateau on a newly paved road. Cracked fields stretch away towards the Moroccan desert to the south. Yet the barren landscape is no longer quite as desolate as it once was. This year it became home to one of the world’s biggest solar power plants.

Hundreds of curved mirrors, each as big as a bus, are ranked in rows covering 1,400,000 sq m (15m sq ft) of desert, an area the size of 200 football fields. The massive complex sits on a sun-blasted site at the foot of the High Atlas mountains, 10km (6 miles) from Ouarzazate – a city nicknamed the door to the desert. With around 330 days of sunshine a year, it’s an ideal location.

As well as meeting domestic needs, Morocco hopes one day to export solar energy to Europe. This is a plant that could help define Africa’s – and the world’s – energy future.

Of course, on the day I visit the sky is covered in clouds. “No electricity will be produced today,“ says Rachid Bayed at the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (Masen), which is responsible for implementing the flagship project.

An occasional off day is not a concern, however. After many years of false starts, solar power is coming of age as countries in the sun finally embrace their most abundant source of clean energy. The Moroccan site is one of several across Africa and similar plants are being built in the Middle East – in Jordan, Dubai and Saudi Arabia. The falling cost of solar power has made it a viable alternative to oil even in the most oil-rich parts of the world.

Noor 1, the first phase of the Moroccan plant, has already surpassed expectations in terms of the amount of energy it has produced. It is an encouraging result in line with Morocco’s goal to reduce its fossil fuel bill by focusing on renewables while still meeting growing energy needs that are increasing by about 7% per year. Morocco’s stable government and economy has helped it secure funding: the European Union contributed 60% of the cost for the Ouarzazate project, for example.

The country plans to generate 14% of its energy from solar by 2020 and by adding other renewable sources like wind and water into the mix, it is aiming to produce 52% of its own energy by 2030. This puts Morocco more or less in line with countries like the UK, which wants to generate 30% of its electricity from renewables by the end of the decade, and the US, where President Obama set a target of 20% by 2030. (Trump has threatened to dump renewables, but his actions may not have a huge impact. Many policies are controlled by individual states and big companies have already started to switch to cleaner and cheaper alternatives.)

Due to the lack sun on the day I visit, the hundreds of mirrors stand still and silent. The team keeps a close eye on weather forecasts to predict output for the following day, allowing other sources of energy to take over when it is overcast.

But normally the reflectors can be heard as they move together to follow the Sun like a giant field of sunflowers. The mirrors focus the Sun’s energy onto a synthetic oil that flows through a network of pipes. Reaching temperatures up to 350C (662F), the hot oil is used to produce high-pressure water vapour that drives a turbine-powered generator. “It’s the same classic process used with fossil fuels, except that we are using the Sun’s heat as the source,” says Bayed.

The plant keeps generating energy after sunset, when electricity demands peak. Some of the day’s energy is stored in reservoirs of superhot molten salts made of sodium and potassium nitrates, which keeps production going for up to three hours. In the next phase of the plant, production will continue for up to eight hours after sunset.

As well as boosting Morocco’s power production, the Ouarzazate project is helping the local economy. Around 2,000 workers were hired during the initial two years of construction, many of them Moroccan. Roads built to provide access to the plant have also connected nearby villages, helping children get to school. Water brought in for the site has been piped beyond the complex, hooking up 33 villages to the water grid.

Masen has also helped farmers in the area by teaching them sustainable practices. Heading towards the mountains, I visit the Berber village of Asseghmou, 30 miles (48 kilometres) north of Ouarzazate, where a small farm has now changed the way it raises ewes. Most farmers here rely on their intuition alone but they are being introduced to more reliable techniques -such as simply separating animals in their pens – which are improving yields. Masen also provided 25 farms with sheep for breeding purposes. “I now have better food security,” says Chaoui, who runs a local farm. And his almond tree is thriving thanks to cultivation tips.

Even so, some locals have concerns. Abdellatif, who lives in the city of Zagora about 75 miles (120 kilometres) further south, where there are high rates of unemployment, thinks that the plant should focus on creating permanent jobs. He has friends who were hired to work there but they were only on contract for a few months. Once fully operational, the station will only require about 50 to 100 employees so the job boom may end. “The components of the plant are manufactured abroad but it would be better to produce them locally to generate ongoing work for residents,” he says.

A bigger issue is that the solar plant draws a massive amount of water for cleaning and cooling from the local El Mansour Eddahbi dam. In recent years, water scarcity has been a problem in the semi-desert region and there are water cuts. Agricultural land further south in the Draa valley depends on water from the dam, which is occasionally released into the otherwise-dry river. But Mustapha Sellam, the site manager, claims that the water used by the complex amounts to 0.5% of the dam’s supply, which is negligible compared to its capacity.

Still, the plant’s consumption is enough to make a difference to struggling farmers. So the plant is making improvements to reduce the amount of water it uses. Instead of relying on water to clean the mirrors, pressurised air is used. And whereas Noor 1 uses water to cool the steam produced by the generators, so that it can be turned back into water and reused to produce more electricity, a dry cooling system that uses air will be installed.

These new sections of the plant are currently being built. Noor 2 will be similar to the first phase, but Noor 3 will experiment with a different design. Instead of ranks of mirrors it will capture and store the Sun’s energy with a single large tower, which is thought to be more efficient.

Seven thousand flat mirrors surrounding the tower will all track and reflect the sun’s rays towards a receiver at the top, requiring much less space than existing arrangement of mirrors. Molten salts filling the interior of the tower will capture and store heat directly, doing away with the need for hot oil.

Similar systems are already used in South Africa, Spain and a few sites in the US, such as California’s Mojave desert and Nevada. But at 86ft (26m) tall, Ouarzazate’s recently erected structure is the highest of its kind in the world.

Other plants in Morocco are already underway. Next year construction will begin at two sites in the south-west, near Laayoune and Boujdour, with plants near Tata and Midelt to follow.

The success of these plants in Morocco – and those in South Africa – may encourage other African countries to turn to solar power. South Africa is already one of the world’s top 10 producers of solar power and Rwanda is home to east Africa’s first solar plant, which opened in 2014. Large plants are being planned for Ghana and Uganda.

Africa’s sunshine could eventually make the continent a supplier of energy to the rest of the world. Sellam has high hopes for Noor. “Our main goal is to become energy-independent but if one day we are producing a surplus we could supply other countries too,” he says. Imagine recharging your electric car in Berlin with electricity produced in Morocco.

With the clouds set to lift in Ouarzazate, Africa is busy planning for a sunny day.