From Amazon Dash to Aussie Farmers,  … through branded boutiques and online marketplaces, digital walls and mobile marketing, big data and personalised promotions … what is the future of retailing?

Online retail has grown rapidly over the last decade, from a marginal bolt-on, to major revenue stream in a multi-channel model. In the US, it has grown by around 18% per year, and now accounts for 8% of all sales. But digital is more that this, it is not just another way, but a fundamental capability that can enhance every channel. Search on your phone, buy online, pick up in store. Go to store, use your phone to buy, delivered to your home. Retail innovation is about hybrids, combing physical and digital activities and options in a more experiential and valuable way.

Retail purpose, formats and incentives all change – whilst loyalty cards originally drove behaviour through points, people soon became wise that the rewards were trivial compared to special offers in store. Whilst stores have enhanced their shopper experiences, markets have fragmented with more space for discounters. In Turkey for example, BIM has taken around 40% of the food market with low price, small outlets across cities. At the same time, online players have morphed into credible alternatives, where Amazon sells wines and eBay replaces physical outlet stores. More emotionally, technologies such as Synqera from Russia can “mind-read” a shoppers emotions, judging how to best engage them as they shop, and how to make them smile.

Big data, the huge quantitites of transacational data, mashed with other sources of personal and behavioural data through complex algorithms, means that marketing is highly personalised. Around 35% of all Amazon purchases and 75% of Netflix movie choices are based on recommendations. Of course these suggestions compete with the much more trusted recommmendations of friends and peers on social media, often valued around 10 times more highly than anything from a brand. A brand therefore needs to think laterally, about how to influence communities, and give them the abilities and incentives to influence each other. Consumers also become much less tolerant of failures, unavailable products or poor service, they expect free and easy returns, and they immediately tweet their feelings, particularly the negative ones, to thousands of people like them.

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You can explore more of the retailers driving innovative experiences online and physically (and most often in an integrated way) at FutureStore and also innovators in other sectors who are embracing retail as part of their changing business models and consumer experiences at Gamechangers. Also, here are the top retailers as featured in the 2018 World’s Most Innovative Companies rankings by Fast Company magazine:

Amazon … from clicks to bricks

24 years old, and now worth $940 billion, Amazon was initially known for selling books through its website (and later digital versions via its Kindle e-reader), Amazon has built up a customer service, inventory, and shipping empire that allows the site to offer everything from clothes to lawn furniture to janitorial supplies. It also sells digital content like movies, music, and apps. Its Amazon Web Services arm is a multibillion-dollar provider of cloud-based services for millions of business customers around the world, including government agencies and universities. And it’s a major player in consumer electronics–not only by offering devices such as Fire tablets and TV boxes, but also via its Alexa AI assistant service, which made news at the CES 2017 gadget show by being built into everything from LG refrigerators to Ford cars. In an interesting twist, Amazon has made significant investments in brick and mortar, opening its first bookstore in Seattle in late 2015 and since then expanding to 13 locations. In 2017, the company completed its acquisition of Whole Foods and in early 2018 opened an Amazon Go grocery store to the public at the company’s headquarters in Seattle.

Sephora … beauty studios get personal

Premium cosmetics retailer Sephora was founded in France in 1969, acquired by luxury conglomerate LVMH in 1996, and has evolved into one of the world’s most powerful beauty chains. While women had been accustomed to sampling products at department store beauty counters with the help of brand representatives, Sephora allowed women to test products on their own along the aisles of the store. This alternative model of product discovery has been very popular and has allowed the brand to scale globally. Sephora has invested heavily in its website that contains educational videos that teach customers how to use different products. The brand also has a popular loyalty program and a monthly subscription box that allows women to discover new products at home. In 2017, Sephora started rolling out small format boutiques that offer a more intimate shopping experience in neighborhoods. These will exist alongside its larger format stores in malls.

Brandless … the unbranded branding concept

Brandless launched in 2017 with a simple concept: An online retailer, selling its own line of nonperishable food and other household items, where every single product costs $3. Much like other direct to consumer startups such as Everlane and Warby Parker, Brandless wants to cut out the hidden middleman markups from many national brands found in grocery stores. Brandless also abides by its own set of values when manufacturing products. All food products are non-GMO and preservative free, for instance, while all beauty products are devoid of more than 400 harmful ingredients like parabens, phthalates, and sulfates. Founded by serial entrepreneurs Tina Sharkey and Ido Leffler, Brandless has so far garnered $50 million in funding and is set to grow quickly, providing consumers an alternative to Amazon.

Everlane … next generation clothing brand

Everlane launched in 2010 with a concept that was, until then, unheard of in the fashion industry. It would offer the customer a full breakdown of how much it cost to make each product, from the price of the raw materials and transportation to exactly how much of a markup Everlane would take. Millennial shoppers were very attracted to Everlane’s vision of radical transparency, and the brand has grown exponentially over the years. Founder and CEO Michael Preysman has taken the concept of transparency beyond price to offering customers a glimpse into the company’s supply chain, which is both ethical and environmentally sound. On the brand’s website, customers can get a glimpse into the factories where products are made and see photos of the workers making the garments. In 2017, five years after saying he would rather shut down Everlane than open a physical store, Preysman launched the brand’s first permanent brick and mortar location in New York. The brand will continue to roll out new locations around the country over the next few years, each equipped with a proprietary new point of sale system that will make the transition from shopping online to in-store more seamless for the customer.

Sugarfina … vodka-infused artisan treats

Sugarfina’s founders, couple Rosie O’Neill and Josh Resnick, have built a multimillion-dollar business on selling artisanal, high quality candies–often infused with alcohol like vodka and champagne–presented in clear, Instagrammable boxes, perfect for gifting. Founded in 2012, the store now has more than two dozen stores across the U.S. with more opening soon, with the infusion of $35 million in growth financing it received in late 2017. These stores, much like the candy boxes, are minimalistic and encourage customers to sample and savor the products, much like they would wine. The brand now frequently collaborates with artists like Gray Malin and brands like MeUndies to create “Candy Bento Boxes” with sweets and products.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=217HFLzlo_s

Alfred … AI-enabled personal concierge service

Founded in 2014, New York-based personal-concierge service company Alfred combines artificial intelligence with human assistants to create experiences that go beyond just picking up laundry or ordering groceries (though Alfred does that too). The Alfred platform works in conjunction with an app to provide customers with next-level services such as putting groceries away in the refrigerator and auto-ordering and restocking toilet paper. Alfred assistants also learn about customers’ usage habits, using that info to better inform the AI work. Meanwhile, Alfred has partnered with brands such as Diageo, Nestlé, and P&G to allow Alfred’s customers to test new products (and have the brands receive helpful feedback on beta goods). Available at various price points, Alfred is now focused on incorporating itself into more and more apartment buildings. In 2017, it signed a deal with major real estate company Related Companies, which added Alfred services to an additional 11,000 units while helping Related’s luxury buildings retain tenants.

Find out more

“FutureStore” is part of the Gamechangers project, exploring the future of retail, the fast-changing needs of consumers and the best new ideas from retailers across the world. You can explore FutureStore online with in-depth case studies, downloadable tools and videos, but also through keynotes, workshops and practical fast consulting support for your business. To think of new possibilities. To learn from the best ideas around the world, and even from other sectors. And by applying new approaches from design thinking to gamechanger strategies, new business models to lean innovation, consider how you can innovate and grow.

Here is an example of Peter Fisk’s retail keynote, which is always updated and customised to the audience and event:

http://www.slideshare.net/geniusworks/gamechangers-retail-growth-through-consumercentric-innovation

More about Gamechangers

More about FutureStore

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, said:

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Reed Hastings likes to say that a hundred million members is a good start, but ultimately he wants Netflix to entertain everyone. And that includes his employees too.

Whilst Netflix is admired across the world for its innovative business model that has transformed the world of entertainment – from the early days of videos and DVDs by mail, to a subscription-based, data-fuelled, personalised experience that is the envy of every industry – Netflix has been a market innovator. But inside, it realises it needs to innovate how it works, how people work and lead too, in order to deliver the external promise and sustain its market momentum.

“Entertainment, like friendship, is a core human need”, says Hastings. “It changes how we feel and gives us common ground. The invention of motion pictures 120 years ago, and then of television 70 years ago, were the first two entertainment revolutions. The third revolution is streaming, personalized any-screen anytime anyplace video, which allows Netflix to provide better entertainment at lower cost and greater scale than the world has ever seen.”

“Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility” has been called by Sheryl Sandberg as “the most important document ever to come out of the Valley.”

The book was developed by former chief talent officer , Patty McCord. “We [she and Hastings] had been at another company together, and we didn’t like how that company was when we left,” said McCord, who now works as a consultant and advises companies on leadership and culture. “It was like every other company.”

So, the two decided to start a different kind of company. Instead of listing the company’s core values like every other company was doing, McCord decide to write down the things the company valued, what mattered to them, what they expected in their people. For instance, if the company wanted courageous employees, they also wanted employees to know what “courage” looked like and what it didn’t look like.

The result is a document that demands self-sufficient employees who feel a responsibility to the company. There’s no vacation policy, a nonexistent travel policy, and no annual employee reviews. McCord says the culture is meant to only attract “fully formed adults.”

“If you look at an innovator’s mind, the innovator never says, ‘I know what we should do. We should look around and see what everyone else is doing and do it a smidge better,’” said McCord. “We just took risks with the people stuff, just like we took risks with the business.”

The Netflix Culture document defines “the unusual ways we work together so we can eventually entertain everyone” …

We are Netflix

Like many great companies, we strive to hire the best and we value integrity, excellence, respect, and collaboration. What is unique and special, though, about Netflix is how much we:

  • encourage independent decision-making by employees
  • share information openly, broadly, and deliberately
  • are extraordinarily candid with each other
  • keep only our highly effective people
  • avoid rules

Our core philosophy is people over process.

More specifically, we have great people working together as a dream team. With this approach, we are a more flexible, fun, inventive, stimulating, creative, and successful organization.

Specific Values

Many companies have value statements, but often these written values are vague and ignored. The real values of a firm are shown by who gets rewarded or let go. Below are our real values, the specific behaviors and skills we care about most. The more these sound like you, and describe people you want to work with, the more likely you will thrive at Netflix.

Judgment

  • You make wise decisions despite ambiguity
  • You identify root causes, and get beyond treating symptoms
  • You think strategically, and can articulate what you are, and are not, trying to do
  • You are good at using data to inform your intuition
  • You make decisions based on the long term, not near term

Communication

  • You are concise and articulate in speech and writing
  • You listen well and seek to understand before reacting
  • You maintain calm poise in stressful situations to draw out the clearest thinking
  • You adapt your communication style to work well with people from around the world who may not share your native language
  • You provide candid, timely feedback to colleagues

Curiosity

  • You learn rapidly and eagerly
  • You contribute effectively outside of your specialty
  • You make connections that others miss
  • You seek to understand our members around the world, and how we entertain them
  • You seek alternate perspectives

Innovation

  • You create new ideas that prove useful
  • You re-conceptualize issues to discover solutions to hard problems
  • You challenge prevailing assumptions, and suggest better approaches
  • You keep us nimble by minimizing complexity and finding time to simplify
  • You thrive on change

Courage

  • You say what you think, when it’s in the best interest of Netflix, even if it is uncomfortable
  • You are willing to be critical of the status quo
  • You make tough decisions without agonizing
  • You take smart risks and are open to possible failure
  • You question actions inconsistent with our values
  • You are able to be vulnerable, in search of truth

Passion

  • You inspire others with your thirst for excellence
  • You care intensely about our members and Netflix’s success
  • You are tenacious and optimistic
  • You are quietly confident and openly humble

Selflessness

  • You seek what is best for Netflix, rather than what is best for yourself or your group
  • You are open-minded in search of the best ideas
  • You make time to help colleagues
  • You share information openly and proactively

Inclusion

  • You collaborate effectively with people of diverse backgrounds and cultures
  • You nurture and embrace differing perspectives to make better decisions
  • You focus on talent and our values, rather than a person’s similarity to yourself
  • You are curious about how our different backgrounds affect us at work, rather than pretending they don’t affect us
  • You recognize we all have biases, and work to grow past them
  • You intervene if someone else is being marginalized

Integrity

  • You are known for candor, authenticity, transparency, and being non-political
  • You only say things about fellow employees that you say to their face
  • You admit mistakes freely and openly
  • You treat people with respect independent of their status or disagreement with you

Impact

  • You accomplish amazing amounts of important work
  • You demonstrate consistently strong performance so colleagues can rely upon you
  • You make your colleagues better
  • You focus on results over process

It’s easy to write admirable values; it’s harder to live them. In describing courage we say, “You question actions inconsistent with our values.” We want everyone to help each other live the values and hold each other responsible for being role models. It is a continuous aspirational process.

In describing integrity we say, “You only say things about fellow employees you say to their face.” This attribute is one of the hardest for new people to believe — and to learn to practice. In most situations, both social and work, those who consistently say what they really think about people are quickly isolated and banished. We work hard to get people to give each other professional, constructive feedback — up, down and across the organization — on a continual basis. People frequently ask others, “What could I be doing better?” and themselves, “What feedback have I not yet shared?”

We believe we will learn faster and be better if we can make giving and receiving feedback less stressful and a more normal part of work life. Feedback is a continuous part of how we communicate and work with one another versus an occasional formal exercise. We build trust by being selfless in giving feedback to our colleagues even if it is uncomfortable to do so. Feedback helps us to avoid sustained misunderstandings and the need for rules. Feedback is more easily exchanged if there is a strong underlying relationship and trust between people, which is part of why we invest time in developing those professional relationships. We celebrate the people who are very candid, especially to those in more powerful positions. We know this level of candor and feedback can be difficult for new hires and people in different parts of the world where direct feedback is uncommon. We actively help people learn how to do this at Netflix through coaching and modeling the behaviors we want to see in every employee.

Dream Team

A dream team1 is one in which all of your colleagues are extraordinary at what they do and are highly effective collaborators. The value and satisfaction of being on a dream team is tremendous. Our version of the great workplace is not comprised of sushi lunches, great gyms, big offices, or frequent parties. Our version of the great workplace is a dream team in pursuit of ambitious common goals, for which we spend heavily. It is on such a team that you learn the most, perform your best work, improve the fastest, and have the most fun.

To have an entire company comprise the dream team (rather than just a few small groups) is challenging. Unquestionably, we have to hire well. We also have to foster collaboration, support information sharing, and discourage politics. The unusual part is that we give adequate performers a generous severance package2, so that we can find a star for that position. If you think of a professional football team, it is up to the coach to ensure that every player on the field is amazing at their position, and plays very effectively with the others. We model ourselves on being a team, not a family. A family is about unconditional love, despite your siblings’ unusual behavior. A dream team is about pushing yourself to be the best teammate you can be, caring intensely about your teammates, and knowing that you may not be on the team forever.

We have no bell curves or rankings or quotas such as “cut the bottom 10% every year.” That would be detrimental to fostering collaboration, and is a simplistic, rules-based approach we would never support. We focus on managers’ judgment through the “keeper test” for each of their people: if one of the members of the team was thinking of leaving for another firm, would the manager try hard to keep them from leaving? Those that do not pass the keeper test (i.e. their manager would not fight to keep them) are promptly and respectfully given a generous severance package so we can find someone for that position that makes us an even better dream team. Getting cut from our team is very disappointing, but there is no shame. Being on a dream team can be the thrill of a professional lifetime.

Given our dream team orientation, it is very important that managers communicate frequently with each of their team members about where they stand so surprises are rare. Also, it is safe for any employee at any time to check in with their manager by asking, “How hard would you work to change my mind if I were thinking of leaving?” In the tension between honesty and kindness, we lean into honesty. No matter how honest, though, we treat people with respect.

One might assume that with dream team focus, people are afraid of making mistakes. In fact, it’s the opposite. We try all kinds of things and make plenty of mistakes as we search for improvement. The keeper test is applied as a judgment of someone’s overall expected contribution.

Within a dream team, collaboration and trust work well because your colleagues are both exceptionally skilled at what they do, and at working well with others. In describing selflessness we say “You make time to help colleagues. You share information openly and proactively.” We want new colleagues to feel very welcome and get all the support they need to be effective.

Some people ask about loyalty. Loyalty is great as a stabilizer. Employees with a strong track record at Netflix get leeway if their performance takes a temporary dip. Similarly, we ask employees to stick with Netflix through any short term dips. But unconditional allegiance to a shrinking firm, or to an adequately performing employee, is not what we are about.

On a dream team, there are no “brilliant jerks.” The cost to teamwork is just too high. Our view is that brilliant people are also capable of decent human interactions, and we insist upon that. When highly capable people work together in a collaborative context, they inspire each other to be more creative, more productive and ultimately more successful as a team than they could be as a collection of individuals.

Succeeding on a dream team is about being effective, not about working hard. Sustained “B” performance, despite an “A” for effort, gets a respectful generous severance package. Sustained “A” performance, regardless of level of effort, gets rewarded. Of course, to be great, most of us have to put in considerable effort, but hard work is not how we measure effectiveness.

Being on a dream team is not right for everyone, and that is OK. Many people value job security very highly, and would prefer to work at the many companies whose orientation is more about stability, seniority, and working around inconsistent employee effectiveness. Our model works best for people who highly value consistent excellence in their colleagues.

To help us attract and retain stunning colleagues, we pay employees at the top of their personal market. We make a good-faith estimate of the highest compensation each employee could make at peer firms, and pay them that max. Typically, we calibrate to market once a year. We do not think of these as “raises” and there is no raise pool to divide up. The market for talent is what it is. We avoid the model of “2% raise for adequate, 4% raise for great”. Some employees’ market value will rapidly rise (both due to their performance and to shortage of talent in their areas) while other employees may be flat year-to-year, despite doing great work. At all times, we aim to pay all of our people at the top of their personal market.

Note that if our company experienced financial difficulty, we wouldn’t ask our employees to accept less pay. A sports team with a losing record still pays top of personal market for the players they hope will get them back into a winning position. On the other hand, if the company does well, our broadly distributed stock options become quite valuable.

The dream team model reinforces the idea that your economic security is based on your skills and reputation, not on your seniority at one company. At Netflix, you learn a lot working on hard problems with amazing colleagues and what you learn increases your market value. Knowing that other companies would quickly hire you if you left Netflix is comforting. We see occasional outside interviewing as healthy, and encourage employees to talk with their managers about what they learn in the process.

While our teammates are fantastic, and we work together very well, we know we can always do better. We strive to have calm confidence, and yet yearn to improve. We are mediocre compared to how great we want to become.

Freedom & Responsibility

There are companies where people walk by trash on the floor in the office, waiting for someone else to pick it up, and there are companies where people lean down to pick up the trash they see, as they would at home. We try hard to be the latter, a company where everyone feels a sense of responsibility to do the right thing to help the company at every juncture. Picking up the trash is the metaphor for taking care of problems, small and large, as you see them, and never thinking “that’s not my job.” We don’t have rules about picking up the real or metaphoric trash. We try to create the sense of ownership, responsibility and initiative so that this behavior comes naturally.

Our goal is to inspire people more than manage them. We trust our teams to do what they think is best for Netflix — giving them lots of freedom, power, and information in support of their decisions. In turn, this generates a sense of responsibility and self-discipline that drives us to do great work that benefits the company.

We believe that people thrive on being trusted, on freedom, and on being able to make a difference. So we foster freedom and empowerment wherever we can.

In many organizations, there is an unhealthy emphasis on process and not much freedom. These organizations didn’t start that way, but became that way as they grew over time. Specifically, many organizations have freedom and responsibility when they are small. Everyone knows each other, and everyone picks up the trash. As they grow, however, the business gets more complex, and sometimes the average talent and passion level goes down. As the informal, smooth-running organization starts to break down, pockets of chaos emerge, and the general outcry is to “grow up” and add traditional management and process to reduce the chaos. As rules and procedures proliferate, the value system evolves into rule following (i.e. that is how you get rewarded). If this standard management approach is done well, then the company becomes very efficient at its business model — the system is dummy-proofed, and creative thinkers are told to stop questioning the status quo. This kind of organization is very specialized and well adapted to its business model. Eventually, however, over 10 to 100 years, the business model inevitably has to change, and most of these companies are unable to adapt.

To avoid the rigidity of over-specialization, and avoid the chaos of growth, while retaining freedom, we work to have as simple a business as we can given our growth ambitions, and to keep employee excellence rising. We work to have a company of self-disciplined people who discover and fix issues without being told to do so.

We are dedicated to constantly increasing employee freedom. Some examples of how we operate with unusual amounts of freedom3 are:

  • We share documents internally broadly and systematically. Nearly every document is fully open for anyone to read and comment on, and everything is cross-linked. Memos on each title’s performance, on every strategy decision, on every competitor, and on every product feature test are open for all employees to read. Despite this huge access, we’ve had very few leaks, due to our culture of self-discipline and responsibility.There are virtually no spending controls or contract signing controls. Each employee is expected to seek advice and perspective as appropriate. “Use good judgment” is our core precept.
  • Our policy for travel, entertainment, gifts, and other expenses is 5 words long: “Act in Netflix’s Best Interest.” We also avoid the compliance departments that most companies have to enforce their policies.
  • Our vacation policy is “take vacation.” We don’t have any rules or forms around how many weeks per year. Frankly, we intermix work and personal time quite a bit, doing email at odd hours, taking off weekday afternoons for kids’ games, etc. We also don’t have a clothing policy, but no one has come to work naked; you don’t need policies for everything. Our leaders make sure they set good examples by taking vacations, often coming back with fresh ideas, and encourage the rest of the team to do the same.
  • Our parental leave policy is: “take care of your baby and yourself.” New parents are encouraged to take whatever time they feel is right in the first year, which they generally aren’t sure of until a few months after the baby arrives.
  • Each employee chooses each year how much of their compensation they want in salary versus stock options. You can choose all cash, all options, or whatever combination suits you4. You choose how much risk and upside you want. These 10-year stock options are fully-vested and you keep them even if you leave Netflix.
  • There are no compensation handcuffs requiring you to stay in order to get your money. People are free to leave at any time, without loss of money, and yet they generally choose to stay. We want managers to create conditions where people love being here, for the great work and great pay.

You might think that that such freedom would lead to chaos. The lesson is you don’t need policies for everything. Most people get the need to wear clothes at work.

There are a few important exceptions to our anti-rules pro-freedom philosophy. We are strict about ethical issues and safety issues. Harassment of employees or trading on insider information are zero tolerance issues, for example. Some information security issues, such as keeping our members’ payment information safe, have strict controls around access. Transferring large amounts of cash from our company bank accounts has strict controls. But these are edge cases.

In general, freedom and rapid recovery is better than trying to prevent error. We are in a creative business, not a safety-critical business. Our big threat over time is lack of innovation, so we should be relatively error tolerant. Rapid recovery is possible if people have great judgment. The seduction is that error prevention just sounds so good, even if it is often ineffective. We are always on guard if too much error prevention hinders inventive, creative work.

On rare occasion, freedom is abused. We had one senior employee who organized kick-backs on contracts for several years before being caught. But those are the exceptions, and we avoid over-correcting. Just because a few people abuse freedom doesn’t mean that our employees are not worthy of great trust.

Some processes are about increased productivity, rather than error avoidance, and we like process that helps us get more done. One such process we do well at is effective scheduled meetings. We have a regular cadence of many types of meetings; we start and end on time, and have well-prepared agendas. We use these meetings to learn from each other and get more done, rather than to prevent errors or approve decisions.

Informed Captains

For every significant decision there is a responsible captain of the ship who makes a judgment call after digesting others’ views. We avoid committees making decisions because that would slow us down, and diffuse responsibility and accountability. We “farm for dissent.” Dissent is not natural or easy, so we make a concerted effort to stimulate it. Many times, groups will meet about topics and debate them, but then afterwards someone needs to make a decision and become that “captain.” Small decisions may be shared just by email, larger ones will merit a memo with discussion of the various positions, and why the captain made such a decision. The bigger a decision, the more extensive the dissent/assent gathering should be, usually in an open shared document. We are clear, however, that decisions are not made by a majority or committee vote. We don’t wait for consensus, nor do we drive to rapid, uninformed decision making. When the captain of any particular decision is reasonably confident of the right bet for us to take, they decide and we take that bet.

Context Not Control

We want employees to be great independent decision makers, and to only consult their manager when they are unsure of the right decision. The leader’s job at every level is to set clear context so that others have the right information to make generally great decisions.

We don’t buy into the lore of CEOs, or other senior leaders, who are so involved in the details that their product or service becomes amazing. The legend of Steve Jobs was that his micromanagement made the iPhone a great product. Others take it to new extremes, proudly calling themselves nano-managers. The heads of major networks and studios sometimes make many decisions in the creative process of their content. We do not emulate these top-down models because we believe we are most effective and innovative when employees throughout the company own decisions.

We strive to develop good decision-making muscle everywhere in our company. We pride ourselves on how few, not how many, decisions senior management makes. We don’t want hands-off management, though. Each leader’s role is to teach, to set context, and to be highly informed of what is happening. The only way to figure out how the context setting needs to improve is to explore a sample of all the details. But unlike the micro-manager, the goal of knowing those details is not to change certain small decisions, but to learn how to adjust context so more decisions are made well.

There are some minor exceptions to “context not control,” such as an urgent situation in which there is no time to think about proper context and principles, when a new team member hasn’t yet absorbed enough context to be confident, or when it’s recognized that the wrong person is in a decision-making role.

We tell people not to seek to please their boss. Instead seek to serve the business. It’s OK to disagree with your manager. It’s never OK to hide anything. It’s OK to say to your manager, “I know you disagree, but I’m going to do X because I think it is a better solution. Let me know if you want to specifically override my decision.” What we don’t want is people guessing what their manager would do or want, and then executing on that decision.

Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled

As companies grow, they often become highly centralized and inflexible. Symptoms include:

  • Senior management is involved in tons of small decisions
  • There are numerous cross-departmental buy-in meetings to socialize tactics
  • Pleasing other internal groups takes precedence over pleasing customers
  • The organization is highly coordinated and less prone to error, but slow and frustrating

We avoid this by being highly aligned and loosely coupled. We spend lots of time debating strategy together, and then trust each other to execute on tactics without prior approvals. Often, two groups working on the same goals won’t know of, or have approval over, their peer activities. If, later, the activities don’t seem right, we have a candid discussion. We may find that the strategy was too vague or the tactics were not aligned with the agreed strategy. And we discuss generally how we can do better in the future. The success of a “Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled” work environment is dependent upon the collaborative efforts of high performance individuals and effective context. Ultimately, the end goal is to grow the business for bigger impact while increasing flexibility and agility. We seek to be big, fast and nimble.

Seeking Excellence

New employees often comment in the first few months that they are surprised how accurate our culture description is to the actual culture they experience. Around the world, we live and create our culture together. In fact, hundreds of global employees contributed to this document.

We do not seek to preserve our culture — we seek to improve it. Every person who joins us helps to shape and evolve the culture further. We find new ways to accomplish more together. Every few years we can feel a real difference in how much more effectively we are operating than in the past. We are learning faster than ever because we have more dedicated people with diverse perspectives trying to find better ways for our talented team to work together more cohesively, nimbly and effectively.

Summary

As we wrote in the beginning, what is unique and special about Netflix is how much we:

  • encourage independent decision-making by employees
  • share information openly, broadly, and deliberately
  • are extraordinarily candid with each other
  • keep only our highly effective people
  • avoid rules

Design thinking is a process for creative problem solving

Design thinking is a term coined by David Kelley, founder of IDEO and the Stanford d.school. It utilises elements from the designer’s toolkit like empathy and experimentation to arrive at innovative solutions. By using design thinking, you make decisions based on what future customers really want instead of relying only on historical data or making risky bets based on instinct instead of evidence.

“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” says Tim Brown who is now CEO at IDEO.

Thinking like a designer can transform the way organizations develop products, services, processes, and strategy. This approach, which has become known as design thinking, brings together what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. It also allows people who aren’t trained as designers to use creative tools to address a vast range of challenges.

Consumer Packaged Goods

Education

Financial Services

Healthcare

Journalism

Non-Profit/NGOs

Retail

Tech

Transportation

Self-Improvement

Amazon Lab126 is Amazon’s self-contained innovation studio, based in Sunnyvale in the heart of Silicon Valley, where its research and development team designs and engineers new consumer electronic devices and services-  Fire tablets, Kindle e-readers, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and more.

In 2004, the Amazon team had a vision: To improve upon the physical book, making it easier than ever for customers to discover and enjoy books. Gregg Zehr, vice president of hardware engineering at Palm Computing at the time, was part of the group that accepted the challenge. In October 2004, Gregg formed a small team, moved into a shared space in a Palo Alto law library, and got to work. Amazon Lab126 was born.

The Lab126 name originated from the arrow in the Amazon logo, which draws a line from A to Z in “Amazon.” In Lab126, the 1 stands for “A” and the “26” stands for “Z.” The subsidiary is an Amazon lab of innovation, research, and development.

After years of research and development, the first Kindle e-reader launched with 90,000 e-books on November 19, 2007. The Lab126 team watched a live broadcast of the New York announcement event, holding their breaths as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos introduced Kindle. 5.5 hours later, Kindle was sold out.

The team has expanded rapidly since then, producing a variety of new, innovative products from Amazon Fire TV to Amazon Echo. The team engineers devices with the same spirit that fuelled the first inventors. They’ve come along way, yet as Jeff Bezos likes to remind everyone, it’s always day one.

 

Forbes Magazine today publishes its own list of Global Gamechangers … focusing on the individual leaders behind some of the world’s most disruptive innovators. The list complements well with my own ranking of Gamechanger companies which you can explore in more detail here.

In particular its great to see some fabulous female leaders on this list, women like Sara Blakely of Spanx and Katrine Bosley of Editas. What Sara can do for your body shape and confidence, Katrine can do for your future health and wellbeing

Together these Gamechangers are great leaders and innovators –  leveraging technology, finance and sheer brainpower to upend entire sectors and transform the everyday lives of billions. To compile their list, Forbes started by screening hundreds of companies for growth, innovation and global presence. They only considered for-profit entities with a market value of more than $1 billion, although we all recognise that smaller, focused business can be incredibly disruptive too. Although they sought balance in terms of industries and geography, inclusion was mostly determined, in the end, by the brilliance of their ideas and the audacity of their ambition.

Here’s the list, in alphabetical order:

Marc Benioff, 51
Founder, CEO, Salesforce.com
United States
Cloud-computing pioneer
has upended the software business with its ubiquitous customer relationship software. Revenues, which were $6.7 billion in 2015, continue to grow at 30% annual clip.

“What we’re using today will be obsolete in a few years. The past is never the future.” Aug. 8, 2011

Jeff Bezos, 52
Founder, CEO, Amazon.com
United States
First books, then retail. Now movies and data farms. Next: drones and grocery delivery. Bezos seems to remake an industry nearly every year, and Amazon has global sales of nearly $110 billion.

“We are comfortable planting seeds and waiting for them to grow into trees.” Apr. 23, 2012

Rahul Bhatia, 55
CoFounder, IndiGo

India

Brought the discount airline model to the developing world, supersized it and made it profitable. IndiGo is now India’s largest and most profitable carrier, with 29 million passengers in 2015, or 2 in 5 domestic fliers. Recently expanded to Dubai, Singapore, Bangkok, Kathmandu and Muscat.

“We keep asking ourselves: What other cost can we remove without losing a single customer? This is our religion, and it serves us well.” Oct. 20, 2014

Sara Blakely, 45
Founder, Spanx
United States
In just over a decade Spanx has become a byword for shapewear in the same way Kleenex is for tissues, spawning dozens of competitors and copycats. Blakely still owns 100% of the brand, which had estimated sales of $400 million last year, ships to 61 countries and is rolling out its own brick-and-mortar network (14 stores and counting).

“I’m game for anything. The company has to pull me back.” Mar. 26, 2012

Katrine Bosley, 47
CEO, Editas Medicine
United States
Bosley is spearheading the push to turn CRISPR, a revolutionary gene-editing technology that has been called a word processor for DNA because of its low cost and ease of use, into new medicines. Its first treatment, soon to be tested in humans, is for Leber’s congenital amaurosis, a rare inherited eye disease. It is also developing cancer-killing cells with Juno Therapeutics of Seattle, Wash. After a successful IPO earlier this year, the company is already worth some $1.5 billion.

Brian Chesky, 34
Cofounder, CEO, Airbnb
United States
The first smash hit of the share economy, Airbnb has provided beds for more than
60 million since 2008. The company offers accommodations in 34,000 cities in 190 countries, including Cuba.

“People providing these services in many ways are entrepreneurs or micro-entrepreneurs. They’re more independent, more liberated, a little more economically empowered.”
Feb. 11, 2013

Daniel Ek, 33
coFounder, CEO, Spotify
Sweden
After Napster nearly destroyed the music business, Ek found a way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, offering up millions of tunes and splitting the revenue (from a combo of subscriptions and ads) with the artists and labels. His service is available in 59 nations and has 75 million monthly active users.

“It disturbed me that the music industry had gone down the drain, even though people were listening to more music than ever and from a greater diversity of artists.” Jan. 16, 2012

Jay Flatley, 63
CEO, Illumina
United States
Not long ago it cost $200,000 to sequence one person’s genome. Now, thanks to Illumina, the cost is around $1,000 per person, opening up the possibility of truly individualized medicine. Sales increased 19% to $2.2 billion in 2015, and profits went up 21% to $490 million. Flatley has even greater ambitions: A new subsidiary, Grail, is working on inventing a simple blood test that can catch cancer in its earliest stages.

“If we remain the leader in sequencing we can grow our company with a much more fantastic return on investment than anything else.” Sept. 8, 2014

Ilene Gordon, 62
CEO, Ingredion
United States
High-fructose corn syrup is cheap, plentiful and terrible for you. The stuff is still a part of Ingredion’s core business, but Gordon is focused on turning corn (and berries, fruits and potatoes) into ingredients for organic, gluten-free and non-GMO foods. It’s working. Specialty sales, which include gluten-free ingredients, have gone from 5% of revenue to 25% on Gordon’s watch, and could hit 30%, or more than $2 billion, by 2019.

Terry Gou, 65
Founder,
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (Foxconn)
Taiwan
Without Gou you probably couldn’t afford that iPhone in your pocket. Marrying a low-cost workforce with high-precision assembly has transformed Foxconn from a small plastics supplier into the largest electronics maker in the world. Its most famous customer is Apple: It has made about 80% of all iPhones on the planet. Over the past five years revenues have increased 20% to $141.2 billion, and profits have grown to $4.6 billion. The company recently agreed to buy Sharp, the venerable Japanese consumer-electronics concern.

Reed Hastings, 55
Cofounder, CEO, Netflix
United States
Whether you want your entertainment delivered in the mail on a DVD or prefer to stream it on your phone, Netflix is there for you. Having conquered distribution, Hastings’ company is now gunning for network status, producing critically acclaimed binge-watchable blockbusters like House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black. In January Netflix made its service available in 130 more countries, effectively doubling its footprint. The number of subscribers has expanded by 30% since 2014.

Jen-Hsun Huang, 53
Cofounder, CEO, Nvidia
United States
Nvidia is best-known for making the high-end graphics chips used by gamers to soup up their PCs. Its single-minded pursuit of creating better-looking aliens has also led the company to a slew of related technological advances. Some of the fastest supercomputers in the world run on its Tesla chips, and the firm has a portfolio of 7,300 patents used in virtual reality, artificial intelligence and autonomous driving.

“The more content there is, the more visual interest there can be, the more processing horsepower people need.” Jan. 7, 2008

Wang Jianlin, 61
founder, Dalian Wanda Group, China
Wang became China’s richest man by shrewdly playing the high-stakes Beijing real estate market. Now he is making an equally shrewd move to hedge his bets by diversifying globally. Most recently he purchased the AMC movie theater chain for $2.6 billion in 2012 and earlier this year spent $3.5 billion for Legendary Entertainment, maker of Godzilla and Straight Outta Compton. Group revenue was up 19% in 2015 to $44 billion.

“Legendary is a gateway to cultural and financial alignment between the Hollywood moviemaking world and the rapidly expanding Chinese marketplace.” Feb. 29, 2016

Travis Kalanick, 39
Cofounder, CEO, Uber
United States
Hailing a taxi often used to mean overpaying for a ride in a dirty jalopy. No more. Uber’s rides are affordable, clean and, because of its rating system for both drivers and passengers, nearly always pleasant. Uber is available in 405 cities around the world and in some markets is also available for food and other deliveries. The company has raised more than $10 billion, valuing it above $62 billion.

Alexander Karp, 48
Cofounder, CEO, Palantir Technologies
United States
Big brother meets big data. Karp’s secretive firm is the go-to partner for central governments, law enforcement agencies and multinationals trying to glean actionable intelligence from massive data sets. Palantir has helped capture terrorists, thwarted sex traffickers and identified rogue traders. The CIA was an early investor (and client), but customers now include foreign governments, the NYPD, JPMorgan and Hershey. Its last round of funding, in December 2015, valued the company at $20.5 billion.

“The only time I’m not thinking about Palantir is when I’m swimming, practicing Qigong or during sexual activity.” Sept. 2, 2013

Osman Kibar, 45
Founder, CEO, Samumed
United States
The new biotech billionaire is backed by a deep purse of international money that has raised $270 million from investors gambling that the Turkish-American scientist has discovered a real fountain of youth (read the full story).

Bom Kim, 37
Founder, CEO, Coupang
South Korea
The Harvard-trained Kim is beating Jeff Bezos at his own game in South Korea (read the full story).

Jorge Paulo Lemann, 76
CoFounder, 3G Capital
United States
With the backing of Warren Buffett, Brazil’s richest man (whose firm is headquartered in New York City) has become the undisputed master of the megadeal, transforming mature brands–from Budweiser and Burger King to Heinz ketchup and Jell-O–into gigantic profit centers. The secret is razor-sharp cost-cutting implemented by forcing managers to justify every single number on their budgets, every single year. Anheuser-Busch InBev's 32% operating margin is now the envy of the industry, and it wants to spread the gospel by spending more than $100 billion to buy global rival SABMiller.

Jack Ma, 51
Founder, Alibaba
China
The biggest Internet company in China is a one-stop e-commerce shop, combining the functions of Amazon, eBay and PayPal under the same roof. Now it’s pushing deeper into financial services through Ant Financial and opening new offices in places like London and Milan. In 2014 Alibaba raised $25 billion in the largest initial public offering of all time. The company has been clocking sales growth in the range of 50% per year, with 2015 revenues at $12.3 billion and profit margins of around 45%.

John Milligan, 55
CEO, Gilead Sciences
United States
By diving more deeply into the science of viruses than any other company, Gilead has managed to create meds that put HIV in check and cure hepatitis C 95% of the time. Harvoni, its hep C drug, is already one of the world’s bestselling, and the market could even be bigger: The disease still afflicts 150 million people and kills 500,000 every year. Annual sales have tripled to $33 billion in three years.

Elon Musk, 44
Cofounder, CEO,
Tesla Motors, SpaceX
United States
The world’s most innovative businessman has stratospheric ambitions: He’s reimagining the electric car as more of a rocket ship than a golf cart and reimagining the rocket ship as more of a car (i.e., reusable). Tesla’s newest car, the more affordable Model 3, booked $7.5 billion in preorders the first day it was offered, and the vertically integrated company has a three-year sales growth rate of 114%. Tesla’s “Gigafactory” in Nevada will soon produce more lithium batteries than all the other factories in the world.

“Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You’d probably have no teeth by now.”
Apr. 9, 2012

Peder Holk Nielsen, 60
CEO, Novozymes
Denmark
Novozymes’ enzymes replace nasty chemicals in places like refineries and food factories, making the industrial world run cleaner and more efficiently. The company’s products could save 100 million tons of carbon dioxide by 2020. Research is a religion at the company: Scientists spend 10% of their time pursuing personal projects.

Larry Page, 43
Cofounder, CEO, Alphabet (Google)
United States
Not content with just being the Ma Bell of the Internet, the parent company of the world’s most knowing search engine is busy pursuing dozens of “moon shots.” These high-risk, high-reward (and often high-minded) projects include self-driving cars, computers that create original art and a network of balloons that deliver high-speed Internet access to rural areas in the developing world. Google, far and away the largest subsidiary of Alphabet, raked in $74.5 billion in revenues in 2015, up from $65.7 billion in 2014 and $10.6 billion a decade ago.

Cyrus Poonawalla, 74
Founder, Serum Institute of India

India
The world’s largest vaccine-maker by volume produces 1.3 billion doses annually, which have immunized close to two-thirds of the world’s children. Serum’s revenues, estimated to be some $620 million, have been growing at about 30% compounded and profits about 40%. It supplies low-cost vaccines to 140 countries through agencies such as UNICEF and the Pan American HealthOrganization. New vaccines are being developed for diarrhea, cervical cancer, pneumonia and tuberculosis.

Hakan Samuelsson, 65
CEO, Volvo Cars

Sweden
Safety-first Volvo has publicly pledged that no one should die or be seriously injured in its cars by 2020. Now owned by China’s Geely Holding Group, Volvo tripled its operating profit to $780 million in 2015 on revenues of $20 billion. Worldwide, Volvo sold 503,127 vehicles last year, the highest in the company’s 89-year history.

Howard Schultz, 62
CEO, Starbucks
United States
Schultz has turned a commodity product into a high-margin lifestyle brand that represents everything from digital savvy and green living to progressive politics. The coffee-shop social experiment resonates on a global scale: Starbucks now has more than 24,000 stores in 70 countries, 6,000 opened in the last five years. Sales grew 17% to $19.2 billion in 2015.

“We can elevate citizenship and humanity.” Mar. 21, 2016

Sunny Varkey, 59
Founder, GEMS Education
United Arab Emirates
He never went to college, but Varkey is building the largest network of private K?12 schools in the world, many focused on providing education to girls in places where they would otherwise have no access. GEMS has 250,000 students enrolled in 240 schools in 17 countries across the globe. Over the next four years Varkey plans to invest $200 million in expanding in Africa and his native India.

“We adopted the airline model of economy, business and first class to make top-notch education available based on what families could afford.” Apr. 14, 2014

Frank Wang, 35
Founder, CEO, DJi, China
Chances are if you own a drone, it was made by Wang’s company: His Shenzhen-based DJI has an estimated 70% share of the consumer drone market. And unlike most Chinese tech companies, which tend to be fast followers of their Western counterparts, DJI is blazing the trail in this entirely new electronic category. Nearly 1,500 of its 4,000 employees are focused on R&D. It doubled its sales to an estimated $1 billion last year, evenly distributed among Asia, North America and Europe.

“All you need to do is to be smarter than others–there needs to be a distance from
the masses. If you can create that distance, you will be
successful.” May 25, 2015

Tadashi Yanai, 67
Founder, CEO, Fast Retailing

Japan
In a business where choking on inventory is commonplace, Yanai’s flagship, trendy Uniqlo, is a master of speed-to-market. In-store sales are tracked obsessively, and slow-selling products are yanked and replaced by new ones. In addition to Uniqlo’s 1,700 stores spread across 17 countries, Fast Retailing runs the denim-focused J Brand and, in February, introduced a popular line of clothing for Muslim women in America. Revenues are up 15% annually over the last five years.

Mark Zuckerberg, 31
Cofounder, CEO, Facebook
United States
Five words: one billion active daily users. That’s roughly one out of every seven humans alive today and nearly a third of all people who have Internet access. Eighty-four percent of Facebook’s users hail from outside the U.S., and sales have grown at an average annual rate of 49% over the past five years to $18 billion, generating 2015 profits of $3.7 billion. Zuckerberg is leveraging that financial success to buy his way into hot new markets. In 2014 he acquired the pioneering virtual-reality firm Oculus for $2 billion and messaging giant WhatsApp for $22 billion.

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk unveiled the highly anticipated Tesla Model 3 electric car on Thursday night in a converted LA aircraft hangar. Tesla’s launch events have become a little like Apple’s big moments used to be. Electrifying, a pioneering spirit, packed with hard core fans. Musk is much more improvised than the word perfect Jobs, stuttering with nerves that show he is human despite his vision and celebrity. The Model 3 has the potential to become the tipping point from carbon to carbon-free motoring, and to drive exponential growth for Tesla, and the electric car market. 250,000 preorders, almost two years ahead of delivery, demonstrates the consumer response.

In the Gamechangers project we explore in detail how Tesla has developed a long-term market-shaping strategy to change the game of car travel. The cars themselves, beautiful and technically wonderful, are not even the heart of the story. Nor is the innovative retail model, selling direct in upmarket shopping malls, customised on the iPad, cash in advance. Most significant is the overall business model – designed to shape the market through the world’s leading charging network – the Supercharger network, which is included as an ongoing subscription in the retail price, for Tesla and other brand cars. Supercharger is driven by another of Musk’s businesses, Solar City. By giving away much technical IP, Tesla is creating an industry standard in its own vision, on its own terms. It is redefining the game of motoring in front of our eyes.

musk2-e1459396761206

At the launch of the Model 3, Musk was at pains to explain his market entry strategy too. Starting from the expensive and niche roadster, to the other premium models, he has positioned the brand as innovative and aspirational, to compare with a Porsche or even Ferrari. Now he is moving down the price ladder to the wider market – to compete alongside the BMW and Audi-type brands, but with more magic, and sustainable credentials. He even thanked early adopters, those who had bought the early models at premium prices, saying that the profits he made through them has allowed him to build this new car for everyone (well at lot more people, and made him incredibly rich too).

tesla 3 launch

Tesla’s mass market Model 3  was driven onto a foggy stage in an extravagant unveiling, where Musk revealed that the Tesla Model 3 will seat five, and be able to cover at least 215 miles on one charge.   Musk said the standard Model 3 would be capable of zero to 60 miles per hour in less than 6 seconds, and will cost $35,000, which is half that of the company’s current flagship cars, the Model S sedan and Model X crossover. The new car actually looks like a more sporty version of the company’s Model S. The Model 3 will also feature Autopilot for assisted driving and be future-proof for self-driving road use. Deliveries begin in late 2017, by which time Tesla says it will have doubled the number of charging stations worldwide and will include charging for free.

tesla1

The Model 3 is Tesla’s attempt to bring electric cars to the mass market and is considered critical to the company’s future success.  Interest has been strong, with preorders for the Model 3 at Tesla stores and galleries – some of which are located directly adjacent to Apple retail stores (where the launch of the iPhone SE no longer commands the long queues of old). Musk later boasted on stage that the company had already secured 115,000 reservations before the car had even been revealed (a figure that has doubled in the last few days). Tesla’s stock price rocketed too.

You can watch the full unveiling of the Tesla Model 3 here:

Apple is believed to be working on its own electric road vehicle, commonly referred to as the Apple Car (rather than iCar, in a similar naming logic to the Apple Watch), which Musk has called an “open secret” in the industry. According to Musk, the hundreds of engineers Apple has taken on make it clear there’s an electric car in the works. Apple and Tesla have hired each other’s employees over the last couple of years, with Musk saying that Apple has hired away “very few people” from the car company despite offering $250,000 signing bonuses and 60 percent salary increases to its employees. Tesla meanwhile has hired nearly 150 Apple employees.

Read more about Tesla and how it is changing the game.

What is innovation?

Sounds like an easy question. Or should be. But we still stumble over phrases like making ideas happen, solving problems, doing it profitably, or at least with a positive impact.

And of course its easy to resort to Apple, or more specifically, Steve Jobs. Whilst you’ve heard everything about him already, there is one moment worth recalling from that magical Stanford commencement speech he made in 2005. Whilst he talked about life, and making the most of your time, he captured the spirit of innovation in three sentences:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8kHDJKdJXM

Leonardo da Vinci was a great one for making new connections. His greatest breakthroughs came from connecting the unconnected, and in particular, the insights gained by bringing different perspectives together. His expertise in anatomy helped him to create better portraits and sculptures, and also helped him make sense of mechanics and engineering. He himself defined innovation as connecting the unconnected.

Another great disruptor, Albert Einstein was often challenged for making what seemed like absurd connections. Like the connection between energy and mass. Of course, there was no existing logic which suggested such a connection, it needed to be shaped through imagination. Almost every great scientific breakthrough has come about through hypothesis and then making sense through practical demonstration.

Back in the business world, I explored innovation with Sir Richard Branson, and the culture which he seeks to create across his Virgin companies, he reached for a pencil and paper and jotted down his equation of life … A+B+C+D (Always Be Connecting the Dots). Its not about creating newness, but making sense of what you have, maybe in fragments and different places, but can be shaped in new and interesting ways.

We spend much of our time collecting dots – seeking new insights, reading more books, generating more ideas – but too little time connecting dots. This requires confidence and creativity, to think bigger and laterally.

“The magic of connecting dots is that once you learn the techniques, the dots can change but you’ll still be good at connecting them.”

Indeed we live in an incredible world with so many great sources of ideas, insights and inspirations. I spend my exploring the world’s most innovative companies, the new markets which they shape, the business models which they develop, the new experiences they deliver to customers. There are so many ideas out there.

So many dots to connect …

  • Connecting ideas with different ideas to create new and unusual concepts
  • Connecting diverse people to combine talents, experience and perspectives
  • Connecting customers with business to gain insight and engagement
  • Connecting partners with business to gain capability and reach
  • Connecting customer needs and wants, to solve bigger problems
  • Connecting ideas from different places, across geographies and sectors
  • Connecting products and services, into richer customer experiences
  • Connecting markets in new ways, to operate different and better
  • Connecting business with new business models to be more profitable
  • Connecting media, channels and market networks to amplify the impact
  • Connecting customers with customers to build richer communities

The real skill is to see the bigger picture, the bigger space in which you can make the new connections – and then to make new connections – interesting, unusual, distinctive, better. Even if at first you question how will it work, how will it make money, don’t be disheartened. By adding more connections you will soon find ways to implement and sell your uniqueness, often in ways you never imagined.

And so innovation in every aspect of what you do.

And as I googled for more clarity (as you do), I came across this video:

It finishes with a great few lines, worth remembering for when you’re asked that question about what really is innovation:

So what is innovation?

Those other dots. The ones others miss.
And having the certainty to know that the dots you see are not only valid, but necessary if the world is to move forward.

 

Explore more from Peter Fisk about innovation:

 

 

“Robot Makers” focus on the most exciting growth markets of robotics and drones.

Whilst it might seem a long time since the golden C-3PO and cute R2D2 appeared in the first Star Wars movie back in 1977, the technical capabilities, intelligence and applications of robotics are about to explode into every day life. These include the much-hyped role of drones, supporting everything from unmanned combat to Amazon parcel deliveries.

Like other “Market Makers” these Robot Makers create and shape markets in their own vision.

They are not content to play the game of marginal gains – competing on small differences or price discounts, in mature and stagnant markets. They see the future world, they look for the new growth markets, and in particular those which are still emerging, which they can shape to their own advantage. They are “gamechangers” in the biggest sense, in that they create new games (markets), with new audiences (customers and needs), new rules (process and behaviours), and new possibilities (perceived value and profit potential) for business success.

Here are some of the most phenomenal Robot Makers who are creating and shaping the fast-emerging robotics markets to their advantage. Whilst there are many others developing sophisticated AI and robotics, these are examples of companies who are already out there, making money and shaping the attitudes and behaviours of customers right now:

Anki

Smart toys are just the beginning

Anki Drive, debuted during an Apple press conference back in 2013, lives up to the hype. Rather than using a Scaletrix-type track, Anki embeds cameras and IR sensors into the toys, and lets them steer themselves. Even the human-controlled racers smooth out user input, turning commands into more precise on-track movements. Anki toys have clocked up more than 800,000 miles. If this sounds like a lot of tech just for a little racing game, Anki CEO and cofounder Boris Sofman says “We want to eventually leave entertainment, to go into other areas where these approaches would apply, like the home or sports or even transportation.”

Bossa Nova Robotics

Making home a better place

Bossa Nova is developing a fulling autonomous mobile robot that could transform everyday tasks in the home.  Their 2016 launch, developed at Carnegie Mellon University, seeks to create emotional connections so that tasks become intuitive and empathic- seeking to add value in new ways, rather than just automate the mundane.

Daewoo Shipbuilding

Exoskeletons as giant industrial workers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6RTp6UefPg

One of most promising players in the growing field of wearable robotics is also the most unexpected. DSME, the shipbuilding arm of the South Korean Daewoo Group is developing exoskeletons for use in its sprawling shipyards, to help workers carry heavy loads by hand. The hydraulic, battery-powered systems deployed in a successful pilot test could run for three hours at a time and lift 66 pounds on their own. The company’s current goal, however, is nothing short of superhuman—effortless handling of loads weighing roughly 220 pounds.

DJI

The world’s largest maker of consumer drones.

The Shenzhen-based company is opening a Silicon Valley research and development center in hopes of harnessing the wealth of robotics talent in the area, and identifying potential new partners and investment targets. The Phantom range of consumer drones have captured the world’s imagination – for everything from mapping landscapes to herding sheep. Phantoms are relatively inexpensive (about $1,300) remote-control quad-copters that are made for filming, some with stabilized HD cameras built in. The small and light drones are fairly user-friendly and extremely high-performance. They fly at speeds of up to 35 miles an hour and up to 400 feet. They also have GPS and stabilizing sensors to idiot-proof them as much as possible, with features that allow them to automatically return to where they launched should they lose contact with their remote. The company was founded in 2006, but in just the last three years, its sales have grown by a factor of 150, making it the fastest-growing drone manufacturer in the world.

Gamma 2 Robotics

Intelligent and autonomous security

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

G2R have developed the “Cybernetic Brain” – artificial intelligence that enables the robot to operate independently whilst detecting and making judgement relating to any “invaders” – fire, water,  or suspicious objects. The robots learns about its environment, becoming fast and accurate in diagnosis, and ultimately more reliable and lower risk than humans.

Matternet

Autonomous drone delivery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl9DviYWRs8

Matternet One is the first smart transport drone – in particularly focused on the challenge of “last mile” logistics to homes. The company is building an automated delivery network for goods based on a fleet of autonomous UAVs/drones. Initial tests with Swiss Post delivering parcels to areas which were difficult to reach by traditional methods (everything from mountain tops, to apartment blocks, and remote islands).

ReWalk Robotics

Exoskeletons that will replace expired limbs and wheelchairs.

The ReWalk Personal System is the first exoskeleton to be cleared by the FDA for use at home and in the community. No longer stuck in laboratories or rehab facilities, these robotic devices can now help users move about the world, restoring some of the lower-limb mobility lost to injury or disease. ReWalk Robotics’ model essentially walks for its wearer, balancing and adjusting its gait as it steps forward, and proving a first glimpse of a future where exoskeletons are as commonplace as wheelchairs

More ideas

I am currently working with Odense, Denmark which has become Europe’s “robot city” and seeks to change the game in the way in which it works with start-ups and corporates in accelerating the technical development and market growth of robotics and drones.

I am also currently researching my next book about Market Makers:

  • Gamechangers … introduction to my recent book on disruptive innovation
  • Market Makers … new strategies for creating and shaping markets
  • Innolab … fast and collaborative strategic innovation process

If you’d like to suggest ideas for inclusion in my next book, please email me at peterfisk@peterfisk.com

“Market Makers” create and shape markets in their own vision.

They are not content to play the game of marginal gains – competing on small differences or price discounts, in mature and stagnant markets. They see the future world, they look for the new growth markets, and in particular those which are still emerging, which they can shape to their own advantage. They are “gamechangers” in the biggest sense, in that they create new games (markets), with new audiences (customers and needs), new rules (process and behaviours), and new possibilities (perceived value and profit potential) for business success.

“Space Makers” focus on the most exciting growth markets of space.

Whilst it might seem a long time since Neil Armstrong stood on the Moon, or even since NASA’s Space Shuttle made its final flight, the commercial opportunities for space are real and now – be it for scientific research into new medicines, satellites that can connect the world, or hypersonic travel to replace aeroplanes.

Here are 3 of the most phenomenal “Space Makers” who are creating and shaping the fast-emerging space markets to their advantage:

OneWeb 

Providing global internet access via satellite

Airbus, Bharti, Coca-Cola and Virgin are just some of the investors who have together pledged over $500m to create the world’s first global satellite-based internet service. OneWeb is building a network of 700 satellites to take broadband access to every corner of our planet – including cars, aircraft, and homes in the most remote locations. SpaceX and O3B are also developing similar concepts. Read more about OneWeb

Planetary Resources 

Asteroid mining for precious metals and water

Explorer James Cameron is one of the entrepreneurs behind the asteroid mining company that plans low cost robotic space exploration to find commercially viable asteroids near Earth. From these, they hope to extract precious metals and water (which can be converted to rocket fuel and oxygen).  It launched its first rocket from the ISS in 2015, and also sees a huge market in space refuelling. Similar companies include Deep Space Industries and Moon Express. Read more about Planetary Resources

Space X

Private space travel and the mission to create life on Mars

Elon Musk’s $1.2bn space business is even more exciting than his Tesla cars, and is already proving a commercial success having won the contract from NASA to transport satellites into space, and transport cargo to and from the ISS. Musk has bigger ambitions, specifically to colonise Mars. His reusable space craft is rapidly bringing down the cost of space travel, and creating an ecosystem of services and providers, including Solar City, his solar power business that could sustain life on Musk’s Mars. Other space companies include BlueOrigin and Virgin Galactic.

Space Elevator 

Potentially the most practical form of space travel

The Space Elevator is the most promising Space Transportation system on the drawing boards today, combining scalability, low cost, qualify of ride, and safety to deliver truly commercial-grade space access – practically comparable to a train ride to space. Rocket-based space launch systems are inherently limited by the physics of rocket propulsion. More than 90% of the rocket’s weight is propellant, and the rest is split between the weight of the fuel tank and the payload. It is very difficult (if not impossible) to make such a vehicle safe or low cost. A target cost of $1,000 US per kg is proving to be impossible to reach. In comparison, airliners charge us about $1 per pound, and train transportation is in cents per pound. Find out more at the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) which is composed of individuals and organizations from around the world who share a vision of humanity in space.

More ideas

Other “Space Makers” include

  • Accion Systems: electric propulsion systems for small satellites developed at MIT, removing the risk of blow ups.
  • Bagaveev: designing and testing 3D printed Aerospace rocket engines and nano satellites into low-Earth orbits.
  • PlanetLabs: satellite imaging based on a network of over 100 small satellites to document and monitor life on Earth.
  • SpacePharma: providing micro-gravity environments for scientific research, from agrochemicals to new vaccines.
  • WorldView: building relatively cheap high-altitude balloon travel for leisure, research and education.

I am currently researching my next book about Market Makers:

  • Gamechangers … introduction to my recent book on disruptive innovation
  • Market Makers … new strategies for creating and shaping markets
  • Innolab … fast and collaborative strategic innovation process

If you’d like to suggest ideas for inclusion in my next book, please email me at peterfisk@peterfisk.com