In today’s business world, doing the same thing you always did is not an option. If you don’t innovate, you die. It could be a slow demise, might be fast, but thriving isn’t on the cards if you don’t change.
One of the fastest and most effective ways to drive digital innovation is to go directly to the source – to the start-ups that are reinventing your market right now (whether you know it, or not), and Start Up Europe Week in early March 2018 created a fine opportunity to consider the role of a start up in your business and your career.
Yet consider with care, with caution. This century might be relatively young but we’ve already seen waves of over-investment in what felt like pivot points but frequently were simply money-pits.
One discussion at Blink’s (MediaCom’s division which matches client needs with start ups) event for the week focussed on the big question of whether innovation by big corporates in this space really delivers business value or is essentially an effective way of driving public relations and image.
The panel concluded that there’s sweet spot where you can get both, but the panel urged caution in having too high an expectation from this work stream.
Dora Michail, md, digital at The Telegraph, reckoned that if 1% of the meetings with start-ups converted into something powerful, something that would drive real change, you were doing well.
Jon Bradford, early stage investor and founder of Motive Partners, characterised corporates’ meetings with start ups as a “petting zoo.”
Does that leave you wondering if it’s worth your valuable time?
Whether you should leave the disrupting to someone else and hope for the best?
What if despite your best efforts it fails?
What motivation is there for corporate innovation in fact if it’s so hard to execute and business as usual pays this week’s bills?
Dave Knox, one of the Blink panel, has written a guide for businesses seeking to navigate this. In it he quotes Jeff Bezos “Most large organisations embrace the idea of invention but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there….. in business, every once in a while, when you step up to the plate, you can score 1000 runs… it’s important to be bold.” Knox is passionate about the value of start ups: “the canary in the coal mine”, and points out that it’s easy to dismiss them, warning: “The leaders of yesterday have to learn the rule of an entirely new game of business in order to maintain their position as the leaders of tomorrow”
Businesses need to think through how they innovate. Anyone can create experiments or buy in some new tech. The real question to be asked and answered is where is the new business model?
There’s a danger in using an accelerator that is incentivised on introductions to start ups. The business must ask the right question first and be prepared to experiment in an agile way to find the answers.
The team at Blink focus on defining the business opportunity or problem first. With this clarified the odds of finding the right start up solution to make sure that your business has competitive advantage are hugely improved, and operating this way can lead to step changes in performance.
The single most important factor for transformation, and it might surprise you.
Thursday, March 29th, 2018Which is the most important factor for transformation?
At the beginning of 2018 we asked our clients a big question. Of all of the multiple issues facing our industry, (including GAFAM, Brexit, Millennials, Voice, Purpose etc etc), all of which are on marketers’ minds, which is the most important?
I can reveal here that the top four issues are:
Creativity, Artificial Intelligence, Data and Agility.
At our opening session at AdWeek Europe we invited four speakers to each champion one of the topics and let the audience vote on which was most crucial.
That transformation is essential for business is unarguable. Most businesses have path dependence baked into their ways of working. Keeping up with the pace of change in the world is essential but it isn’t enough simply to buy in a new head of digital or data. If you staple on a new product to the edge of the business but don’t change how the organisation operates then it won’t deliver.
As one great thinker of this century Stephen Hawking said “intelligence is the ability to adapt to change”.
As another great (but in this case a fictional great) Optimus Prime said: “there’s a thin line between being a hero and being a memory.”
Without transformation, without change, there’s no chance of being a hero.
Without the right kind of transformation there’s just the Gartner “Trough of disillusionment.
What did our speakers say and who won?
Victoria White, editorial director of Hearst Made, championed creativity. She talked about the importance of human editorial judgement: “If we only went with what the data said then would not have created such amazing products such as Esquire Town House and House Beautiful Sofas.” She pointed to the need for bravery in knowing what the audience want before they know they want it and acting on that insight, calling her editors “walking algorithms”. She concluded by saying: “without a passionate human being with an idea there is no creativity”.
Jim Kelly, VP R+D at Quantcast was up next, championing the supremacy of data. He pointed out the step change in media from making a few decisions every quarter in the last century to making a few million media decisions every second now. So he said it is crucial to get “comfortable with machines digesting data on your behalf”. Culturally this is a big change too. Kelly believes that many organisations are focussed on too many so called key performance indicators because too many metrics are measurable. In a reference to Coleridge he challenged that many are “drowning in data, like the ancient mariner surrounded by water, but dying of thirst”. (Remember the lines: “water water everywhere but not a drop to drink”). The solution, sort out your metrics and data will drive business success.
Hannah Mirza, global head of partnerships at MediaCom talked about AI being crucial. She said: “When humans think of problem solving we follow decision making trees to arrive at answers. AI has the ability to comprehend many more decision trees than a human can by contrast.” Hannah pointed out that we are reaching a point where AI and reality matching is as close as 95% and improving to the extent that we are not able to discernibly differentiate between humans and machine and showed how you can benefit at every stage of the consumer decision journey with best practice AI.
Finally, Tony Foggett, ceo and owner of Code, computer love championed Agility. Agile processes differ from traditional ways of working by valuing Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, Working software over comprehensive documentation, Customer collaboration over contract negotiation and Responding to change over slavishly following a plan. His business is built on Agile practices and he eloquently argued that his philosophy of “Point, Fire, Aim” led to better decisions and more empowered staff. In a world where change will never be this slow again, agility is essential for transformation.
Transformation is crucial. That’s why we’ve set up Theobalds Road Consultancy at MediaCom to deliver a change path for clients.
After all the speakers had argued their point we had a vote. The Adweek Europe 2018 audience said, conclusively, that Creativity was key. What do you think?
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