bands, whereas the mass industry of CDs and cassettes just went away. Why buy one CD why you can stream the whole world’s music?


Te big challenge for this industry, from where I’m sitting in the nosebleed seats, is that you can’t run hospitality with a risk management mindset. If you were to open a steak restaurant with that attitude you couldn’t give anyone steak knives. Te patrons ‘could’ stab each other! Food relies on risk – we wouldn’t have oysters otherwise. Te reason people enjoy it is that it’s this slightly scary refined thing that requires a leap of faith.


In a casino, you must have a risk management mindset to please the law makers, I appreciate that, but where this industry has lost out is in the ‘generational gain.’ Tings that were once considered sinful are now tolerated. Sexuality and life-style choices, for example, about which we are a less conservative continent now than a few decades ago. However, you wouldn’t know that from entering most casinos. I have never seen a Pride-themed event in a casino. My son is into Magic Te Gathering, the playing cards game. He and his friends are confined to a basement in the middle of Stockholm that hosts a niche community of players – why doesn’t that happen at the casino?


If you want to find pockets of growth, find these communities of interest and give them a platform. Whether they gamble on your machines is probably the least important aspect. Just get them into the building, which as we’ve seen in other industries, has enabled growth and relevance to the brands you’ve created.


In general, we like to preserve our city centres with museum-like dedication, which returns us to the European idea of refining processes. Bo Bernhard says that we don’t destroy the cathedrals of gaming in Europe, as they do in Las Vegas, but there are examples of this. Te church in many countries has been extremely good at bringing new groups into its buildings. Tey were relevant in the European refugee crisis, they made themselves relevant in current debates on sexuality and family – they don’t always hold the popular opinion, but they have become places of debate. Someone like Jordan Peterson talks to people about popular questions like a priest and we’ve seen what the popular yearning is for that.


Our love for socialisation and intrinsic need for excitement and gambling are timeless. In 10,000 years they’ll still be here, but it might not be the casino that is best at being able to cater for all of them at the same time. I think you have to choose what you are – and if you’re competing against frictionless gambling, then it’s probably good to add friction to your own offer.


When your industry is doing well, diversity becomes an exotic spice. Inclusion in this environment becomes a human rights thing for fairness sake. It is one discussion to have, but a less bitter version of that is to ask, what does a multiplicity of skills, backgrounds, capabilities,


“There must be a reason to get dressed, get into my car and go to this building tonight –


not tomorrow. If the answer to this question is only gambling then you have failed; you have already been beaten by


someone offering a frictionless alternative. We have seen this change before. Record stores thought that they were only about selling packaged music. The ones that survive are now special community shops selling vinyl, in-store concerts by indie bands, whereas the mass industry of CDs and


cassettes just went away. Why buy one CD why you can stream the whole world’s music?”


what capabilities do we need? If you’ve ever seen a tech-developer, they tend to be a non- binary person with pink hair and tattooed everything, whose job hours are not the same and their way of thinking is certainly not aligned to yours, because they are coders and systems architects. How do we ensure that we get those people into the industry?


Joe and the Juice, the Danish juice company, decided only to hire hot looking young men in their bars. Tey knew this would attract young women, and they would bring the young men. If you want there to be more young or old – then you need to hire ambassadors. Tis industry, in terms of diversity, has not even got to square one. To catch up to square one quick, be relevant and interesting. Tat’s my advice.


Te best advice ever given, however, was from Steven Spielberg to George Clooney, who at the time was a TV actor. Spielberg told Clooney: stop moving your head so much when you talk. He has since become the suave leading man. Tat is a good advisor.


Te expectations of Futurology, for the past few years, has been – show us umpteenth cool new gadgets. Here is the metaverse, here is a self- driving car etc. It became a mono-cultural diet of information. Some of my books are about the art and questionable science of future thinking in which we talk about the visual appearance of the future – as opposed to its smell – how does it feel? Historically, inventions in things that we see, such as architecture or industry, were preceded by inventions in new ways of thinking. If you think about the limited liability stock company – an invisible thing, but the idea that you could take more risks than you would be liable for, preceded the corporatisation of the 18th century; or consider that the enlightenment gave away to the scientific revolution, which was in turn how we came to invent ‘things’ like electro-magnetism, medicine, etc.


ideation mean? A lot of people talk about deep diversity as opposed to superficial diversity, which is the human rights side. If we believe that women and people of colour have been disenfranchised then we must do everything in our power to change that, including for me – as a 40+ year old white guy – to step aside. And I’m okay with that.


Te other long-term thought, in which we create multidisciplinary ways of doing this, especially in an insular industry such as gaming, is when we go to the same suppliers, same procurement procedures and have a very clear idea of what they do, and wonder why they are not doing better? If you expect different results by doing the same thing – that’s the definition of madness.


A lot of companies are ‘doing’ diversity by saying they have too many of one and not enough of the other. We need to ask instead,


I struggle with this concept as a keynote speaker because if you are too much on the wild side you become an exotic philosopher, which isn’t that useful for an industry forum. On the other hand, if you go in and say: hello casino members, here are the 10 most important topics for the future of your industry; you become a recycler of last month’s periodical, plus it is bound to be all about digitalisation. So you have to swerve in- between. Where I get my energy from – is where and how does the future happen and what is the missing link between seeing things and doing. Tinking anew so you can do anew.


Such ideas keep evolving as we failed to anticipate the pandemic. I held a speech for hotel industry owners in London in February 2020, and the half-life of that talk was three weeks. Te general of the Swedish army, two weeks before the invasion of Ukraine said, “I doubt the Russians will invade.” It is part of a pattern of being constantly surprised by the future. So there is obviously something wrong with our mental software – and hope to be able to fix that bug.


WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS P47


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108