CONFERENCE REPORT


and in the early stages – could really help in that respect. But it’s really about information turned into intelligence.” He stresses that the pace is going to accelerate, resulting in be more “unknown knowns”. He adds: “If you are a traditional player – a traditional retailer or manufacturer, we’re going to be faced with this amazing amount of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity and that’s the world we’re going to be in. And if you’re a traditional player, then this is your path and you’re going to see a lot of these challengers over the next couple of years.” He asks delegates some key questions – “how much time do we spend thinking about tomorrow? We spend a lot of time thinking about today. The 100 emails in your inbox, that’s today. But how do you look at tomorrow? And most companies extrapolate today and that’s wrong. The problem is the day after there are huge amounts of business models that could change the rules of the game. “Today is very important,


tomorrow is very important but the day after is huge long-term value and if you ignore that, you are probably going to be too late.”


Be a one percenter


He admits many people may wonder how they can think about the day after tomorrow if we don’t actually know what it’s going to be. He explains: “I think there are only two types of people in the world – there are people who know what they’re doing and people who don’t know what they’re doing. It sounds stupid but it’s not. Elon Musk is the king of people who don’t know what they’re doing. Why? Because he’s constantly doing things that have never been done before, so by definition, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. “I come from the world of start ups. In start ups you have 99% of people who are doing things that have never been done before. The more it grows and you scale up, the more this number changes, If you go to Facebook, the number is 50:50, for Google it’s 80:20 and


then I go to a bank where 99% of people know what they’re doing. And they’ve done it that way for 20 years. But I like the one percenters who are trying to do things that have never been done before, they are trying to innovate. But you know what the problem is with these one percenters in these traditional companies, they don’t spend all of their time innovating. These one percenters spend most of their energy fighting the 99 percenters. That is the true challenge of innovation. Innovation is no longer a luxury.” He says some companies will look at product innovation, others on market innovation, looking at entering new markets – an avenue he believes could lead some companies to “fail miserably” – and others will look at service innovation. He gives the example of Netflix, which went from a physical DVD rental business to live-streaming its content. “This was hugely successful,” he says. “Same product, different delivery


– great service innovation.” He also gave the example of


Ikea’s acquisition of Task Rabbit, which helps users find a handyman for DIY tasks, after it emerged that the biggest search term on the site in 2017 was ‘Ikea furniture’. Eventually he believes we need to think about business model innovation.


“It’s a new canvas for thinking. And, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a lot easier when you’re a start up but I think, fundamentally, it’s about having a different mind-set about what you want to achieve.” He concludes: “If you go back to your business after an invigorating conference such as this one, how much time are you going to spend on controlling your comfort zone and how much time ae you going to spend thinking about how you are going to be relevant for customers the day after tomorrow? I like Nelson Mandela’s quote: ‘I never fail, I either win or learn’. “You try, you fail, you learn and then you repeat until it works and then you can actually achieve greatness in the day after tomorrow.”


www.diyweek.net


7 SEPTEMBER 2018 DIY WEEK 15


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