Gamechangers

Creating Innovative Strategies for Business and Brands; New Approaches to Strategy, Innovation and Marketing

Peter Fisk

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781118956960
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

Shake up and redefine the market by changing your game! A new generation of businesses is rising out of the maelstrom of economic and technological change across our world. These companies are shaking up the world. In Gamechangers Peter Fisk has sought out the brands and businesses, large and small, from every continent, who are changing the game… and shows how we can learn the best new approaches to strategy and leadership, innovation and marketing from them.

'Gamechangers' are disruptive and innovative, they are more ambitious, with stretching vision and enlightened purpose. They find their own space, then shape it in their own vision. Most of all they have great ideas. They outthink their competition, thinking bigger and different. They don't believe in being slightly cheaper or slightly better. Why be 10% better, when you could be 10 times better?

G amechangers is built around 10 themes that are shaping the future of business, brought to life with 100 case studies from across the world, and 16 practical canvases to make the best ideas happen in your business. The book is supported by a range of seminars, workshops and digital resources.

Gamechangers offers guidance on:

• Thinking smarter and acting faster
• Embracing the new tricks of business
• Understanding how gamechangers dream and disrupt
• Delivering practical results and winning

PART 1
ARE YOU READY?

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Next generation businesses win by changing the game. They don't want to be a little better, they think bigger . . . they see things differently, and think different things . . . they define and shape markets in their own vision. They combine all the tricks of 21st-century business to engage and inspire people . . . to enable more, to make life better. And to win.

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1
PLAY . . . THE GAME
THE GAME, CHANGE THE GAME

‘Moonshots' are the incredible, seemingly impossible, ideas that can change our world.

Google <X> is a moonshot factory. Full of creative thinkers, optimists, seeking out the big opportunities and most challenging problems, that with a little imagination and a lot of innovation might just make our world a better place. From intelligent cars to augmented vision, the <X> team fuses technological possibility with human need, to create more audacious, inspiring futures.

This is how we move forwards.

From Galileo's vision to da Vinci's mechanics, Ford's cars to Bell's phones, Apple's devices to Dyson's cleaners. They enrich society, and make life better. Markets emerge out of new possibilities, seeing things differently, thinking different things. Brands capture big ideas, innovation turns them into businesses and future growth.

We live in the most incredible time.

Days of exponential change and opportunities limited only by our imagination. A world where impossible dreams can now come true. A period of awesomeness. From Alibaba to Zespri, Ashmei to Zidisha, Azuri and Zipcars, a new generation of businesses are rising out of the maelstrom of economic and technological change across our world.

‘Gamechangers' are more ambitious, with stretching vision and enlightened purpose. They see markets as kaleidoscopes of infinite possibilities, assembling and defining them to their advantage. Most of all they have great ideas, captured by brands that resonate with their target audiences at the right time and place, enabled by data and technology but most of all by rich human experiences. Social networks drive reach and richness, whilst new business models make the possible profitable.

Our challenge is to make sense of this new world, to embrace the new opportunities in innovative ways, and to be a winner.

WHAT'S YOUR GAME?

Branson flashed his trademark grin, flicked his shaggy, maverick hair.

‘Business is like the best game you could ever imagine.'

We talked about his multi-billion dollar investments in financial services, media and telecoms, airlines and space travel. He described his responsibility to hundreds of thousands of staff, and millions of customers.

And he was calling it a game.

He was having fun now, challenging the notions of conventional strategies and structures, especially in the biggest companies. The essence of Virgin, he said, is to do things significantly different and better.

He talked about his admiration for kids and for the next generation of entrepreneurs – especially those in fast-growing markets who have hunger and passion, and how he was inspired by iconic revolutionaries, Nelson Mandela and Steve Jobs.

‘You've got to think different, uninhibited like a child, never give up, have an ambition that you really care about, take more risks, be ingenious, make a bigger difference to people's lives, have incredible fun, but also play to win.'

I asked him what keeps him going. ‘Doing things different, unexpected and a bit crazy,' he said. ‘It's about playing the game. But the best way to win is to change the game.'

Whilst he says he's not too old for an all-night party, Branson loves a game of tennis, and that's after he's swum for an hour each morning along the coast of his own Necker Island.

From his earliest venture, launching a student magazine, he would always do things differently. He launched his first airline with no knowledge of the travel industry, but he had a big idea, to provide low-cost travel that was modern and fun. And he had a brand that at least some people loved. He could see an opportunity to disrupt the market, to be on the customer's side. When he launched mobile phones, he piggy backed on somebody else's network to grow further and faster, and targeted a new generation of consumers.

Even Virgin Galactic, his latest and craziest business, is not all it might seem. He had no experience of space travel. But he got together with glider designer Burt Rutan to do things differently, launching his spacecraft from the back of a mother ship, eventually to be fuelled by his algae farms on the Carribean, hugely reducing costs and carbon emissions and enabling daily departures and landings.

Perhaps the most surprising revelation is that space is not really the frontier. Branson's real ambition for Virgin Galactic is inter-continental travel. Imagine a one-hour flight from Rio to Jakarta, or Cape Town to Beijing. It could get a little weightless on the way, but could transform the way we think about the world.

Whilst Branson was still playing, it was already evening in Beijing.

Li Ka-Shing was sitting down to a dinner of his favourite snake soup. The Chaozhou-born, Hong Kong-based chairman of Hutchison Whampoa is the richest man in Asia, worth around $30 billion according to Bloomberg.

Yet he lives a relatively frugal existence, wearing simple clothes and a $50 Seiko watch on his wrist, and has donated much of his fortune to education and medical research.

This is a man who sees business as an ancient game, rooted in Chinese culture's ‘Wu Xing' where the five elements – wood, fire, earth, metal and water – come together in a mutually generative sequence.

You can see these phases in Li's business investments which include construction and energy, mining and technology, shipping and banking. Together they account for over 15% of the market cap of Hong Kong's Stock Exchange.

Li loves a game before work too. In fact you'll find him at 6 every morning teeing off at the Hong Kong Golf Club with his playing partner, movie mogul Raymond Chow.

Whilst Asia rises, the old is still important. And that great old ‘Sage of Omaha', investor Warren Buffett, still knows how to play too.

Twice as wealthy as his Asian peer, Buffett loves to surprise his shareholders when they gather at ‘the Woodstock of business', Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting. Forget slick graphics explaining the complexities of financial markets, this is different.

As the lights dim, there's a roar off stage, and 80 year-old Buffett rides on, dressed in a leather jacket, on the back of a shining Harley Davidson. He grabs a guitar and starts playing a song. His review of the year. His shareholders love it.

In fact it's interesting how playful the world's most famous entrepreneurs are.

Mark Zuckerberg began writing software at the age of about 10. As his father once said ‘Other kids played computer games, Mark created them'. Whenever he came across somebody else's game, he would hack into the code, and change it to make it better.

Facebook itself started out as a game. Enrolled at Harvard to study psychology and com...