This Element is an excerpt from The Power of Impossible Thinking: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Embrace the Outlier: To Do Differently You Must See Differently FT Press Delivers Elements.
Table of contents
- Embrace the Outlier: To Do Differently You Must See Differently
- The Power of Impossible Thinking: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business
- Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete
Change on this scale is rarely comfortable or easy, yet for Sir Ian the issue of most concern is skills.
The business is much more complex than that now. As an example, he says there is a completely different paradigm for attracting customers in the 21st century. How do you know which blogger has the most influence? One of the solutions, Sir Ian suggests, is to create a new culture. To do that you need much more team building and much less hierarchy. And you need to invest in diversity. For Sir Ian, diversity is not defined entirely by gender, race, age and orientation — though these all are important — but it is also about different skills, experiences and opinions.
People within the business need to know they can become leaders but you need fresh thinking too. Sir Ian has already turned words into deeds. Nicky Kinnaird is an experienced leader in the beauty industry, a part of the business Debenhams expects to grow. Lisa Mayers had a senior role in the asset management industry where she researched retail, apparel and luxury goods. He has been outspoken because he fears the industry is sticking its head in the sand.
He has a point: Traditional stores have to be online and pure play etailers are no longer satisfied with just having an online presence and want bricks and mortar. Like Sir Ian, Martin says the blend is key. You might need a team of data scientists but they are probably already in short supply globally. Different retailers have already tried different remedies. Those who can afford it, and have faith in their judgment in a sector where picking winners is notoriously difficult, have acquired promising digital start-ups. You can see his logic. With customer preferences constantly changing, retailers need to be swifter to respond.
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The right external partner, given a brief but unencumbered by bureaucratic obduracy, organizational inertia and legacy mindsets, can help retailers execute quicker and more effectively. For example, a few years ago, one grocery chain was looking to develop customer data but concluded that it would take two years and millions of dollars to define customer preferences for the project.
Yet a start-up offered to develop those preferences in six weeks at a fraction of the price. Similar alliances — for example between a US DIY chain and a digital service that provides electricians, painters and other contractors — are showing promise elsewhere. There is an argument, Martin suggests, that creating the right ecosystem of innovative digital partners will free retailers to focus on — and invest in — their core business.
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This may help retailers develop the agility they need to reinvent themselves. The skill is to get the pace of change right. We have to be agile. Change too slowly and we bore the customers. The question we have to keep asking ourselves is: ConsumerCurrents provides senior executives and consumer companies insights on topical industry issues, global trends and business planning. Save what resonates, curate a library of information, and share content with your network of contacts.
You've been a member since. Insights Industries Services Careers Contact. Close Notice of updates! Since the last time you logged in our privacy statement has been updated. We want to ensure that you are kept up to date with any changes and as such would ask that you take a moment to review the changes. You will not continue to receive KPMG subscriptions until you accept the changes. The notion of trust has also changed with the concept of user reviews and ratings. All these factors have led to the emergence of networked platforms, especially in the B2C domain, across different verticals and at an unprecedented scale, resulting in the professionalization of diverse fragmented industries.
Whereas start-ups with networked business models are forging ahead, traditional companies have responded with the typical excuses: Should we develop new capabilities in-house or should we build partnerships? Or should we outsource entirely? If the billing system can be repurposed for socially targeted big brands like Coca-Cola, far greater value can be generated by creating APIs application programming interfaces for them — a potential new business. A combination of entrepreneurship and leveraging unique assets and capabilities makes it viable.
With medical knowledge doubling every 3. Watson for Oncology was launched in and free access was provided to hospitals worldwide. Participating hospitals had a madate to share their data fully, which would make the tool more intelligent. Taking the US as an example, Watson for Oncology has great potential in the highly regulated healthcare industry a classic problem solver and an asset builder.
There are three tiers of hospitals: Tier 1 — world-class, with top doctors; Tier 2 — regional; and Tier 3 — community, often with limited resources. Hospitals in each tier have the opportunity to reconfigure their business model to compete better. For example, Watson for Oncology could lead to a decoupling of diagnosis and treatment, which are typically vertically integrated and housed under one roof.
It is also possible to save on expensive doctors and invest in areas that have more impact for cancer patients, such as nursing and after-treatment services. By specializing in a disease class, a new provider could do the job — at scale, more efficiently and at a lower cost. Specialization involves streamlining the type of patient, changing the workflow, investing in specific equipment, standardizing procedures and becoming outcome driven. Expertise and human intuition are expensive and time-consuming and the outcome is not predictable.
The codification of human knowledge to enable data-based decision making is the way forward. Watson for Oncology has gained traction in countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Korea and India, many of which lack oncologists and specialist centers. The problem- solving industry will eventually become a network, with the ability to move data around as its fundamental gel. Although privacy concerns surrounding patient data will need to be addressed by regulation and technology — such as block chains and encryption — Watson for Oncology is poised to change the architecture of healthcare.
An alternative organizational design to support innovation As technology and the nature of the workforce continue to evolve, organization design scholars are grappling with an outlier in terms of organizational design — a hierarchy-less organization without bosses, more frequently seen in innovative companies. Professor Narayanan argues that this kind of organization has existed since prehistoric times when hunter-gatherer communities had a two-layered structure comprising a tribe head, chosen based on hunting skills, and the rest of the community.
The next evolutionary step came with agriculture, which modified the way humans organized themselves. Thus hierarchies came about. Hierarchy accomplishes task division, task allocation, motivation rewards, monitoring and coordination flow of information. But it also causes problems such as silos and red tape and, most importantly, it separates decision makers from where the knowledge resides.
Are there credible alternatives to hierarchies? Given that hierarchy can be a roadblock to creativity, innovation is easier in a smaller company. Research has shown that the number of people with whom one can maintain a meaningful relationship — whether in a hunter-gatherer society or on Facebook — is , also known as the Dunbar number.
This means that humans will be most effective in organizations of around that implicitly embed safety, trust, a shared purpose and the ability to have an impact. At this size, there are fewer intermediaries and much innovation occurs serendipitously through informal conversations. In traditional companies, creative outposts are often formed to enable innovation by highly empowered talents.
Embrace the Outlier: To Do Differently You Must See Differently
Organizations therefore need to strive to facilitate the inclusion of hierarchy-less forms within the overall organizational design see Table 1. What can we incorporate into our existing organization design? Just the absence of the physical presence of the leader can sometimes change the quality of ideas in a brainstorming session. You might have to step back as a leader and do less than you normally do. Many traditional asset builders and service providers are responding to these competitive challenges by undertaking innovation in different ways.
A life sciences company might innovate with a university, an FMCG company with key account customers, while others collaborate with suppliers. DARPA, as we saw, extended the boundary of open innovation to tap into the wisdom of individual inventors. While partnering with high-tech players to seed innovation, traditional companies have to retain the ability to capture value, bearing in mind the following: Owning the customer interface is critical, particularly for B2B companies. Since they supply components along the value chain, traditionally they have tended not to focus much on the end customer.
By embedding sensors into their products, for example, asset builders can bypass Amazon and have a direct channel to the customer. The terms of data ownership and data sharing in partnerships should be clarified. The range of data gathered can subsequently be used for different types of analytics. Embrace technology to release resources to focus on the customer experience, thus redefining the core value proposition.
Small and deep data based on human psychology and unarticulated needs can provide superior insights. No big data analytics can provide this insight. The empathetic lens unleashes creativity. Explore options beyond partnering with the big players.
The Power of Impossible Thinking: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business
It might be more effective to acquire or work with smaller players such as start-ups or university offshoots that are more agile and flexible with their business model. Above all, keep abreast of the technology roadmap. To find out more, go to www. Yu biography Latest articles In the field with Wanda Group At a glance The onslaught of e-commerce requires traditional retailers to adapt their business models.
Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete
Elon Musk took the business community by surprise when he said he had secured financing steps to take Tesla private. This morning, the Financial Times reveals that actually, the board has only begun But whenever I was with him, I felt that he was the giant. Your information has been modified successfully. Do you want to save your changes?