Expo 2020 posed 50 questions that were relevant when the organisers were planning the event.

Since then, Expo 2020 has been postponed by a year and many of the known knowns have become irrelevant or accelerated.

Take a look at the attached list of 50 questions (faithfully reproduced from the original) and consider how your perception of the world, viewed at the macro level, has altered in one short year.

This is the kind of stimulus that room44 uses in our scenario planning activities. After all, if you don’t know how your environment will change, how can you know how to fit into it?

Let’s discuss. Make a date here.

Future thinking. Future proofing. It’s what we do.

Expo 2020 50 questions

Since we started our business in 2014, room44’s aim has always been to be a bit different. ‘Thinking differently’ has unfortunately become something of a cliché, and future-proofing has become rather under-valued since COVID-19 knocked everybody for six.

Reading the runes and ‘helping’ clients see trends that will affect them is the currency that a new breed of consultancies trades in.

We did it differently in 2019 and 2020.

In early 2019, it was pretty obvious that the climate change agenda would impact mobility. Our thinking suggested internal combustion engines were doomed, and not only because governments laid down dates by which they would be outlawed, but also that these dates may be brought forward as new data became available.

Thinking differently has always been our strength and so, rather than sell this mantra exclusively, I decided we’d leap again.

Seeking a new venture for room44 to expand into, that would benefit from all the signs we read, we settled on eBikes. The reasons are many and various but after running our own scenarios assessment, this sector stacked up as a great opportunity.

How did we capitalise?

Simple. We started another company and now we sell eBikes, eBike service contracts, eBike hire schemes and we’re active in promoting local micro-mobility as part of the evolving multi-modal model.

Hang on, did you miss that bit: localism is a trend that had to evolve and this was part of the rationale too.

I have to admit, we didn’t factor in COVID-19 as part of the equation back in Q2’19, but serendipity has its place.

“The more I practise, the luckier I get.”

To start a company from scratch would have taken more time than I wanted to spend getting going, and we got lucky in the same way that Gary Player got luckier at golf the more he practised. Researching, meeting, talking, interrogating, investigating and filtering all featured in my personal bid to get into a market I simply knew would be good for us. And eventually we found our partner.

I met Fully Charged at the inaugural eBike Summit in Oxford and from that moment on our trajectory was set. A new partnership and venture takes tenacity and energy: even eighteen months into our relationship, we still have to work really hard to keep the ball rolling but, with trust on both sides, I couldn’t be happier with where we are and I know that Fully Charged is happy with our first year’s performance. Everybody wins.

Case study.

Back to the ‘we help’ generation of consultancies. It’s not usual for a creative agency like room44 to step out of its groove and try something completely new based on its own trend analysis. It’s more common for them to create a digital version of project delivery so they can pull in more clients without increasing their staffing costs. I believe in thinking differently.

Ask yourself, who would you rather talk to: a business that has started up in this market environment, got going and become established when markets are in turmoil…?

Or someone who ‘helps you’ to see new ideas without the recent experience of seeing a trend and following their own intuition?

If this encourages you to have a chat, here’s how you can make a date that suits you.

Future thinking. Future proofing. It’s what I/we do.