The data you need to see aren’t always where you want them to be. There’s a value to inviting an outside party with an enquiring mind to look at your condition.

Here’s an example.

Cardiff’s housing market is sinking without trace – maybe.

In The Guardian’s Audio Long Read podcast of 29th August (The century of climate migration: why we need to plan for the great upheaval), Gaia Vince presents many arguments in favour of the title of the article. It all makes perfect sense, to me.

During this period of change, it’s high on the list of important things to understand that migration of populations and climate change are inextricably linked. One of the ironies is that we (the UK) are working hard, as an independent nation, to smooth and ease the flow of goods and services in and out of the country while making it ever harder for people to travel in and out without friction. It’s people who make stuff we want to export and yet we currently appear not to want people?

I strongly recommend you have a listen, or read it here. It’s full of insight and data you should know. One particular nugget is that “the Welsh capital, Cardiff, is projected to be two-thirds underwater by 2050.”

Pause while this sinks in.

Cardiff? Really?

If this is accurate, it means if you’re buying a house in Cardiff now, by the time you reach the end of your 25-year mortgage, assuming you don’t live on a hill, your investment may not be looking that great.

Estate agencies in Cardiff may or may not have cottoned on to this yet. But it proves the point that, from a personal and due diligence perspective, trends and threads of thinking like this are massively important when planning how to act in the short term to protect and thrive in the long term.

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

Disclaimer: room44 looks for data points that need examination. This one hasn’t been examined by us so make your own decision based on your own research – at least it’s on your radar now.

Everything that happens has a wider effect. We all know this.

But, to confront it puts us in an uncomfortable place.

There is a better way than to only dwell on the inevitable – Actionable, sustainable strategy.

 

At this time of year we write a content calendar that usually includes a blog timed for March saying something like, your year is 25% time gone: what has changed?

Obviously, it’s provocative. Understandably, it can get a reaction along the lines of ‘shut up, smart arse, we know’.

This year we decided it was worth writing the blog a bit earlier. As usual, predictions abound – like this decade will see more technological change that we’ve experienced in the last hundred.

No real surprises there. It was the same in the 2010s and is difficult to plan for.

But it was only a few weeks ago that the UK government announced we could have a Christmas and that they’d review things in four days’ time. Policies that last four days? That’s a new kind of normal.

In February, of course, all bets are off and the only place you ‘need’ to wear a face mask is on a bus.

In other news the UK and France aren’t really getting on (again). Inflation is soaring. Domestic energy costs are set to rise by 50% this year. Lithium is in short supply, so batteries are too, affecting almost everything. Internationally, the Ukraine is in a state of flux; Kazakhstan is worth watching; US Republicans are planning a Trump return to power while Democrats aren’t able to stop regional restructuring that might permit it.

But none of this can affect your business because it’s all a long way away and in the future.

Stuff happens every day doesn’t it?

The obvious reaction is to, well, react because that’s pragmatic. But how differently would it be if you had already anticipated the macro events that could sideswipe you?

You can forecast your future

The idea of stepping into the future and looking back is attributed to Steve Jobs (but probably not his original thought). He was right though; step into the future, look back and join the dots – when they join up, you have a route map/ plan/ strategy – whatever.

There’s always one

This concept of future thinking makes perfect sense until the sceptic in your team says, ’but you can’t predict the future’. There’s always one. It’s usually the same person who insists on forecasting everything. Forecasts and trends watching aren’t quite the same. Forecasts are guesses based on historical data and maybe you can’t predict the future; but you can keep an eye on it so it doesn’t catch you out. You can also build a plan for your possible futures.

Planning for change

The diagram below illustrates the point. Try it for yourself: print it out and do the exercise as instructed.

Now turn it through 180⁰ and do it backwards.

See what I mean?

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

If you want to talk about this, here’s my diary. Pick a time that suits you.

 

 

 

In the good old days, we could take a view of markets and see the probable changes that were readable from viewable trends. That was when the pace of change was fast – now things have stepped up to a whole new level.

Long-term thinking. Future thinking. Future-proofing.

When the long term is the hardest thing to focus on, that’s when it’s most important to retain that focus.

We’ve written a number of blogs recently predicting changes of fortune in various sectors: we’ve suggested the demise of the mobile phone; the accelerating rate of switch to electric vehicles; Apple losing its innovative edge; veganism really taking off; and the impulse and confectionery sectors taking a hit.

These are extrapolations from readable trends.

Wearable tech is becoming invisible and the internet of things has developed into the internet of everything, so the infrastructure is growing that will integrate the functionality of mobile phones into the fabric of your lives.

Governments have issued more aggressive net zero targets and shortened timescales for EVs to replace fossil-fuelled cars. It was 2040 last year. Now it’s 2032.

As for the impulse sector, we believe it’s heading for a major restructuring and probable value reduction to a negative trajectory that’s similar to the growth of EVs.

A whole new level.

And all this was when the pace of change was fast. Now things have stepped up to a whole new level.

• The UK is out of Europe.
• There are interesting developments in the US Presidential race.
• Country politics are not what they were, even a few weeks ago.
• Plastic pollution is off the news agenda because COVID19 is all anyone is talking about.

Markets tumble.

This week saw the Dow Jones tumble 7% in just four minutes. Italy’s market dropped by 11% and Germany and the UK both dropped 8% in a day. Why? Because the world is facing a pandemic and oil-producing countries can’t agree whether demand will drop during the lifecycle of the Coronavirus.

Mega-trends and toilet rolls.

Countries have ring-fenced cities. Mass gatherings are being restricted in some places, while mass transit systems function as normal in others. Government departments are closing and toilet rolls are running out.

Let’s not forget the major environmental disasters, such as drought and wildfires, that are still going on, while uncontrolled migration and its inherent human tragedies continue.

The effect of mega trends used to be something that was a step removed from the fortunes of individual companies, but things have changed.

Even as major events have turned some markets upside down, others have experienced an uplift. Hand sanitiser brands are literally rubbing their hands in glee while consumers hoard stock, and pollution levels drop as commuters stop travelling.

So, is change a real thing? Of course.

When the long term is the hardest thing to focus on, that’s when it’s most important to retain that focus.

Long-term thinking. Future thinking. Future-proofing. It’s what we do.

If this kind of thinking can be helpful to you, let’s talk. Long-term thinking. Future proofing. It’s what we do.

Here’s my diary. Book some time.

Like a great song, a product can have a development trajectory. Here’s how a product can be nurtured over the 2020 – 2030 decade.

1984

When Leonard Cohen released Hallelujah, probably his most recognisable song, in 1984, he did so after a struggle.

If you’re familiar with Cohen, you’ll know that he isn’t the jolliest of singers, even if his poetry is worth a read. 1984 was all about the end of disco, and the start of the New Wave and electronica. It wasn’t about angst-ridden self-reflection. So Leonard had an uphill battle; his record label didn’t want to release Hallelujah at first, apparently telling him: ‘We know you’re great. We just don’t know if you’re any good.’

Cream rises to the top

With enough heat though, cream rises to the top, and Leonard got Hallelujah out – although it didn’t do particularly well. But, like all ideas that start as a minimal viable product, the development of Hallelujah was built by various artists over the following years. It was sung faster – let’s face it, it couldn’t get slower; it was shortened from the original seventeen verses; it was treated to as many styles as there were covers – and then came Jeff Buckley.

1994 – 2007

Buckley got hold of Hallelujah in 1994 and made it his own. Again, it wasn’t an immediate success – in fact, it didn’t meet its moment until almost a decade after Buckley’s death. The version of the song that finally became a hit was true to the original, but with a new vibe that resonated with a contemporary audience in the early noughties.

And what happened as a result? Leonard Cohen himself came to the party with a couple of extra beats per minute, and sped up his own song when in his seventies.

Hallelujah!

The point is that Cohen conceived a ‘product’ that was almost good when it launched. Over time, the idea got better – until someone came along and packaged it in a different wrapper and it met its moment. It took over twenty years and speaks to the long-term value of ‘evergreen’ content.

The lifecycle of a product is never easy to predict but, if the product is any good, it will find its market position eventually.

I’m not claiming that Hallelujah was an innovation. That would be like saying Cohen invented music. But I am saying that products that don’t make it at first can, with tenacity, belief and maybe even some pivoting, win out.

10, 20-30

To read about our new long-range innovation tool please click here and we’ll send you a synopsis. It’s called 10, 20-30 and it is designed to maximise your opportunities though-out the next decade.

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

Raspberries

There’s a farm in the UK that grows raspberries. It has always had pickers to come in and harvest the crops at the right time, but now it’s working with an automated picker and the results are looking good.

The robot does the work of a person, and does it for 24 hours a day and for as many days as the need exists. Then it stops and waits.

The robot doesn’t eat anything or need space to move around in between jobs or heat or food. It just waits and, when there’s a crop, it’s ready to go again.

Other farms like this idea too and are watching closely.

Apples

We know of an autonomous tractor designed to do the job of conventional tractors in orchards – crowded, obstacle-strewn places – and it’s working out well. The tractor runs out to collect, tow, carry and mow, and then returns itself to a charging point to be refuelled and re-instructed.

When it’s not working, it waits.

Farmers are facing a problem with the UK workforce. People prefer, given the choice, not to work on their knees in fields. So, people with fewer choices do those jobs and, at the moment, many of those people have come to the UK because work is easier to find than in their home country. And even the migrant population prefers to work in towns where other facilities are easier to find and enjoy.

Supply

But Brexit has slowed immigration of the people who are prepared to do the jobs, for less money, that the native population doesn’t want, so farmers are looking at other solutions.

Automation has taken an autonomous step forward.

The result may be a reduction in openings for migrant workers and an increase in jobs skilled in the art of managing robots. The landscape is clearly shifting and autonomy is growing more acceptable, more competent and more efficient.

Picking up a trend

I’ve written many times that the concepts we imagine will enter our markets in about five years, most often gain market share inside eighteen months.

On 4^th January 2017, I wrote a blog called Augment yourself that opened with the line, “We’re going to let you in on a secret: Artificial Intelligence’s dirty little secret.
AI hasn’t got legs and it won’t march over the hill and steal your job.“

Eighteen months on, the picture shifted to make automated, commercial fruit picking possible today. AI may still be a way off, but autonomous machines, that can do the same things people can, are here. If you doubt it, take a look at the reporting of robots in distribution warehouses like Amazon and Ocado, where most of the work is already automated.

So, whether you like it or not, food picked from a tree, a bush, or in a warehouse is likely to have had some non-human intervention before it reaches you.

Subscribe to our newsletter for regular insight on emerging innovation.

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

Old dog

My last dog made it to fifteen. Coincidentally, this is about the lifecycle of a successful company today. Sure, there are exceptions, but fifteen years is the average brand lifecycle now according to people like PWC.

During the life of that dog, who was called Ice, I had two children, moved house four times and changed jobs five times. When Ice was a puppy, I had no plans for any of that to happen.

New dog

I’ve got a new dog. Well, actually she’s five now, and she’s called Soda. In the last five years we haven’t moved house, I have started five businesses for other people, and am five years into running my consultancy.

When Soda was a puppy, I had an idea I wanted to start companies and knew I’d be my own boss. Soda is a reminder to me that, as she gets older, so does everything else – including my brand. By the time she’s fifteen and I’m another ten years down the road, everything I know about the world will be different.

We regularly say that the ideas you expect to be in the market in five years will have taken market share in eighteen months. Things change much faster than they used to.

New tricks

At the current rate of creation, all data (every byte of data ever created) is doubled every two years. By 2020, data creation will be doubled every year.

Without a regular look into emerging trends, you simply can’t plan for a future market.

I’m a great believer in ‘how you do anything is how you do everything’.

If you aren’t looking into the future and planning your place in markets as they develop, you may as well wrap it up and sell out now to give someone else a chance of doing better.

This is the reality of business today.

If this kind of thinking can be helpful to you, let’s talk. Here’s my diary.

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

This may be a bit uncomfortable for some of you, so let’s start by talking about something that many people find funny.

I’m from Cornwall, and for many years there’s been a small but vocal movement for Cornish independence from the UK. Funny? It depends who you are and what your perspective is.

When Brexit first became a thing, some Yorkshire folk decided that it too had a claim for independence. ‘YEXIT’ was floated, and the arguments for its ability to stand alone sound pretty good: a population close to that of Denmark, a larger economy than some entire EU nations, and Yorkshire athletes won more medals than Canada in the Rio Olympics. Amusing? Not to Yorkshire. To the rest of us? Maybe, but stranger things have happened.

How we choose to look at issues reflects our perspective.

Here’s another one: according to a Hubbub, UK consumers buy, use and throw away 11 billion pieces of single-use packaging a year, and that’s just for lunch. That’s the equivalent of 276 pieces of plastic for every person in the UK – every year. On average, more than one piece of plastic every working day per person. Which kind of cancels out the argument that individuals can’t make a difference.

Now, as a consumer, I know that none of us wants to be responsible for plastic waste, but we do want to eat. The opportunities to use and refill our own food savers, reusable cups and rented tiffin cans are growing. The opportunities for buying single-use plastics are not yet decreasing, but they will.

Logically, the pressure on consumer behaviour and the financial penalties that will come to bear on the plastics supply chain will squeeze companies whose entire output is of plastic.

Most of these companies are still bullish. They think this is a problem for tomorrow because, today, their customers are supporting them. Phrases I’ve borrowed before are apposite again here:

1. The difference between animals and humans is our ability to deny reality.
2. When consumers stop buying crap, they’ll stop making crap.

Plastic manufacturers, on their websites, are still saying things like:

“We’re global specialists in packaging for food and drink, dedicated to making every consumer experience enjoyable, consistent, and safe. Our purpose is to help great products reach more people, more easily.”

“Make food look great.”

“A leading global design and engineering company in plastic products.”

With some simple research, you can see who is working to introduce pulp-based products and where the focus on plastic is still a priority. There remains a lot of ‘selling what we can make’ rather than ‘making what we can sell’ embedded in the psychology of these businesses.

In business, the CSuite is where strategic decisions are sanctioned. The Chief Marketing Officer is probably the person who gets to assess the options a company has. Every company needs someone in this position to battle against inherent short-termism that always bubbles to the surface when targets and financial planning are the focus.

Unfortunately, according to Seth Godin, the average tenure of a Chief Marketing Officer is about eighteen months. About the same amount of time a CEO takes to realise that there is no easy fix to the corner her or his plastic producing machines are in. Ironically, the person with the long-term strategic brain is the person your company is most likely to lose the quickest.

Whether you have a desire to change your business attitude to consumers’ and environmental issues, or you simply need to nail a new direction to the wall for everyone to buy into, you may well stumble at the first hurdle – picking exactly what to invest in, out of the noise in your market. Luckily, this is what we do.

Future thinking. Future-proofing.

Get in touch. Time is ticking.

As you get close to your end of Q1, 2019 budget presentations, one thing becomes blindingly obvious: stakeholders don’t apply logic to targets and plans. If your stakeholders are also your investors – bad luck. They’re even less likely to be sympathetic to a plan that doesn’t return them a nailed-on guarantee that they can count in cash.

We paraphrase this by stating the case more precisely, and in a way stakeholders will understand. The same two definitions apply to companies that need to innovate…

…there are two kinds of companies; those that are doing well and those that aren’t.

 

In both cases, the answer is to see your situation differently and give the guys with the money a reason to behave differently too. After all, doing more of the same is madness.

The misunderstanding we encounter every day is that innovation is associated with the future. It isn’t – not entirely. Innovation is about making a difference to your business fortunes now – today – to future-proof your long-term.

 

Re-framing the opportunity

Here’s why the confusion exists. Talking about future trends and what could happen is just the start of a process; what matters more is how you choose to use the insight you gather. If your attitude to emerging trends is to plan a course of action against an unspecified timeline, stakeholders won’t buy this.

We understand it’s hard to get your peers onside when their priority is to hit a target. That’s why you need to re-frame signals that emerge from seeing trends early. The ability to show your colleagues strong signals of change in your market and the opportunities that emerge from this insight, has real power to convince people to change their view.

 

See it differently

room44 interprets emerging trends and makes them meaningful for you today, linking these developments back to your current condition. We deliver immediate return on investment. We take your existing business condition, introduce a customer perspective, and work with you so that your team can learn along the way. All our projects end with an actionable short, medium and long term plan, complete with a rationale.

 

Example of playing long and winning short

Here’s an example of the tangible and measurable effect that thinking long to win short can have.

In two weeks, our client had established a long-range strategic endpoint that extended its immediate reach into new storage solutions for sustainably-produced electricity. We produced a roadmap of small step developments to exploit emerging technologies as the market begins to accept the concepts. More importantly, the new commercial approach shortened payment terms, previously counted in months, to a mix of payment in advance and four-week terms.

If you want to quickly find out how ‘innovation ready’ you are, click here. The best way to start is to start.

[button link=”http://room44-co-uk-4918163.hs-sites.com/innovationaudit” type=”big” newwindow=”yes”] Your innovation audit starts here[/button]

 

Seeing it differently. Future-proofing. It’s what we do.

As you get close to 2019 budget presentations, one thing becomes blindingly obvious: stakeholders don’t apply logic to anything. If your stakeholders are also your investors – bad luck. They’re even less likely to be sympathetic to a plan that doesn’t return them a nailed-on guarantee that they can count in cash.

We paraphrase this by stating the case more precisely, and in a way stakeholders will understand: there are two kinds of companies – those that are doing well and those that aren’t.

In both cases, the answer is to see your situation differently and give the guys with the money a reason to behave differently too. After all, doing more of the same is madness.

The misunderstanding we encounter every day is that innovation is associated with the future. It isn’t – not entirely. Innovation is about making a difference to your business fortunes now – today – to future-proof your long-term.

Re-framing the opportunity

Here’s why the confusion exists. Talking about future trends and what could happen is just the start of a process; what matters more is how you choose to use the insight you gather. If your attitude to emerging trends is to plan a course of action against an unspecified timeline, you can’t achieve value and impact from them today.

We understand it’s hard to get your peers onside when their priority is to hit a target. That’s why you need to re-frame signals that emerge from seeing trends early. The ability to show your colleagues strong signals of change in your market and the opportunities that emerge from this insight, has real power to convince people to change their view.

See it differently

room44 interprets emerging trends and makes them meaningful for you today, linking these developments back to your current condition. We deliver immediate return on investment. We take your existing business condition, introduce a customer perspective, and work with you so that your team can learn along the way. All our projects end with an actionable short, medium and long term plan, completewith a rationale.

Example of playing long and winning short

Here’s an example of the tangible and measurable effect that thinking long to win short can have.

In two weeks, our client had established a long-range strategic endpoint that extended its immediate reach into new storage solutions for sustainably-produced electricity. We produced a roadmap of small step developments to exploit emerging technologies as the market begins to accept the concepts.More importantly, the new commercial approach shortened payment terms, previously counted in months, to a mix of payment in advance and four-week terms.

Seeing it differently. Future-proofing. It’s what we do.