NMP Live Meets business innovation expert Peter Fisk. In our exclusive interview, we discuss how to mobilise change within a large organisation and the benefits of big data within companies.
Watch the full interview or read the transcript below.
In conversation with Peter Fisk
Can you give us an overview of your career
So, my background is in nuclear physics and diving deep under the ground to understand how the world works. It was fascinating, but a bit boring, so what I did was I jumped out of that and I got in to the world of brands and marketing. So, in a sense moving from a left brain to a right brain view of the world. And as I have evolved through working in airlines, working in finance and working in technology then how do you bring your left and right brain together has been a recurring theme in my career.
Then I became the CEO of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, which gave me a platform in the marketing world. And then 9 years ago I wrote my first book, which was ‘Marketing Genius’, it was all about the left and right brain of doing business today.
And 7 books later, and 9 years later, I am spending my time travelling around the world, meeting the most amazing companies, the most amazing people, really making sense of a changing world and what it is that helps companies to win today.
What does innovation mean to you?
Innovation, for me, is about making ideas happen. They don’t have to be new ideas; they could come from other places. Quite often it’s things that happen in other industries, which you could apply to your own industry, which have already been tested by consumers elsewhere and you can then make them happen.
So creativity is about opening up in terms of dreaming new ideas and exploring, but innovation is about then closing down and saying ‘how am I going to make this happen?’, ‘how am I going to make it successful in this market?’ and ‘how am I going to make sure it drives profitability and growth for my company?’
What inspired you to write a book about game changers?
What I wanted to do was to find 100 companies who are shaking up the world today, and I asked 1000 CEOs ‘who do you think is disrupting your market, who would you love to learn from?’ And from that I found 100 companies from all different sectors, some small and some big, and said ‘what are they doing to create success, to create value for customers and therefore value for their shareholders in the world today?’
Making sense of these companies, the shaker-uppers, or as I call them ‘game-changers’, how do they really change the game? They change the market, they play things in a different way. What is that game and how do you play it is what I wanted to understand.
What does the term ‘big data’ mean to you? And how will it benefit companies of the future?
Big data, I guess that is one of the big buzz words of today. It is a huge, fascinating challenge, we are moving from a world in 2015 in 4 zettabytes, that is a trillion gigabytes, to 40 zettabytes, which is 40 trillion gigabytes of data.
What is this data? Well, it is all that stuff that is flung around the world in terms of social media, or in terms of tracking each customer, in terms of everything they are doing, or in your supply chain. And it’s about taking all of that amazing data that you have and trying to make sense of it.
So, big data, the real challenge is to say, ‘well how can I combine it with big ideas?’. It comes back to the left and right brain thing again, you can have this huge amount of intelligence, but if you don’t have some imagination, a hypothesis to say ‘well what if I was to do this and then test that against the data?’ you’re not going to be able to move forward.
So, when I look at companies who are really using big data, companies like GE who have transformed their business from a traditional, selling big machines into what they call brilliant machines, and more about leasing today.
Or Disney investing a billion dollars in terms of putting a magic band on every park visitor’s hand and then creating a much more individual and immersive experience because they understand that individual.
Or Nike, Mark Parker the CEO saying ‘we are not about the shoes or the clothing, we are about helping people to run faster and play soccer better’ by the technology and the digital information which they now bring together through those fantastic additional products which they now sell.
So big data, plus big ideas, is how you create big impact in the world today.
How do you mobilise change within a large organisation?
Any change is a human process, and it takes time, so mobilising a culture and engaging people in a different way of thinking is a big, big challenge. At the heart of that is leadership.
Leadership, we used to define in a very hierarchal way about command and control. Leadership is not about that today; in a digital world leadership is about a different set of c’s. So instead of command and control it is about being the communicator, being the coach, being the catalyst and being the connector of different ideas and different people.
As a leader it is then about saying how can you amplify the impact of other people? So, it’s not about what you do but it’s about what you enable other people to achieve. And then it’s recognising that inside your company, and outside your company, with your partners and also with your customers, change is something which nobody feels instantly comfortable with. So, we tend to reject newness.
So, it’s about helping people to see the benefits, rather than the problems with that change and moving through the change curve, the emotional negative through to the emotional positive side. So that you take them and accelerate them through that initial uncertainty to the point where they really do have a shared passion with you about what they are trying to achieve, and how you can help them to achieve it.
Then the process in terms of structure and logistics and processes – the hard things – is much easier to make happen.
How do you stimulate already creative brands to think more innovatively?
Any company, be it Coca-Cola, Red Bull, Proctor and Gamble, Microsoft, even Apple, constantly have to rethink what makes them successful, and what are the ideas which they can move forward with to keep inspiring their customers, and their employees over time.
The best ideas don’t come from their competitors, they come from other places. So, it’s really about crossing boundaries and thinking ‘how can I learn from other sectors? How can I learn from other companies?’ And as you see new start ups, as you see new business models emerging you think about ‘well, how could I do that?’
So, take Nespresso coffee for example, selling the coffee machines very cheaply, and then signing up their customers to a coffee club by which you then get the regular subscription in terms of the capsules, which are 1000 times more profitable than the coffee machines. So, you have this ongoing relationship – interesting! But what would that mean for selling Red Bull? So how could Red Bull move in to that market? So, giving them an analogy or a model, and then moving to it.
Let’s think about gaming. So, their Gen Y audience is very much a gaming market. Most games are freemium business models – you get it free but then you pay for things over time. It’s about building community; it’s about creating addictive gaming which people want to be part of and connecting people socially at the same time. So, if you can sell Red Bull as a drink, how do you create the freemium socialised community model in order to be successful?
And suddenly by looking at different models and different worlds and then saying ‘well, how could you learn from that?’ you spark people and all sorts of imaginative ideas come out of them.
How do the workshops you offer differ from a keynote presentation?
So, I guess one of the things which makes me a bit different is about being able to deliver an inspiring keynote and bringing the best ideas from all over the world to make people think in a very different way in a short period of time but then say ‘well, okay, how are we going to do something about that? How are we going to apply that to my business?’
So, in the workshops, which I develop around either marketing or strategy or innovation or customers or branding, then it’s about saying ‘how can the individuals think about their businesses, think about the issues which they really have, frame the challenge in the right way for them.’ And then be selective about the right models and say, ‘well how can I use that model or that process’ and then start to apply things and think ‘where do I start?’
And then ‘what’s the next step?’ ‘How do I engage my colleagues or my bosses in terms of wanting to make that thing happen?’ And that might be a half-day or a one-day workshop or then that might actually move through to a short project to really think about how can I make this happen as a team?
So, it might be a series of interventions where firstly they’re about opening up their ideas, so I call that an ‘insight lab’ or an ‘insight workshop’. The second one would then be about design – design thinking in terms of saying how can we connect the best ideas together to create better concepts, better potential solutions.
Then evaluating them and we might come together again and as a project team think about ‘well, okay, we’ve got lots of ideas – how are we going to evaluate them?’ And in quite a rapid but focussed and disciplined way, how can we then decide what is the blueprint for the future? And which ones do we make first, and how do we develop a series of horizons by which we can start to make the best ideas happen in a practical and a well costed and hopefully a profitable way?
What can audiences expect to take away from your talks?
One comment that comes out more than anything at the end of when I speak is ‘well that was really inspiring!’ So, it’s a lot about energy, and it’s a lot about stretching people to think in a bit of a different way. But it’s also about making sense of a changing world where people see lots of fragments as to what’s going on, they see lots of different companies doing different things, and so making sense of the world is an important thing, which I do.
There is then something about saying ‘well, I want to learn something new’, so learning about new companies, be they Ashima in terms of the textiles or Alibaba in terms of business to business; maybe it’s Zingo in terms of gain or Zidisha in terms of finance. So, companies that perhaps they haven’t heard of and could learn something new from, and some new models and new ways of thinking, which they could practically apply to their business.
So, it’s that combination of different perspectives, their left and their right brain being engaged at the same time. The passion to want to do something but also the tools to actually be able to start doing it themselves afterwards.
At the end of it, with a bit of colour, and a bit of fantastic graphics, and a bit of participation at the same time, getting people to say ‘well, yes, I really enjoyed that. It was a fantastic session but actually I am going to go away and I think we can do something about that’, and that’s what is most satisfying to me.
If you're interested in booking Peter Fisk you can enquire online, email us or pick up the phone and speak to one of our booking agents. For further information on Peter, testimonials and video clips view his profile.
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