There are industries where being customer-centric just isn’t enough, because they don’t have customers, they have fans. Across sport, music, gaming and culture, success and failure is driven in large part by what fans are thinking, and how much they stay caring. …

Big, slow and expensive. These are things we can’t afford any longer as countries attempt to build back better in the aftermath of the pandemic. Be it the supply of affordable housing, delivering a generation of new mega infrastructure projects or re-purposing existing build assets, construction is an industry we need to become much more digital and data driven. — It’s easy to say the world is changing faster than ever, but for the most part this is hyperbolic drivel spouted by consultants and salespeople. …

“Nothing will stop you being creative more effectively than the fear of making a mistake.” — John Cleese While these words were uttered by one of the world’s most famous comedians, they stand all too true for anyone tasked with doing things differently in a big business today. …

We’re knackered, but big change is on the horizon… — After 16+ months of riding it out and adapting, most organizations have done a solid job of keeping it together. …

We are on the verge of a moment of truth for pretty much every established business. Despite riding out the pandemic and the great working from home experiment, it seems few lessons have been learned. Innovation has stalled, employees are uninspired and customers are largely apathetic to their brand. This…

Out of touch CEOs, mostly bankers, are ready to ‘get back to work’ … as if their employees haven’t been busting their hump working long hours and dealing with endless frustrating Zoom calls these past 15+ months. It’s touched a bit of a nerve, and I don’t blame them. …

Almost every big business recognizes the need to innovate. Sadly, despite spending millions on big consultancies, building in-house innovation teams and the occasional hackathon, most of them are pretty crap at it. — Big businesses are excellent at two things; maximizing profit and minimizing risk. However, innovation is inherently risky and the profits take time to materialize. “The trouble is that for too long, business has been run by the wrong sort of pirates.” — Sam Conniff Allende

I promised myself I wouldn’t do one of those takes on the failure of the European Super League and what it means for innovation/marketing/business etc. Ah well. However, it is a nice example of what happens when an economy (let’s face it, football is business) goes K shaped … just…

Savings are core to both the financial health of consumers and banks, yet there has been little innovation within savings products. — We wanted to try to figure out how to make savings less “rational” and develop real concepts to bring in more ideas to make saving something people want to actually do. From boring rational interest rates to leveraging gaming and from making it easier for people to contribute to making…