Black Swans, climate change and remote innovation

Musings from our conversation at Innov8rs Connect

Yesterday three of our colleagues hosted a virtual conversation at the Innov8rs Connect Series. It was brilliant to engage with such a mix of people from all over the world — a testament to the flexibility of the virtual world we live in now. Here are our top 10 most interesting learnings.

1. A black swan (term coined by Nassim Nicholas Talib) is an extremely rare event with severe consequences. This black swan event is unique in that it’s changed the world as we know it; from how we work, live, consume and even how we use technology. We’ve had nine-Black Swan events that changed the financial world in the last 30 years.
2. It takes 66 days to form a habit (or break one). We’ve been living ‘differently’ for 272 days now.
3. It’s the right time to innovate. This week we saw the first administration of a vaccine that’s been produced in record time; evidence that with a clear purpose innovation is a fantastic force for good. There is no better time to help your business. Whether that’s getting the right infrastructure and rituals in place to support the hybrid working, or optimising the time coming out of a recession as a reason to work smarter and innovate. Whatever transformation businesses are going through, it’s for the leaders to drive it.
4. 45% of UK businesses are concerned their business model won’t be viable in 5 years time. Read more here.
5. Brain Tumours are the biggest cancer for the people in the UK under the age of 40 and it only receives 2% of cancer research funding.
6. After working with the Brain Tumour Charity, we discovered that 74% of walkers at their flagship Twilight Walk fundraising event hadn’t actually fundraised. The team became obsessed with getting to the heart of the problem; with unpacking the event model canvas, they tested their assumptions against stakeholder interviews and learned there were blockers in the sign-up process for big teams. We worked with them to bring registration in-house, support fundraising leaders and be clear on the fundraising ‘ask’.
7. One of Europes’ largest Financial service companies, Legal and General announced their ambitions to become net-zero by 2030 just before the pandemic hit. They could’ve pulled the plug on the project that would deliver on their goal. Instead, the project became even more important, as they prioritised and drove what was core to the business’ values. For innovation to work it must be at the heart of the company’s core.
8. Remote innovation works just as well as IRL innovation, it’s just a bit different.

How you thrive no matter what comes to pass. Determine key axes of change impacting their business. Then, map the domain — which major forces in and out of their industry create significant waves of change? Want to know more? Chat to our Resident Foresight Expert Meredith Smith.

9. To make sense of the changes in the world (and the existential threats to their business) one commercial retailer adopted the minimal viable futures model. Like a savings account, foresight drips in bit by bit; it’s a recipe for success no matter what comes to pass.

10. Don’t have COVID-19 snow blindness. There are some massive things that companies need to be reacting to that were big things before C-19 — high streets were dying, sustainability needed addressing — C-19 is just an accelerator and reminds us how fragile things are leading to action.

Jassi is Marketing Lead at Fluxx, a company that uses experiments to understand customers, helping clients to build better products. We work with The Economist, Mars, Bupa, Condé Nast, National Grid, BEIS, Severn Trent Water and others.

Here are some useful links. Got thoughts worth sharing? Let’s have a virtual coffee. jassi@fluxx.uk.com