This week we were lucky enough to be invited along to the Marketing Society Annual Conference at the beautiful and impressive Royal Opera House. There’s something both humbling and inspiring about being in the same room and listening to the leaders in our industry discuss and debate a very real and relevant topic to marketeers and business owners alike.
With the interesting and thought provoking title of ‘Reset’, speakers such as Unilever’s Marc Mathieu and Telefonica’s Simon Devonshire presented how two such large corporations, such as they work for, look for innovation, re-shape and constantly re-evaluate their business to ensure it is not ‘business as usual’. It was particularly interesting for us, as Scout, to hear about how to scale a company in its infancy to achieve much greater success.
Disruption was a key word that was used many times throughout the day and that to succeed in business, although you are pushed far out of your comfort zone, it must happen to ensure continued success. Steve Vranakis of Google discussed how he was challenged to disrupt the status quo every day and in doing this people can even achieve solutions to major world problems.
When my kids learn to drive, I will certainly be going to Ingenie for a quote – the double act of Founder and CEO Richard King and Gary Lineker worked really well and a fantastic example of not settling for existing solutions.
A particular highlight was listening to the amazing talents of the pianist and entrepreneur Orit Wolf. There are just some people that have a natural aura about them and this lady is certainly one of them. Such talent and ability to captivate the whole audience, both on her musical instrument of choice and as a business speaker!
If there are a few words of wisdom that we got from the day that were of particular relevance to us as a company, they would be the below:
- As humans we look for the expected and not the disruptive.
- If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.
- Raise the roof and reach for the stars.
- Bring the outside in – create a platform for collaboration and a framework for experimentation.
- Don’t be afraid to launch and learn. If it doesn’t work, change or tweak it.
- Large companies need innovation, small companies need leverage – work together to achieve both.
- Disruption is an art form – break the rules and use dreams and fantasies.
- Fail more and aim to be 10 times better.
