Why we want to be the activism platform for a healthier marketplace
Because market concentration is at a 29-year high, despite 305 million new businesses launching worldwide each year. Businesses are struggling to make change last. So we first asked ourselves, why is that?
Startups don’t stay-up, too focused on selling-up to realise their true value.
90% growth in acquisitions versus going public, eliminating competitors from a healthy marketplace. (Yale)
SMEs struggle with resources, vision and skills to make change last.
74% of SMEs lack a digital strategy and roadmap to navigate their future Go-To-Market path. (McKinsey)
Corporate change-makers aren’t able to stay the course.
CMOs & CHROs in charge of mastering change and user-centricity stay less time than the rest of C-suite. (Korn Ferry)
“Buying the dream” often helps Big Tech’s competitiveness more than its customers.
The curse of the hype cycle.
Businesses lost $104 million on average last year due to digital inefficiencies, such as underutilized technology and disjointed strategies.
$2.3 trillion has been wasted globally in failed digital transformation programs.
Image credit: Jared Tarbell
Our insight:
Complexification
Let’s get existential for a minute.
Our universe is evolving into an increasingly complex web of structures.
Humanity too is evolving into an increasingly complex web of structures.
Rapid technological advancement, global economic interdependence and growing awareness of environmental systems.
Sweeping changes make our world less and less predictable. You feel it right?
Complexification is at the heart of fragility in our systems, societies and governance.
Complexification is at the heart of fragility in ourselves; overwhelm that results in fatigue, denialism and avoidance.
To cope, we control, prizing familiarity and convenience - the status quo - instead of thinking about consequences.
Short-term thinking is both rooted in our most primal instincts and encouraged by runaway technological development.
Rising complexity means rising reactivity. Reactivity means more binary thinking.
Binary thinking exaggerates positive and negative outcomes. Left for long enough it results in apathy and fatalism.
Creativity is responsive. Organic brains make connections that machines cannot.
Creativity with activism, quality and authenticity are our best responses for sustained growth.
The hard truth: complexity will only increase. The biggest question is how we choose to respond.
What if we imagined tech’s role in a new consensus?
“Cross-functional collaboration yields worse revenue outcomes” (Gartner)
Systems:
Don’t just collaborate, systemise cooperation.
Don’t measure impact in isolation, recognize intangible and personal impacts through integrated accountability.
Don’t ignore, adopt proven systems for human-centred design and innovation making use of common languages.
“Brands need to move on from effectiveness and solve for influence” (McKinsey)
Don’t stifle difference, embrace independence.
Stories:
Don’t burden BAU processes, find inflection points to bring teams together and formulate outcomes-based models.
Don’t re-org, re-design to reflect a more nuanced view of contribution and set-out the right degrees of freedom.
A new consensus
Target-state built on outcomes not functions.
Don’t just collaborate, systemise cooperation.
Systems
Don’t stifle difference, embrace independence.
Stories
Pronounced HITME, a big part of our idea was inspired by the fitness and elite sports. The ‘hit me’ moment of truth means being willing to take risks, invest energy and accept honesty. We start from pain points, since the weakest link always breaks the chain.
That goes just as equally for us and our work. Commitment goes both ways.