Peter Fisk - Business Recoded: Have the Courage to Create a Better Future for Yourself and your Business

1. Chapter 6

1. Introduction
2. Chapter 1
3. Chapter 2
4. Chapter 3
5. Chapter 4
6. Chapter 5
7. Chapter 6
8. Chapter 7

Peter Fisk

This edition first published in 2021
2021 by Peter Fisk

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 9781119679868 (hardback) ISBN 9781119680000 (ePUB) ISBN 9781119680024 (Adobe PDF)

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In memory of my father.

My dad always encouraged me to look for better. He grew up in a small coal-mining village in northern England, and never forgot his origins. As a teacher, he saw talent in everyone, whatever their background or ambition. As a headteacher, he was proud of his students and colleagues, and loved taking part in school plays and events. As leader of the nation's headteachers he worked tirelessly to create a better education for everyone.

I remember him as we travelled around Europe on family holidays, camping in apple orchards and playing endless games of boules. I remember him on cold winter evenings, standing with a stopwatch, as I sprinted around the local running track. I remember him raving about Tom Peters' book In Search of Excellence, my introduction to business (an anecdote which I recently shared with Tom). I remember him at home with mum, and a glass of wine in his hand, as a great father and grandfather.

My dad was my inspiration to do more than I could ever imagine. To stay strong when things felt tough. And to make the most of everything in life. In a way, he was also my inspiration for this book. Not just to accept the codes of life, but to seek better ones. Not just to explore my world, but to challenge it. Not just to define new ideas, but to bring them to life through personal experiences and interesting stories that can inspire others.

To create a better future. I hope we can.

Change is dramatic, pervasive and relentless. The challenges are numerous. The opportunities are greater. Incredible technologies and geopolitical shifts, demanding customers and disruptive entrepreneurs, environmental crisis and social distrust, unexpected shocks and stagnating growth.

The old codes that got us here are insufficient, or obsolete.

Business Recoded is for business leaders who seek to thrive in today's world, and to create the best companies of tomorrow.

It describes how to lead a better future, to reimagine your business, to reinvent markets, to reenergise your people, to redefine success. It brings together fresh insights and ideas from the leaders of many of the world's most innovative companies right now Alibaba to BlackRock, Corning and Danone, Ecoalf to Fujifilm, Glossier and Haier, and many more.

And it's about you, developing your own codes for personal and business progress. And having the courage to step up to be more, to achieve more, to be extraordinary.

We live in a time of great promise but also great uncertainty.

Markets are more crowded, competition is intense, customer aspirations are constantly fuelled by new innovations and dreams. Technology disrupts every industry, from banking to construction, entertainment to healthcare. It drives new possibilities and solutions, but also speed and complexity, uncertainty and fear.

As digital and physical worlds fuse to augment how we live and work, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics enhance but also challenge our capabilities, whilst ubiquitous supercomputing, genetic editing and self-driving cars take us further.

Technologies with the power to help us leap forwards in unimaginable ways. To transform business, to solve our big problems, to drive radical innovation, to accelerate growth and achieve progress socially and environmentally too.

We are likely to see more change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years.

• Markets accelerate 4 times faster than 20 years ago, based on the accelerating speed of innovation and diminishing lifecycles of products.
• People are more capable 825 times more connected than 20 years ago, with access to education, unlimited knowledge, tools to create anything.
• Consumer attitudes change 78% of young people choose brands that do good, they reject corporate jobs, and see the world through the lens of a gamer.

However, change goes far beyond the technology.

Markets will transform, converge and evolve faster. From old town Ann Arbor to the rejuvenated Bilbao, today's megacities like Chennai and the future Saudi tech city of Neom, economic power will continue to shift. China has risen to the top of the new global business order, whilst India and eventually Africa will follow.

Industrialisation challenges the natural equilibrium of our planet's resources. Today's climate crisis is the result of our progress, and our problem to solve. Globalisation challenges our old notions of nationhood and locality. Migration changes where we call home. Religious values compete with social values, economic priorities conflict with social priorities. Living standards improve but inequality grows.