Ashmei is changing the game of sportswear. The small Aylesbury-based company, with an interesting Chinese name, designs sportswear, assembled from the most innovative suppliers across 4 continents, to create products that its many fans will pay twice as much for.
Raspberry Pi, the Cambridge manufacturer of computers for £30, is the best friend of young digital entrepreneurs, and has become a global network by setting up Raspberry Pi Clubs in 150 cities worldwide. Nearby start-up, Azuri Tech, has transformed the lives of millions of Africans by giving them £1/week pay-as-you-go solar panels that provide enough energy to light their homes, cook food and charge their mobile phones.
Three examples of small UK companies who are 'changing the game' in their respective markets, with influence and growth across the world.
Gamechangers think and act differently. They fuse digital and physical, global and local, ideas and networks. They win by being smart, fast and connected – rather than through scale and efficiency. They capture their higher purpose in more inspiring brands that resonate with their target audiences at the right time and place, enabled by data and technology, but more through empathetic design and rich human experiences.
Social networks drive reach and richness, whilst new business models make the possible profitable. They collaborate with customers, and partner with other businesses, connecting ideas and utilising their capabilities. They look beyond the sale to enable customers to achieve more. They care about their impact on people and the world. Ultimately they want to create a better world.
1 - Think: Change your future
Outthinking the competition, with ideas that can change the world.
We live in an ideas economy, with possibilities limited only by our imaginations. The past is no guide to the future. What we can do matters more than what we have done. The best companies are guided by an inspiring purpose, exploring new possibilities, being curious and connected, daring and ingenious, working from the future back, to develop more audacious and disruptive ideas, to outthink the competition.
2 - Explore: Change your market
Making sense of the kaleidoscope, to shape markets in your own vision.
Finding the best opportunities for growth in connected and fragmented markets, disrupted by tectonic shifts in power and new technologies. The best companies have foresight beyond traditional borders, geographies and categories. From masses to niches, averages to individuals, geography to global tribes. They look east and south, to digital natives and migrants, women and entrepreneurs.
3 - Disrupt: Change your strategy
Finding your own space, with a strategy that disrupts the future.
Strategy is about finding your space in crowded and convergent markets. It cannot be an extrapolation of the past, nor a fixed point in the future. Through a more stretching vision and disruptive thinking, you choose your future – reframing your context, choosing a different audience, playing by new rules. Strategy is then about pivoting to this better place, from mediocrity to magic, staying focused yet agile as you progress.
4 - Inspire: Change your brand
Building brands about people not products, about making life better.
Brands are about making people’s lives better. About me not you, what people want and aspire to, rather than companies and products. Brands are enriching and enabling, giving people the confidence, and helping them, to achieve more. They can reach into new spaces because they mean more. They are platforms that bring people together inside and out, engaging them in bigger ideas, collaborating and evolving over time.
5 - Design: Change your business
Innovating the whole company, from business model to customer experience.
Innovation is about making the best ideas happen profitably. It uses design thinking to look beyond products, to rethink business models and customer experiences, hard and soft, and then the products and services to deliver them. Every aspect of business can be innovated, open and collaborative, simple and frugal. Innovation is driven by a human cause, to make a positive and profitable difference to our world.
6 - Resonate: Change your story
Tuning into the customers world with real-time and relevant marketing content.
Getting in sync with your customers world, engaging them in relevant and meaningful ways, about them, at the right time and place. Forget broadcast campaigns, advertising push. Think digital and physical, in context and on demand. Participation builds content that is liquid and linked, working across media, social and local, mobile and topical, articulated in stories that are authentic, collaborative, experiential and contagious.
7 - Enable: Change your experience
Delivering customer experiences that enable them to achieve more.
Customer experiences are much more than the touchpoints that lead to a sale. That is just the beginning for the customer. They should do more, and go further. Educating or entertaining, supporting and enabling the customer to achieve more. They are intelligent and interactive, collaborative and personal. Through digital interfaces and physical theatre, big data and human service, they immerse people in a brand that enables more.
8 - Mobilise: Change your relationship
Growing further and faster, through social networks and collaboration.
Customers have more in common, trust each other, and want to connect with each other much more than with any business. Advocacy, trust and loyalty between customers can be far more powerful than any CRM or loyalty card could ever achieve. Social and collaborative, brands and networks can support their desire to collaborate and share ideas, to build communities, or empowered movements with cause and passion.
9 - Impact: Change your results
Delivering and sustaining a positive impact, human and financial.
Value creation is about more than sales, it is about sustaining long-term profitable growth, which is good financially, and good for the world. Sustaining growth means being sustainable more broadly, through circular business models, and enabling customers to be better too. The focus is on happiness, health, social and environmental. Your purpose is to find growth that is good, profits that are shared by achieving more together.
10 - Amplify: Change your potential
Leaders amplify the potential of their people and organisations.
Changing the game might also require you to change your brain, to think in new ways with new people and partners. Leaders amplify the potential of others. Brands amplify the potential of customers. Networks amplify the possibilities with partners. Gamechangers are typically the speedboats, rather than the supertankers, with the speed and agility to seize the new opportunities of change.
“Gamechangers are disruptive and innovative, start-ups and corporates, in every sector and region, reshaping our world. They are more ambitious, with stretching vision and enlightened purpose. They see markets as kaleidoscopes of infinite possibilities, assembling and defining them to their advantage. They find their own space, then shape it in their own vision. Most of all they have great ideas. They outthink their competition, thinking bigger and different. They don’t believe in being slightly cheaper or slightly better. That is a short-term game of diminishing returns” - Peter Fisk, Vistage Speaker.
Are you a gamechanger?
Visit theGeniusWorks.com, where you can also find 'Gamechangers' free chapters, video stories, live case studies, downloadable tools, and much more.
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