Pioneers Podcast by Lyreco
The podcast from Lyreco that explores the Future of Work, from Lyreco's innovation team.
Each episode we talk to a pioneer of the future of work, exploring the themes and trends that will shape the workplaces of tomorrow.
Pioneers Podcast by Lyreco
Peter Hinssen and The Phoenix Way: Reinventing Corporations in the Digital Age
What does it take for established companies to reinvent themselves in the digital age? Peter Hinson, bestselling author and innovation expert, believes we're overlooking something powerful in our fascination with disruptive startups.
After launching and exiting three successful tech ventures, Peter became captivated by how traditional businesses could transform themselves using technology. His journey from engineer to entrepreneur to thought leader offers a unique perspective on corporate reinvention that challenges conventional wisdom about innovation.
In this thought-provoking conversation, Peter introduces us to "Phoenix" companies – established organizations that rise from the ashes through strategic transformation. From Microsoft's remarkable turnaround under Satya Nadella to Walmart's surprising emergence as the second-largest e-commerce player in America, these examples demonstrate that innovation isn't exclusive to tech startups.
The discussion delves into what Peter calls our "never normal" world – an environment of constant change that renders traditional management tools like annual budgets quickly obsolete. This new reality demands more than structural adjustments; it requires cultivating curiosity, critical thinking, and adaptability throughout organizations.
Perhaps most fascinating is Peter's admiration for Hermès, the 180-year-old luxury brand that has continually reinvented itself across generations. From abandoning saddle-making when automobiles appeared to pioneering mushroom-based leather alternatives today, Hermès exemplifies how even the most traditional companies can embrace innovation while maintaining their identity.
Whether you lead an established company or aspire to disrupt an industry, this episode offers valuable insights into navigating transformation in an increasingly volatile business landscape. Join us at the Future of Work conference in Brussels on June 5th to hear more from Peter in person.
Welcome to the Pioneers podcast by Lyreco. I'm Marc Curtis. Each edition we're talking to pioneers in their own fields. We're talking to business leaders, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, keynote speakers basically anybody who's got something interesting to say about the workplace and is pioneering the way we think about the future of work. Today I am speaking to Peter Hinssen. Peter has had a long career. He has been a successful founder and exited on several startups in his younger years. He is now a best-selling author in the field of innovation and a very well-known keynote speaker in both Europe and in the United States, and Peter's most recent book, the Phoenix and the Unicorns, really examines the relationship that businesses have to innovation and how even the largest corporations can reinvent themselves and remain relevant in their markets.
Marc Curtis:Really enjoyed this conversation with Peter. We covered a range of different topics. Hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as I did and remember you can hear Peter live if you come to the Future of Work conference in Brussels on June the 5th in Brussels on June the 5th. Peter Hinssenn, an entrepreneur, ceo, lecturer at the London Business School and also an author of several bestselling books, most recently the Phoenix and the Unicorn. More on this in a little bit, but thank you so much, peter, for taking the time to talk to me this morning. Welcome to the Pioneers podcast. Great to see you again as well.
Peter Hinssen:Really nice to be here and thanks for the invitation.
Marc Curtis:Really appreciate it. That's brilliant. Well, no, as I say it's, you know, the honour is genuinely all mine. First of all, I think it's really interesting to go into a little bit of detail about how you got to where you are now. So the journey that you've been on to become this bestselling author and also having sort of launched various companies and I think now you're CEO or co-founder of Nexworks as well I'd really love to just hear about you know what's brought you to this point in your life. Hear about.
Peter Hinssen:You know what's, what's brought you to this point in your life? No, I'm happy to. So I think I have a rather unusual career in the sense that I'm an engineer by training, so I'm a technologist at heart, love technology, and then I worked after graduating at a company called Alcatel, and that was one of those big French, you know, infrastructure players competing with Cisco and Ericsson around the world in the world of telecom. But if you would have asked me at the age of 25, what do you want to do? I would have probably said this is where I want to stay and I might eventually become chief technology officer of this great company. But I only lasted a year and a half and it's the only corporate experience I've ever had.
Peter Hinssen:What happened is the World Wide Web happened and I got so excited by the technology I wanted to do something, and then I left at a very early age to do my own thing. I did three startups back to back. Ironically, the first startup was acquired by Alcatel, the second one by Vodafone and the third was a company that we IPO'd. We put it on the stock exchange. But 15 fun, exciting but very exhausting startup years Loved it very much.
Peter Hinssen:And then, in 2010,.
Peter Hinssen:I wanted to do something else with my life and I said you know, I know the startup scene, but I was fascinated by how traditional companies could reinvent themselves.
Peter Hinssen:And then actually, the last 15 years have been very much focused on that, that idea of how can companies use technology as a weapon for innovation, how can they use that to fundamentally reinvent themselves and how do big companies do that. And I like the fact that I've had both in my career. I've done the startups when I was younger and now I spend most of my time with established companies and established markets. That's a combination that I really like. And then the challenge today is I probably wouldn't be able to do one thing anymore because, you know, I write the books and I teach at London Business School and then I do a lot of conferences and lectures, and there are weeks when on Monday I could be with a bank and on Wednesday I could be with a retailer and on Friday with somebody in the mobility space, and I love those stories. So I always get really excited by how companies can really reinvent themselves.
Marc Curtis:So that's quite interesting in itself. So a lot of your startups in your early career were very focused around communication technology and, as you say, the burgeoning Internet, and clearly there's a big technology focus in your background. So how are companies that wouldn't necessarily describe themselves as tech-first companies, how are they? Well, how are you seeing what they need to do in order to continue to remain relevant or to reinvent themselves or to innovate, if they don't perceive technologies being at the core of what their business offering is?
Peter Hinssen:Well, I think that has significantly changed over the years, and I remember I started teaching at London Business School, I think, 2010. And my favorite part of LBS is a program called the Senior Executive Program, and this is where 50, 60 executives from all around the world but people who already have had a very rich career are being groomed for their maybe next step or their final step in their career step or their final step in their career. So these are people that are already running I don't know a category or a brand or even a continent, and are groomed to become CEO. Fabulous group, and I remember when I started teaching to that group in 2010,. A lot of the senior executives there they had very little affinity with technology. I mean, most of them hated IT because it was far removed from their normal everyday life, and then I saw that change. I mean they started to bring in BlackBerrys and then suddenly they all had iPads and iPhones, and I think now what you see is there is a generation of executives that really realizes that this isn't far away anymore. This is very close to what they do, and one of the best books that I've ever read in my life was a book that was written mid-90s by Nicholas Negroponte called being Digital, and Nicholas is the founder of the MIT Media Lab and I had the chance to work with him on a few occasions, an amazing character.
Peter Hinssen:And he wrote in that book in 1995, there's only two types of companies in the world. You have bits companies and you have atoms companies. And if you're a bits company, your main ingredient is information. A bank is just numbers, Insurance companies, media companies. If your core ingredient is information, then digital is super relevant and of course very early on. But he said if you're a real company, you're an atoms company. If you're hauling cement from A to B, you're not in the bits business, You're in cement molecules that you're transporting from A to B. If you're in logistics or fast-moving consumer goods or in retail or in pharmaceuticals, you're in the atoms business.
Peter Hinssen:But in this book in 1995, he said eventually, over time, every atoms company will transform into aits company. And that kind of blew my mind 30 years ago and I think we've seen that become more relevant nowadays and with everything that is happening. If you want to communicate to your customers, if you want to think about you know everything that is customer care, if you want to think about the experience, but even the whole supply chain. Everything has become data-driven and what I've seen, certainly in the last couple of years, is there's now a generation of executives who are beginning to really realize that if they really want to excel, they have to understand this potential, they have to understand digital, they have to understand what data and certainly the future, AI could do. And I find that really fascinating, because I think we're now in an age where every atoms company really has become a bits company senior executives not being particularly keen on IT quote IT, and it's still.
Marc Curtis:Having had a similar background to you actually, I come from a computer, software and engineering background and sort of found myself in this innovation role but one of my big frustrations is that the world is often divided by executives into the IT part and then all the rest of it, whereas IT for me now is looking after the cables in the office and taking care of the printer, whereas all the stuff that I think a lot of companies still perceive as IT is actually, as you say, is the backbone of the company. It's the data, it's the communications, it's the way that they present themselves. Company it's the data, it's the communications, it's the way that they present themselves. Do you see this now as a battle that has been fought, that you know boards no longer have the classic CEO who's getting the secretary to print off emails for them to look at, or do you think there's still a degree of that going on in the world?
Peter Hinssen:I think there's been a significant change in the sense that I think there's been a significant change and in the sense that I think now we have senior executives and board members who understand the potential there. But what happened is that because of the consumerization of technology I mean in the past and I really mean you know, 20 plus years ago the majority of all the new innovative things happening in the world of technology came through the workplace and you know, I mean most people were introduced to the personal computer because they had to use a PC, you know, in the office. With consumerization, that completely changed and I love that phrase where, if you ask young people you know what the definition of work is, they say work is the brief period during the day where most natural way to use that. There's now a disconnect where in many companies there's still.
Peter Hinssen:We have ERP systems that have been around for years ago but really can't cope with the next generation of consumer interactions, and you can clearly see that in many companies there's a lot of legacy being built up and I think there's more awareness certainly, but the reality is that many companies cannot really accelerate or move fast enough because in a lot of cases their foundations are actually dragging them down and that is now a source for frustration. I think, if you put it very simply, in the past you had a lot of executives senior executives who would say I don't like IT because I don't understand them. Now you have, I think, a lot of executives say I don't like IT because they're always saying no, it's always something that can't be done, or it costs a lot of money or it's way too slow. So it's always something that can't be done, or it costs a lot of money or it's way too slow. So there's always been a tension. But there is certainly a lot more awareness with executives on what technology could really do to empower innovation.
Marc Curtis:I mean just digging into that a little bit. I'm quite interested in this idea that and you're absolutely right, by the way, you know I mean if you're, if you're, looking at trying to upgrade your SAP or something I mean it's a multimillion euro activity and a lot of businesses will tend to try and kick that can down the road because invariably they've got problems right now that they need to solve that potentially aren't as pressing as what they perceive to be the issues with their big IT infrastructure. And yet companies do need to evolve, they need to stay current, they need to innovate. So you know where's, where's the solution there.
Marc Curtis:We quite often fetishize the smallest, faster moving startups because they don't come with all of that legacy um. But I mean actually just going into your, into your book, the phoenix and the unicorn, you know you talk a lot about the fact that companies are actually really well placed to reinvent themselves and and, rather than trying to start from scratch, it's actually about doing the work internally to innovate. But but clearly there's a massive structural and cost um sort of tax in, in in a way, on trying to do those things. You know what's the answer for for for a global company to to try and be the Phoenix and try and try and innovate.
Peter Hinssen:Well, I, it's absolutely true, it's a lot more difficult, but the reward is so much higher and I think that is the the potential that is there. And I wrote the book the Phoenix and unicorn because I was getting a little fed up by that fetish, because it was all. Every conference you went to, that's all. You heard people talk about all oh Uber and oh Airbnb and those are amazing stories. They are truly amazing stories of people who can build something from scratch and do something that is truly unique and with all the new techniques and models and approaches wow. But when I would look into an audience, 99% of the people in the audience would never be Airbnb or could never become the Uber of their industry. I mean, there are a lot of companies out there who have a traditional footprint and a traditional business model and traditional approach and I wanted to find opportunities where those companies could really be helped by technology that could really reinvent themselves. And first it was just an idea and a thought and then I discovered a number of these phoenixes that I just absolutely loved. And I'll be the first to say it's a lot more difficult to do a phoenix than a unicorn, because if you start from scratch and you have no legacy, no shit of yesterday, as I call it, then it's easy to do that. But the potential is amazing.
Peter Hinssen:And the first is I became fascinated by the phoenixes in the technology sector itself, and one of the companies that I wrote about in the book is Microsoft, because Microsoft is 50 years old or something like that, and I remember as a kid I could see Microsoft, you know, go from a startup to a scale-up, to a unicorn, even before we had those names. But then they became a global monopolist and people started to really dislike Microsoft. They say, oh, it's the Microsoft tax, it's the Windows tax. And then they went through a period where, you know it was rapid decline because they were turning out mediocre products the Zoom music player or Windows XP. They were terrible.
Peter Hinssen:And then there was an absolute turnaround when Satya Nadella, the new CEO, came on board, which was a big fundamental shift for the company, because from a revenue point of view, a financial point of view, it was going from a license upfront, getting so much dollars for a Windows license, to putting it into the cloud, where every month you get a little bit of revenue. It was a complete shift financially, but they managed and they were able to become one of the most valuable companies in the world again and seen as a clear leader in innovation, certainly with AI, and people said, oh, okay, that's a good example of a Phoenix, but yeah, they're a tech company. I mean, you know, that is easy to do. And then I started to figure out what are other companies that can really do that, and the company that really, you know, I adore is Walmart.
Marc Curtis:And.
Peter Hinssen:I think Walmart is. I had the chance to do some work for them a couple of years ago and, honestly, first I didn't want to go there because they're in the middle of nowhere in Northwest Arkansas, and I thought, yeah, but they're a retailer from the past, they're a disruptor from the last century. But I went there and I was blown away. First of thought, yeah, but they're a retailer from the past, they're a disruptor from the last century. But I went there and I was blown away. First of all, the size of the company is insane. It's 1.7 million employees.
Peter Hinssen:But where many people thought they're going to be crushed by the Amazons of this world, what you could see is this is a company that was dramatically reinventing themselves and today Walmart is the number two player in e-commerce in the US and they've basically taken their traditional business 5,000 physical stores and then enhanced that to function in the digital world Everything from pickup to last mile reinvention, completely rethinking the app and how you engage with them, and I love to see a company of that size, with that history, being able to reinvent itself. And then I was onto something I loved hunting for these phoenixes and since then the phoenixes have come up in every sector, in every market, in every geography. You see phoenixes and I still think there's a lot of phoenix potential. So my conclusion is very simple. I think we've had a decade of you know, I think unicorn fetishism and unicorn applause. I think we're now ready to maybe look at a next decade of phoenix potential, of companies reinventing themselves, and I get very excited about that yeah, and it's quite.
Marc Curtis:It's rather telling as well, I think, when you know we can all name the unicorns and yet, looking at them now, many of them are actually somehow being pulled back towards the very models that they were seeking to disrupt in the first place. You know, uber has become a taxi company, airbnb has become, you know, effectively a travel company, netflix is beginning to do scheduled TV and you know, sporting events, you know they've all kind of gravitated back to the area that they were trying to disrupt.
Peter Hinssen:Well, the fascinating thing is, I mean, look at Netflix, right, I mean, netflix was a completely novel idea and the fact that they were able to, you know, scale so quickly was fascinating. But then what happened was a revenge of the of the Phoenix's, because Disney is a great example of a Phoenix as well. This is a company that's been around for 100 years, has always been a pioneer in technology innovation, and they also had a really rough period 15 years ago when things weren't going so great for Disney, but then, thanks, of course, to Marvel and Disney and the Star Wars franchise, they were able to completely, almost transform themselves into a global player. But they also addressed Netflix head on, and if you look at what Disney did with Disney Plus and building up the streaming infrastructure, all of a sudden you could see that the unicorns were being attacked by the traditional players. And the funny thing is that Netflix and many of these big tech companies have now become so large and so big that they need to reinvent themselves as well.
Peter Hinssen:So you see the Phoenix phenomenon playing out with some of these big tech players, which is absolutely fascinating. And, of course, it comes with size. I mean, I think there's a there's a clear size issue. When you're small and nimble as a startup, you can do things that corporates can't do, but I mean companies like Amazon or Netflix. They're not small companies anymore and, however you try to avoid it, you build up bureaucracy and you build up governance and you build up complexity, and it's absolutely wonderful to see these new tech players having to also reinvent itself. So that idea of reinvention is at the very core, I think, of our current thinking.
Marc Curtis:I want to get on in a second to the startup world and specifically, um, specifically, the age of startup founders. Cause I cause, I was reading a fascinating article the other day, but before I get onto that, I'm just just to sort of cap off this, this idea of Phoenix's and especially bigger companies, you know, bigger corporates, where where, as you say, all this bureaucracy, all this function that that exists to, you know, to keep these, these really big companies, running, given that and the investment required and the various huge platforms that they rely upon, what are the first steps, or are there even any first steps? Where does it start for a company to first of all recognise that it needs to take a Phoenix approach to the way they work? And then where do they go next? Is it simply about employing a head of innovation and sticking me in a room and hoping that he's going to come up with the next big idea, or is it something more systemic that they need to embark upon?
Peter Hinssen:I don't think there's a cookie cutter approach, but I think what I've seen with many of the phoenixes is that number one building that sense of urgency is really important, and I think it's easy to scare people now, but how can you build a sense of urgency without scaring people? And I think that is where it starts.
Marc Curtis:Because if you scare people, they tend to shut down. They don't want to listen. You know they'd rather they, you know they were a retreat into something they understand and try and embrace the thing that they need to do Right, absolutely, and they'll stick their heels into the sand and it only gets worse.
Peter Hinssen:But I think, trying to get that positive sense of, you know, change going and building that sense of urgency, but without scaring people. Number two is very clearly a mistake that many of these companies make in their journeys. They say, oh yeah, we have to change, but you know, old is bad, new is good. And then they often, you know, attach that to say you know, they acquire a company or they make some sort of an approach where the new would be. But then you tend to polarize the old and the new. And I gave the example of Walmart. In the beginning Walmart, when they were confronted with everything that was e-commerce and digital, they said, oh, we'll just buy an e-commerce company. They bought Jetcom, which was a very pricey acquisition. They lost $3 a half billion dollars and it took them three years to realize that's not going to work. We can't just buy our way, we have to change the big boat.
Peter Hinssen:And I think that is interesting where, instead of polarizing old and new, you find ways that they could actually coexist and work together. That is, I think, one of the most crucial things. Three is you have to get people into that mindset of change. And the last thing I would say is you have to empower the innovators, because if you isolate the innovators too much because you don't want them to be smothered by the mothership, that's really great, but you will never have the impact to change the mothership. And if you put them too close to the mothership, then there's a chance that you know there is so much resistance to change the mothership. And if you put them too close to the mothership, then there is a chance that you know there is so much resistance to change. So I think it's going to be really crucial as leadership to find that ultimate balance, but really to empower the innovators, because if you don't do that, you're going to just frustrate a lot of people who are trying to make a difference.
Marc Curtis:Sounds like a. Well, I know it is, but it's a fine line to walk, right. I mean, it's part of the innovator's dilemma, I suppose in some respects.
Peter Hinssen:Absolutely, but I think what I've seen with the Phoenixes is that if you can pull it off, then you can use the power of a company, a brand, a footprint. You know the reach with your customers and it can be absolutely fantastic and you know the people who are involved with that. It's a difficult journey but once you get that mechanism in place, you can unlock things that you could have never done if you tried to do that just as a small startup.
Marc Curtis:No, absolutely it sounds like a rallying cry. I mean, I guess as well, to a certain extent it's very personality dependent as well. If you've got a head of a company, if you've got a CEO, they've got to have a really firm and unwavering commitment to making the kind of changes that need to be made in order to enable exactly that kind of culture and thinking right.
Peter Hinssen:Absolutely, no, absolutely.
Marc Curtis:I was struck, just sort of changing tack very slightly. I was struck by an article or it might've been a podcast I was listening to recently about a statistic that the average founder in the US is around 40 years old and actually that older founders tend to have greater success with startups. But the thing that really blew my mind and there's a lot of talk recently about this company, tsmc. I mean, obviously people in business will will know who that is, but it's, it's, um, it's. It was founded by morris chang. It's it's a company that makes basically the chips that go into all of our mobile phones, all of our cars. It's arguably the the company that's keeping taiwan safe from the chinese at the moment.
Marc Curtis:But he founded that company when he was 55 years old, which I think for me, especially as somebody who's 54 years old, you know, that's great because it means I've got a year to found a $700 billion company, which, you know, no pressure. I'm probably going to leave that to the second half of the year, but does that say something about the value of the value of older people in business? But also maybe that we've again we've fetishized the young in terms of disruption and innovation as well. You know, clearly there's a mix that's required, but but do you think we're seeing a bit more of a cultural shift now to to, to older founders and older innovators?
Peter Hinssen:now to older founders and older innovators. Well, I mean maybe, but I think when I did the startups I was a lot younger, and then I would look at older people and think, oh my God, I'd hate to be in that position Now, when I'm 55, I think I'm still capable of disruptive thinking. But I think the problem is that in many corporations you often have a very limited view and I think the older you get and the more you work inside the mechanisms of. We've always done it that way and that's our market. That's how we address it, and I've been in this business for 27 years. There's a certain natural tendency to not maybe look too much left and right. We're so geared to looking straight ahead, but I'm hoping that there's going to be an opportunity. I really believe that if you can combine the experience and wisdom of somebody who's had a lot of life lessons, and then you can apply innovation and disruption, that magical things can happen. So I'm a big fan of older founders.
Marc Curtis:And I guess it's diversity of thought as well, isn't it? It doesn't mean that you should have a room just full of older founders or just young people. It's about creating the mix and creating the interface where innovation can truly happen. Um, thinking about, you use this expression never normal, um, which I, which I think actually, it really captures the moment, the moment of the. You know, the kind of the, the spirit of the age, if you will um with with this background of never normal, and thinking about the future of work and the future of companies.
Marc Curtis:What do you and this is sort of trying to put a bit of a futurologist hat, I suppose, on which I know you're not a futurologist necessarily and you know, I'm sure, they're great people as well, futurologists but you know what do? What should we be thinking about now? What you know, beyond the obvious, beyond thinking about now, beyond the obvious, beyond the? Yes, ai is coming for us all and, yes, we need to understand how to use these tools. But where should we be focusing our attention? As businesses, as innovators, in broad terms?
Peter Hinssen:So I started using that term the never normal because I wrote that book the New Normal a long time ago about what would happen if digital becomes normal. And what I found is, after I wrote the book, people said, yeah, you were right, digital is the new normal. What's the next new normal? What is the next one? Is it going to be? And then it was mobile is the next new normal? Or cloud, or AI. And then I started to think that it doesn't make sense anymore, because things are happening faster and faster and faster and I think we're getting into that never normal.
Peter Hinssen:It's a world of constant change. You know ultimate volatility and we see that in our personal lives. We see that. You know globally. We see that geopolitically. I mean, let's be honest, I've been writing a book on this called the Uncertainty Principle, which is coming out this summer. When I wrote the book last year, I thought, oh damn, I missed the window, because 2024 was like the Grand Cru year of uncertainty. Now I'm beginning to think that 2025 is going to be an even better vintage when it comes to uncertainty. So it seems to be escalating every single day. So I think that is a world we have to get used to. But I think what it means is that companies, I think, are in a position where they're going to have to maybe find ways to implement that as a systemic mechanism, because we're all in companies where we've used mechanisms to control, manage and, you know, steer a company that were really good for the last century. But in this century, in this never normal, we are clearly seeing that some of these things don't work anymore.
Peter Hinssen:I'll give you one practical example it's the annual budget. I mean, I think annual budgets were the perfect example of post-World War II until 2000 to manage companies and organizations and we have embraced that and it's how we operate. But I meet so many companies now where they spend an insane amount of energy in November, you know, thinking about the annual budget of the next year and by mid-February they say, well, that's gone. You know thinking about the annual budget of the next year and by mid-February they say, well, that's gone, you know, completely useless, let's get rid of it. So it means that we're going to have to reinvent new mechanisms to deal with that and that means that embedding that agility, that idea of sensing, understanding and then being able to translate that into actions, that is a completely different way of working, a completely different way of steering and guiding corporations, and it's very difficult because we're so used to our old, you know, ideas and abandoning.
Peter Hinssen:I don't say that you don't have to do budgeting and planning anymore, but the fetishism of the annual budget might be something that we have to rethink in the course of this century, and it's not easy. And what you see is that companies are really struggling with that. Companies are struggling because they have built organizations and structures and bureaucracies on top of that. So I think it's more than just the fact that AI is a game changer.
Peter Hinssen:Yes, ai is a game changer, but I think it's fundamentally how do we prepare people for that? Never normal, and it means that you know we're going to have to find the right people who are maybe going to thrive in that. We're going to find people that are constantly alert and open-minded and are eager to understand some of these opportunities and capable of responding with that. But yeah, maybe then curiosity is going to be a very important trait that we have to look for. Critical thinking certainly is that whole blend of the fact that the world around us changes we have to change our structures and our mechanisms but also a lot of the mindset and you know skills inside workers. That's a beautiful blend to work with it's.
Marc Curtis:Yeah, I mean it's. There's so much to unpack there. I mean it's funny you should mention the critical thinking thing and you know, being aware of of the pace of change and trying to react to it. I had a conversation yesterday with my 11-year-old son about the need to have a sense of what things should look like so that you can compare it to what it is that you're seeing and then be critical enough to be able to navigate that, but then at the same time, still understand that the things that you're seeing might not marry up at all to the expected outcomes.
Marc Curtis:I mean it feels chaotic, to be honest, and it's difficult to imagine how companies can create strategies around chaos. Clearly some people are thriving in that environment. I mean, you know, clearly there are people in the financial markets who are thriving from the chaos, but it's. But I have to say I'm struggling to. I'm struggling to imagine what a, what a corporate structure could look like, that could, that could, or what things you can put in place within a company to to be reactive but at the same time, have a sense of where you're trying to stay the ship.
Peter Hinssen:And I think this is something where we're going to have to, you know, figure out the playbook as we go along. I mean, I always, if I get invited to speak to an MBA course, I always use the same lame introduction I say, well, it's wonderful to be here and I'm really glad that you've chosen the excellent preparation for last century, because many of the things that we teach in an MBA are things that are actually no longer relevant and we feel that every single day. But it's not that we have a completely new organization model or playbook ready to have. I think what we can do is try and see how some of these companies are doing that or trying to do that. I mean, if you look at the world of technology, which is my world, I take two examples, a couple like Intel, which that I have admired for a really long time, and I remember Intel when I was younger, it was like the king of the hill, it was the absolute genius of the chip industry.
Peter Hinssen:And they had, of course, an amazing CEO, andy Grove, who you know. He wrote that brilliant book, only the Paranoid Survive, and he said we have to be alert, we have to understand the changes. He's the one who came up with that concept of Intel inside. You know that famous marketing slogan that I think you know took a commodity product because they were a commodity product and they transformed their brand into a premium product, although they were still in that commodity, with that brilliant marketing approach. But it was deeply rooted in that paranoia. If you saw Intel, in the last five years they've lost almost half of their market value and the new players, like NVIDIA, are just running circles around them. And what is fascinating is that NVIDIA is one of those companies that is now one of the most valuable companies in the world. But they have a completely different approach. They have a completely different way of organizing themselves. They are much more alert to the outside world, they can change much more quickly and they have more of a network approach and an ecosystem than a completely vertically integrated environment.
Marc Curtis:They're much more opportunistic, aren't they? I mean, they started off with effectively doing graphical, user graphical processes, which then the, the, the blockchain, bitcoin, sort of crowd jumped on and that pushed up the prices and then they recognized immediate, you know.
Peter Hinssen:There was then a natural evolution into into um, into ai as well absolutely, and you're right, they're much more opportunistic, but I think they are almost like a company that thrives in the never normal. It's almost like a company that you know the more adversity you throw at them, the stronger they become. It's almost like the anti-fragile that Nassim Taleb was talking about, and I think it's going to be fascinating to hear the lessons from those companies. And but then again, there is not a cook, a cutter approach. This is not something you can replicate in every other company, but I think it's going to be a fundamental change in some of our management principles and ideas that we're going to have to figure out over the next couple of years for half an hour.
Marc Curtis:I'd just like to wrap up. There's a question I always like to ask people on this podcast and that is and I think you've actually pretty much answered it, or at least you've signposted a couple of companies that you're you know in awe of or you admire greatly, but in terms of pioneering, and pioneering with you know, within the world in which you operate, who, for you, is somebody that you really admire or an organization that you really admire? That really somehow exemplifies all of the thoughts and the kind of the ideas that inform your work now.
Peter Hinssen:So it will be obvious for me, I think, to you know, to look at, you know, say, a Microsoft or an NVIDIA. Let me give you one example of a company that has deeply inspired me. It's the French luxury brand Hermès. And the reason I love them is they're more than 180 years old. Founded by Monsieur Hermès to build the number one luxury saddle maker in Paris, his son took over and scaled it to become the number one European luxury saddle maker and then the third generation took over, which typically in a family business, screws things up.
Peter Hinssen:And that person went to New York for a year to just be inspired by the day after tomorrow. And he saw two things. One he saw the first, automobile, and he realized that making saddles for horses might not be the way forward. And the second is he saw the zipper, which we now think is a commodity product, but he just blew his mind. It was like the invention of 1911. By the time he came back to Paris, he had the exclusive rights to use the zipper in continental Europe. And then imagine, you know, the grandson of the founder coming in after a year in New York saying stop with the saddles, because horses are not the future.
Peter Hinssen:And look at this, you know I mean that company has been transforming itself over and over again. Today, the number one challenge for them is the product itself, because leather is not seen as maybe the most environmentally ecologically. So you know, wearing a very expensive bag made out of dead cows might not appeal to the next generation. They're now one of the pioneer inventors in alternative leather products. They can make you a Birkin bag out of mycelium, which is mushroom, that is even more expensive than the dead cow variant. And I love these companies that are constantly reinventing themselves. So I think Hermès is one of my favorite companies out there that I really enjoy how they're continuously, continuously reinventing themselves and thriving, actually, on the never normal.
Marc Curtis:Peter, that was a really good answer and I love the expression dead cow variant, I think is the one that I'm going to be repeating for the next week. Peter, thank you so much for taking the time. I know we're going to see you on the 5th of June at the Future of Work conference.
Peter Hinssen:Yes, very excited to do that, yeah absolutely.
Marc Curtis:I think it's going to be a fantastic event. I'm very much looking forward to hearing what you've got to say on that, but for now, thank you so much for spending the time talking to me and hope to talk to you again really soon.
Peter Hinssen:Thank you very much, Mark. A pleasure to be here.
Marc Curtis:That was Peter Hinson really interesting guy and genuinely, really looking forward to hearing him talk at the Future of Work conference on the 5th of June in Brussels. There is a link in the podcast notes, so have a look. See if you can get some tickets. There's a few left. If you are a Lyrico customer, please talk to your sales rep or your account manager and see if they can sort you out with some tickets, and I hope to see you in June.
