Holistic Transformation

  • “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
  • – Albert Einstein

The Blue Earth process is a revolutionary new system for creating, incubating and scaling holistic transformation.

We established the Blue Earth Network in 2008 with the belief that the need of the hour is to create holistic solutions to chronic problems that plague businesses, society and the planet as a whole. In our experience of business and society, the real issue isn’t lack of resources, but the lack of transformative capability.

The Six Disciplines of Holistic Transformation
The system was designed based on a revolutionary study of how some of the world’s greatest brands became iconic from the most humble of beginnings. We discovered underlying drivers of disruptive innovation and iconic branding that directly contravene sacred management doctrine. These are the Six Disciplines that you can learn about by contacting us.

There are some inherent advantages to creating and incubating an iconic brand that are enjoyed by small entrepreneurs who don’t have rigid mental models, organizational silos, incentive structures or core competencies that masquerade as “assets”. However, large organizations can leverage their scale and resources to use the Blue Earth Holistic Transformation Disciplines to consistently create highly transformative brands/services/programs. It is a scientific, structured and repeatable approach to identifying significant and meaningful problems, inventing breakthrough solutions and executing sustainably scalable plans.

Read how we discovered the Six Disciplines below:

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  • What Is an Iconic Brand?
  • A brand that creates enduring transformational value.

Keeping in mind the three criterion (above) for a brand to be classified as iconic, brands like these qualified for our revolutionary study: Coca-Cola, Nike, Harley-Davidson, Apple, Starbucks, Red Bull, Gatorade, etc.

Several big brands (like Sprite and Pantene) that I had worked on, did not meet all three criterion. Even great brands like Folgers or Tide did not qualify as truly iconic.

Highly innovative brands like the Sony Walkman also did not meet the iconic criterion, because they failed to transcend their technology. They were commoditized or obsoleted when their technology lost its advantage.

So, why do some brands transcend their technology, and sometimes their categories, and beat the gravitational pull of commoditization?

There were two epiphanies that triggered our revolutionary study of iconic brands, which provided very unexpected answers:

  • Epiphany One
  • All of these brands were created and incubated by small entrepreneurs, not by large companies.

Iconic Brand Creators are Invariably Small Entrepreneurs. There is no doubt that big companies have launched many great brands, and many small entrepreneurs fail to create brands of note. However, we were intrigued that almost all truly iconic brands that met all three Iconic Criterion above, were launched and incubated by small entrepreneurs.

Iconic Brand Creators
  • Epiphany Two
  • These small entrepreneurs came from outside the industries they transformed and came to dominate.
Iconic Brands Who created these icons Creators' Background Who could have, but didn't
Coca-Cola Pemberton Pharmacist Dr. Pepper
Gatorade Cade College Professor Coca-Cola
Red Bull Mateschitz Toothpaste Marketer Coca-Cola
McDonald's Kroc Milkshake Machine Sales White Castle
Starbucks Schultz Salesman McDonald's
Microsoft Gates College Drop-out IBM
Apple Jobs Technician at Atari Microsoft
Google Page & Brin Students Microsoft
Nike Knight Student/Accountant Converse
Blackberry Lazaridis College Drop-out Motorola
Harley-Davidson Harley & Davidson Hobbyists Ford

Contrary to widely-held belief, huge resources and industry expertise - the two factors that you would most expect to be required to create iconic brands - were missing from the creation/incubation equation!  Some of these small entrepreneurs established Fortune 100 companies. However, even these iconic companies never repeated their success by incubating another iconic brand. Many of the owners of such brands helplessly witnessed other small entrepreneurs launch new iconic brands in their domain. Apple, Starbucks and Red Bull are cases in point of small entrepreneurs launching iconic brands that grew right under the noses of gigantic corporations.

So are industry expertise and money a handicap when it comes to transformative innovation? How do these little entrepreneurs not only invent new categories, but manage to grow into giants themselves? Our study found there were six factors that these entrepreneurs stumbled upon due to circumstances that might have been a combination of serendipity, necessity, flexibility or genius! We find that these factors can be deliberately replicated.

These Six Disciplines are the foundation of our innovation system, which helps reduce the risk, cost and time associated with the:

  • Discovery of great opportunities

  • Invention of transformative new categories

  • Creation of launch/re-Launch plans using the learnings from the incubation of iconic brands

Please contact us for a deeper overview of the Six Disciplines of Iconic Entrepreneurship as they apply to Corporations, Nonprofits and Entrepreneurs.

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